Literary Terms for the AP Test

Learning Target: I can define and give examples of literary terms.

Test next week on these literary terms!

Announcements

Complete annotated bibliography on Macbeth by Friday, April 24.

Tori Murden McClure will be here next Tuesday during 2nd and 3rd periods! Let me know today if you are interested in attending and I’ll notify your teachers.

Tips #1 and 2 for Successful AP Essays

 1. Read the question, circling specific

points being asked. What is the topic and how can it be proven?

2. Think before you write. Plan your response. It is not easy for the reader to pick over an essay in an attempt to decipher sentences. A little organization will help you avoid extensive editing.

Practice AP Test II (Multiple Choice)

Check your answers.

Review the rationale for the ones you missed.

Review the questions you missed and try to evaluate what caused you to miss it. Was it unfamiliar vocabulary? Wording of the stem question? Highlight or make notes in the margin.

Allegory

Allegory: a story in which characters, things, and events represent qualities or concepts. The interaction of these characters, things, events is meant to reveal an abstraction or truth.

Example: Animal Farm written by George Orwell, uses animals on a farm to describe the overthrow of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and the Communist Revolution of Russia before WW II. The actions of the animals on the farm are used to expose the greed and corruption of the revolution.

Ambiguity

Ambiguity: an event or situation that may be interpreted in more than one way.

Example: Hamlet is a morally ambiguous character. He kills to avenge his father’s murder.

Anachronism

Anachronism: assignment of something to a time when it was not in existence.

Example: In Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, Cleopatra wants to play billiards. The game was first invented almost 1500 years after the timeline of Antony and Cleopatra.

Anaphora

Anaphora: Repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row.

Example: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…

(A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens)

Anaphora

Antithesis

Antithesis: a balancing of two opposite words, phrases, or clauses

Example: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” M uhammad Ali

Archetype

Archetype: repeated experiences in the lives of our ancestors and stored in the “collective unconscious” of the human race.

Example: The hero’s journey as depicted in Beowulf.

Aside

Aside: in drama when a character directly addresses the audience but it is not heard by other actors on the stage.

Example from Macbeth: (aside) Glamis, and thane of Cawdor! The greatest is behind. (to ROSS and ANGUS) Thanks for your pains.

Asyndeton

Asyndeton: series of words separated by commas with no conjunction.

Example: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Julius Caesar

Chiasmus

Chiasmus: Arrangement of repeated thoughts in a pattern of XYYX.

Example: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Comic Relief

Comic Relief: humorous incidents/speeches that occur in the midst of tragedy.

Example: The porter’s speech following the murder of Duncan in Macbeth.

Conceit

Conceit: A complicated analogy or comparison

Example: Mark but this flea, and mark in this,How little that which thou deny'st me is;It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,And in this flea, our two bloods mingled be;Thou knowest that this cannot be saidA sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead.Yet this enjoys before it woo,And pampered, swells with one blood made of two,And this, alas, is more than we would do... By John Donne

Connotation vs Denotation

CONNOTATION

Implied meaning that carries an emotional impact

Example: A snake is a person who can’t be trusted and will hurt you if you let him.

DENOTATION

Dictionary definition of a word

Example: A snake is a reptile.

Didactic

Didactic: a term used to describe literature that teaches a lesson or provides a moral model.

Example: John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” describes a religious and spiritual journey of a man on the way to deliverance. The poem describes an ordinary sinner “Christian” who leaves the City of Destruction and travels towards Celestial City, where God resides, for salvation. On his way, he finds a companion “Faithful” who helps him.

Elegy

Elegy: A formal sustained poem lamenting the death of a person

Example: “O Captain! My Captain” by Walt Whitman

O CAPTAIN! My Captain! our fearful trip is done;The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:But O heart! Heart! Heart!O the bleeding drops of red,Where on the deck my Captain lies . . .

Upon the death of Abraham Lincoln

Hyperbole

Hyperbole: an exaggeration used for effect

Examples: “She is so dumb, she thinks Taco Bell

is a Mexican phone company”

“My backpack weighs a ton!”

Litotes

Litotes—Opposite of hyperbole; litotes intensifies an understatement by stating through the opposite.

Example: "It wasn't my best day"

instead of "It was my worst day."

Angst

Angst—A term used in existential criticism to describe the feeling of anxiety, dread, or anguish present in the works of writers like Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.

In John Gardner’s Grendel, the creature is filled with angst as he struggles to find the meaning of life.

Dramatic Irony

Dramatic Irony—When the audience is aware of something that a character in the play does not know.

In Act I Duncan rides up to Macbeth’s castle and claims, “This castle hast a pleasant seat.” The audience has just listened to the Macbeths plotting Duncan’s murder and we know there is going to be nothing pleasant about this place for him.

Ennui

Ennui—A persistent feeling of weariness which afflicts existential man, often manifesting as boredom.

Daisy Buchanan, complains that "I've been everywhere and  seen everything and done everything."

Epiphany

Epiphany—A character's moment of realization or awareness.

I turned to go home. Street lights winked down the street all the way to town. I had never seen our neighborhood from this angle. There were Miss Maudie’s, Miss Stephanie’s–there was our house, I could see the porch swing–Miss Rachel’s house was beyond us,  plainly visible. I could even see Mrs. Dubose’s…Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley proch was enough…

(“To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee)

Euphemism

Euphemism—The use of a word or phrase that is less direct, but is also considered less distasteful or less offensive than another.

Example: "He is at rest" instead of "He is dead."

Explication

Explication—The act of interpreting or discovering the meaning of a text. Explication usually involves close reading and special attention to figurative language.

Exposition

Exposition—Background information provided by a writer to enhance a reader's understanding of the context of a fictional or nonfictional story.

Farce

Farce—A type of comedy in which one-dimensional characters are put into ludicrous situations; ordinary standards of probability and motivation are freely violated in order to evoke laughter.

Think Dumb and Dumber and Hot Tub Time Machine!

Flat and Round Characters

FLAT CHARACTERS

A character constructed around a single idea or quality; a flat character is often a stereotype.

Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby remains the stereotypical brute throughout the novel.

ROUND CHARACTERS

A character that is multi-dimensional and who experiences change as a result of events in the novel.

Nick Calloway in The Great Gatsby develops a cynicism as he watches the way Daisy and Tom hurt people .

Foil Character

Foil—A character whose traits are the opposite of another and who thus points up the strengths and weaknesses of the other character.

Don Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panza are foils. Laertes and Hamlet are foils.

Personification

Personification: giving an animal or object human characteristics

Example:The run down houseappeared depressed.

Paradox

Paradox: a statement that seems to contradict itself but is, in fact, true.

Examples:"Je ne parle pas Français."

(Bart Simpson, The Simpsons)

"War is peace.Freedom is slavery.Ignorance is strength."(George Orwell, 1984)

Apostrophe

Apostrophe: a figure of speech that addresses (talks to) a dead or nonpresent person, or an object.

Example:"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.“

Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Metonymy

Metonymy: a figure of speech that replaces the literal thing with a more vivid, but closely related thing oridea.

Metonymy

Example: Instead of saying "give me your attention," Mark Antony says to the Romans gathered for Caesar’s funeral, “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears.”

Understatement

Understatement: the opposite of hyperbole, an understatement makes something that is a big deal seem not very important. It's often used for humor.

Example: "The boat had been ripped apart by the storm and now a dozen hungry sharks began circling the captain. 'This isn't great,' he told his wife.“

Idiom

Idiom: a word or phrase which means something different from what it says. Idioms are common phrases or terms whose meaning is not real, but can be understood by their popular use.

Example: A Drop in the Bucket: Meaning: A very small part of something big or whole

Get out of my face!Meaning: Stop bothering me!

PunPun: A play on words which

suggests two or more meaningsA pessimist's blood type is B-negative.

OxymoronOxymoron: A figure of speech in

which apparently contradictory terms appear together

Friendly argument

Imagery

Imagery: any description that appeals to the sense of sound, taste, smell, sight or touch

Example: "Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells" - T.S. Eliot

imagery

Alliteration

Alliteration: Repetition of the initial consonant sound

Assonance

Assonance: repetition of a vowel sound in nearby words

Example: “Poetry is old, ancient, goes back far. It is among the oldest of living things. So old it is that no man knows how and why the first poems came.”

Carl Sandburg “Early Moon”

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia: words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.

ThemeTheme: a statement of universal

truth that emerges in a work of literature

Example of theme in The Hunger Games: Anyone that wishes to survive in a harsh environment needs the necessary skills and an ability to assess risk and make decisions based on possible consequences and outcomes.

ToneTone: the author’s attitude toward his/her subject

Examples of ironic tone in The Kite Runner:

Isn't it ironic that Baba also betrayed his friend even though he talks big about honor and principles?

Isn't it ironic that Assef finally loses his eye?

MoodMood: emotions a reader feels while

reading

Example: The dark fatalistic mood in Poe’s short story "The Cask of Amantillado" is established through the setting.

The time, the last night of Mardi Gras, hints at the deprivation and "end of the party" to come.

Fortunato's costume suggests his foolish mistakes as he is lured into his final gruesome end.

He is buried alive in a wall at the end of a long, dank, musty, corridor.

The torch lighting, and crumbling walls remind the reader that it is a dark and unvisited place. A place where no one will ever find the unfortunate Fortunato

Allusion

Allusion: a figure of speech that makes a reference to

another literary work, myth, or works of art

Example: In The Hunger Games the term “star-crossed lovers” is used to describe Peeta and Katniss. This is an allusion to Romeo and Juliet

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition: The arrangement of two or more ideas side-by-side for the purpose of comparison or contrast

Example: a love-sick Romeo and a hot-headed Tybalt are juxtaposed or contrasted to make their ultimate confrontation more dramatic.

Point-of-View

Point of view: the way the author allows the reader to "see" and "hear" what's going on.

Example: Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is told from the point of view of Scout, a young child.

She doesn't grasp the complex racial and socioeconomic relations of her town.

Scout's innocence reminds the reader of a simple, "it's-not-fair" attitude that contrasts with the rationalizations of other characters.

ForeshadowingForeshadowing: a literary device in which an author

suggests plot developments that might come later in the story.

Example: Romeo foreshadows his own death on his way to the Capulet ball.

. . . my mind misgives Some consequence yet hanging in the stars Shall bitterly begin his fearful date With this night's revels and expire the term Of a despised life closed in my breastBy some vile forfeit of untimely death.

Synecdoche

Synecdoche—Part of something is used to stand for the whole

Example: "threads" for clothes; "wheels" for cars.