AP Exam

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AP Exam

• Identifying Literary Devices

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Alliteration

• The repetition of initial consonant sounds

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• Sweet-scented stuff

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anadiplosis

• Repetition of an important word from one phrase
  or clause (usually the last word) at the start of
  the next phrase or clause.

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• the love of wicked men converts to fear,/That
  fear to hate, and hate turns one or both/ To
  worthy danger and deserved deathShakespeare,
  Richard II

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anaphora

• Repeated use of a word or phrase at the start of
  successive phrases or sentences for effect also
  the use of a pronoun to refer to an antecedent
  (noun)

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• We shall fight on the beaches,
• We shall fight on the landing grounds,
• We shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
• We shall fight in the hills.
• Winston Churchill

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• As Caesar loved me, I weep for him.
• As he was fortunate, I rejoice at it.
• As he was valiant, I honor him.
• But as he was ambitious, I slew him.
• --Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

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anthimeria

• A type of pun in which one part of speech is
  substituted for another
• (in this case a noun for a verb)

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• The thunder would not peace at my bidding.
• --Shakespeare, King Lear

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antithesis

• The contrasting of ideas by the use of parallel
  structure in phrases or clauses

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• I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
• ---Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

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• Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved
  Rome more.
• --Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

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aphorism

• A concise expression of insight or wisdom

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• The vanity of others offends our taste only when
  it offends our vanity.
• --Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

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apostrophe

• A direct address to an absent or dead person, or
  to an object, quality, or idea

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• Thou still unravishd bride of quietness
• --John Keats,
• Ode on a Grecian Urn

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assonance

• The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a
  sequence of nearby words

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• All day the wind breathes low with mellower
  tone.
• ---Tennyson The Lotos-Eaters

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asyndeton

• The omission of coordinating conjunctions, such
  as in a series.

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• I came, I saw, I conquered.
• attributed to Julius Caesar

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Atanaclasis

• A type of pun in which one words is repeated in
  two different senses

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• If we dont hang together well hang
  separately.
• --Ben Franklin

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Bathos

• A sudden and unexpected drop from the lofty to
  the trivial or excessively sentimental

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• Ye Gods! Annihilate but Space and Time
• And make two lovers happy.
• --Alexander Pope, Martinus Scriblerus on the
  Art of Sinking in Poetry

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Cacophony (dissonance)

• The clash of discordant or harsh sounds within a
  sentence or phrase

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• Anfractuous rocks
• --T.S. Eliot, Sweeney Erect

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Catalog

• A list of people or things

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• The tropics at first-hand the trumpet-vine,
• fox glove, giant snap-dragon, a salpiglossis that
  has
• spots and stripes.
• --Marianne Moore, The Steeple-Jack

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chiasmus

• Two phrases in which the syntax is the same but
  the placement of words is reversed

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• To stop too fearful, and too faint to go.
• --Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller

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Colliquialism

• An informal or slang expression, especially in
  the context of formal writing

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• All the other lads there were
• Were itching to have a bash.
• ---Philip Larkin, Send No
  Money

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Consonance

• The repetition of consonants in a sequence of
  nearby words (moth breath), especially at the
  end of stressed syllables when there is no
  similar repetition of vowel sounds

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• All night your moth breath
• Flickers among the flat pink roses
• --Sylvia Plath, Morning Song

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Epanalepsis

• Repetition at the end of a clause of the word
  that appeared at the beginning of the clause

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• Possessing what we were still unpossessed by
• Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
• --Robert Frost, The Gift Outright

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Epistrophe

• The repetition of a word or group of words at the
  end of successive phrases, clauses, verses, or
  sentences.

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• Of the people, by the people, for the people
• --Lincoln, Gettysbury Address

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Epithet

• An adjective or phrase that describes a prominent
  or distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

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• The wine-dark sea
• --Homer, The Iliad

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Epizeuxis

• Repetition of the same word with no other words
  in between for emphasis

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• Words, words, words
• --Shakespeare, Hamlet

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Hyperbaton

• A scheme of unusual or inverted word order

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• I got, so far as the immediate moment was
  concerned, away.
• --Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

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Hard Evidence

• The use of empirical or factual data in support
  of an argument

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• The law should require seat belts because
  studeies show that they reduce the rate of
  fatalities in accidents (RFIA) by 80 percent.

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Hamartia (tragic flaw)

• In the context of tragedy, a fatal flaw or error
  that brings about the downfall of someone of high
  status.

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• Othellos jealousy, fueled by the false Iago,
  ultimately causes him to kill Desdemona, his wife.

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Hyperbole

• Excessive overstatement or conscious exaggeration
  of fact

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• Ive told you this a million times already!

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Isocolon

• A device in which corresponding clauses are of
  exactly equal length.

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• I think my wife be honest, and think she is not,
• I think that thou art just, and think thou art
  not.
• --Shakespeare, Othello
• (this quotation also provides examples of
  parison, epistrophe, and anaphora)

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Inductive reasoning

• Reasoning in which one arrives at a general
  conclusion from specific instances

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• I got hives from the shrimp I ate last night I
  must be allergic to shellfish.

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In medias res

• Latin for in the middle of things refers to
  the technique of starting a narrative in the
  middle of the action.

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• Antigone opens after Polynieces and the other
  brother, whose name currently escapes me, have
  already killed each other, and their rotting
  corpses are strewn about the plain, an amusement
  park for vultures and flies only later does it
  deal with the events that led to their deaths.

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Juxtaposition

• The technique of placing unexpected combinations
  of words or ideas side by side.

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• My tongue, every atom of my blood, formd from
  this soil, this air
• --Whitman, Song of Myself

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Litotes

• Deliberate understatement, in which an idea or
  opinion is often affirmed by negating its
  opposite
• (though this is not the case in the first
  example)

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• Its nothing. Im just bleeding to death is all.
• He is not unfriendly.

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Meiosis

• A form of understatement is which something is
  referred to by a name that is disproportionate to
  its true nature.

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• In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio is mortally
  wounded, yet he says his wound is only a
  scratch.

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Metonymy

• A figure of speech in which something is referred
  to by one of its attributes

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• Referring to businesspeople as suits.

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Mixed Metaphor

• A combination of metaphors (comparisons of unlike
  things without the use of like or as) that
  produces a confused or contradictory image.

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• The meaning of this poem is clouded in a sea of
  difficult syntax.

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Metaphor

• The comparison of unlike things without the use
  of like or as

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• Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player
• That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
• --Shakespeare, Macbeth

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Onomatopoeia

• The use of words that sound like the thing or
  action they refer to.

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• Bow-wow
• Crackle
• Buzz
• Zoom

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Oxymoron

• The association of two contradictory terms

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• Same difference
• Jumbo shrimp
• Soft rock

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Pun (paronomasia)

• A play on words that exploits the similarity in
  sound between two words with distinctly different
  meanings.

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• Oscar Wildes play The Importance of Being
  Earnest exploits the similarity in sound between
  the word earnest, which means serious, and the
  name Ernest, which figures into a scheme that
  some of the plays main characters perpetrate.

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Poetic license

• The right of an author to change elements of
  reality, or to break rules of formor other
  conventionsto achieve an effect in a piece of
  writing.

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• The choice of poet e.e.cummings to dispense with
  capitalization rules in his name and in his
  writing.
• In Shame by Salman Rushdie, a characters hair
  spontaneously changes colora phenomenon that
  could never occur in real life.

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Poetic diction

• The use of specific types of words, phrases, or
  literary structures that are not common in
  contemporary speech or prose.

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• Wilfred Owens Sonnets on Seeing a Piece of
  Artillery Brought into Action, though written in
  the twentieth century, uses antiquated diction
  and the traditional sonnet form. Owen creates an
  ironic contrast between the horrors of modern war
  and the way poets wrote about war in the past
• Be slowly lifted up, thou long black arm,
• Great gun towering toward Heaven, about to curse.

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Personification

• The use of human characteristics to describe
  animals, objects, or ideas.

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• The moon smiled down at us as we sat by the
  river.
• (This quotation also exemplifies pathetic fallacy)

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Periphrasis

• The substitution of a proper noun in place of a
  description (Periphrasis can also apply to the
  reversethe substitution of an illustrative or
  descriptive word or phrase in place of a proper
  noun.)

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• Im no Martha Stewart, but I can bake a decent
  pie.
• Well, where have you been, Mr. Ill-be-over-in-tw
  enty-minutes?

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Pathetic fallacy

• The attribution of human feeling or motivation to
  nonhuman object, especially an object found in
  nature.

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• In Ode to Melancholy, John Keats describes a
  weeping cloud.

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Paralipsis (Praeteritio)

• The technique of drawing attention to something
  by claiming not to mention it.

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• I wont stoop to describing the depth of his
  stupidity.

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Parallelism

• The use of similar grammatical structures or word
  order in two or more sentences, clauses, or
  phrases to suggest a comparison or contrast
  between them. It can also refer to similarities
  between larger element in a narrative.

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• Before, a joy proposed behind, a dream.
• --Shakespeare, Sonnet 129

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Paradox

• A statement that seems absurd or even
  contradictory but that often expresses a deeper
  truth.

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• Heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
• ---Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

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Parison

• The correspondence of words within successive
  sentences or clauses, either by direct repetition
  of a specific word or by matching up nouns or
  verb forms.

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• Rose is a rose is a rose.
• --Gertrude Stein, Sacred Emily

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Polyptoton

• The repetition of words that come from the same
  root word (battle and embattled)

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• Not as a call to battle, though embattled we
  are.
• --John F. Kennedy, 1961 inaugural address

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Polysyndeton

• The device of repeating conjunctions in close
  succession

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• Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
• --The Wizard of Oz

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• In the late summer of that year we lived in a
  house in a village that looked across the river
  and the plain to the mountain. In the bed of the
  river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and
  white in the sun, and the water was clear and
  swiftly moving and blue in the channels.
• --Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

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Rhetorical question

• A question that is asked not to elicit a response
  but to call attention to or assert something.

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• Isnt she great?

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Romantic irony

• A technique in which an author reminds the reader
  of his or her presence in the work. By drawing
  attention to the artifice of the work, the author
  ensures that the reader will remain critically
  detached and not accept the writing at face
  value.
• (This particular technique is also called
  metafiction or self-reflexivity and represents
  one variety of postmodernism)

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• In the novel Tristram Shandy, author Laurence
  Sterne discusses the writing of the novel in the
  novel itself.

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Repetition

• By bringing up words or ideas on multiple
  occasions, authors emphasize the importance of
  these words or ideas.

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• Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered yet
  we have this consolation with us, that the harder
  the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
  What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly
  it is dearness only that gives everything its
  value.
• --Thomas Paine, The Crisis, No. 1

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Sarcasm

• A simple form of verbal irony, in which it is
  obvious from context and tone that the speaker
  means the opposite of what he or she says.

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• Saying that was graceful when someone trips and
  falls.

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Simile

• A comparison of two unlike things through the use
  of like or as.

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• As hot as the sun

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Situational irony

• A technique in which one understanding of a
  situation stands in sharp contrast with another,
  usually more prevalent understanding of the same
  situation.

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• Wilfred Owens poem Dulce et Decorum Est
  comments on the grotesque difference between
  politicians high-minded praise of the noble
  warrior and the unspeakably awful conditions of
  soldiers at the front.

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Syllogism

• A formal argument involving deductive reasoning,
  in which a specific conclusion is inferred form a
  general statement. In this type of argument, the
  speaker offers a general and a specific premise,
  as well as a conclusion.

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• All cats purr. This animal is a cat. Therefore,
  this animal must purr.

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Symbol

• A concrete object that is made to represent
  something abstract.

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• The fish in The Old Man and the Sea represents
  youth.

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Synaesthesia

• The use of one kind of sensory experience to
  describe another

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• They had a great thirst for viewing new paintings.

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Synecdoche

• A figure of speech in which a part of an entity
  is used to refer to the whole or when a genus is
  referred to by a species.

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• I want to take a ride in your new wheels!
• That word occurs only three times in all of
  Shakespeare.

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