Literary Terms - AP Study Deck 2009
Terms
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- Aesthetics
- Philosophical investigation into the nature of beauty and the perception of beauty, especially in the arts; the theory of art or artistic taste.
- Allegory
- A story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning; 2 or more levels of meaning
- Ambiguity
- A statement that can contain two or more meanings.
- Allusion
- An indirect or passing reference to some event, person, place, or artistic work.
- Analogy
- A resemblance of relations; an agreement or likeness between things that different
- Anaphora
- repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or sentences.
- Anecdote
- A very short tale told by a character in a literary work.
- Antagonist
- character, force, or collection of forces in fiction or drama that opposes the protagonist and gives rise to the conflict in the story
- Anti-hero
- protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional attributes of a hero; may be bewildered, ineffectual, deluded, or merely pathetic.
- Aphorism
- brief statement which expresses an observation on life, usually intended as a wise observation.
- Apostrophe
- a figure of speech in which the speaker speaks directly to something nonhuman
- Archetype
- a term used to describe universal symbols that evoke deep and sometimes unconscious responses in the reader
- Aside
- device in which a character in a drama makes a short speech which is heard by the audience but not by the other characters in the play
- Asyndeton
- the omission of a conjunction from a list (chips, beans, peas, vinegar, salt, pepper)
- Canon
- Greek word that implies rule or law; used in literature as the source which regulates which works are considered important pieces of literature
- Catharsis
- meaning "purgation"; describes the release of emotions of pity and fear by the audience at the end of a tragedy
- Chiasmus
- rhetorical term; describes a situation in which you introduce subjects in the order A, B, C but talk about them in the order C, B, A.
- Climax
- decisive moment in a drama; turning point of the play which is led to by the rising action; determines the outcome of the conflict
- Colloquialism
- spoken or written communication that seeks to imitate informal speech
- Comedy
- literary work which is amusing and ends happily
- Conceit
- far-fetched simile or metaphor
- Connotation
- emotional implications and associations that words may carry as distinguished from their denotative meanings
- Denotation
- basic dictionary meaning of a word
- Deus ex Machina
- unrealistic or unexpected intervention to rescue the protagonists or resolve the conflict
- Diction
- author's choice of words
- Didactic
- work designed to impart information, advice, or some doctrine of morality or philosophy
- Epigraph
- brief quote that appears at the beginning of a literary work
- Epithet
- a word or phrase preceding or following a name which serves to describe the character
- Exegesis
- critical interpretation of a text, especially in biblical text
- Farce
- a type of comedy based on a humorous situation; situation not dialogue or plot provides humor
- Formalism
- strict observance of established rules, traditions and methods employed in the arts
- Framing Device
- a story in which one or more other stories are told
- Genre
- established category of written work employing such common conventions as will prevent readers from mistaking it with another genre
- Gothic
- characterized by gloom and mystery and the grotesque
- Homily
- inspirational saying or platitude
- Hubris
- excessive pride or self-confidence; common theme in Greek tragedies and mythology; protagonists often suffer for it by gods
- Hyperbole
- figure of speech in which an overstatement or exaggeration is deliberately used for effect
- Idiom
- specialized vocabulary used by a group of people
- Imagery
- collection of images within a literary work; used to evoke atmosphere, mood, tension
- In Media Res
- in or into the middle of a sequence of events
- Intentional Fallacy
- assuming from the text what the author intended to mean
- Interpolation
- passage included in an author's work without his consent
- Intertextuality
- a way of accounting for the role of literary and exta-literary materials without recourse to traditional notes of authorship
- Inversion
- reversal of the normal order of words for dramatic effect
- Irony
- device that depends on the existence of at least two separate and contrasting levels of meaning embedded in one message
- Magical Realism
- literary technique where the disbelief of the reader and writer produces a shift in the real world wherein an element of the surreal enters and leaves with ease
- Metaphor
- type of figurative language in which a statement is made that says something is one thing when it is literally not.
- Metonymy
- figure of speech in which a word represents something else which is suggests
- Minimalism
- style of art in which objects are stripped down to their elemental, geometric form, and presented in an impersonal manner; in literature, minimalists use short descriptions and simple sentences
- Monologue
- thoughts of a single person, directed outward
- Motif
- recurring image, word, phrase, represented object or action that tends to unify the literary work that may be elaborated into a more general theme
- Naturalism
- type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings
- Nemesis
- a villain who has a particular interest in defeating a hero or group of heroes
- Oxymoron
- a combination of contradictory terms
- Parallelism
- repetition of words, phrases, sentences that have the same grammatical structure or that restate a similar idea
- Parable
- a brief and often simple narrative that illustrates a moral or religious lesson
- Parody
- literary form in which the style of an author or work is mocked in its style for the sake of comic effect
- Pathetic Fallacy
- the attribution of human emotions or characteristics to inanimate objects or to nature
- Pastoral
- of, relating to, or being a literary or other artistic work that portrays or evokes rural life, usually in an idealized way
- Persona
- narrator or storyteller of the novel; different from the author
- Personification
- a figure of speech were animals, ideas, or inorganic objects are given human characteristics
- Point of View
- the way events are portrayed to the reader
- Polemic
- a controversial argument, especially one refuting or attacking a specific opinion or doctrine
- Protagonist
- the main character of a literary work
- Realism
- literary technique that faithfully represents reality; especially the representation of middle-class life
- Rhetoric
- the art of persuasive argument through writing or speech
- Roman a Clef
- a novel in which actual persons and events are disguised as fictional characters
- Romance
- the mythos of literature concerned primarily with an idealized world
- Satire
- literary work which exposes and ridicules human vices or folly; usually intended as a moral criticism directed against the injustice of social wrongs
- Scansion
- the analysis of a poem's meter
- Semantics
- the study of the meaning of language, as opposed to its form
- Semiotics
- theories regarding symbolism and how people glean meaning from words, sounds, and pictures
- Stock Character
- a fictional character that relies heavily on cultural types or stereotypes for its personality, manner of speech, and other characteristics
- Stream of Consciousness
- technique that records the multifarious thoughts and feelings of a character without regard to logical argumentn or narrative sequence
- Subtext
- the hidden meaning lying behind the overt
- Synecdoche
- literary figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole or the whole for a part
- Syntax
- the way in which linguistic elements are arranged to form grammatical structure
- Soliloquy
- a dramatic or literary form of discourse in which a character talks to himself or reveals his thoughts without addressing a listener
- Tone
- the writers attitude toward the material and/or readers
- Theme
- the abstract concept explored in a literary work; frequently recurring ideas; repetition of a meaningful element
- Tragedy
- a serious play in which the chief figures by some peculiarity of character pass through a series of misfortunes leading to a final devastating catastrophe
- Tragic Flaw
- the character flaw or error of a tragic hero that leads to his downfall
- Trope
- the intentional use of a word or expression figuratively: antonomasia, irony, metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche
- Utopia
- imaginary and indefinitely remote place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions
- Dystopia
- imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives; a place where everything is as bad as it can possibly be
- Vernacular
- the everyday speech of the people
- Vignette
- a small illustrative sketch
- Voice
- term to describe an encompassment of the writer's tone, style and manner