AP English Lit terms

canon

A body of writings established over time as having genuine literary merit.

anecdote

A brief account of a story about an individual or incident

epigraph

A brief quotation at the beginning of a work (usually on the title page) that reflects the theme of the work. My Antonia, Fahrenheit 451, and Frankenstein each have an epigraph.

confidant

A character entrusted with the secrets and private thoughts of another character, usually the protagonist e. g. Horatio is Hamlet's confidant

first person narrator

A character in the story who tells the story, using the pronoun I. Limited perspective of the narration and therefore unreliable.

dynamic character

A character that changes during the course of a work

antagonist

A character who functions as a resisting force to the goals of the protagonist, without association of good or evil e. g. the creature in Frankenstein or Macduff in Macbeth

archetype

A character, situation, or symbol that is familiar to people from all cultures and eras because it occurs frequently in literature, myth, religion, or folklore e. g. the wise old man, the goddess, the temptress, the crone etc.; premised on Carl Jung's theories of the collective unconscious.

analogy

A comparison, usually extended, of two different things.

doppelganger

A device by which a character is self-duplicated; the "divided self" or ghostly double e. g. Victor Frankenstein and his creature

convention

A device, principle, procedure or form which is generally accepted e. g. an audience at a play accepts the convention of a representation of scenery and action

anticlimax

A drop, often sudden and unexpected, from a dignified or important idea or situation to one that is trivial or humorous. Also, a sudden descent from something sublime to something ridiculous e.g. the ending of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

Conceit

A far-fetched comparison between two seemingly unlike thing; an extended metaphor that gains appeal from its unusual or extraordinary comparison e.g. in John Donne's "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" the speaker compares the love he feels for his wife to a mathematical compass. Also known as metaphysical conceit.

apostrophe

A figure of speech in which a person not present or a personified abstraction is directly addressed as though present e. g. Walt Whitman's O Captain, My Captain! and May Sarton's Lady with a Falcon

dramatic irony

A form of irony that depends more on the structure of a play than the words; where the audience knows something vital that the character does not know. e. g. in Oedipus Rex, the audience knows that, as was prophesized, Oedipus has killed his father and married his mother, but Oedipus does not know either of them are his parents.

chiasmus

A literary scheme involving a specific inversion of word order. It involves taking parallelism and deliberately turning it inside out, creating a 'crisscross' pattern e. g. in William Shakespeare's Macbeth, "Fair is foul and foul is fair" and in Cormac McCarthy's The Road " you forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget." The overall novel structure of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying may be said to employ the chiasmus form.

ballad

A narrative poem, usually simple and fairly short, originally designed to be sung. Historically, the ballad was part of the oral tradition and was transmitted from singer to singer by word of mouth. It is distinguished by : simple, colloquial language; a story told through dialogue and action; a theme that is often tragic; the use of a refrain.

Bildungsroman

A novel which is an account of the youthful development of a hero or heroine e. g. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Jane Eyre

caesura

A pause separating phrases within a line of poetry e. g. from William Butler Yeat's Sailing to Byzantium "That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees -- Those dying generations - at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commended all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies."

dramatic monologue

A poem consisting of the words of a single character who reveals in his speech his own nature; discloses the psychology of the speaker at a particular moment e. g. Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" and "Porphyria's Lover".

elegy

A poem mourning the death of an individual. The loss is always personal for the speaker, and may also reflect a sense of cultural loss. e. g. A. E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young" or Theodore Roethke's "Elegy for Jane".

aubade

A poem or song announcing/celebrating the coming of dawn.

antihero

A protagonist who carries the action of the literary piece but does not embody the classic characteristics of courage, strength, and nobility. Frequently a pathetic, comic, or anti-social figure. Many scholars consider Winston Smith from 1984 to be an anti-hero, as is Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.

allusion

A reference in literature to previous literature, history, mythology, pop culture, or the Bible e. g. from T. Nashe's "Litany in Time of Plague" a reference to Helen of Troy "Brightness falls from the air Queens have died young and fair Dust hath closed Helen's eye..."

antithesis

A rhetorical figure in which sharply opposing are expressed within a balanced grammatical structure, as in the following example from Samuel Johnson in his characterization of the Reverend Zacariah Mudge: "Though studious, he was popular; though argumentative, he was modest; though inflexible, he was candid; and though metaphysical, yet orthodox

flashback

A scene inserted in a novel, play, or story showing events which happened at an earlier time.

aphorism

A short pithy statement of a truth or doctrine e. g. from Pope's An Essay on Man "The proper study of mankind is man."

epigram

A short, usually witty statement, graceful in style and ingenious in thought e. g. the following statement by Oscar Wilde "Man is a rational animal always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason."

epithalamion

A song or poem sung outside the bridal chamber on the wedding night.

epiphany

A sudden flash of insight; a startling discovery; a dramatic realization

emblem

A symbolic picture accompanied by a motto and occasionally by exposition e.g. in 1984 the ever-present posters of Big Brother which state "Big Brother is watching you."

euphemism

A word or phrase which substitutes for another which would likely be undesirable because it may be too direct, unpleasant, or offensive e. g. "pass on" instead of "die".

burlesque

A work designed to ridicule attitudes, style, or subject matter by handling either an elevated subject in trivial manner or a low subject with mock dignity. The term is used for various types of satirical imitation.

diction

A writer's choice of language to achieve a desired tone or effect, be it formal, informal, colloquial elevated etc.

aposiopesis

An abrupt breaking off in the middle of a sentence without the completion of the idea, often under the stress of emotion e. g. Hamlet III, iv, 96-104 HAMLET A murderer and a villian; A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe Of your precedent lord; a vice of kings; A cutpurse of the empire and the rule That from a shelf the precious diadem stole, And put it in his pocket QUEEN No more! HAMLET A king of shreds and patches - (enter GHOST) Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings, You heavenly gaurds! What would your gracious figure?"

epithet

An adjective or phrase expressing some defining or prominent quality or attribute characteristic of an individual, as in Atilla the Hun, Long John Silver, or Jack the Ripper.

cliche

An expression that deviates enough from ordinary usage to call attention to itself and has been used so often that it is felt to be hackneyed or cloying e. g. "He's fit as a fiddle" or "I saw the handwriting on the wall" They can also be overused and therefore trite literary phrases e. g. "the cooling western breeze" or "the whisper of the wind"

epic

An extended narrative poem, exalted in style and heroic in theme e. g. The Odyssey

Allegory

An extended narrative that carries a second meaning along with the surface story. The second meaning usually involves incarnations of abstract ideas. William Golding's Lord of the Flies is considered allegorical and Cormac McCarthy's The Road may be read in this way

aporia

An impasse or un-resolvable conflict between thought and language e. g. '"There is no God and we are his prophets"' from The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Enlightenment

An intellectual movement in the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries uniting the concepts of God, nature, reason, and man in the belief that "right reason" could achieve for man a perfect society by freeing him from the oppressive restraints of unexamined authority, superstition, and prejudice. Also known as the Age of Reason.

farce

Any play which evokes laughter by such devices of low comedy such as physical buffoonery, rough wit or ridiculous situations; unconcerned with subtlety/plausibility.

ethos

Appeal to ethics. In argumentative and persuasive writing, the writer must establish his or her credibility

Deconstructionism

As a contemporary literary theory, deconstructionism asserts that, rather than the traditional view that a text has only one fixed and stable meaning, any text carries a plurality of meaning. As such, whatever meaning that exists does not exist in the closed book, but only occurs when a reader begins to read.

connotation

Associations a word calls to mind

comedy of manners

Concerned with the intrigues, regularly amorous, of witty and sophisticated members of an aristocratic society e. g. Oscar Wilde's The importance of Being Earnest

climax

Currently, critics disagree on exact distinctions between crisis and climax. For this class, the point of greatest dramatic tension or emotional intensity in a plot is defined as the climax. In a drama, the climax follows the rising action and precedes the falling action. Climax is the point at which the conflict reaches the greatest height, whereas the crisis is used to describe multiple conflicts throughout the work where the outcome of protagonist is uncertain.

Beat Generation

Denotes a group of American writers (especially poets) who became prominent in the 1950s. Their convictions and attitudes were unconventional, provocative, anti-intellectual, anti-hierarchal and anti-middle-class ('squares'). Allen Ginsberg's Howl and other Poems (1956) represents the disillusionment of the movement with modern society, materialism, militarism, and conformity.

euphony

Denotes pleasing, mellifluous sounds, usually produced by long vowels rather than consonants

apotheosis

Elevation of someone to the status of a god e. g. After Mr. Rochester proposes, Jane Eyre apotheosizes him when she says "'My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world; almost my hope of heaven... I could not, in those days, see God for his creature..."

catharsis

Emotional cleansing or feeling of relief felt by an audience member at the conclusion of a tragedy. In a sense, the tragedy, having aroused powerful feelings in the spectator, also has a therapeutic effect.

anadiplosis

Greek for "doubling"): Repeating the last word of a clause at the beginning of the next clause e.g. Nietzsche: "Talent is an adornment:an adornment is also a concealment." On a more mundane level, the character of Yoda states in Star Wars, Episode I: "Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hatred; hatred leads to conflict; conflict leads to suffering."

catastrophe

Greek for "overturning"; the tragic denouement of a play or story e. g. the Moor's murder of his wife Desdemona and his own suicide at the climax of Shakespeare's Othello or Darl's betrayal and forced incarceration in an insane asylum at the end of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

antimetabole

Greek for "turning about." A rhetorical scheme involving repetition in reverse order: "One should eat to live, not live to ear." Or, "You like it; it likes you." The witches in that Scottish play chant, "Fair is foul and foul is fair." One character in Love's Labor's Lost uses antimetabole when he asks "I pretty, and my saying apt? or I apt, and my saying pretty?" (I,ii). "The first will be last and last will be first" and so forth. Antimetabole often overlaps chiasmus.

cacophony

Harsh, discordant sounds, unpleasant to the ear e. g. from Tennyson's Morte D'Arthur: "Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves and barren chasms, and all to left and right The bare black cliff clanged round him..."

comic relief

Humorous element inserted into a somber or tragic work esp. a play, in order to relieve its tension, widen its scope, or heighten by contrast the tragic emotion e. g. the porter's scene in Macbeth or the gravediggers' scene in Hamlet.

anachronism

In a literary work, something placed in an inappropriate period in time e. g. a clock with hands in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Often, but not always, a mistake on the part of the author

aside

In a play, a character's short speech or remark heard by the audience but not by other characters e. g. Hamlet's comment that he is "'A little more than kin, and less than kind." (I, ii, 65)

Byronic hero

In literature, a rebel, proudly defiant in his attitude toward conventional social codes and religious beliefs; an exile or outcast hungering for an ultimate truth to give meaning to his life. Despite past transgressions he remains a sympathetic figure. Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre is typically considered a Byronic hero

enjambment

In poetry, the running over of a sentence from one verse or stanza to the next without stopping at the end of the first. "Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as knot." In this excerpt, the first and third lines are enjambed

carpe diem

Latin phrase meaning "seize the day", the idea of which (time is short and life is fleeting) was used frequently in 16th and 17th century poetry e.g. Robert Herrick's. "To The Virgins to Make Much of Time" "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may Old Time is still flying; And this same flower that smile today Tomorrow will be dying..."

deus ex machina

Literally 'god out of the machine'; at a story's end, any unanticipated intervention that resolves a seemingly impossible plot problem e. g. Hamlet's rescue by merciful pirates

Elizabethan era

Named for England's Queen Elizabeth the First, a somewhat vague classification applied to the second half of the 16th century and early part of the 17th, remarkable for its creative activity and output in English literature, especially drama.

epistolary novel

Novel written in the form of letters. Technically, Frankenstein is an epistolary novel.

Edwardian Period

Pertaining to King Edward VII's reign (1901-1910) - a period of considerable change and reaction against Victorianism as well as growing apprehension about technology, industrialization, and the weakening of British imperialism

blank verse

Poetry of unrhymed iambic pentameter e. g. Robert Frost's Birches

end rhyme

Rhyme which comes at the end of a line of verse

eye rhyme

Rhyme which depends on spelling rather than pronunciation; rhyme that is seen, not heard.

doggerel

Rough, crudely written verse. The term is one of critical judgment rather than technical description. In Mark Twain's Huck Finn, Emmeline Grangerford's "Ode on the Death of Stephen Dowling Bots" is a classic example: "And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad hearts thicken, And did the mourners cry? No; such was no the fate of Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad hearts round him thicken, 'Twas not from sickness' shots. No whooping cough did rack his frame, Nor measles drear, with spots; Not these impaired the sacred name Of Stephen Dowling Bots..."

bathos

Similar to anti-climactic, a sudden descent from the exalted to the ridiculous; excessive sentimentality or pathos; authors achieve bathos unintentionally -- it is a derisive comment about the author's failure.

elision

Slurring or omission of an unstressed syllable to make a line of poetry conform to a metrical pattern e. g. from Felicia Heman's "England's Dead" "Son of the ocean isle! Where sleep your mighty dead? Show me what high and stately pile Is reared o'er Glory's bed..."

didactic

Story, speech essay, or play in which the author's primary purpose is to instruct, teach or moralize

direct characterization

Telling the attributes and qualities of a character e. g. early in Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen tells us that "Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty Years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character."

feminine rhyme

Terminal rhyme that extends over two or more syllables

attitude

The author's feelings toward the topic he or she is writing about; often used interchangeably with "tone".

dramatis personae

The characters in a play, usually listed on a page prior to the opening lines.

consonance

The close repetition of identical consonant sounds before and after different vowels e. g. slip-slop; live-love; pitter-patter e.g. the last stanza from W H. Auden's "'O where are you going?' said reader to rider" "Out of this house"---said rider to reader "Yours never will"---said farer to fearer "They're looking for you"---said hearer to horror as he left them there, as he left them there.

denotation

The dictionary or literal meaning of a word or phrase

atmosphere

The emotional tone pervading a section or a whole of a literary work.

caricature

The exaggeration of features and mannerisms for satirical effect. Deliberately distorted rendering of a person for satirical effect.

anastrophe

The inversion of normal word order to achieve a particular effect, usually rhyme or meter e. g. from A. E. Houseman's "To an Athlete Dying Young": "The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the marketplace. Man and boy stood cheering by And home we brought you shoulder high."

cadence

The natural rise and fall of voice in reciting, reading, or speaking; flow of rhythm, inflection, or modulation in a tone.

alliteration

The repetition of accented consonant sounds either at the beginning of words (or a stressed syllable within a word) that are close to each other e. g. the repetition of the s, th, and w consonants from Shakespeare's Sonnet 30 "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought and with old woes new wail my dear time's waste."

anaphora

The repetition of an identical word or group of words in successive verses or clauses e. g. "I gave her Cakes and I gave her Ale, I gave her Sack and Sherry; I kissed her once and I kissed her twice, And we were wondrous merry." Anon.

assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds, usually close together, to achieve a particular effect or euphony e. g. from Tennyson's Lotus-Eaters "The Lotus blooms below the barren peak; The Lotus blows by every winding creek; All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone Thro' every hallow cave and alley lone, Round and Round the spicy downs the yellow Lotus-dust is blown."

crisis

The turning point of uncertainty and tension resulting from earlier conflict in a plot. At these moments in a story, it is unclear if the protagonist will succeed or fail in his struggle.

denouement

The tying up of loose ends after the climax in a story, novel, or play

American Renaissance

The writing of the period before the Civil War, beginning with Emerson and Thoreau and the Transcendentalist movement including Whitman, Hawthorne, and Melville. These writers are essentially Romantics of a distinctively American stripe

ambiguity

They quality of being intentionally unclear. Makes the situation able to be interpreted in more than one way. For example, when Hamlet says to Ophelia "get thee to a nunnery" is he literally urging her to go to a convent or is he calling her a *****?

coin

To invent and put into use a new word or expression. Shakespeare is commonly credited with over 1700 coinages including, "eyeball," "zany," and "swagger."

Bowdlerize

To prudishly expurgate supposedly offensive passages e. g. the crossing-the-stream scene from Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles

English sonnet

Traditionally, a fourteen-line love poem in iambic pentameter, but in contemporary poetry, themes and forms vary. Rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The final couplet sums up or resolves the situation described in the previous lines. Also known as the Shakespearean sonnet.

couplet

Two successive rhyming lines of the same number of syllables, with matching cadence e. g. from John Greenleaf Whittier's "Snowbound" "Shut in from all the world without We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door..."

closed form

Type of poetry in which the structure is dictated or predetermined e. g. a sonnet, a haiku, a sestina etc..

figurative language

Unlike literal expression, uses of figures of speech (metaphor, simile, metonymy, personification, and hyperbole) in order to appeal to one's senses. Commonly used in poetry.

bucolic

Used to describe an idealized country setting; basically a synonym for pastoral.

distortion

Variation from expected or typical proportion or arrangement. Intentional variation from norms of harmony, balance, and order

end-stopped

When the sense and meter coincide at the end of the line e. g. the second and fourth lines in this excerpt from Seamus Heaney's "Blackberry-Picking" "Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as knot."

colloquial

Words, phrases, or expressions used in everyday speech and writing.

dystopia

Work in which a society in an attempt to perfect itself, instead goes terribly wrong; usually characterized by extreme mechanization and authoritarianism e. g. George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. May be used interchangeably with "anti-utopia."