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AP Literature – Literary Terms List
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Academic: As an adjective describing style, this word means dry and theoretical writing. When a
piece of writing seems to be sucking all the life out its subject with analysis, the writing is academic.
Accent: In poetry, accent refers to the stressed portion of the word.
Aesthetic/Aesthetics: appealing to the senses/the study of beauty.
Allegory: A story in which each aspect of the story has a symbolic meaning.
Alliteration: The repetition of initial consonant sounds is called alliteration. In other words,
“consonant clusters coming closely cramped and compressed.” Get it?
Allusion: Indirect reference to an event, person, place or artistic work that the writer assumes the
reader knows about; used effectively, the allusion economically links the text to the larger meaning
of the other text. Hinting towards Star Wars, when before a test you say “May the Force be with
you” is an example of an allusion.
Ambiguity/Ambiguous – Often a writer will deliberately write in such a way that is ambiguous, or
unclear, in order to make a point about the state of confusion or uncertainty that exists in the story.
Anachronism: The word anachronism is derived from the Greek. It means misplaced in time, such as
when the genie in Disney’s Aladdin, a medieval Arabic tale from over a thousand years ago, does
impersonations of Hollywood celebrities and airplane flight attendants.
Analogy: Illustrates the ideas by linking the current ideas to a more familiar idea to better
communicate the idea at hand; typically involves the use of an extended simile.
Anaphora: Repetition of an exact word or phrase at the beginning of a poetic line. It draws strong
attention to the point the poet is trying to make.
Anecdote: A short tale told by someone in conversation to make a particular point.
Antagonist: The most prominent of the story’s characters who oppose the hero (see Protagonist).
Colloquially known as “the bad guy.”
Anthropomorphism: In literature, when inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena are
given human shape, characteristics, behavior, or motivation, anthropomorphism is at work. This is
often called personification.
Antihero: A protagonist (main character) who is markedly unheroic: morally weak, cowardly,
dishonest, or any number of unsavory qualities.
Aphorism: also known as an epigram, it is a brief, witty phrase or proverb, often funny, but typically
something that provokes great thought: “Little strokes fell great oaks” , “you snooze, you lose”
Apostrophe: Talking to someone or something not present, or to a personified object or idea.
Archaism: The use of deliberately old-fashioned language. Authors sometimes use archaisms to
create a feeling of antiquity. Think of a modern writer using words like “thou”, “ye”, and “shalt”.
Assonance: The repeated use of an interior vowel sounds on the same line, as in, “Jack jumped off
the rack and cracked his back”
Axis Mundi – “World pillar.” This is a literary device where the author uses a geographic feature or
physical object to link heaven and earth. Examples include the Empire State Building in King Kong,
the beanstalk in Jack and the Beanstalk, Jacob’s ladder to heaven in the Old Testament, the
heavenly stairway in Paradise Lost, the Bifrost in Thor, or any story featuring the Egyptian pyramids.
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Ballad: A song or orally performed poem that dramatically retells the story of a popular figure.
Bathos, Pathos: Pathos is when the writing of a scene evokes feelings of dignified pity and
sympathy. However, when the author tries to create sympathy and pity when there is no need (i.e. a
mild case of the hiccups) it is called bathos.
Bildungsroman – German term for “formation novel.” This coming of age story describes the
physical maturation of a young person who also grows into an adult through a series of significant
emotional, mental, social, psychological or spiritual experiences. Example – Merida in Brave or
Simba in The Lion King.
Blank verse: unrhymed form of poetry; each line composed of 10 syllables in which every other
syllable, beginning with the second one, is stressed (iambic pentameter). It is often used in long
poems. Tennyson’s “Ulysses” (1842) effectively illustrates this form:
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Cadence: Occasionally used as a synonym for rhythm or meter. Relates to the rising and falling of
speech patterns, stressed and unstressed, the rhythm of speech; this is often an important aspect of
a poet’s style.
Cacophony: In poetry, cacophony is using deliberately harsh, awkward sounds that clash together.
Caesura or cesura: a pause in a line of verse, often caused by grammar, logic, or cadence, that is
similar to the pause for breath.
Catharsis: The “cleansing” of emotion an audience member experiences, having lived (vicariously)
through the experiences presented on stage.
Chorus: In drama, a chorus is the group of citizens who stand outside the main action on stage and
comment on it. This is common in Greek theatre like in Antigone.
Coinage: A new word, usually one invented on the spot.
Colloquialism: A slang word or phrase that is used in everyday conversational English that isn’t a
part of accepted “schoolbook” English.
Comedy – A light-hearted and humorous drama with a happy ending and an emphasis on people
overcoming obstacles to be united in love (typically marriage).
Complex, Dense: These two terms carry the similar meaning of suggesting that there is more than
one possibility in the meaning of words.
Conflict: the primary source of tension within a story. Often divided into four categories;
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One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
the individual vs. themselves – _____________________ (fill in an example of your own)
the individual vs. society – _____________________ (fill in an example of your own)
the individual vs. nature – _____________________ (fill in an example of your own)
the individual vs. fate/gods – _____________________ (fill in an example of your own)
Conceit: In poetry, conceit doesn’t mean stuck up. It refers to a startling or unusual metaphor, or to
a metaphor developed and expanded upon over several lines. In John Donne’s The Flea, the
metaphor is that the mixing of blood in the flea’s body is equivalent to sex.
Connotation: The range of further associations that a word or phrase suggests in addition to the
primary dictionary meaning (i.e., its denotation). Using “the bomb” to mean great is connotation,
whereas using “the bomb” to refer to an explosive device is denotation.
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Consonance: The repetition of consonant sounds within words (rather than at their beginnings,
which is alliteration): “A flock of sick, black-checkered ducks.”
Convention: an established practice used by authors of literary works. Involves technique, style,
structure, or subject matter; particularly essential to poetry and literature, which depend on such
conventions as rhyme or the genre conventions of short stories.
Couplet: pair of lines in verse that form a unit; there are several types, for example, the heroic,
open, end-stopped, and most notably, those that appear at the end of Shakespearean sonnets
which form the last two lines and rhyme with each other.
Denotation: the accepted meaning of a word (i.e., the one that appears in the dictionary). Using
“the bomb” to mean great is connotation, whereas using “the bomb” to refer to an explosive device
is denotation.
Denouement: the resolution, solving, undoing of a central “problem” or complications of the story.
Dialect: variation of pronunciation and usage within standard form of speech; typically based on
regional, cultural, or social class differences. Best example is the different dialects used by Mark
Twain in Huck Finn. Another word for this is vernacular.
Diction: the choice of words used in a literary work: i.e. romantic diction, patriotic diction, etc. The
writing can be characterized by such features as archaisms, colloquialisms, profanity, slang, trite
expressions, or vulgarity.
Dirge: A song for the dead. Its tone is typically slow, heavy, and melancholy.
Dissonance: The grating of incompatible sounds. Similar to cacophony.
Dramatic irony: When the audience knows something that the characters in the story do not: the
audience watching Titanic knows that the ship is going to sink, but the characters don’t know that.
Dramatic monologue: speech in which the character speaks to a silent audience of one or more.
This is different from a soliloquy which is when the character is the only one on stage.
Dynamic – The opposite of static, dynamic characters are ones who change throughout the story.
They undergo significant character development and are different at the end of the story compared
to how they were in the beginning. These are the best types of characters, ones who make stories
deeper and more realistic.
Elegy: A type of poem that meditates on death or mortality in a serious, thoughtful manner. They
also memorialize specific dead people.
Ellipsis – This is the actual term for the “. . .” that appears at the end of a sentence or phrase to
indicate either omission or continuation.
Empathy: the act of placing yourself “in the shoes” of another and forcing yourself to imagine how
that person must feel. This is what fiction asks the reader to do.
Enjambment: Starting a new line of poetry by continuing on from the previous line. This places
particular emphasis on the word that starts the new line. Underlined example below.
“Roses are red and violets
Are blue”
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Epic: a long narrative poem that tells of the deeds and adventures of a hero, such as Beowulf or The
Odyssey.
Epigram: also known as an aphorism, it is a brief, witty phrase or proverb, often funny, but typically
something that provokes great thought: “Little strokes fell great oaks” , “You snooze, you lose”
Epigraph: short poem or verse placed at the beginning of a book that bears some relation to the
book’s themes or subject.
Epilogue: concluding section of a literary work.
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Euphemism: A word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality. The
use of “passed away” instead of died is an example.
Euphony: When sounds blend together harmoniously. Think of vowels and soft consonant sounds.
Existentialism: a European philosophy that several authors, among them Albert Camus and Jean
Paul Sartre, have adapted to fiction and drama to explore the themes of meaningless, individual
freedom, and alienation that plague humanity. For a good laugh, search the internet for the “Jean
Paul Sartre Cookbook.”
Exposition: Writing that makes clear or explains something that might be difficult for the reader to
understand; in a play or novel or essay it helps the reader understand the larger action or subject of
the text.
Eye rhyme/Sight rhyme – This would be missed if a poem was read out loud, but some words only
rhyme on paper and do not rhyme when said out loud. This is called an eye/sight rhyme. An
example would be “daughter” and “laughter.”
Farce: Today we use this word to refer to extremely broad humor. Writers of earlier times used
farce as a more neutral term, meaning simply a funny play.
Feminine rhyme: Lines rhymed by their final two syllables, running and gunning.
Foil – A foil is a character who contrasts with another character. This juxtaposition, usually between
the villain and the hero of the story, is done in order to emphasize the differences between them
and to highlight various features of the protagonist’s character.
Foot: the smallest repeated pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in line of verse.
Foreshadowing: early on the author gives hints of what will come later in the story. In Of Mice and
Men, we are given clues as to what Lennie will do later in the story because of how he keeps killing
little animals.
Free verse: when poetry has no regular meter or rhyme, it does not conform to the traditional rules
that govern metrical verse. Such poets use free verse to demand that their reader attend to other
aspects of the text such as cadence and imagery. Walt Whitman’s poetry exemplifies this form.
Genre: refers to a type of literature specific to its style, form, or content. Examples include mystery
novels, epic poems, and tragic plays.
Gothic, Gothic Novel – The gothic genre first showed up in the middle of the eighteenth century and
had a heyday of popularity for about sixty years. It hasn’t really ever gone away. Think mysterious
gloomy castles perched high upon sheer cliffs. Paintings with sinister eyeballs that follow you
around the room. Weird screams from the attic each night.
Hubris: The excessive pride or ambition that leads to the main character’s downfall. After all, we all
know that pride comes before a fall.
Hyperbole: exaggeration or overstatement of the truth: “There were a million ants crawling on me!”
Interior monologue: A term from novels and poetry, not dramatic literature. It refers to writing that
records the mental talking that goes on inside a character’s head. It is related but not identical to
stream of consciousness. Interior monologue tends to be coherent, as though the character were
actually talking.
Intertextuality – When so many allusions and direct references are used that a reader needs to be
well versed in dozens of different texts to fully understand the piece of literature.
Iambic pentameter: since roughly 90 percent of all verse is written in iambic pentameter, it is
helpful to carefully define it. An iamb is a poetic foot consisting of one unstressed syllable followed
by one stressed syllable (e.g., the word to-day). Pentameter means that the line has five feet (or ten
syllables) that may or may not rhyme as the poet refers/intends.
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Inversion: switching the order of words in a sentence or phrase. Think of Yoda in Star Wars. When
done badly it can give a stilted, artificial, look-at-me-I’m-poetry feel to the verse, but poets do it all
the time. This type of messing with syntax is called poetic license. I’ll have one large pizza with all the
fixins – presto chango instant poetry: A pizza large I’ll have, one with the fixin’s all.
Irony: the writer uses a word or phrase to mean the opposite of its literal or normal meaning. There
are three forms of irony commonly used: dramatic irony (audience knows what the characters
don’t), verbal irony (the opposite of what is said is true), and situational irony (a situation takes
place in the opposite way from what you’d expect).
Juxtaposition – Contrasting two ideas, characters or concepts that are very different, often
completely opposite. This is done to highlight the differences between them and emphasize
whatever it is that separates or makes them different.
Lament: a poem of sadness or grief or death of a loved one or over some other intense loss. The
biblical book of Lamentations is all about grieving for the state of God’s people.
Lampoon: another word for a satire. See satire.
Lyric: a type of poetry that explores the poet’s personal interpretation of and feelings about the
world (or the part that his poem is about). When the word lyric is used to describe a tone it refers to
a sweet, emotional melodiousness.
Melodrama: a form of cheesy theater in which the hero is very, very good, the villain mean and
rotten, and the heroine o-so-pure. (It sounds dumb, but melodramatic movies make tons of money
every year.)
Metaphor: a comparison of two unlike things in which no word of comparison (like or as) is used.
“His temper was volcanic, erupting in fury” or “She was a swan, diving in and out of the pool”
Meter: the patterned repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.
Metonym: a figure of speech in which a person, place, or thing, is referred to by something closely
associated with it. “We requested from the crown more support for our petition.” The crown is used
to represent the monarch.
Mood: relates to the feeling a text arouses in its reader; can shift between scenes but tends to
define a work overall (e.g., the mood of Macbeth is ominous or heavy).
Motif: a frequently recurring mini-theme or idea in a work of literature. In Finding Dory, confusion is
a motif that runs throughout the story.
Neologism: see coinage.
Onomatopoeia: use of words whose sound defines its meaning; examples include plop, crash, and
hum.
Opposition: one of the most useful concepts in analyzing literature. It means that you have a pair of
elements that contrast sharply. It is not necessarily “conflict” but rather a pairing of images (or
settings or appeals, etc.), whereby each becomes more striking and informative because it’s placed
in contrast to the other one. This kind of opposition creates mystery and tension. Oppositions can
be obvious. Opposition scan also lead to irony, but not necessarily so.
Oxymoron: a phrase composed of opposites; a contradiction. Bright black. A calm frenzy. Jumbo
shrimp. Dark light. A truthful lie.
Parable: a short story that illustrates a particular belief or moral.
Parallelism/parallel structure: repeating the structure of a line: “Roses are red / Violets are blue”.
Parody: a story that mocks a literary work or its style. Weird Al Yankovic creates parodies of famous
pop songs, and the movie Space Balls is a parody of Star Wars.
Pastoral: an adjective describing poetry set in tranquil nature, or even more specifically, one about
shepherds.
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Personification: a literary device that describes an animal, object, or ideas as if it had human
characteristics: “The trees reached toward the sky” and “The sun smiled down on me”. Heavily used
in poetry but common to fiction also.
Plot elements: The plot traditionally contains five elements: exposition, rising action, climax, falling
action, and resolution.
Point of view: the perspective from which the action of a novel (or narrative poem) is presented,
whether the action is presented by one character or from different vantage points over the course
of the novel. Be sensitive to point of view, because the AP test likes to ask questions about it, and
they also like for you to mention point of view in your essays.
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The omniscient narrator: this is a third-person narrator who sees, like God, into each
character’s mind and understands all the action going on
The limited omniscient narrator: this is a third-person narrator who generally reports only
what one character (usually the main character) sees, and who only reports the thoughts of
that one privileged character.
The objective, or camera-eye narrator: this is a third-person narrator who only reports on
what would be visible to a camera. The objective narrator does not know what the character
is thinking unless the character speaks of it.
The first person-narrator: this is a narrator who is a character in the story and tells the tale
from his or her point of view. When the first-person narrator is crazy, a liar, very young, or
for some other reason not entirely credible, the narrator is unreliable.
The stream of consciousness technique: this method is like first-person narration but,
instead of the character telling the story, the author places the reader inside the main
character’s head and makes the reader privy to all of the character’s thoughts as they scroll
through her consciousness.
Polysyndeton: pronounced “polly-sin-deh-ton”. If, in a list, a poet or author removed commas and
simply used a conjunctions like “or” as well as “and” it might look like this: “I fought in Afghanistan
and Iraq and Pakistan and Somalia and Venezuela and Honduras”. Using polysyndeton forces the
reader to continue without taking a breath, making the list seem much more intense and joined
together without any pause.
Prose: “normal” or non-poetic writing that is not composed according to rules and forms that
govern poetry.
Protagonist: the main character or hero of a story.
Pun: word or phrase used in such a way as to imply other possible meanings: calling a cow with no
legs “ground beef.” Students cannot “get” Shakespeare, for example, if they do not understand and
cannot recognize a pun.
Refrain: a chorus or set of lines repeated several times over the course of a poem
Requiem: a song of prayer for the dead.
Rhythm: the way in which sound is used in a poem. It can be used in an ordered or free manner to
give a tone and shape to the text.
Satire: Using mockery and humor to make a serious point about bad human behavior. In general,
satire attempts to improve things by pointing out people’s mistakes in the hope that once exposed,
such behavior will become less common. Used to make fun or ridicule a human vice or weakness or
individual failings; classic example is found in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, which satirizes politics
and human nature. Websites like The Onion are classic examples of satire.
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Simile: compares two unlike things using as or like. “She stood in front of the altar, shaking like a
freshly caught trout” (Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings).
Soliloquy: similar to a dramatic monologue: it is a speech that a character delivers while on stage
alone. The supreme example is, of course, Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy.
Sonnet: a poem composed of fourteen lines written in iambic pentameter, the most commonly
encountered in high school being the Shakespearean sonnet (three quatrains and a couplet); there is
another type called the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet (a sestet and an octave).
Stanza: the Italian word for room, this refers to the number of lines a poetic “paragraph” contains:
couplet (two-line stanza), triplet, quatrain (four-line stanza), quintet, sestet, septet, and octave.
Static – This term is used to describe characters that do not change throughout the story. They are
the same in the beginning as they are in the end. These characters are usually uncomplicated and
rather simple. They’re often found in melodramas and children’s stories.
Stereotype: a character is merely a stereotype when they have no individuality to distinguish them
from, for example, historical conceptions of their group. Thus Shylock in Merchant of Venice and Jim
from Huck Finn are sometimes considered little more than stereotypes if not read carefully.
Stock characters: standard or clichéd character types: the drunk, the miser, the foolish girl, etc.
Structure: has to do with the form or organization of the text, particularly as it relates to or affects
the meaning or action within the story. A poem about popcorn popping in a pan might be written in
a series of short, separated, explosive sentences.
Suspension of disbelief: the demand made of a theater audience to accept the limitations of staging
and supply the details with imagination. Also, the acceptance on an audience’s or reader’s part of
the incidents of plot in a play or story. If there are too many coincidences or improbable
occurrences, the viewer/reader can no longer suspend disbelief and subsequently loses interest.
Symbol: person, place, thing that is, in a text, used to represent something else. Think of it as an
object that represents an idea.
Synecdoche: a figure of speech in which a part represents the whole. “If you don’t drive properly,
you will lose your wheels.” The wheels represent the car. Another example says “Thirty sails came
into the harbor” instead of “thirty ships”. The sails, a part of the ship, represent the boats.
Technique: the methods, the tools, the “how-she-does-it” ways of the author. In poetry,
onomatopoeia is a technique within the element of rhythm. In drama, blocking is a technique, as is
lighting. Concrete details are not techniques, but tone is.
Theme: The main idea of the overall work; the central idea. It is the topic of discussion. This is the
deep structure consisting of the text’s ideas and truths, which the writer tries to convey through the
action and exposition of the story. Readers understand theme when they write “This is a story about
alienation,” instead of “This is a story about a man who goes to live by himself in the country.”
Tone: similar to mood, it relates to the emotions within the voice of the narrator, character or poet:
most people recite the pledge of allegiance in a respectful tone.
Tragedy: a terrible outcome that the character could have avoided at any point, but due to certain
flaws, chose not to; these errors in judgment lead to their inevitable fall.
Tragic flaw: in a tragedy, this is the weakness of character in an otherwise good (or even great)
individual that ultimately leads to his demise.
Truism: a way-too-obvious truth: “It’s hot in the Sahara desert”
Verse: consists of a metric line of poetry that has some formal structure to it. Also used to
distinguish poetry from prose.
Zeugma: the use of a word to modify two or more words, but used for different meanings: “He
closed the door and his heart on his lost love.”