Allegory A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities The most famous example in English is John Bunyans ID: 534551
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Literary Terms For The AP Literature and Composition Exam Slide2
Allegory
A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities. The most famous example in English is John Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress
, in which the name of the central character, Pilgrim, epitomizes the book's allegorical nature. Kay Boyle's story "Astronomer's Wife" and Christina Rossetti's poem "Up-Hill" both contain allegorical elements. A couplet is a pair of rhyming lines that are like a stanzaSlide3
Alliteration
Use of the same letter repeatedly ( Ho Hum, Silly Sally)
The repetition of initial sounds in consonants, especially at the beginning of words. Example: "Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood." Hopkins, "In the Valley of the Elwy." Slide4
Allusion
A reference to a person, a place, an event, or a literary work that a writer expects a reader to recognize.
Allusions could be drawn from literature, mythology, religion, history, or geography. Slide5
Anapest
Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one, as in
com-pre-HEND or in-ter-VENE. An anapestic meter rises to the accented beat as in Byron's lines from "The Destruction of Sennacherib": "And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, / When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee." Slide6
Assonance
The repetition of
similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe." Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" contains assonantal "I's" in the following lines: "How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, / Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself." Slide7
Aubade
A love lyric in which the speaker complains about the arrival of the dawn, when he must part from his lover. John Donne's "The Sun Rising" exemplifies this poetic genre. Slide8
APOSTROPHE
A figure of speech in which an absent or dead person, an abstract quality, or something inanimate or nonhuman is addressed directly
.
Apostrophe is a common device in poetry.Slide9
ASIDE
In drama, a short speech spoken by a character in an undertone or directly to the audience.
An aside is meant to be heard by the audience but not by the characters. Slide10
Anachronism
Derived from Greek. It means “misplaced in time”.
the effect can be comic.Slide11
Anthropomorphism
In literature, when inanimate objects are given human characteristics, anthropomorphism is at work.
e.g. In the forest, the darkness waited for me.Slide12
Ballad
A
narrative poem
written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style. The Anonymous medieval ballad, "Barbara Allan," exemplifies the genre. Slide13
A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed
iambic pentameter
. Shakespeare's sonnets, Milton's epic poem
Paradise Lost, and Robert Frost's meditative poems such as "Birches" include many lines of blank verse. Here are the opening blank verse lines of "Birches": When I see birches bend to left and right / Across the lines of straighter darker trees, / I like to think some boy's been swinging them. Blank Verse Slide14
Black Humor
This is the use of disturbing themes in comedy.
E.g. two tramps comically debating about who should commit suicide first, and whether the tree branch will support their weight.Slide15
Caesura
A strong pause within a line of verse. The following stanza from Hardys.
"The Man He Killed" contains caesuras in the middle two lines: He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,Off-hand-like--just as I--Was out of work-had sold his traps--No other reason why.Slide16
Character
An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Literary characters may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change). In Shakespeare's
Othello
, Desdemona is a major character, but one who is static, like the minor character Bianca. Othello is a major character who is dynamic, exhibiting an ability to change. Slide17
Characterization
The means by which writers present and reveal character. Although techniques of characterization are complex, writers typically reveal characters through their speech, dress, manner, and actions. Readers come to understand the character Miss Emily in Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" through what she says, how she lives, and what she does. Slide18
Climax
The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work. The climax of John Updike's "A&P," for example, occurs when Sammy quits his job as a cashier. Slide19
Couplet
A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate
stanza
in a poem. Shakespeare's sonnets end in rhymed couplets, as in "For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings.“Slide20
Concrete Poetry
Poetry that uses the appearance of the verse lines on the page to suggest or imitate the poem’s subject.
Slide21
Confessional Poetry
Poetry that makes frank, explicit use of incidents in the poet’s life.Slide22
Consonance
The repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words. Sometimes the term is limited to the repetition of final consonant sounds.
Took / Tack Bitter / Butter
Slide23
Dactyl:
A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, as in
FLUT-ter-ing
or BLUE-ber-ry. The following playful lines illustrate double dactyls, two dactyls per line: Higgledy, piggledy,Emily DickinsonGibbering, jabbering. Slide24
Denouement
The resolution of the
plot
of a literary work. The denouement of Hamlet takes place after the catastrophe, with the stage littered with corpses. During the denouement Fortinbras makes an entrance and a speech, and Horatio speaks his sweet lines in praise of Hamlet. Slide25
Diction
The selection of words in a literary work
. A work's diction forms one of its centrally important literary elements, as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values. We can speak of the diction particular to a character, as in Iago's and Desdemona's very different ways of speaking in
Othello. We can also refer to a poet's diction as represented over the body of his or her work, as in Donne's or Hughes's diction. Slide26
Dramatic Monologue
A narrative poem in which one character speaks to one or more listeners whose replies are not given in the poem. Slide27
Dramatic Poem
A narrative poem in which one or more characters speak.Slide28
Elegy
A
lyric poem
that laments the dead. Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" is elegiac in tone. A more explicitly identified elegy is W.H. Auden's "In Memory of William Butler Yeats" and his "Funeral Blues." Slide29
Elision
The omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the
meter
of a line of poetry. Alexander uses elision in "Sound and Sense": "Flies o'er th' unbending corn...." Slide30
Enjambment
A run-on line of poetry in which logical and grammatical sense carries over from one line into the next.
An enjambed line differs from an end-stopped line in which the grammatical and logical sense is completed within the line. In the opening lines of Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," for example, the first line is end-stopped and the second is enjambed:
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now.... Slide31
Epic
A long
narrative poem
that records the adventures of a hero. Epics typically chronicle the origins of a civilization and embody its central values. Examples from western literature include Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and Milton's Paradise Lost.Slide32
Epigram
A brief witty poem, often satirical. Alexander Pope's "Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog" exemplifies the genre:
I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you? Slide33
Epigraph
A quotation or motto at the beginning of a chapter, book, short story, or poem that makes some point about the work.
Slide34
Epitaph
An inscription on a gravestone or a short poem written in memory of someone who has died. Slide35
Epithet
A descriptive name or phrase used to characterize someone or something as “fair-weather-friend” or “Catherine the Great”.Slide36
Euphemism
A word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality. The use of
passed away
for died, and let go for fired are two examples of euphemisms.Slide37
Falling
Meter
Poetic meters such as trochaic and dactylic that move or fall from a stressed to an unstressed syllable. The nonsense line, "Higgledy, piggledy," is dactylic, with the accent on the first syllable and the two syllables following falling off from that accent in each word. Trochaic meter is represented by this line: "Hip-hop, be-bop, treetop--freedom." Slide38
Foil
A character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a play or story.
Laertes, in
Hamlet, is a foil for the main character; in Othello, Emilia and Bianca are foils for Desdemona. The Hubbell’s are a foil to Stella and Stanley Kowalski.Slide39
Foot
A
metrical
unit composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. For example, an iamb or iambic foot is represented by ˘', that is, an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one. Frost's line "Whose woods these are I think I know" contains four iambs, and is thus an iambic foot. Slide40
Foot Continued
The basic unit for describing meter, usually consisting of a certain number and combination of stressed and unstressed syllables. Stressed and unstressed syllables form one or other of the recognized metrical forms:
an
iamb is 'di dúm'; (unstressed followed by a stressed syllable) a trochee is 'dúm di‘( stressed by an unstressed syllable)an anapest
is 'di di dúm', ( a foot of three syllables 2unstressed followed by a syllable) and
a
dactyl
is 'dúm di di'.( opposite of anapest, stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables. Slide41
Form
The term is usually used in the analysis of poetry to refer to the structure of stanzas (such as
ottava rima
). It can also be used less technically of the general structural principles by which a work is organized, and is distinguished from its content. Slide42
Free Verse
Poetry without a regular pattern of
meter
or rhyme. The verse is "free" in not being bound by earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad. Modern and contemporary poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries often employ free verse. Williams's "This Is Just to Say" is one of many examples.Slide43
Hyperbole
A figure of speech involving exaggeration. John Donne uses hyperbole in his poem: "Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star." Slide44
Iambic Pentameter:
an unrhymed line of five
feet
in which the dominant accent usually falls on the second syllable of each foot (di dúm), a pattern known as an iamb. The form is very flexible: it is possible to have one or more feet in which the expected order of accent is reversed (dúm di). These are called trochees. Slide45
Limerick
A form of poetry with a lighter form often a pun or a curious rhyme in the last line. It has five lines built on two rhymes with the third and fourth lines shorter than the others- may explain ease in remembering and reciting.
Limerick from the Book of Nonsense
byEdward Lear There was an Old Man with a gong,Who bumped at it all day long;But they called out, 'O law!You're a horrid old bore!'So they smashed that Old Man with a gong.
Slide46
Lyric Poem
A type of poem characterized by brevity, compression, and the expression of feeling. Most of the poems in this book are lyrics. The anonymous "Western Wind" epitomizes the genre:
Western wind, when will thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?Christ, if my love were in my armsAnd I in my bed again! Slide47
Meter
A regular patterned recurrence of light and heavy stresses in a line of verse. These patterns are given names. Almost all poems deliberately depart from the template established by a metrical pattern for specific effect. Assessing a poem's metre requires more than just spotting an
iambic pentameter
or other metrical pattern: it requires you to think about the ways in which a poem departs from its underlying pattern and why. Emotion might force a reverse foot or trochee, or the normal patterns of speech might occasionally cut across an underlying rhythm. Slide48
Metonymy
A figure of speech in which the name of one object is replaced by another which is closely associated with it. So 'the turf' is a metonym for horse-racing, 'Westminster' is a metonym for the Houses of Parliament, 'Downing Street' is a metonym for the Prime-Minister or his office. 'Scepter and crown came tumbling down' is a metonymic way of saying 'the king fell from power'. Slide49
ODE
Its an ancient form of poetic song, is a celebratory poem. Highly lyrical and profoundly philosophical, odes pay homage to whatever the poet may hold dear- another person, a place, an object, an abstract idea.
An Ode to a Nightingale- by John Keats My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness painsMy sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,Or emptied some dull opiate to the drainsOne minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: Slide50
Quatrain
A four-line
stanza
in a poem, the first four lines and the second four lines in a Petrachan sonnet. A Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a couplet. Slide51
SYNECDOCHE
Resembles metonymy very closely Slide52
TYPES OF POETRY
NARRATIVE POEM
- Tells part or all of a story.
Epics like Gilgamesh and The Odyssey Birches by Robert Frost When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load
, Slide53
LYRIC POEM
Lyric Poem
-
Lyric Poetry consists of a poem, such as a sonnet or an ode, elegy and villanelle that expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet. The term lyric is now commonly referred to as the words to a song. Lyric poetry does not tell a story which portrays characters and actions. The lyric poet addresses the reader directly, portraying his or her own feeling, state of mind, and perceptions. . Slide54
LYRIC POEM continued,
Dying
(aka I heard a fly buzz when I died )
byEmily DickinsonI heard a fly buzz when I died;The stillness round my formWas like the stillness in the airBetween the heaves of stormSlide55
VILLANELLE