APE Literary Terms '08-09
This is dedicated to Nolan. Keep uploading those poems, please! :P
Terms
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- Allusion
- Reference to a famous work or figure outside the poem.
- Ad hominem argument
- Argument that appeals to emotion rather than reason; may attack the messenger rather than the message.
- Climax
- The point of highest tension, or a major turning point in a play.
- Accent
- The stressed portion of a word in poetry.
- Cadence
- The beat of rhythm of poetry.
- Hypophora
- Raising a question then proceeding to answer it.
- Elegy
- Poem on death or mortality.
- Concrete poetry
- A poem wherein shape of words and lines conveys the meaning.
- Apologia
- A defense of one's opinions, actions or life.
- Enjambment
- Continuation of syntax over line break.
- Antithesis
- Juxtaposition of opposites.
- Cacophony
- Using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds.
- Antimetabole
- Reversing the order of repeated words/clauses to intensify the sequence, present alternatives, or show contrast.
- Homonyms
- Words that sound alike but have different spellings and meanings.
- Hubris
- Excessive pride/ambition which leads to a character's downfall.
- Aleatory
- An alogical poem seems composed by chance.
- First person narrator
- A character in the story who tells the tale from his/her point of view.
- Harlem Renaissance
- Flowering of African American art & music in the 1920s; center was in Harlem, New York.
- Flashback
- A scene that interrupts the action to show an event that happened earlier.
- Catalogue
- A complete enumeratin of items, arranged systematically, with descriptive details.
- Dramatic monologue
- Single speaker in literature talks to silent audience.
- Eye of the poem
- The central focus of the poem.
- Atmosphere
- The emotional tone or background that surround a scene.
- Analogy
- A comparison, involving two or more symbolic parts, employed to clarify an action or a relationship.
- Antistrophe
- Repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive lines.
- Epistrophe
- Repeat of same word(s) at the end of successive sentences.
- Euphemism
- A word that takes the place of a more harsh or inappropriate word.
- Antecedent
- A word, phrase, or clause that determines what a pronoun refers to.
- Anecdote
- A short story
- Aestheticism
- Devotion to the idea of beauty in art.
- Dissonance
- The grating of incompatible sounds.
- Epitaph
- Lines that commemorate the dead at the burial place.
- Exemplum
- Citing an example.
- Inversion
- Switching the customary order of elements in a sentence or phrase.
- Canto
- A section division in a long work of poetry
- Aphorism
- A short and witty saying.
- Confessional poetry
- Makes frank, explicit use of incidents in the poet's life.
- Epizeuxis
- Repetition of the same word for emphasis.
- Camera eye narrator
- Third-person narrator who describes what would be visible to a camera; objective.
- Hamartia
- Tragic flaw or error which brings down the protagonist of a tragedy.
- Heroic couplet
- A rhyming couplet in iambic pentameter.
- Gothic
- Use of eerie themes and images (shrieking women, ghosts).
- Euphony
- Sounds blending harmoniously.
- Falling rhyme
- Feminine rhyme; ending with unaccented last syllable.
- Archaism
- Use of deliberately old-fashioned diction.
- Anapestic
- Metrical measurement of two unstressed syllables and then one stressed one.
- Diacope
- Repetition of ords before and after syntactical break (We will do it, I tell you, we will do it.).
- Catharsis
- Cleansing of emotion an audience member experiences, having lived through the experiences on stage.
- Interior monologue
- Recording of mental talk in character's head.
- Feminine rhyme
- Falling rhyme; ending with unaccented last syllable.
- Bathos
- Writing that strains for grandeur it can't support.
- Dualistic
- Two-valued, e.g., good/evil.
- Anachronism
- An object misplaced in time.
- Farce
- A comedy of unlikely, but possible, situations.
- Epigram
- A short poem intended to impart wisdom.
- Denoument
- Conclusion; the outcome of a plot.
- Incongruity
- The joining of opposites to create an unexpected situation.
- Expletive
- Word interrupting syntax to give emphasis to words around it.
- In media res
- A piece of writing that begins in the middle of the action.
- Anacoluthon
- Finishing a sentence with different grammatical structure from that which it began.
- Local color
- Use of specific details describing dialect, dress, customs, and scenery associated with a particular region.
- Hyperbole
- Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement.
- Epithet
- A word preceding or following a name which serves to describe (fleet-footed Achilles or wine-dark sea).
- Hexameter
- Poetic form of six metrical feet.
- Conceit
- An extended metaphor, developed and expanded upon over several lines.
- Alliteration
- Repetition of initial consonant sounds.
- Euphuism
- Elegant Victorian prose style (filled with alliterations and similes).
- Chaucerian stanza
- 7-lines, rhyme ababbcc
- Bombast
- Pretentious, exaggeratedly learned language.
- Haiku
- Japanese poetry with 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables.
- Encomium
- A laudatory poem for a legendary or real person.
- Litotes
- Type of understatement achieved by denying the opposite.
- Assonance
- The repeated use of internal vowel sounds.
- Appositive
- A noun or phrase placed next to another noun, for the purpose of further describing.
- Didactic
- Primary purpose is to teach.
- Coinage
- A new word, usually invented on the spot.
- Caesura
- A pause in a line of poetry (indicated or not).
- Decorum
- The attitude one should display according to his social/economic status.
- Aubade
- A love song or poem greeting the dawn.
- Allegory
- A story in which each aspect has symbolic meaning outside the poem.
- Eulogy
- Formal expression of praise, usually given at a funeral.
- Amplification
- Repeating a word, and adding more modifiers each time.
- Literal image
- Concrete replication in words of an object or experience.
- Enumeratio
- Listing parts, cause, effect, for added emphasis.
- Heptameter
- Poem of seven metrical feet.
- Ars poetica
- A poem wrriten on the subject of poetic art, usually explaining poet's reasons for writing.
- Iambic
- A metrical foot with an unstressed first syllable and a stressed second syllable.
- Anthropomorphism
- Inanimate objects are given human characteristics, but no human shape.
- Doggerel
- Crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme.
- Determinism
- Belief that man is fated to defeat under indifferent natural forces; emphasizes vanity of free will.
- Linked rhyme
- First syllable of a line echoes the last syllable of the previous rhyme.
- Epigraph
- A quotation that is placed at the start of a work or section that expresses what will be said.
- Blank verse
- Unrhymed iambic pentameter.
- Epithalamium
- A poem that is written for the bride; celebration of a wedding.
- Deus ex machina
- "God from the machine" - conflicts quickly resolved at end of last act, often by sudden introduction of a power who solves all.
- Connotation
- The association with a word; the word suggests/implies meaning beyond the literal.
- Figurative image
- Representation of one thing by another.
- Aside
- A speech made by an actor to the audience as though momentarily stepping outside the action on stage.
- Antiphrasis
- One word irony.
- Foot
- Basic rhythmic unit of a line of poetry, formed by two or three syllables, stressed or not.
- Free verse
- Poetry without regular rhyme or meter.
- Epic
- A long narrative poem on a serious theme in a dignified style; often describes glorious or profound subject.
- Lampoon
- A satire.
- Anaphora
- Repetition of the same words at the beginning of successive sentences or clauses.
- Foil
- A secondary character whose purpose is to highlight the characteristics of a main character.
- Irony
- Events turn out eactly the opposite of how they might be expected; saying the opposite of what is meant.
- Burlesque
- Broad parody that takes on a specific style and makes fun of it.
- Apostrophe
- Speech is directed to a nonhuman object or one that is not present.
- Expressionism
- Emphasizes the life of the mind and feelings rather than the realistic external details of everyday life.
- Genre
- A sub-category of literature; categorizes literature by types.
- Antihero
- A protagonist who is markedly unheroic.
- Couplet
- A pair of lines ending in rhyme.
- Aporia
- Expression of doubt about conclusions.
- Diction
- The author's choice of words.
- Dirge
- A song for the dead.
- Loose sentence
- A sentence complete before its end.
- Ballad
- A long narrative poem in regular meter and rhyme.
- Eponym
- Substituting the name of a famous person for a description (He's a real Einstein).
- Head rhyme
- Another word for alliteration.
- Dystopia
- Opposite of utopia, society where social and technological advances have served to aid corruption.
- Abstract words
- Words used to discuss intangible qualities like good and evil.
- Foreshadowing
- An event or statement that, in miniature, suggests a larger event that comes later.
- Denotation
- A word's literal meaning.
- Aesthetic
- Appealing to the senses (adj.), a coherent sense of taste (n.), the study of beauty (n.).
- Colloquialism
- A word or phrase used in everyday conversational English.
- Eye rhyme
- Words that look similar, but pronounced differently.
- Apocopated rhyme
- A cut-off rhyme; last syllable of one of the rhymes is missing (pain/gainless).
- Consonance
- Repetition of consonant sounds within words.
- Classicism
- A tendency to reflect the principles manifested in the art of ancient Greece & Rome.
- Epistle
- A letter directed or sent to a group of people.
- Dactylic
- A metrical measurement of one accented syllable and two unaccented.
- Dramatic poem
- A poem that has a conflict.
- Lyric
- Poetry that explores the poet's personal interpretation of and feelings about the world.
- Bildungsroman
- A novel of self-development or personal formation.
- Aposiopesis
- Stopping abruptly and leaving statement unfinished.
- Half rhyme
- Words that almost rhyme; slant rhyme (dizzy/easy).
- Apologue
- Moral fable using animals to comment on human condition.
- Antagonist
- One that contends with or opposes another.
- Archetype
- The original pattern or model of which all things of a similar nature are copies.
- Carpe diem
- The enjoyment of the pleasures of the moment without concern for the future.
- Epiphany
- A sudden realization or comprehension of the meaning of something.
- Dialect
- The characteristic speech of a particular region or group.
- Invective
- Speech/writing that abuses, denounces, attacks.
- Continuous form
- A poem in which lines follow each other without stanza breaks.
- Hyperbaton
- Departure from normal word order; a form of inversion (a personality indescribable).
- Madrigal
- A short lyric on love or pastoral themes.
- Anticlimax
- An action produces far smaller results than one had led to expect, comic.
- Masculine rhyme
- Rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable.
- Chorus
- The group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and comment on it.
- Caricature
- A portrait that exaggerates a facet of personality.
- Lament
- A poem of sadness or grief over the death of a loved one or some intense loss.