AP Literary Terms

In media res

"in the midst of things" Opening of a story in the middle of the action, in the past details by exposition or flashback. Ex: Inception, Titanic

Versimilitude

"like the truth;" the internal truthfulness, lifelikeness, and consistency of the world created within a literary work. Stories with fantasy settings may still achieve a high degree of versimilitude The Song of Ice and Fire series The Mote in God's Eye (and many other Science Fiction novels)

Euphemism

(Greek "an insertion"): the figure by which something distasteful is described in alternative, less repugnant terms. (e.g., "he passed away")

Anaphora

(Greek "carrying back") The repetition of words or groups of words at the beginning of consecutive sentences , clause or phrases. Ex: Winston Churchill's quote "We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender".

Didactic

(Greek "teaching mode") Genres in a didactic mode are design to instruct to teach something explicitly and sometimes through the means of fiction. Ex: Children's fables, such as the Three Little Pigs, are teaching children about moral and what is right in society.

Doppelganger

(also known as The Double.) A character is duplicated into two (usually opposite) personalities. Example: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Bathos

*Not to be confused with Pathos* Writing strains for grandeur it cannot support; the author tries too hard to be a tear jerker. Can be for comic effect. One most common types of bathos is the humorous arrangement of items, so the list descends from grandiosity to absurdity. ex. "In the U.S., Osama Bin Laden is wanted for conspiracy, murder, terrorism, and unpaid parking tickets"

Hyperbaton

- a figure of speech where words are delivered or writen in an unusual or unexpected order ex: "Bloody thou art; bloody will be thy end" - from William Shakespeare Richard III

Kenning

- a literary trope in the form of a compound that uses figurative language in place of a concrete noun ex: "breaker of rings"= king "swan-road" = the sea

Spoonerism

- refers to the practice of interchanging the first letters of words to create nonsensical ones esp. to generate a humorous setting ex: "flesh and blood"= "blesh and flood"

Cacophony

- refers to words and phrases that imply strong unpleasant sounds - jarring dissonant sounds often times used to create a disturbing atmosphere ex: 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. - excerpt from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky

Climax

-(also called the turning point) the point at which the action stops rising and begins falling or reversing (ex. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar -when Caesar dies)

Iamb

-a foot containing an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one - (ex "Shall I compAre thee tO a sUmmer's dAy") -stressed syllables are capitalized

Epic

-poem that celebrates, in a continuous narrative, the achievements of heroes and heroines -uses elevated language and style -(ex Beowulf)

Ambiguity

1. A statement which has two or more possible meanings 2. A statement whose meaning is unclear Ex: "I saw her duck."

Ottava Rima

1. Literally "octave (eighth) rhyme"(Italian); a verse form consisting of eight-line stanzas with abababcc fhyme scheme and iambic meter W.B. Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium"

Elegy

1. Since the Renaissance, usually a formal lament on the death of a particular person, but focusing mainly on the speaker's efforts to come to terms with his or her grief. 2. More broadly, any lyric in sorrowful mood that takes death as its primary subject. ex: W.H. Auden's "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"

Bildungsroman

1. literally "educational novel" (German), a novel that depicts the intellectual, emotional, and moral developmet of its protagonist from childhood into adulthood Ex. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Cold Sassy Tree, The Alchemist, David Copperfield, Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye), Scout Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird

Symbol

A Symbol is a particular object, idea, or item that is taking the place of another object of significant value. A symbol can be for something unattainable, or attainable, while representing something either out of reach at the moment, or never realistic. I.E. The llightsaber of Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars that Luke inherits from Obi-Wan Kenobi symbolizes the past of Luke's father as well as Luke's destiny of becoming a Jedi, while it also represents foreshadowing that Anakin is still the chosen one.

Lampoon

A crude, coarse often bitter satire ridiculing the personal apperance or character of a person. Ex: Pap Finn in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Persona

A fictional character Ex: Roxanne Cross, in Bel Canto, embodies an important persona that cannot be ignored by the other characters or the reader.

litote

A figure of speech that emphasizes its subject by conscious understatement Example: Not bad (when praising someone)

Antithesis

A figure of speech where opposing ideas are expressed through the use of parallelism. ex: The agony of ecstacy ex: Let's agree to disagree

Distopian

A genre that attacks the fallacies of an idealistic view of life known as utopia. ex: George Orwell's 1984 is a distopian novel where the ambition for utopia has resulted in a largely unperfect society.

Stock Response

A habitual/automatic response based on the reader's belief's or feelings, rather than on the work itself. Ex. A moralistic person shocked by a sexual scene, condemning the movie or book as dirty; Sentimentalist automatically moved by a love story, regardless of quality of writing, etc.

Bowdlerization

A later editor's censorship of sexuality, profanity, or political sentiment of an earlier author's text. Example: Basically any Shakespeare play used in a high school, particularly Romeo and Juliet.

Colloquial Diction

A level of language in a work that approximates the speech of ordinary people. Ex: Huck Finn: Jim's speech represents the vernacular of the south.

Anastrophe

A literary device where he order of the verb and noun are switched. Ex. Shakespeare is notorious of using anastrophe in his plays. For example, "blow, blow, thus winter wind"

Protagonist

A main character;is notnecessarily a hero or heroine. Ex: In Beowulf, the hero Beowulf is the protagonist, since the story is about him and his trials.

Soliloquy

A monologue in which the character in a play is alone and speaking only to him or herself Example: "to be or not to be" soliloquy in Hamlet

Emblem

A picture allegorically expressing a moral or a verbal picture open to such interpretation. AN example of an emblem is the Red Cross emblem.

Tragicomedy

A play in which potentially tragic events turn out to have a happy, or comic, ending The Merchant of Venice is a good example of this because of the dramatic elements but the happy ending with the marriage at the end.

Antihero

A protagonist who is in one way or another the very opposite of a traditional hero. Instead of being courageous and determined, for instance, an antihero might be timid, hypersensitive, and indecisive to the point of paralysis. Antiheroes are common in modern literary works. Ex: speaker of T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" or the protagonist of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.

Catharsis

A purifying or purging of emotions that releases tension in a literary work. Eg: Oedipus exiling himself and discovering the truth of his life

echo

A reference that recalls a word, phrase, or sound in another text. Ex: "And indeed there will be time" in Eliot´s "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1917) recalls both Ecclesiastes 3.1 ("To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven") and Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress" (1681; "Had we but world enough and time"). *It is less specific than an allusion.

Chiasmus

A rhetorical figure in which elements are presented in the order ABBA. It is named for the Greek letter chi (which looks like an X). The X suggests the crossing that characterizes the figure. Ex: -This man I though had been a Lord among wits; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords. -Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. -Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. (ABCCBA)

Decorum

A rhetorical principle whereby each formal aspect of a work should be in keeping with its subject matter and/or audience. Ie) The girl who used the world "hell" in her graduation speech is getting her diploma withhelf for breaching academic decorum.

Foil

A secondary character who constrasts with a major character to furter explain and depict that major character. Ex: Mercutio acts as a foil for the Character Romeo because he brings out a different side of Romeo, showing him as a rounded person.

Parable

A short fiction that illustrates an explicit moral lesson Example: Bible

Caesura

A short pause within a line of poetry; often butknot always signaled by punctuation Ex: A line from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven": "Once upon a midnight dreary, whole I pondered, weak and weary."

Fabliau

A short, funny, often bawdy narrative style imitated and developed from French models most subly by Chaucer. Ie) 'The Miller's Prologue and Tale, characteristically bawdy and vulgar.

Aphorism

A short, pithy and instructive statement of truth. ex. "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

Enthymeme

A statement in which one's purpose in explicitly stated. Eg: walking into a plastic surgeon office and seeing Picasso paintings

spondee

A stressed syllable followed by another syllable of approximately equal stress ex: "hot dog"

Peripeteia

A sudden reversal of fortune in a dramatic work. An example of Peripeteia is when Oedipus's fortune changes from being a king to having married his mother in Oedipus Rex.

Zeugma

A syntatctic pun whereby the one word is revealed to have more than one sense in the sentence as a whole. "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

Discursive Structure

A textual organization based on the form of a treatise, argument, or essay Example: "Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau

Microcosom

A tiny world within the macrocosm representing ideas and activities present in the macrocosm. Ex: The town in Shirley Jackson's short story, The Lottery, represents the backward ideas of the world as a whole.

Cosmic irony

A type of irony that arises out of the difference between what a character aspires to and what so-called universal forces deal him or her; such irony implies that a god or fate controls and toys with human actions, feelings, lives, outcomes. ex: Return of the Native. Even though Eustacia wishes to leave glamourously in Paris, nature kills her when she tries to leave the Heath. Example: In Romeo and Juliet, the main characters want to be together but fate (their families in this case) would never allow it.

Synecdoche

A type of metonymy in which the part is used to name or stand in for the whole. Ex: "Hands" in reference to manual laborers. "Wheels" in reference to a car.

Anagram

A type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; a transposition of letters to form a new word or phrase. *Palindromes, acronyms and acrostics are not to be confused anagrams. Examples: William Shakespeare can be rearranged into "I am a Weakish Speller"; Mother-in-Law can be rearranged into "Woman Hitler"; and Sexual Reassignment Surgery can be rearranged into "Man Returns as Sexy Girl."

Epithalamion

A wedding poem, celebrating the marriage and wishing the couple a good future. Ie) Spencer's 'Epithalamion' & possibly the wedding song from Mama Mia

Vogue Word

A word that appears in fashionable use or in pop culture. Ex: "radical" "groovy"

Palindrome

A word, sentence, or verse that reads the same way backward or forward. Ex: "Madam, I'm Adam.", "kayak", "racecar"

Burlesque

A work that adopts the conventions of a genre with the aim less comically mocking the genre than of satirically mocking the society so represented. Ie) Pope's 'Rape of the Lock' isn't mocking classical epics but rather, contemporary mores

Periphrasis

Adding in superfluous words to extend the message the author wants to give Example: Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy and works of Charles Dickens

Weak Rhyme

Also known as slant, oblique, half -, or approximate rhyme. Definition:Words with similar but not identical endings. They are not true rhymes, just appear to be. Example: Notion - Nation; Bear - Bore; Ear - Are; Emily Dickinson uses alot of slant rhyme in her poetry

Epithet

An adjectival phrase used to define a special quality of a person or thing. Ex: "The grey-eyed goddess" Athena in the Odyssey.

Allegory

An allegory is a symbolism device where the meaning of a greater, often abstract, concept is conveyed with the aid of a more corporeal object or idea being used as an example. Usually a rhetoric device, an allegory suggests a meaning via metaphoric examples. Example: Faith is like a stony uphill climb: a single stumble might send you sprawling but belief and steadfastness will see you to the very top.

Animal Fable

An animal fable is a short narrative of speaking animals, followed by a moral or theme at the end. Ex) An example of this is the book Animal Farm.

Byronic Hero

An antihero who is a romanticized but wicked character; usually a young, attractive male with a bad reputation. Example: Edward Cullen in Twilight or Heathcliffe in Wuthering Heights.

Motif

An extended idea, theme, or metaphor throughout a particular literary work. I.E. In The Scarlet Letter, the literal Scarlet Letter A is a motif because it is a continuing ideal and object throughout the entire novel.

Dystopia

An imaginary place in a work of fiction where characters lead dehumanized, fearful lives. Example: 1984 by George Orwell

Anti-climax

An unseen and often trivial resolution to a plot conflict. Often one that leaves the reader unfulfilled. ex: In The War of the Worlds, the aliens are not defeated by a superhero or military power, but by bacteria.

Allusion

Any reference within a literary work to another literary work, person, place, or thing in common or past society. Example:"I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save the Planet Earth." ~ Senator Barack

Hapax Legomenon

Any word of indeterminate meaning appearing only once in the surviving textual records of an ancient language. The word's rarity makes it difficult for modern scholars to figure out its meaning by context. Several words in Anglo-Saxon poetry as well as the Bible are hapax legomena. ex: Slæpwerigne occurs exactly once in the Old English corpus, in the Exeter Book. There is debate over whether it means "weary with sleep" or "weary for sleep".

Classical unities

As derived from Aristotle's Poetics, the Principles of structure that require a play to have one action that occurs in one place and within one day. Ex: A Midsummer Night's Dream: This play occurs within a period of 24 hours, mostly during the evening.

Discourse

Broadly, any nonfictional speech or writing; as a more specific genre, a philosophical meditation on a set theme. An example of a discourse is The Idea of a University by Newman.

Stock Character

Character types of a genre; Character based on common literary or cultural stereotype. Ex: girl next door; racial stereotypes

Synesthesia

Conflation of the senses. ex: sweet voice, velvety smile, "the buzz of a fly: with a blue, uncertain stumbling buzz"

Masque

Costly entertainments of the Stuart court, involving dance, song, speech, and elaborate stage effects, in which courtiers themselves participated. Ie) Ben Jonson's 'The Masque of Queens, Celebrated From the House of Fame' presented for the Stuart court

Assonance

Def.: (Latin "sounding to"): the repitition of identical or near identical stressed vowel sounds in words whose final cosonants differ, producing half-rhyme. Ex.: In Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott," there is a quote that says, "His broad clear brow in sunlight glowed" (Tennyson 100).

Lexical Set

Def.: Words that habitually recur together form a lexical set. Ex.: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. form a lexical set.

Lai

Definition - A short narrative, often characterized by images of great intensity Example - Many lais in the middle ages choose to address a lady, most notably the Virgin Mary.

Plot

Definition - The sequence of events in a story as narrated. Example - The plot is often considered the bones of a story, regarded by some to be the most important part.

Farce

Definition - a play or novel designed to provoke laughter through the often humiliating antics of stock characters Example - Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Ernest"

Objective Point of View

Definition: A method of presenting a characer's actions and speech without comment or emotion. The reader must interpret the writing to uncover the true meaning the author is trying to get across. In other words, the author writes the story but the audience gives it their own personal meaning. Example: In Little Red Riding Hood when she first encounters the wolf. The audience only reads about what the wolf looks like and what the wolf says. The audience does not know how Red Riding Hood reacts to what the wolf says. The audience fills in those details themselves and those details vary slightly from reader to reader.

Elevated Language (Elevated Style)

Definition: Formal, dignified language. Uses elaborate figures of speech. Often used to give dignity to a hero, to express the authority of God in religious or moral arguments, to give significance to certain events, etc. Example: Speeches of Achilles or Agamemnon in the Iliad (shows the speaker to have dignity); Prayers in King James' version of the Bible (prayers use lofty, formal language)

Convention

Definiton: 1) a rule based on general consent & upheld by the society (literary in this case) at large. 2) an arbitrary rule considered valid in any particular art or discipline. Example: a light appearing above a character in a comic book symbolizing a new idea that the character had

Invective

Direct verbal assault on someone or something; an insult or denunciation. Ex: "A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; abase, proud, shallow, three-suited, hundred-pound..." ~ The Tragedy of King Lear, II.2 by William Shakespeare

Amplification

Embellishment of a certain sentence for a purposeful and intended response in the reader. Ex. Characterization in The Return of the Native is long and detailed. It is amplified.

Comic Mode

Genres that involve a happy ending in which justice is done, the ravages of time are arrested, and that which is lost is found. Romance and comedy are examples.

Magnum Opus

Great work; masterpiece, an author's most distinguished work. Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Parataxis

Greek and Latin meaning 'ordering beside' The coordination of different main clauses in a single sentence. Ex: "So Sir Lancelot departed and took his sword under his arm, and so he walked in his mantel that noble knight, and put himself in jeopardy"- 'Morte Darthur' by Malory

Panegyric

Greek meaning "showing" Demonstrative or epideictic rhetoric, was a branch of classical rhetoric. The term used to describe the speeches or writings of praise. Ex: The "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats

Homophone

Homophone comes from the Greek meaning "same sound". It is a word that sounds identical to another but has a different meaning. Ex) "bear"/ "bare"

Low (physical) Comedy

Humor that employs burlesque, horseplay, or representation ofunrefined life. Example: Making farting noises, or guy humor.

Polysyndeton

In literature, the literary device 'polysyndeton' refers to the process of using conjunctions or connecting words frequently in a sentence, placed very close to one another, as opposed to the usual norm of using them sparsely, only where they are technically needed. The use of polysyndetons is primarily for adding dramatic effect as they have a strong rhetorical presence. Example: a) Saying "here and there and everywhere", instead of simply saying "here, there and everywhere". b) "Marge and Susan and Anne and Daisy and Barry all planned to go for a picnic", instead of "Marge, Susan, Anne, Daisy and Barry..." emphasizes each of the individuals and calls attention to every person one by one instead of assembling them as a group.

Occupatio

Latin "taking possesion" Denying that one will discuss a subject while actually discussing it. "I refuse to talk about how my criminal past, during which I stole a car, kidnapped, and held up a bank."

Deus ex Machina

Latin for "God from the machine;" this occurs when an appearently unsolveable crisis is resolved by a random lucky occurence. In ancient times, a god was literally brought in on some complex machine. it is a sort of cheat to fix the plot and allow the hero to triumph. Examples: Life of Brian makes a parady of the effect when Brian is saved from a deadly fall from a Roman tower by a passing spaceship. In Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are saved from the vacuum of space in the nick of time by a spaceship, the odds of which are 2 to the power of 2,079,460,347:1.

Enjambment

Lines of poetry that continue thoughts without a pause at the end of a line. Example: "Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love..." (Shakespeare)

Malapropism

Malapropism in literature refers to the practice of misusing words by substituting words with similar sounding words that have different, often unconnected meanings, and thus creating a situation of confusion, misunderstanding and amusement. Malapropism is used to convey that the speaker/character is flustered, bothered, unaware or confused and as a result cannot employ proper diction. A trick to using malapropism is to ensure that the two words (the original and the substitute) sound similar enough for the reader to catch onto the intended switch and find humor in the result. Example: In the play Much Ado About Nothing, noted playwright William Shakespeare's character Dogberry says, "Our watch, sir, have indeed comprehended two auspicious persons." Instead, what the character means to say is ""Our watch, sir, have indeed apprehended two suspicious persons."

Mixed Metaphor

Metaphor whose elements are either incongruent or contradictory by the use of incompatible identifications. Ex: "To take arms against a sea of troubles"

Metonymy

Metaphorical substitution of one thing for another based on association. Ex: calling a king "the crown"

Controlling Metaphor

Metaphors that domnate or organize a poem. Ex: The Author to her Book (Bradstreet) She compares her book to a child throughout the entire poem.

Mood

Mood is usually defined by the emotional respsonse to a particular literary work. It is usually the emotion(s) that the author has intended the audience to feel. I.E. The Mood in Edgar Allen Poe's Telltale Heart was very dark and suspenseful.

Socratic irony

Named after the teaching method of Socrates in which he acts ignorant in order to find out information from another person Example: In Return of the Native, Eustacia acts like she doesn't know anything about Wildeve and Thomasin when Diggory confronts her.

Procatalepsis

Noun. (Greek: "anticipation") A rhetorical strategy in which the writer raises an objection and immediately answers it; by doing so, the author avoids possible objections. Example: ...But you might object that, if what I say is true, why would people buy products illogically? The answer to that lies in human psychology.

eye rhyme

Occurs when the words look alike but do not sound alike Ex. bough and rough, bear and ear, laughter and slaughter, love and move, etc.

Archetype

Original model or models for persons appearing later in history or characters appearing later in literature. ie. Shield and Beowulf

Point of View

Perspective from which the story is told. First person-from the pov of a character or narrator Omniscient narrator- a detached narrator who can see into the minds and personal minds of all characters Limited omniscient narrator-storyteller knows only certain aspects and cannot share details on all characters'personal lives Objective or third person- storyteller does not refer to him or herself and is detached from the events happening Example: In Ellen Hopkin's verse narrative identical , the point of view is in the first person, but switches between several different characters/personas. Point of view is very important for analyzing narration and characterization.

Anachronism

Placement of an event, person, item of expression in the wrong historical period. Example: [from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar"] "Brutus: Peace! Count the clock. Cassius: The clock has stricken three" (II. I. l 193-194). This play takes place in Ancient Rome, where there were no clocks yet. Shakespeare might have done this anachronism on purpose, to convey a message, or it could have been an accident. Most likely,Shakespeare did this on purpose.

Epanalepsis

Repeating a word from the beginning of a clause or phrase at the end of the same clause or phrase Ex: "Blood will have blood"

Alliteration

Repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of a word Ex: "She sells sea-shells down by the sea shore."

Syntactic Permutation

Sentence structures that are extraordinarily complex and involved. They can be difficult to follow in a literary work. "we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the front. The best way to negotiate is to say nothing just listen" Winston Churchhill

Machiavellian

Sneaky, ruthless, deceitful behavior, especially in regard to a ruler obsessed with power who puts on the surface a veneer of honor and trustworthy behavior in order to achieve evil ends. *Spolier Alert* Example: When Snape kills Dumbledore in The Halfblood Prince. (Before all the diehard Harry Potter fans attack me, yes I know there's a good logical reason for it in later books, but in this book it applies as a suitable example).

Paradox

Statement which contains seemingly contradictory elements or appears contrary to common sense, yet can be seen as perhaps true from another angle Ex: A parent stealing food for their child to eat is an example of a paradox. The parent must give the child food, yet also needs to differ from right and wrong for the child. Example: "They have ears but hear not." Ex: Jumbo Shrimp Ex: "That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me" or "damn with faint praise"

Oeuvre

Sum of total works verifiably written by an unknow author Example: The Louvre is filled with all kinds of different oeuvre.

Unities

The events represented in a play should have unity of time, place and action: that the play take up no more time than the time of the play, or at most a day; that the space of action should be within a single city; and that they should be no subplot. The city of Verona in Romeo and Juliet serves as one-third of the theory of unities.

Hamartia

The feeling of making errors in ignorance through misjudgmentincluding moral errors Example: In Oedipus the King, Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother because of his ignorance of who he actually is.

Aesthetic Distance

The gap between the audience's present reality and the fictional reality of the work. Ex. paintings-looking at one as a whole or looking closely at each brush stroke.

Deuteragonist

The person second in importance to the protagonist in a drama Ex: Ron and Hermione are deuteragonists to Harry

Stream of Consciousness

The phrase 'stream of consciousness' refers to an uninterrupted and unhindered collection and occurrence of thoughts and ideas in the conscious mind. In literature, the phrase refers to the flow of these thoughts, with reference to a particular character's thinking process. This literary device is usually used in order to provide a narrative in the form of the character's thoughts instead of using dialogue or description. Example: All writings by Virginia Woolff are a good example of literary stream of consciousness. "Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end." The Common Reader (1925)

Denouement

The point at which a narrative can be resolved and ended Ex: When Beowulf ends the dragon's reign of terror and dies provides a good point for the narrative to be ended. Ex. The endings of Scooby Doo, where the kids catch the culprit, and the mystery is explained. Scooby dooby doo! Ex: "The prince and princess married. And they lived happily ever after."

Connotation

The subjective, not literal, cultural understanding of a word ex: Holocaust literally means a great fire, but it has a negative connotation because of what Germany did to the Jews.

Pathetic Fallacy

The treatment of inanimate objects as if they have human feelings, thoughts or sensations. Example: Tonight the rain is crying on my windowpane. Example: 'smiling skies', 'angry seas'

epigram

The use of a quotation at the beginning of a work that hints at its theme. "You are all a lost generation" - The sun also rises Gertrude stein

Irony

There are different types of irony pertaining to literature. Situational Irony- refers to an occurence that is contrary to what was supposed to happen. Dramatic Irony- is when the characters do or say something that makes it evident that the audience knows more. I.E. In Romeo and Juliet, Dramatic Irony exists towards the end when Romeo kills himself thinking Juliet is dead, and then Juliet kills herself thinking Romeo is dead.

anapest

Two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one ex: the word "unabridged"

Personification

Type of metaphor gives human qualities to something that is not human. Example: In House on Mango Street a chapter is called (and includes) "Four Skinny Trees". In the chapter "Hairs" she personsifies hair by describing it with the smell of bread and replacing the hair with her family's personalities.

Imagery

Vivid, sensory details that raise a picture in the mind in a way that abstract language does not Ex: "And in some perfumes in there more delight/Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.'' Shakespeare, Sonnet 130

Denotation

a direct and specific meaning - the "dictionary definition" - (ex. difference between "house" and "home"- "Home" (connotation) is used to describe a "house" but with more sentimental value. "House" (denotation) would have a definition along the lines of "a place inhabited by a person or group of people (often a family) "

tragedy

a drama in which a character (usually a good and noble person of high rank) is brought to a disastrous end in his or her confrontation with a superior force (fortune, the gods, social forces, universal values), but also comes to understand the meaning of his or her deeds and to accept an appropriate punishment. Often the protagonist's downfall is a direct result of a fatal flaw in his or her character. example: Oedipus

Red Herring

a false lead, something that misdirects expectations. ex: in Harry Potter #3 - everyone thinks Sirius Black is evil

Pyrrhic Meter

a foot consisting of two unaccented syllables, generally used to vary the rhythm. ex:"[When the] blood creeps [and the] nerves ***."

Atanclasis

a form of speech in which a key word is repeated and used in a different, and sometimes contrary, way for a play on words ex: "the craft of a politician is to appear before the public without craft"

Apostrophe

a formal invocation to an absent or dead person, or even an inanimate object Wordsworth: "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour; / England hath need of thee."

Aubade

a morning song in which the coming of dawn is either celebrated or denounced as a nuisance Example: Romeo's lament that dawn means he has to go-- Romeo and Juliet

Pastoral

a poem describing the simple life of country folk, usually shepherds Example: Oludipe Samuel's "A Joy of Everything"

Protest poem

a poetic attack on allegedly unjust institutions or social injustice Example: "We Wear the Mask' by Paul Lawrence Dunbar

Confessional poem

a relatively recent (or recently defined) kind in which the speaker describes a state of mind, which NA becomes a metaphor for the larger world.

Rite of passage

a ritual or ceremony marking an individual's passing from one stage or state to a more advanced one Example: Gandalf the Grey becomes Gandalf the White, Jesus' ascension into heaven, Hercules' deification, the Doctor's various reincarnations

Unreliable narrator

a speaker whose vision or version of the details of a story are (un)consciously deceiving Example: Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caufield

verbal irony

a statement in which the literal meaning differs from the implicit meaning. See dramatic irony and situational irony. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare "Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man". Mark Antony really means that Brutus is dishonourable

underplot

a subordinate plot in fiction or drama. Also called a subplot. ex: the tale of Finn in Beowulf.

villanelle

a verse form consisting of nineteen lines divided into six stanzas—five tercets (three-line stanzas) and one quatrain (four-line stanza). The first and third lines of the first tercet rhyme, and this rhyme is repeated through each of the next four tercets and in the lastNA two lines of the concluding quatrain. The villanelle is also known for its repetition of select lines. example given in the term list : Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."

Incunabulum

a very early printed book produced before 1501 ex. Gutenberg Bible

stock situation

frequently recurring sequence of action in a genre Ex. rags-to-riches, boy-meets-girl

eponumous

having a name used in the title of a literary work ex: "Lemuel Gulliver is the eponymous protagonist of Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels'" ex: The Great Gatsby

Dramatis personae

he list of characters that appears either in the play's program or at the top of the first page of the written play. Ex: In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, a dramatis personae appears as one of the first pages of the play.

High comedy

humor exploiting subtlety, wit, or representation of refined life Example: Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew

understatement

language that avoids obvious emphasis or embellishment; litotes is one form of it. example: after eating an entire pie, the boy remarked, "Well, I wasn't hungry!"

Trope

phrase formerly interpolated in a text to amplify or embelish ex. metaphor, simile

Free Verse

poetry with no metrical foot, and often no fixed number of feet per verse Ex: The poem Insomniac by Maya Angelou

dactylic

referring to the metrical pattern which each foot consists of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones ex: "flashed all their/ sabres bare"

Anadiplosis

repitition in the first part of a clause of sentence of a prominent word from the latter part of the preceding clause or sentence, usually with a change or extension of meaning ex: to be doubled back

Satire

ridicule of some vice or imperfection by making it look ridiculous or worthy of scorn The Secret Life of Walter Mitty satirizes the ineffectual daydreamer in our world

traditional symbols

symbols that, through years of usage, have acquired an agreed-upon significance, an accepted meaning.See archetype. example: A four leaf clover is considered a universal good luck charm.

Paralipsis

the discussion, by deliberately concise treatment of a topic, that much of significance is being omitted Example: "not to mention other faults"

Parody

the imitation of either formal or thematic elements of one work in another for humorous purposes Ex: Weird Al Yankovic rewrites the words of other artists' songs

Anagnorisis

the moment of tragic recognition in which the character realizes an important fact or insight, often a truth about his situation Ex: Electra recognizing her brother in Aeschylus' "The Choephoroi" ex: When the messenger tells Oedipus who his real mother and father are.

Epistrophe

the repetition of a word or words at the end of two or more successive clauses, verses, or sentences Example: "I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong..."