AP Literature Terms
Catharsis: emotional discharge through which one can achieve a state of moral or spiritual renewal or achieve a state of liberation from anxiety and stress. Catharsis is a Greek word and it means cleansing.
"...a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing" Macbeth
Syllogism: a rhetorical device that starts an argument with a reference to something general and from this it draws conclusion about something more specific.
"All love is wonder; if we justly do Account her wonderful, why not lovely too?" If we expand the above Syllogism, it will have the following organization of statements; "All that is lovable is wonderful and the mistress is wonderful. Therefore, the mistress is lovable."
Ethos: in rhetoric, ethos represents credibility or an ethical appeal which involves persuasion by the character involved.
"Doctors all over the world recommend this type of treatment." People tend to believe the opinions of doctors in the matter of medical treatments.
Antimetabole: derived from a Greek word which means "turning about". It is a literary term or device that involves repeating a phrase in reverse order.
"Eat to live, not live to eat."- Socrates "I go where I please, and I please where I go." - Attributed to Duke Nukem
Romanticism: originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual.
"Grimms' Fairy Tales" by the Brothers grimm Hans Christian Andersen's folk tales Mythology written by Jacob Grimm. The primary concepts explored during the Romantic Period included nature, myth, emotion, symbols, and ideas about the self and individualism.
Ad homenem: "against the man". As the name suggests, it is a literary term that involves commenting on or against an opponent to undermine him instead of his arguments.
"How can you argue your case for vegetarianism when you are enjoying your steak?" This clearly shows how a person is attacked instead of being addressed for or against his argument.
Anapest: a poetic device defined as a metrical foot in a line of a poem that contains three syllables wherein the first two syllables are short and unstressed followed by a third syllable that is long and stressed
"I must fi nish my jour ney a lone."
Apostrophe: A writer or a speaker, using an apostrophe, detaches himself from the reality and addresses an imaginary character in his speech.
"Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee! I have thee not, and yet I see thee still."
Conceit: an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem
"Love is like an oil change," or "The broken heart is a damaged china pot."
Epigram: a memorable, brief, interesting and surprising satirical statement
"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put and end to mankind." - John F. Kennedy "It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness." - Eleanor Roosevelt
Hamartia: a personal error in a protagonist's personality that brings about his tragic downfall in a tragedy.
"Oedipus" in a famous Greek Tragedy is a perfect example of hamartia i.e. his downfall is cause by unintentional wrongdoings. His "hubris" makes him try to defy the prophecy of gods but he ends up doing what he feared the most.
Adynaton: a rhetorical device that is a form of hyperbole in which exaggeration is taken to a great extreme where it seems impossible.
"This coyness, lady, were no crime." - saying that a lady's "coyness" is a crime is clearly an adynaton since no lawmaker will be sane enough to pass a law to criminalize coyness.
Villanelle: a nineteen-line poem with two rhymes throughout, consisting of five tercets and a quatrain
(A1) refrain 1 Line 2 (b) (A2) refrain 2 Line 4 (a) Line 5 (b) (A1) refrain 1 Line 7 (a) Line 8 (b) (A2) refrain 2 Line 10 (a) Line 11 (b) (A1) refrain 1 Line 13 (a) Line 14 (b) (A2) refrain 2 Line 16 (a) Line 17 (b) (A1) refrain 1 (A2) refrain 2
Dramatic Unities: The quality of oneness in a paragraph or essay that results when all the words and sentences contribute to a single main idea.
(The three). One catastrophe, one locality, one day. These are Aristotle's rules for tragedy, and the French plays strictly follow them.
Sestina: The lines are grouped into six sestets and a concluding tercet. Thus a Sestina has 39 lines.
1 2 3 4 5 6 - End words of lines in first sestet. 6 1 5 2 4 3 - End words of lines in second sestet. 3 6 4 1 2 5 - End words of lines in third sestet. 5 3 2 6 1 4 - End words of lines in fourth sestet. 4 5 1 3 6 2 - End words of lines in fifth sestet. 2 4 6 5 3 1 - End words of lines in sixth sestet.
Sonnet: 14 fourteen lines and is written in iambic pentameter. Each line has 10 syllables.
A Shakespearean sonnet is generally written in an iambic pentameter, there are 10 syllables in each line.
Ballad stanza: four-line stanza, known as a quatrain
All in a hot and copper sky! The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon.
Logos: a literary device that can be defined as a statement, sentence or argument used to convince or persuade the targeted audience by employing reason or logic
All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
End-stopped line: a poetic device in which a pause comes at the end of a syntactic unit (sentence, clause or phrase
Bright Star, would I were as stedfast as thou art— Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Naturalism: the 1880s to 1930s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character
Common theme of naturalism: "The conflict in naturalistic novels is often 'man against nature' or 'man against himself' as characters struggle to retain a 'veneer of civilization' despite external pressures that threaten to release the 'brute within' " (Campbell). Nature is indifferent to man The universe is deterministic
Theatre of the Absurd: a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s, as well as one for the style of theatre which has evolved from their work
Critic Martin Esslin coined the term in his 1960 essay "Theatre of the Absurd." He related these plays based on a broad theme of the Absurd, similar to the way Albert Camus uses the term in his 1942 essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus".[2] The Absurd in these plays takes the form of man's reaction to a world apparently without meaning, and/or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible outside forces.
Spondee: consisting of two long or two stressed syllables
DUMDUM
Trochee: a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one
DUMda
Dactyl: a long syllable followed by two short syllables
DUMdada
Closet drama: plays that have been written to be read, but not performed. Their value is in the play itself, not in the performance of the play
Early 1800's - Serious writers such as Browning and Byron sought to elevate the art form by removing it from the stage altogether by creating closet dramas. It was a natural reaction to the sensational performances of the day.
Metonymy: a figure of speech that replaces the name of a thing with the name of something else with which it is closely associated
England decides to keep check on immigration. (England refers to the government.)
Allegory: a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one
Example: Plato's Allegory of the Cave
Eye rhyme: The rhyming in this type is based on spelling and not sound.
Examples are: move and love, cough and bough, food and good, death and wreath.
Feminine Rhyme: Also referred to as double, triple, multiple, extra-syllable, extended, this has different beginnings of the words, but rhymes latter syllables.
Examples include backing and hacking, tricky and picky, moaning and groaning, generate and venerate.
Open form poetry: will have no set meter, which is the rhythm of the words, no rhyme scheme, or any particular structure.
Fog by Carl Sandburg The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.
Surrealism: an artistic attempt to bridge together reality and the imagination.
Founded by André Breton (1896-1966), surrealism began as an artistic movement in Paris in the 1920s and lasted until the 1940s. Writer and philosopher Breton propelled this movement with his publication of The Manifesto of Surrealism, as a way of fighting against the way art was understood at the time.
Cosmic irony: This type of irony can be attributed to some sort of misfortune. Usually cosmic irony is the end result of fate or chance.
Gambling. If you are playing blackjack chances are you will be up (making money) for awhile, and then just when you thought things were going well, you lose it all.
Renaissance literature: refers to European literature which was influenced by the intellectual and cultural tendencies associated with the Renaissance
Hamlet, Macbeth, etc. Dominated by Shakespeare.
Elision: the removal of an unstressed syllable, consonants, or letters from a word or phrase to decrease the number of letters or syllables in order to mix words together
Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard; And crows are fatted with the murrion flock; The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud," (Midsummer Night's Dream)
Picaresque: pertaining to, characteristic of, or characterized by a form of prose fiction, originally developed in Spain, in which the adventures of an engagingly roguish hero are described in a series of usually humorous or satiric episodes that often depict, in realistic detail, the everyday life of the common people:
Her characters are quixotic, picaresque heroes of the moral life. His case is exceptional only for its picaresque twist. Not many picaresque heroes find things so straightforward.
picaresque novel: a genre of prose fiction which depicts the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society
Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Candide
Asyndeton: a stylistic device used in literature and poetry to intentionally eliminate conjunctions between the phrases and in the sentence, yet maintain the grammatical accuracy
IAGO Call up her father. Rouse him. Make after him, Poison his delight, Proclaim him in the streets. Incense her kinsmen, And, though he in a fertile climate dwell, (Othello)
Imperfect Rhyme: a rhyme in which the stressed syllables of ending consonants match, however the preceding vowel sounds do not match.
If love is like a bridge or maybe like a grudge
metafiction: fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions (especially naturalism) and traditional narrative techniques
In The Monster at the End of this Book, Grover is aware of some of the elements of metafiction, which drives the plot. For instance: 1. He knows that the fictional work has a title, like most fictional work does, and reading it causes him to freak out. 2. He is aware that when the reader turns the page, that takes the book closer to the end, and he begs, pleads, and builds barriers to try and keep the reader from turning the pages and moving along the fictional story. In both cases, Grover's ability to see these elements that are part of fictional stories are metafictional examples.
Blank verse poetry: a literary device defined as un-rhyming verse written in iambic pentameter.
In poetry and prose, it has a consistent meter with 10 syllables in each line (pentameter); where, unstressed syllables are followed by stressed ones and five of which are stressed but do not rhyme.
Aubade poetry: A love poem or song welcoming or lamenting the arrival of the dawn
In the mood: Radiant beams of Aubade, Basking brilliant aura, Sun is in the mood.
Falling meter: Term used to describe front stressed meters such as trochaic and dactylic - as opposed to rising meter.
In the trochaic rhythm every second syllable is unstressed or unaccented. Eg. Peter Peter pumpkin eater In the dactylic rhythm the first syllable is stressed and the next two syllables are unstressed. Eg: Half a league half a league.
Meditation poetry: combines the religious practice of meditation with verse.
It occurs in many cultures, especially in Asian, European and Hindu cultures. Especially Buddhist and Hindu writers have developed extensive theories and phase models for meditation (Bevis 1988;73-88).
Victorian literature: written in England during the reign of Queen Victoria, or roughly from 1837 -1901. It is largely characterized by the struggle of working people and the triumph of right over wrong.
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Didactic: refers to a particular philosophy in art and literature that emphasizes the idea that different forms of art and literature ought to convey information and instructions along with pleasure and entertainment.
John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" is one of the best didacticism examples in the form of spiritual allegory. The poem describes a religious and spiritual journey of a man on the way to deliverance.
Enjambment: A line having no end punctuation but running over to the next line.
Listen! The mighty Being is awake And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder―everlastinly.
Melodrama: a creative performance or actions with lots of exaggerated emotion, tension or excitement.
Meg: Stop making a melodrama out of everything. To end the show, once again showing tremendous versatility, the oldest group presented a Victorian melodrama - THE BLACK HEARTED VILLAIN.
Caesura poetry: literary device involves creating a fracture of sorts within a sentence where the two separate parts are distinguishable from one another yet intrinsically linked to one another.
Mozart- oh how your music makes me soar!
Heroic couplet: refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of lines in iambic pentameter
O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull; Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.
Old Comedy: plays are characterized by an exuberant and high-spirited satire of public persons and affairs.
Old Comedy sometimes is called Aristophanic comedy, after its most famous exponent, whose 11 surviving plays include The Clouds (423 bc), a satire on the misuse of philosophical argument directed chiefly against Socrates
Euphemism: a polite expression used in place of words or phrases that otherwise might be considered harsh or unpleasant to hear
Passed away instead of died Correctional facility instead of jail Departed instead of died
Envoi: a short final stanza of a ballad serving as a summary or dedication
Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal, The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way; Even to-day your royal head may fall, I think I will not hang myself to-day. - G. K. Chesterton
Malapropism: use of an incorrect word in place of a similar sounding word that results in a nonsensical and humorous expression.
Richard J. Daley, the former mayor of Chicago, is said to have called "tandem bicycle" as "tantrum bicycle" and also have incorrectly used "Alcoholics Unanimous" instead of "Alcoholics Anonymous".
Black Comedy: a comic work that employs farce and morbid humor, which, in its simplest form, is humor that makes light of subject matter usually considered taboo.
Roald Dahl - in which profound or horrific events were portrayed in a comic manner.
Pathos: a quality of an experience in life or a work of art that stirs up emotions of pity, sympathy and sorrow.
Romeos's servant Balthasar invokes pity among the audience, when he informs Romeo, who was waiting impatiently to hear about Juliet, that Juliet is dead and is buried in her family's death. We feel sorry for the untimely death of Juliet and her heartbroken Romeo.
Sentimental comedy: dramatic genre of the 18th century, denoting plays in which middle-class protagonists triumphantly overcome a series of moral trials
Sentimental comedy had its roots in early 18th century tragedy, which had a vein of morality similar to that of sentimental comedy but had loftier characters and subject matter than sentimental comedy.
Ode poetry: a form of poetry such as sonnet or elegy, etc. Ode is a literary technique that is lyrical in nature, but not very lengthy.
Since the themes of odes are inspiring and lofty that bears significance, therefore have universal appeal. Also, by using sublime and exceptional style, poets endeavor to compose grand and elevated types of odes.
Prose poem: poetry written in prose instead of using verse but preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery and emotional effects.
TO TIME TEASING TIME Time was told to lag behind; the rooster forget to crow and the sun was late: Yet, I did not feel any younger! Time was to rush ahead; the rooster was early and the sun too: Yet, I did not feel any older! As time sashays to and fro, How confuse my body becomes.
Farce: type of a comedy that makes the use of highly exaggerated and funny situations aimed at entertaining the audience
Taming of the Shrew- Although Katherina is a stereotype and a boisterous shrew, Shakespeare portrays her as an individual needing sympathy because Bianca is favorite child of her father, Baptisa. As in this line, "She is your treasure, she must have a husband: I must dance barefoot on her wedding day" it becomes clear that Baptista prefers Bianca to Kate.
Tragicomedy: the characters in tragicomedy are exaggerated and sometimes there might be a happy ending after a series of unfortunate events. It is incorporated with jokes throughout the story just to lighten the tone.
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare is considered as one of the most popular traditional tragicomedy examples. Though it has a comic structure, there are tragic characters such as Shylock (who is a central character) and tragic events such as Antonio's "loss" (because he is not really dead) of life.
Parable: a short allegorical story designed to illustrate or teach some truth, religious principle, or moral lesson.
The first he illustrates with a true story, which might be called the parable of the pheasant. He does not come right out and say so, but the story stands as a parable to be pondered by sociological historians. His story became a parable for the fickleness of art and life.
Elegy: a poem or song in the form of elegiac couplets, written in honor of someone deceased
The forms of elegies we see today were introduced in the 16th century. "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" by Walt Whitman are the two most popular examples of elegy.
epistolary novel: written as a series of documents
The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use.
Antecedent: a thing or event that existed before or logically precedes another.
The weather is great today; let's make the most of it by going to the beach. Reasoning: The word "it" is a pronoun because it refers to the weather.
Litote: a figure of speech which employs an understatement by using double negatives or, in other words, positive statement is expressed by negating its opposite expressions
They do not seem the happiest couple around. The ice cream was not too bad. New York is not an ordinary city.
Literary canon: a term used widely to refer to a group of literary works that are considered the most important of a particular time period or place.
Those who decide whether a work will be canonized include influential literary critics, scholars, teachers, and anyone whose opinions and judgments regarding a literary work are also widely respected.
New comedy: Greek drama from about 320 bc to the mid-3rd century bc that offers a mildly satiric view of contemporary Athenian society, especially in its familiar and domestic aspects.
Unlike Old Comedy, which parodied public figures and events, New Comedy features fictional average citizens and has no supernatural or heroic overtones.
Rondel: one of three stanzas of thirteen or fourteen lines, with the first two lines of the opening quatrain recurring at the end of the second quatrain and the concluding sestet.
Untitled by an anonymous poet, probably female (12th century) I walk in loneliness through the greenwood [A] for I have none to go with me. [B] Since I have lost my friend by not being good I walk in loneliness through the greenwood. [A] I'll send him word and make it understood that I will be good company. I walk in loneliness through the greenwood [A] for I have none to go with me. [B]
Modernism: roughly the 1910s into the 1960s. Modernist literature came into its own due to increasing industrialization and globalization.
William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, E.E. Cummings, Sylvia Plath, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway,
Mimesis: the imitation of life in art and literature.
You know your painting exhibits mimesis when the viewers try to pick the flowers from the canvas.
Foot: the most basic unit of a poem's meter
a combination of feet make up a meter
Hubris: extreme pride and arrogance shown by a character that ultimately brings about his downfall.
a famous Greek Tragedy "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles, the character of the "King Oedipus" provides a classic example of a character who suffers from Hubris or excessive pride. Due to his "hubris", he attempts to defy prophecies of gods but ended up doing what he feared the most and what he was warned against
Static imagery: pertaining to or characterized by a fixed or stationary condition.
a stereotype dealing with imagery such as a specific type of person or figure
Fallacy: an erroneous argument dependent upon an unsound or illogical contention
appeal to ignorance, authority, opinion, etc.
Hermeneutics: the science of interpretation, especially of the Scriptures.
bible study through writing began in the 17000s
Dramatic monologue: a poem in the form of a speech or narrative by an imagined person, in which the speaker inadvertently reveals aspects of their character while describing a particular situation or series of events.
can be seen in movies, plays, and novels
Neo-classical literature: was written between 1660 and 1798. Writers of the Neoclassical period tried to imitate the style of the Romans and Greeks.
characterized by order, accuracy, and structure. In direct opposition to Renaissance attitudes, where man was seen as basically good, the writers portrayed man as inherently flawed.
Accentual verse: fixed number of stresses per line regardless of the number of syllables that are present
common in children's poetry Baa, baa, black sheep, (4) Have you any wool? (5) Yes sir, yes sir, (4)
Iamb: a metrical foot that consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one
daDUM
Pyrrhic: two unaccented, short syllables
dada
Rising meter: refers to metrical units, which are called feet, with rhythms that rise from unaccented to accented syllables
iamb: 2 syllables (unstressed, stressed): to-day. anapest: 3 syllables (unstressed, unstressed, stressed): in-ter-vene.
Stress syllable: the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word
increased loudness and pitch of a letter or sound
Lyric poetry: a form of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person
most commonly seen through songs
Episle: an especially long and formal letter, or is a poem or other writing in letter form.
often seen in religious texts such as the Bible
Common measure: a ballad stanza of four iambic lines and strict rhymes
often used in hymns, rhyming abcb or abab.
gothic literature: a genre or mode of literature that combines fiction, horror and Romanticism
origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto
Terza rima: an arrangement of triplets, especially in iambs
rhyme aba bcb cdc
Rhyme royal: a rhyming stanza form that was introduced into English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer.
rhyme scheme is a-b-a-b-b-c-c
Spenserian Stanza: Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single 'alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter.
rhyme scheme of these lines is "ababbcbcc."
Closed form poetry: also known as fixed form, consists of poems that follow patterns of lines, meter, rhymes and stanzas,
sonett, villanelle, sestina, etc.
Prosody: the use of pitch, loudness, tempo, and rhythm in speech to convey information about the structure and meaning
stress, unstress, pitch, etc.
Masculine Rhyme: the stress in on the final syllable in both words
support and report, dime and sublime, divulge and bulge
Dimeter: a metrical line of verse with two feet.
the first line of William Wordsworth's "We Are Seven": A simp \\ le Child[1]
Synesthesia: a technique adopted by writers to present ideas, characters or places in such a manner that they appeal to more than one senses like hearing, seeing, smell etc. at a given time.
the poet tells us about a place called "Inferno". He says, "Back to the region where the sun is silent." Here, Dante binds the sense of sight (sun) with the sense of hearing(silent).
Didactic poetry: to instill a particular piece of literature or article with a specific philosophical concept meant to teach a specific message or a moral lesson besides giving information and pleasure.
themes of faith, hope, spirituality, etc.
Literary conceit: Conceit is a figure of speech in which two vastly different objects are likened together with the help of similes or metaphors
will definitely be surprised to hear someone comparing "two lovers with the two legs of a draftsman's compass." Thus, conceit examples have a surprising or shocking effect on the readers because they are novel comparisons unlike the conventional comparisons made in similes and metaphors.
