English AP Lit terms
Terms
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- ad misericordiam
- an appeal to the audience's sympathy; an attempt to persuade another, using a hard luck story rather than logic or reason.
- alliteration
- the repetition of accented consonant sounds at the beginning of words that are close to each other.
- allusion
- a reference in literature or in art to previous literature, history, mythology, pop culture/current events, or the bible
- ambiguity
- quality of being intentionaly unclear
- anachronism
- an element in a story that is out of its time
- analogy
- clarifies or explains an unfamiliar concept or object that cannot be put into words by comparing it to something which is familiar
- analysis
- the process of examining the components of a literary work
- anapest
- poetic foot measure unaccented accented unaccented
- anecdote
- a short and often personal story
- antagonist
- character who functions as a resisting force to the goals of the protagonist
- antecedent
- word or phrase to which a pronoun refers.
- anticlimax
- an often dissapointing sudden end to an intense situation
- antihero
- not your classic hero protagonist.
- antithesis
- a concept that is directly opposed to a previously presented idea
- aphorism
- a terse statement that expresses a general truth or moral...folk proverb
- apotheosis
- elevating someone to the level of a god
- archetype
- a character, situation, or symbol that is familiar to people from all cultures
- assonance
- the repeated use of a vowel sound
- aubade
- a poem or song about lovers who must leave one another early in the morning
- ballad
- folk song that tells a story passed down orally
- blank verse
- unrhymed poetry of iambic pentameter
- cacophony
- harsh discordant sounds unpleasant to the ears
- catharsis
- emotional cleansing or feeling of releif
- chiasmus
- reversing of parallel construction so that its no longer parallel
- colloquial
- local slang
- conceit
- a far fetched comparison between 2 things
- connotation
- associations a word brings to mind
- consonance
- same consonant sound in words with different vowels
- couplet
- two succesive rhyming lines of the same number of syllables with matching cadence
- dactyl
- foot of poetry with 3 sylables one stressed two short
- denotation
- actual meaning without any connotation
- deus ex machina
- when gods intervene at a story's end
- didactic
- author's purpose is to instruct
- distortion
- exaggeration or stretching of truth to achieve a desired effect
- enjambment
- and...and...and...
- epigram
- short clever poem
- epigraph
- brief quotation found at beginning of a literary work
- epiphany
- eureka
- epistolary novel
- novel in letter form
- euphemism
- substitution of an inoffensive word for an offensive one
- euphony
- pleasant sound
- figurative language
- uses figures of speech such as metaphor, simile...not straight forward and literal
- heroic couplet
- rhymed couplet written in iambic pentameter
- hubris
- tragic flaw