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Literature Vocabulary J-P
For AP Literature and Composition
67
English
12th Grade
09/24/2009

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Term
Jargon
Definition
Category of language defined by a trade or profession.
Term
Limerick
Definition
Light humorous style of fixed form poetry. aabba
Term
Limited Omniscience
Definition
Author restricts the narrator to the single perspective of either a major or minor character.
Term
Line
Definition
A sequence of words printed as a separate entity on the page. Poetry: lines are measured by the number of feet they contain.
Term
Literary Ballad
Definition
Narrative poem that is written in deliberate imitation of the language, form, and spirit of the traditional ballad.
Term
Literary Historians
Definition
Both the facts of an author's personal life and the text itself to the social and intellectual currents in which the author composed the work. Place work in the context of its time and sometimes make connections with other literary works that may have influenced the author.
Term
Literary symbol
Definition
Setting, character, action, object, name, or anything else in a work that maintains its literal significance while suggesting other meanings.
Term
Low Comedy
Definition
Associated with physical action and is less intellectual.
Term
Lyric
Definition
Type of brief poem that expresses the personal emotions and thoughts of a single speaker.
Term
Marxist criticism
Definition
Focuses on ideological content of a work. Culture, race, class, and power.
Term
Marxist Critics
Definition
Use literature to describe the competing socioeconomic interests that too often advance capitalist interests such as money and power than socialist interests such as morality and justice.
Term
Masculine ending
Definition
Line that ends with a stressed syllable.
Term
Masculine Rhyme
Definition
Rhyming of single syllable words like cat and hat.
Term
Melodrama
Definition
Any literary work that relies on implausible events and sensational action for its effect.Usually ends happily
Term
Metaphor
Definition
Figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things
Term
Meter
Definition
Rhythmic pattern of stresses recurs in a poem.
Term
Metonymy
Definition
Metaphor where something closely associated with a subject is substituted for it.
Term
Middle Diction
Definition
Correct language usage but is less elevated than formal diction, reflects the way most educated people speak.
Term
Miracle Play
Definition
Based on the lives of saints.
Term
Morality Play
Definition
Allegorical stories in which virtues and vices are personified to teach humanity how to achieve salvation.
Term
Motivated Action
Definition
Reader of audience is offered reasons for how the characters behave, what they say, and the decisions they make.
Term
Mystery Play
Definition
Dramatize stories from the Bible.
Term
Mythological Strategies/ Criticism
Definition
Identifies what in a work creates deep universal responses in readers. Look for underlying, recurrent patterns in literature that reveal universal meanings and basic human experiences for readers.a
Term
Naive Narrator
Definition
Characterized by youthful innocence
Term
Narrative Poem
Definition
Poem that tells a story
Term
Narrator
Definition
Voice of the person telling the story.
Term
Naturalism
Definition
Movement that human beings are apart of nature and subject to its laws. Heredity and envoronment shape and control people's lives.
Term
Near Rhyme
Definition
Off Rhyme, slant rhyme, and approximate rhyme. The sounds are almost but not exactly alike.
Term
Neutral Omniscience
Definition
Narration that allows a character's actions and thoughts to speak fo themselves.
Term
New Critics/Criticism
Definition
Suggest that detailed analysis of the language of a literary text can uncover important layers of meaining in that work.
Term
New historicism
Definition
Emphasizes the interaction between the historic context of the work and a moderns reader's understanding and interpretation of the work.
Term
Objective Point of View
Definition
Third person narrator who does not see into the mid of any character.
Term
Octave
Definition
Poetic stanza of eight lines, usually forming one part of a sonnet.
Term
Ode
Definition
Lengthy lyric poem that often expresses lofty emotions in a dignified style.
Term
Oedipus Complex
Definition
Boy's unconscious rivalry with his father for his mother's love and his desire to eliminate his father in order to take his place.
Term
Off Rhyme
Definition
Near rhyme, slant rhyme, and approximate rhyme, the sounds are almost but not exactly alike.
Term
Omniscient Narrator
Definition
All knowing narrator who is not a character in the story and who can move from place to place.
Term
One-Act Play
Definition
A play that takes place in a single location and unfolds as one continuous action.
Term
Onomatopoeia
Definition
Word sounds like it denotes.
Term
Open form
Definition
Free verse, not conform to established patterns of meter, rhyme, and stanza. Rhythmic qualities from repetition of words, phrases, or grammatical structures.
Term
Orchestra
Definition
"dancing place" seats for watching plays in ancient Greece.
Term
Organic Form
Definition
Refers to works whose formal characteristics are not rigidly predetermined but follow the movement of thought or emotion being expressed.
Term
Overstatement
Definition
Hyperbole, boldly exaggerated statement.
Term
Oxymoron
Definition
Condensed form of paradox in which two contradictory words are used together.
Term
Paradox
Definition
Statement initially appearing to be contradictory but turns out to make sense.
Term
Paraphrase
Definition
Prose restatement of the central ideas of a poem in your own language.
Term
Parados
Definition
Where the chorus makes its first entrance and gives its perspective on what the audience has learned in the prologue.
Term
Parody
Definition
Humorous imitation of another, usually serious work.
Term
Persona
Definition
Mask, it is a speaker created by a writer to tell a story or to speak in a poem.
Term
Personification
Definition
Form of metaphor in which human characteristics are attributed to nonhuman things.
Term
Petrarchan Sonnet
Definition
Italian sonnet, divided into an octave which typically rhymes abbaabba and a sestet.
Term
Picture Poem
Definition
Open form poetry in which the poet arranges the lines of the poem so as to create a particular shape on the page.
Term
Plausible Action
Definition
Action by a character in a story that seems reasonable, given the motivations presented.
Term
Plays
Definition
General term for a work of dramatic literature
Term
Playwrights
Definition
Writers who make plays
Term
Plot
Definition
Author's selection and arrangement of incidents in a story to shape the action and give the story a particular focus.
Term
Poetic Diction
Definition
Refers to the way poets sometimes employ an elevated diction that deviates significantly from the common speech and writing of their time.
Term
Point of View
Definition
Refers to who tells us a story and how it is told.
Term
Postcolonial Criticism
Definition
Focuses on the study of cultural behavior and expression in relationship to the colonized world. Analysis of literary works written by writers from countries and cultures that at one time have been controlled by colonizing powers.
Term
Problem Play
Definition
Drama that presents a social issue in order to awaken the audience to it.
Term
Prologue
Definition
Opening speech or dialogue of a play that usually gives the exposition necessary to follow the subsequent action.
Term
Pun
Definition
Play on words that relies on a word's having more than one meaning or sounding like another word.
Term
Prose Poem
Definition
Open form poetry that is printed as prose and represents the most clear opposite of fixed form poetry.
Term
Prosody
Definition
Overall metrical structure of a poem.
Term
Protagonist
Definition
Main character of a narrative.
Term
Psychological Strategies/Criticism
Definition
Draws upon psychoanalytic theories. Human unconscious.
Term
Pyramidal Pattern
Definition
Divides the plot into the rising action, climax, and falling action
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