A slide show containing literary terms and their definitions. Students will view the slide show and listen to a lecture. As they view the slide show they will complete their handout which will be missing important information (the definitions). Students will then go on to apply these terms to the literature we read in this course.

1. Terms which might be useful for
the A.P. Literature Exam
by Kathleen Curran
From Barbara Swovelin’s list

2. Ad hominem argument
From the Latin meaning “to or
against the man,” this is an
argument that appeals to
emotion rather than reason, to
feeling rather than intellect.

3. alliteration
close repetition of consonant
sounds at beginning of words

4. allusion
brief reference to familiar
person/thing/incident (often
Biblical, historical, mythological
or literary)

5. apostrophe
directly addressing an absent or
imaginary person

6. assonance
repetition of vowel sounds

7. ballad
narrative poem, originally sung
(ballade: a French verse form)

8. bathos
excessive pathos

9. caesura
pause in line, dictated by rhythm
(“A little learning…..is a
dangerous thing)

10. consonance
close repetition of identical
consonant sounds around
different vowels
(flip-flop, or at the ends of words
(hid-bed)

11. couplet
two lines of verse, usually
rhymed and of same meter

12. denoument
events following the climax and
falling action (resolution)

13. Deus ex machina
“god from machine” (saves the
day)

14. diction
the choice of words and their
placement in sentences

15. dissonance
juxtaposition of jarring sounds

16. doggrel
rough, crudely written verse,
usually comic

17. elegy
dignified poem mourning death

18. end-stopped line
end of phrase or sentence
coincides with end of line
(poetry)

19. epic
extended narrative poem,
exalted in style and heroic in
theme

20. Epic (Homeric) simile
extended simile

21. epigram
short, witty statement, graceful
and ingenious

22. epilogue
final section of speech or written
work (peroration)

23. epiphany
“showing forth” (Greek), an
insight

24. epitaph
death inscription (“On the whole,
I’d rather be in Philadelphia” W.C.
Fields)

25. epithet
term used to characterize a
person (Jack the Ripper)

26. fable
truth narrative illustrating a
moral

27. Figurative language
makes use of figures of speech
(techniques comparing dissimilar
objects); specific figures of
speech are listed separately

28. foot
group of syllables forming
metrical unit:
iamb trochee
anapest dactyl

29. form
fixed metrical arrangement

30. Free verse
lacks regular meter and line
length (relies on natural rhythm;
most modern poetry)

31. gallows humor
black humor (like dead baby
jokes)

32. Genre
literary type or class, specific or
general (carpe diem poetry,
tragedy, novels, etc.)

33. Heroic couplet
pair of rhymed iambic
pentameter lines

34. hyperbole
deliberate exaggeration

35. imagery
language which evokes sensory
experiences; engaging sight,
smell, taste, etc.

36. irony
writer expresses a meaning contradictory
to stated or ostensible one:
Verbal irony: attitude opposite to what
is literally stated.
Dramatic irony: situation understood in
double sense by audience (and not by
characters on stage).
Situational irony: circumstances turn out
to be reverse of those anticipated

37. litotes
or meiosis; understatement (in
Hamlet, “a play of some
interest”)

38. lyric
originally (Greek) sung to lyre;
lyric poetry expresses feelings of
speaker in words which have
musical qualities

39. metaphor
two unlike objects compared
(“Life is but a walking shadow”)

40. metonymy
figure of speech, name of object
substituted for another (“my
light [vision] is spent”)

41. meter
pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables; see foot, a foot being the
metrical unit; the following terms refer to
number of feet per line: monometer,
dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter,
pentameter, hexameter, heptameter,
octometer. Iambic pentameter refers to a
line of five feet of iambs

42. motif
recurring image, character, verbal
pattern, etc.

43. Narrative verse
tells a story (as does anything
narrative)

44. ode
lyric poem of some length,
serious in subject and dignified in
style

45. onomatopoeia
words whose sounds express or
reinforce their meanings

46. Ottava rima
eight lines, iambic pentameter
(abababcc)

47. oxymoron
two apparently contradictory
terms (cold fires; conspicuous by
his absence)

48. Pathetic fallacy
human characteristics given to
inanimate objects

49. pathos
quality which evokes feelings of
pity, sympathy, tenderness, etc

50. persona
a “mask” which the author
assumes to speak to the audience

51. personification
inanimate objects endowed with
human qualities

52. Petrarchan sonnet
14 lines divided into two parts, an
octave (abbaabba) and sestet
(cdecde)

53. quatrain
stanza of four lines

54. repetition
duplication of an element of
language, such as a word, phrase,
clause, etc

55. Rhyme royal
7-line stanza in iambic
pentameter (ababbcc)

56. Shakespearean sonnet
14 lines, iambic pentameter (abab
cdcd efef gg or abba cddc effe gg)

57. simile
comparison using “like” or “as.”

58. Spenserian sonnet
same with rhyme of abab bcbc
cdcd ee

59. stanza
group of lines that form division
of a poem

60. style
the qualities that make up a
literary personality or way of
writing

61. syllogism
a deductive, logical argument,
formulated around one major
premise, one minor premise, and
a conclusion (e.g. All men are
mortal; Socrates is a man;
therefore, Socrates is mortal.)

62. symbol
something that stands for
something else, but also exists as
an entity itself (a hammer and
sickle for the USSR)

63. synecdoche
part represents the whole (all
hands on deck)

64. syntax
the choice of words and their
placement in sentences

65. tercet
a group of three lines rhyming
together or connected by rhyme
with the adjacent group or
groups of three lines

66. Terza rima
aba bcb cdc etc

67. tone
author’s attitude toward (can
also be towards audience or
both)

68. villanelle
a French fixed form (5 tercets
and a quatrain, all with two
rhymes)

69. Those are your terms, learn them
and use them when appropriate.
As we continue to read we will
use these terms on a daily
basis…know them!