AP LITERARY TERMS 2013
SECOND GROUP
CHIASMUS
 In poetry, a type of rhetorical balance in which
the second part is syntactically balanced against
the first, but with the parts reversed.
 In the blue grass region, A paradox was born: The
corn was full of kernels, and the colonels full of
corn. - John Marshall -
CHIASMUS
 Our very hopes belied our fears,
Our fears our hopes belied;
We thought her dying when she slept,
And sleeping when she died. –
Thomas Hood.
CLICHE
 A WORD OR PHRASE THAT HAS BECOME
LIFELESS BECAUSE OF OVERUSE.
COLLOQUIALISM
 A WORD OF PHRASE IN EVERYDAY USE IN
CONVERSATION AND INFORMAL WRITING
BUT INAPPROPRIATE FOR FORMAL
SITUATIONS
 Try these British colloquialisms:
 “I’M AT SIXES AND SEVENS.” (in disarray)
 “I’M KNACKERED.(“extremely tired)
More British Colloquialisms
 “HER MAJESTY’S PLEASURE” – TO BE PUT IN
PRISON
 “YOU’RE TELLING PORKIES.” – YOU’RE
TELLING LIES.
COMEDY
 A STORY THAT ENDS WITH A HAPPY
RESOLUTON OF THE CONFLICTS FACED BY
THE MAIN CHARACTER OR CHARACTERS
CONCEIT
 AN ELABORATE METAPHOR THAT COMPARES
TWO THINGS THAT ARE STARTLINGLY
DIFFERENT
CONCEIT
 ROMEO SAYS TO JULIET:
 “Thou counterfeit’st a bark, a sea, a wind;






For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,
Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is,
Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs;
Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them,
Without a sudden calm, will overset
Thy tempest-tossed body.”
 Juliet is compared to a ship in a storm at sea.
Juliet and the ship tossed on the sea
Confessional Poetry
 A twentieth century term used to describe
poetry that uses intimate material from the
poet’s life.
 Plath’s “Daddy”
 http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15
291
Conflict
 The struggle between opposing forces or
characters in a story
 External – between two people, between person
and nature or a machine, or between a person and
society
 Internal – involving opposing forces within a
person’s mind
 Raskolnikov experiences both.
Connotation
 The associations and emotional overtones that
have become attached to a word or a phrase, in
addition to its strict dictionary definition
(denotation)
 http://www.piclits.com/lessonplans/poetry_conno
tations.aspx
Couplet
 Two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry :
 There lives more life in one of your fair eyes
Than both your poets can in praise devise.
Dialect
 A way of speaking that is characteristic of a
certain social group or of the inhabitants of a
certain geographical area
 Check out Wuthering Heights’ character Joseph
in the next frame:
Yorkshire Dialect
 'What are ye for?' he shouted. 'T' maister's down i' t' fowld.
Go round by th' end o' t' laith, if ye went to spake to him.'
 'Is there nobody inside to open the door?' I hallooed,
responsively.
 'There's nobbut t' missis; and shoo'll not oppen 't an ye mak'
yer flaysome dins till neeght.'
 'Why? Cannot you tell her whom I am, eh, Joseph?'
 'Nor-ne me! I'll hae no hend wi't,' muttered the head, vanishing.
Translated!
 'What do you want?' he shouted. 'The master's down in the fold
[sheep pen]. Go round the end of the barn if you want to speak
to him.'
 'Is there nobody inside to open the door?' I hallooed,
responsively.
 'There's nobody but the mistress, and she'll not open it for you
if you make your frightening din [noise] till night.'
 'Why? Cannot you tell her whom I am, eh, Joseph?'
 'Not me. I'll not have anything to do with it,' muttered the
head, vanishing.
Diction
 A speaker or writer’s choice of words
Didactic
 A form of fiction or nonfiction that teaches a
specific lesson or moral or provides a model of
correct behavior or thinking.
e. g. The Bible
Elegy
 A poem of mourning, usually abut someone who
has died.
 “O, Captain, My Captain” – Walt Whitman about
the death Lincoln.
 http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15
754
Eulogy
 A great praise or commendation, a laudatory
speech, often about someone who has died.
 Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother Bobbie
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9JTYnMpRyg
Epanalepsis
 Device of repetition in which the same expression
(single word or phrase) is repeated both at the
beginning and at the end of the line, clause, or
sentence)
EPANALEPSIS
 •"Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread."
(Conrad Aiken, "Bread and Music," 1914)
EPANALEPSIS
 •"Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say,
Rejoice."
The Bible, Phil. 4.4
EPANALEPSIS
 •"The man who did the waking buys the man who
was sleeping a drink; the man who was sleeping
drinks it while listening to a proposition from the
man who did the waking."
 (Jack Sparrow, The Pirates of the Caribbean)
EPANALEPSIS
 In times like these, it is helpful to remember that
there have always been times like these. " —Paul
Harvey
EPIC
 A LONG NARRATIVE POEM, WRITTEN IN
HEIGHTENED LANGUAGE, WHICH RECOUNTS
THE DEEDS OF A HEROIC CHARACTER WHO
EMBODIES THE VALUES OF A PARTICULAR
SOCIETY
EPIGRAPH
 A QUOTATION OR APHORISM AT THE
BEGINNING OF A LITERARY WORK
SUGGESTIVE OF THE THEME.
 Mistah Kurtz, he dead” is a line from Heart of
Darkness by Joseph Conrad, which was used in
the famous poem “The Hollow Men” by T.S Eliot
to describe how modern people had dead souls
like Kurtz of Heart of Darkness.
EPIGRAPH
 •Earnest Hemingway also used Gertrude Stein’s
famous quotation, “You are all a lost generation,”
in the beginning of his book The Sun Also Rises.
 http://literarydevices.net/epigraph/
Epistrophe
 Device of repetition in which the same expression
(single word or phrase) is repeated at the end of
two or more lines, clauses, or sentences (the
opposite of anaphora)
EPISTROPHE
 "A day may come when the courage of men fails,
when we forsake our friends and break all bonds
of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of
woes and shattered shields, when the age of men
comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This
day we fight!"
 (Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn in The Lord of the
Rings: The Return of the King, 2003)
EPISTROPHE
 •"The big sycamore by the creek was gone. The
willow tangle was gone. The little enclave of
untrodden bluegrass was gone. The clump of
dogwood on the little rise across the creek--now
that, too, was gone."
 (Robert Penn Warren, Flood: A Romance of Our
Time. Random House, 1963)

EPISTROPHE
 •Abraham Lincoln: "The People"
 "It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated
to the great task remaining before us--that from
these honored dead we take increased devotion to
that cause for which they here gave the last full
measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this
nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that
government of the people, by the people, for the
people shall not perish from the earth."
 (Abraham Lincoln, “The Gettysburg Address,” Nov.
19, 1863)
Epistrophe
 “There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern
problem. There is no Northern problem. There is
only an American problem.”
 — Lyndon Johnson, Washington, D.C., 15 March
1965
EPISTOLARY NOVEL
 An epistolary novel is also called a novel of
letters, because the narration takes place in the
form of letters, possibly journal entries, and
occasionally newspaper reports. An epistle is an
archaic term for a letter.
 Example - The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Epithet
 An adjective or adjective phrase applied to a
person or thing that is frequently used to
emphasize a characteristic quality
EPITHET
 Zeus-loved Achilles, you bid me explain
The wrath of far-smiting Apollo.
HOMERIC EPITHET – a cmpd. adj. used with a
person or a thing
EPITHET
 I've come,
As you surmise, with comrades on a ship,
Sailing across the wine-dark sea to men
Whose style of speech is very different..." - The
Odyssey by Homer
EPITHET
 Shakespearean Epithets:
 Thou mad mustachio purple-hued maltworms!
 Thou puking knotty-pated lout!
 Thou be-slubbering swag-bellied ratsbane!
 Thou roguish tickle-brained fustilarian!
Essay
A short piece of nonfiction prose in which the
writer discusses some aspect of a subject.
 Argumentation
 Description
 Exposition
 Narrative
Argumentation
 One of four forms of discourse using
 Logic (logos)
 Ethos (ethics)
 Pathos (emotion)
 Check out this essay, please:
 http://www.sparknotes.com/testprep/books/gre/
chapter13section4.rhtml
Persuasion
 Relies more on emotion than facts
 Argument – form of persuasion that appeals to
reason instead of emotion
CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP
 1. A causal argument has the following form:
 It has been observed that A and B are correlated
 ----------------------------------------------- So, A is probably the cause of B.
 Correlated means that two or more items have a close or mutual
relationship with one another. In general the time sequence is: B
follows A. For example: It has been observed many times that
smoking marijuana is followed by short term memory loss. Thus,
smoking marijuana causes short term memory loss.
Description
 Form of discourse that uses language to create a
mood or emotion
 Check out the following examples, please:
 http://grammar.about.com/od/developingparagra
phs/a/samdescpars.htm
Exposition
 One of the four major forms of discourse in
which something is explained or set forth
 Please check out the following example:
 http://www.essay-writing-
tips.com/samples/sample-of-5-paragraph-essayon-astronomy.html
Narrative
 Form of discourse that tells about a series of
events
 Please check out the following essay:
 http://www.essay-writing-
tips.com/samples/sample-of-5-paragraph-essayon-astronomy.htmlcf.linnbenton.ed