MCAS Study Guide
|AP Literature Exam Study Guide – Part One |
|Literary Terms Review |
|Allegory |A story illustrating an idea or a moral principle in |In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Dante, symbolizing mankind, is taken by |
| |which objects take on symbolic meanings. |the poet Virgil on a journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise in order to|
| | |teach him the nature of sin, its punishments, and the way to salvation. |
|Alliteration |Repetition of initial consonant sounds |sweetly satisfying sound |
| | |Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon poetry used this literary device to help scops (poem |
| | |reciters) remember their lines. |
|Allusion |Reference to a well-known person, myth, historical event,|Beowulf references the story of Cain and Abel from the Old Testament. |
| |biblical story, etc. |In Hamlet, Shakespeare references the story of Pyrrhus and Priam from |
| | |Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid. |
|Anaphora |The repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of |MLK’s repetition of ‘I have a dream…’ at the start of successive sentences in|
| |consecutive lines or sentences |his famous speech. |
|Anecdote |A very short tale told by a character in a literary work.|In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, "The Miller's Tale" and "The Carpenter's Tale"|
| | |are examples. |
|Antagonist |A person or force which opposes the protagonist in a |In Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Assef is the antagonist of Amir. In Hamlet, |
| |literary work. |Claudius opposes Hamlet. |
|Antecedent |The word or phrase to which a pronoun refers. It often |“Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt, / Thaw and resolve itself into|
| |precedes a pronoun in prose or in poetry. |a dew.” Flesh is the antecedent; itself is the pronoun that refers to it. |
|Anticlimax |An often disappointing, sudden end to an intense |An excellent example of anticlimax in film is when Dorothy wakes up at the |
| |situation. |end of The Wizard of Oz to discover it was all just a dream. |
|Antihero |A protagonist who carries the action of the literary |Holden Caulfield in The Cather in the Rye and Amir in The Kite Runner are |
| |piece but does not embody the classic characteristics of |considered to be antiheroes. |
| |courage, strength and nobility. | |
|Aphorism |A brief statement which expresses an observation on life,|In Hamlet, Polonius shares a series of aphorisms with Laertes before he |
| |usually intended as a wise observation. |leaves for France, including “Neither a borrower nor a lender be" and "To |
| | |thine own self be true." |
|Apostrophe |Figure of speech in which one directly addresses an |“Frailty! Thy name is woman.” |
| |imaginary person or some abstraction. | |
|Appositive |A noun or pronoun used to clarify or explain other nouns |From Beowulf: “We are Geats, / Men who follow Hieglac” |
| |or pronouns already introduced. | |
|Archetype |A character, situation or symbol that is familiar to |Character: The hero - The courageous figure, the one who's always running in |
| |people from all cultures because it occurs frequently in |and saving the day. Example: Beowulf |
| |literature, myth, religion or folklore. |Situation: The task - A situation in which a character or group of characters|
| | |is driven to complete some duty of monstrous proportion. Example: Frodo's |
| | |task to keep the ring safe in J. R. R. Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings |
| | |trilogy |
| | |Symbol: The color red often represents blood, sacrifice, violent passion, |
| | |disorder. |
|Aside |A device in which a character in a drama makes a short |In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Polonius confronts Hamlet. In a dialogue concerning |
| |speech which is heard by the audience but not by other |his daughter Ophelia, Polonius speaks this aside: |
| |characters onstage in the play. |“How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter. / Yet he knew me not at |
| | |first; he said I was a fishmonger. He is / far gone. And truly in my youth I |
| | |suffered much extremity / for love, very near this. I'll speak to him again” |
| | |(II.ii.39). |
|Assonance |The repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work, |How now brown cow. |
| |especially in a poem | |
|Autobiography |The story of a person's life – usually his or her entire |William Colin Powell's My American Journey is an example. |
| |life -- written by himself or herself | |
|Ballad |A story in poetic form, often about tragic love and |Coleridge’s, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a 19th century English |
| |usually sung. Ballads were passed down from generation to|ballad. |
| |generation by singers. | |
|Biography |The story of a person's life written by someone other |Katherine Drinker Bowen's Yankee from Olympus, which details the life and |
| |than the subject of the work. |work of the great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., is an example. |
|Blank Verse |A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. |Shakespeare used this technique, as seen in the following excerpt from |
| | |Hamlet: “When honour’s at stake. How stand I then, / That have a father |
| | |kill’d, a mother stain’d…” |
|Cacophony / Euphony |Cacophony is an unpleasant combination of sounds. |The following passage from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels uses cacophony|
| |Euphony, the opposite, is a pleasant combination of |to show the chaotic and destructive effects of war: |
| |sounds. These sound effects can be used intentionally to | |
| |create an effect, or they may appear unintentionally. |And being no stranger to the art of war, I have him a description / of |
| | |cannons, culverins, muskets, carabines, pistols, bullets, powder, / swords, |
| | |bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, undermines, / countermines, |
| | |bombardments, sea-fights… |
| | | |
| | |The language is put together here to avoid being melodious, but instead give |
| | |the reader the impression of harsh, clanking sounds that do not naturally |
| | |flow together. |
|Caesura |A pause within a line of poetry which may or may not |Caesuras were commonly used in Anglo Saxon poetry to give the speaker a |
| |affect the metrical count. A caesura is sometimes |moment to pause for breath. |
| |indicated by the following symbol (//). | |
|Canto |A subdivision of an epic poem. |Each of the three books of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy is divided into |
| | |cantos. |
|Carpe Diem |A Latin phrase which translated means "Seize (Catch) the |The phrase originated as the title of a poem by the Roman Horace (65 B.C.-8 |
| |day," meaning "Make the most of today." |B.C.) and caught on as a theme with such English poets as Robert Herrick. |
| | |Consider these lines from Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time": |
| | |Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, / Old Time is still a-flying: / And this |
| | |same flower that smiles today, / To-morrow will be dying. |
|Catastrophe |The scene in a tragedy which includes the death or moral |The catastrophe in Shakespearean tragedy occurs in Act 5 of each drama, and |
| |destruction of the |always includes the death of the protagonist. Consider the fates of Hamlet, |
| |protagonist. |Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Othello. |
|Catharsis |An emotional cleansing or feeling of relief as experienced|At the end of Gone With the Wind, many readers cry as they empathize with |
| |by a reader or audience. |Scarlett O’Hara and her losses. They are experiencing catharsis. |
|Characterization |The method a writer uses to reveal the personality of a |In Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, the reader learns that Hassan is loyal |
| |character in a literary work. |through his actions and through the words of Amir. |
| |Direct: The author explicitly states the characters’ | |
| |traits. | |
| |Indirect: The author reveals character (1) by what the | |
| |character says about himself or herself; (2) by what | |
| |others say about the character; and (3) by the character's| |
| |own actions. | |
|Chiasmus |A statement consisting of two parallel parts in which the |Susan walked in, and out rushed Mary. |
| |second part is structurally reversed. |“Never let a fool kiss you--or a kiss fool you.” |
| | |"You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to |
| | |forget. |
|Climax |The decisive moment in a drama. The climax is the turning |The outcome of the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird. |
| |point of the play to which the rising action leads. This | |
| |is the crucial part of the drama, the part which | |
| |determines the outcome of the conflict. | |
|Comedy |A literary work which is amusing and ends happily. Modern |A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing are examples of |
| |comedies tend to be funny, while Shakespearean comedies |Shakespearean comedies. |
| |simply end well. Shakespearean comedies also contain items| |
| |such as misunderstandings and mistaken identity to | |
| |heighten the comic effect. | |
|Comic Relief |Humor that provides a release of tension and breaks up a |The grave-diggers provide comic relief in Act V of Hamlet. |
| |more serious series of events. | |
|Concrete Poetry |A poem that visually resembles something found in the |[pic] |
| |physical world. | |
|Conflict |In the plot of a drama, conflict occurs when the |In Hamlet, Hamlet is in conflict with his murderous uncle Claudius. |
| |protagonist is opposed by some person or force in the |Additionally, he suffers from an internal conflict of whether or not he |
| |play. Examples of external conflict include human vs. |should obey his dead father’s wishes in seeking revenge and risk eternal |
| |nature, human vs. human and human vs. society. With |damnation. |
| |internal conflict, the character’s struggle occurs within| |
| |his or herself. | |
|Connotation |The associations a word calls to mind. |House and home have similar dictionary definitions, but the word home |
| |The more connotative a literary work is, the less |connotes warmth and security, while the word house does not. |
| |objective its interpretation becomes. | |
|Denotation |The dictionary or literal meaning of a word or phrase. |Thin’s denotation is “not fat.” Skinny and scrawny also refer to someone or |
| | |something that is not fat, but they imply or connote something more negative |
| | |than the word thin does. |
|Denouement |The outcome or clarification at the end of a story that |The actions following the outcome of the trial in TKM: Tom’s death, the |
| |follows the climax and leads to the resolution. |children coming to terms with the verdict, Bob Ewell’s attack on the |
| | |children. |
|Diction |An author's deliberate choice of words to achieve an |Diction might include choice of words, phrases, sentence structures, and |
| |effect or tone. Since words have specific meanings, and |figurative language in a literary work. The diction of a poem can range from |
| |since one's choice of words can affect feelings, a |colloquial to formal, from literal to figurative, or from concrete to |
| |writer's choice of words can have great impact in a |abstract. |
| |literary work. | |
|Didactic |A didactic story, speech, essay or play is one in which |Many of Aesop’s fables are didactic because they end with moral lessons. |
| |the author’s primary purpose is to instruct, teach or | |
| |moralize. | |
|Elegy |A lyric poem lamenting death. |The Anglo-Saxon poem “The Wife’s Lament” |
|Epic |A long narrative poem on a great and serious subject, |Beowulf and Homer's The Iliad and The |
| |usually featuring legendary heroes. |Odyssey are all examples of epic poems. |
|Epigraph |A brief quotation found at the beginning of a literary | |
| |work, reflective of the work’s theme. | |
|Epiphany |A sudden flash of insight or a startling discovery and/or|Laertes experiences an epiphany at the end of Hamlet when he realizes that |
| |appearance. A dramatic realization. |Claudius was in fact behind much of the treachery in Denmark. |
|Epistolary novel |A novel in letter form written by one or more of the |Alice Walker uses this form in The Color Purple. |
| |characters. The novelist can use this technique to | |
| |present varying first person viewpoints and does not need| |
| |a narrator. | |
|Exposition |The presentation of essential information regarding what |In the exposition to William Shakespeare's |
| |has occurred prior to the beginning of the work. |Romeo and Juliet, two servants of the house of Capulet discuss the feud |
| | |between their master and the house of Montague, thereby letting the audience |
| | |know that such a feud exists and that it will play an important role in |
| | |influencing the plot. |
|Euphemism |A mild word of phrase which substitutes for another word |Someone might say “he passed on” rather than “he died” or “correctional |
| |or phrase which would be undesirable because it is too |facility” instead of “jail.” |
| |direct, unpleasant, harsh, or offensive. | |
|Fable |A brief tale designed to illustrate a moral lesson. |Aesop is one the most famous writers of fables. |
|Farce |A kind of comedy that depends on exaggerated or |Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and situation comedies on television |
| |improbable situations, physical disasters, and sexual |are examples of farce. |
| |innuendo to amuse the audience. | |
|Figurative language |Words used in an imaginative, non-literal sense. Uses |When Robert Burns writes, “My love is a red, red rose,” he does not really |
| |figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, |mean that he has fallen in love with a red, aromatic, many-petalled, long, |
| |personification, and hyperbole. |thorny-stemmed plant. He means that his love is as sweet and as delicate as a|
| | |rose. |
|Flashback |A literary device that serves as an interruption in the |Much of Hosseini’s The Kite Runner is told through flashback. |
| |action to show a scene that took place earlier. | |
|Flat character |A simple one-dimensional character who remains the same, |Assef ‘s character shows no development in The Kite Runner—he is an amoral |
| |and about whom little or nothing is revealed throughout |character from beginning to end. |
| |the course of the work. Flat characters may serve as | |
| |symbols of types of people, similar to stereotypical | |
| |characters. | |
|Foil |A character in a play who sets off the main character or |Fortinbras and Laertes – in their ability to act decisively – are foils to |
| |other characters by |Hamlet – who is unable to act. |
| |comparison | |
|Foreshadowing |A hint of things to come |Gray clouds at the beginning of a story may foreshadow a storm that occurs |
| | |later. |
|Genre |The category into which a piece of writing can be |Shakespeare’s plays are examples of drama, as well as The Crucible by Arthur |
| |classified—poetry, novel, memoir, short-story, drama. |Miller. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hossieni is a novel. Night by Elie Wiesel |
| |Each genre has its own conventions or common elements. |is a memoir. |
|Hubris |Insolence, arrogance or pride |In Greek tragedy, the protagonist’s hubris is usually the tragic flaw that |
| | |leads to his or her downfall. |
|Hyperbole |A wild exaggeration or an overstatement for literary |When someone says, “I haven’t slept in ages!” they do not literally mean they|
| |effect that is not meant to be interpreted literally. |haven’t slept in ages. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, after Macbeth |
| | |has murdered King Duncan, he asks: “Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this|
| | |blood / Clean from my hand? No. This my hand will rather / The multitudinous|
| | |seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red.” It does not require an ocean |
| | |to wash blood from one's hand, nor can the blood on one's hand turn the green|
| | |ocean red. The hyperbole illustrates the guilt Macbeth feels about his |
| | |crimes. |
|Imagery |Anything that affects or appeals to any of the reader’s |In Hamlet, Shakespeare writes “Foul deeds will rise though all the earth |
| |five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, or smell. The |o'erhelm them, to men's eyes.” By connecting sins to a rotten smell (foul |
| |use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work.|deeds) that is not possible to bury under the earth, Shakespeare emphasizes |
| | |the theme that sin and betrayal will ultimately be revealed. |
|In Medias Res |In literature, a work that begins in the middle of the |The Odyssey and Oedipus Rex begin in medias res. |
| |story. |The Star Wars saga also begins in media res. |
|Inference |A judgment based on reasoning rather than on direct or |Often readers make inferences about characters by the actions they take. In |
| |explicit statement. |The Kite Runner, one may infer that Baba is an honorable man by his |
| | |willingness to risk his life to save a woman he doesn’t know from being raped|
| | |by Russian soldiers. |
|Inversion |A reversal of normal word order |How adorable you are! |
|Irony |Situational: situation that is the opposite of what you’d|Situational: In The Crucible, honest Rebecca Nurse is executed as a witch |
|situational |expect |because she refuses to lie – and confess to witchcraft – to save her own |
|verbal |Verbal: when a writer or speaker says one thing, but |life. |
|dramatic |really means something completely different. |Verbal: In his satire, “A Modest Proposal,” Jonathan Swift proposes to solve |
|tragic |Dramatic: when the reader or audience knows something |famine in Ireland by using the babies of the starving lower classes as a |
| |that the character does not. There is a contrast between |source of food. |
| |what the character says, thinks or does and the true |Dramatic: In The Crucible, the people of Salem believe that Abigail Williams |
| |situation. |is innocent and almost saintly. In contrast, the audience knows that Abigail |
| |Tragic: dramatic irony that occurs in a tragedy |is a manipulative liar. |
| | |Tragic: Characters continually refer to Iago as “Honest Iago” throughout |
| | |Othello, though the audience knows the opposite is true. |
|Litotes |A type of understatement in which the speaker or writer |Describing a particularly horrific scene: “It was not a pretty picture.” |
| |uses a negative of a word ironically, to mean the |Describing a jerk: “She’s not the friendliest person.” |
| |opposite | |
|Metaphor |Comparisons between two unlike things that do NOT use |They were tigers on the playing field, ferociously mauling their opponents. |
| |like or as | |
|Metonym |Substituting the name of one object for another closely |The pen (writing) is mightier than the sword (war/fighting). |
| |associated with it | |
|Mood |The atmosphere or feeling created by a literary work, |Joyful, gloomy, suspenseful (think about how weather affects mood) |
| |partly by a description of objects or by the style of the| |
| |descriptions. | |
|Myth |A story, usually with supernatural significance, that |“The Walam Olum” is a creation myth passed down by the Delaware Tribe. |
| |explains the origins of gods, heroes, or natural | |
| |phenomena. Although myths are fictional stories, they | |
| |contain deeper truths, particularly about the nature of | |
| |humankind. | |
|Onomatopoeia |Use of words that sound like what they mean |Bang, buzz, crackle, meow |
|Oxymoron |A figure of speech that combines two contradictory words,|Claudius uses this device in Hamlet in Act I to address any doubts the Danes |
| |placed side by side: bitter sweet, living death |might have about the propriety of his marriage so soon on the heels of his |
| | |brother’s death: “…as 'twere with a defeated joy,-- / With an auspicious and |
| | |a dropping eye, / With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage.” |
|Parable |A short story illustrating a moral or religious lesson. |The story of the Good Samaritan and the tale of the Prodigal Son are both |
| | |parables. |
|Paradox |A statement or situation that at first seems impossible, |The witches introduce the following paradox in Macbeth: “Fair is foul and |
| |but on closer inspection solves itself and reveals |foul is fair.” |
| |meaning. |This line from John Donne's "Holy Sonnet 14" provides another example: “That |
| | |I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me.” The poet paradoxically asks God to |
| | |knock him down so that he may stand. What |
| | |he means by this is for God to destroy his present self and remake him as a |
| | |holier person. |
|Parody |A literary work that imitates the style of another |Shrek is in some ways a parody of a traditional fairy tale. |
| |literary work. A parody can be simply amusing or it can | |
| |be meant to ridicule the author or his work. | |
|Pastoral |A poem, play or story that celebrates and idealizes the |Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and Robert Burns'|
| |simple life of shepherds and shepherdesses. The form was |"Sweet Afton" are examples. |
| |popular until the late 18th century. | |
|Pathos |The quality of a literary work or passage which appeals |The pathetic figure often suffers through no fault of his or her own: the |
| |to the reader’s or viewer’s emotions—especially pity, |suffering of Hassan and Sohrab in The Kite Runner invoke pathos. |
| |compassion and sympathy. | |
|Personification |Speaking of an inanimate object as human |The sun smiled down on the village. |
| | |In his poem “Chicago” Carl Sandburg personifies the city in the following |
| | |lines: “Stormy, husky, brawling, / City of the big shoulders.” |
|Plot |The sequence of events that take place in story. The plot|Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution |
| |may have a protagonist who is opposed by antagonist, | |
| |creating what is called, conflict. | |
|Point-of-view |The vantage point from which a story is told. |Scout tells the story of TKM from first person p.o.v |
| |First-person: the story is told by a character in the |Amir tells the story of The Kite Runner from first person p.ov. |
| |story. | |
| |Third person limited: the story is a told by a narrator | |
| |who only has access to the thoughts of one character. | |
| |Third person omniscient: the story is told by an | |
| |all-knowing narrator. | |
|Protagonist |The hero or central character of a literary work. In |Beowulf is the protagonist of the epic poem who must overcome opposing forces|
| |accomplishing his or her objective, the protagonist is |in the form of monsters. |
| |hindered by some opposing force either human, animal, or | |
| |natural. | |
|Pun |Humorous play on words that have several meanings or |The following line, spoken by Mercutio in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, is |
| |words that sound the same but have different meanings. |an example of a pun. Mercutio has just been stabbed, knows he is dying and |
| | |says: “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.” Mercutio's |
| | |use of the word "grave” renders it capable of two meanings: a serious |
| | |person or a corpse in his grave. |
|Repetition |Repeating of words or a group of words for effect |Rage, rage against the dying of the light |
|Resolution |The part of a story or drama which occurs after the |Shakespeare's Hamlet climaxes with the duel between Hamlet and Laertes and |
| |climax and which establishes a new norm, a new state of |the deaths of many of the main characters. In the play's resolution, Horatio |
| |affairs-the way things are going to be from then on. |promises to tell Hamlet’s story and Fortinbras announces his claim to the |
| | |throne. |
|Rhetorical question |A question with an obvious answer so that no response is |If your friend jumped off a bridge would you do it too? |
| |expected; used to emphasize an important fact or make a | |
| |point. | |
|Saga |A story of the exploits of a hero, or the story of a |Alex Haley's Roots is a generational saga. |
| |family told through several generations. | |
|Satire |The use of humor to ridicule and expose the faults and |Shaw’s Pygmalion satirizes social class distinctions Victorian England. |
| |shortcomings of society, individuals, and institutions, | |
| |often in the hope that change or reform are possible. | |
|Setting |The time and place of a literary work |TKM: Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s |
|Simile |Comparison between two unlike things using the words like|The house was as large as a castle. |
| |or as | |
|Soliloquy |A character’s speech to the audience, in which emotions |Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ question is a part of one of his best-known |
| |and ideas are revealed. |soliloquies. |
|Structure |Refers to how the parts of a work are organized and |Structure of a novel may be based chronologically; structure of poetry |
| |arranged |includes number, form, and pattern of lines and stanzas. |
|Style |Many things enter into the style of a work: the author's |Zora Neale Hurston uses a distinctive style in Their Eyes Were Watching God |
| |use of figurative language, diction, and other literary |that combines dialect and figurative language. |
| |devices. | |
|Syllepsis |A construction in which one word is used in two different|After he threw the ball, he threw a fit. |
| |senses. |When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes. |
| |The meaning of a verb cleverly changes halfway through a | |
| |sentence but remains grammatically correct. | |
|Symbol |A concrete object, scene or action which has deeper |A mockingbird is a symbol of innocence in TKM. |
| |significance because it is associated with something |The pomegranate tree is a symbol of Amir and Hassan’s friendship in The Kite |
| |else, often an important idea or theme in a literary |Runner. |
| |work. | |
|Synecdoche |A figure of speech where one part of something represents|All hands on deck; lend me your ears; referring to a car simply as wheels. |
| |the whole thing. | |
|Theme |Insight into life or message an author is trying to send.|TKM: All humans are deserving of justice and respect in our society. |
|Tone |Refers to the writer’s attitude toward his or her |The tone may be serious, sympathetic, optimistic, or angry. |
| |subject. | |
|Tragedy |The story of one person, usually of great importance, who|Shakespeare’s plays Othello, Macbeth and Hamlet are all tragedies. |
| |experiences external and internal conflict and ultimately| |
| |brings about his/her own downfall through a tragic flaw. | |
|Tragic flaw |A defect in a tragic hero that leads to his or her |Othello’s jealousy; Hamlet’s indecisiveness |
| |downfall. | |
|Understatement |A statement which lessens or minimizes the importance of |For example, if you were in a desert where the temperature was 125 degrees, |
| |what is meant. |and if |
| | |you were to describe the weather by saying "It's a little warm today," that |
| | |would be an understatement. |
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