SECOND GROUP

AP LITERARY TERMS 2013

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/

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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_connotations.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/15754

Eulogy

A great praise or commendation, a laudatory speech, often about someone who has died.

Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother Bobbiehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9JTYnMpR

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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 explainThe 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 menWhose 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.

ArgumentationDescriptionExpositionNarrative

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/developingparagraphs/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-essay-on-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-essay-on-astronomy.htmlcf.linnbenton.ed