AP English Literature and Composition
Advanced Placement English Literature aligned with the College Board CED. Covers close reading of fiction, poetry, and drama; literary elements; characterization, setting, structure, narration, figurative language, and literary argumentation.
Ämne: Engelska · Nivå: Gymnasium (16–19) · 388 kort
Innehåll
- AP English Literature is organized around six skill categories: Character (CHR), Setting (SET), Structure (STR), Narration (NAR), Figurative Language (FIG), and Literary Argumentation (LAN). These reappear across all nine units of the CED.
- Characterization is the way an author reveals a character — through direct description, dialogue, action, thought, and how others respond. AP Lit treats character as a vehicle of meaning, not a personality sketch.
- A protagonist is the central character whose actions drive the plot. They need not be heroic — they are simply the figure whose change, decision, or struggle the narrative organizes itself around.
- An antagonist is the force opposing the protagonist. The antagonist may be a person, society, nature, fate, or even an aspect of the protagonist's own mind.
- A round character has depth, contradiction, and the capacity to surprise. A flat character is defined by one or two traits and serves a fixed function. E. M. Forster introduced this distinction in 'Aspects of the Novel' (1927).
- A dynamic character changes meaningfully across the work — in belief, value, or self-understanding. A static character does not change. The change need not be moral improvement; loss of innocence is also dynamic change.
- A foil is a character whose contrasting traits highlight features of another character — usually the protagonist. Laertes foils Hamlet by acting decisively on his father's death; Banquo foils Macbeth by hearing the same prophecy without committing murder.
- Setting is more than location — it is the time, place, social environment, and atmosphere in which a story occurs. AP Lit treats setting as an active force that shapes character and theme, not as scenic background.
- Atmosphere (or mood) is the emotional climate of a scene, produced by setting details, diction, and imagery. The fog in Bleak House and the moors in Wuthering Heights generate atmospheres inseparable from theme.
- Plot is the arrangement of events in a narrative. Story is the sequence of events as they happen chronologically; plot is the order the author chooses to present them — which is why flashbacks, in medias res, and frame narratives matter.
- Freytag's pyramid describes a five-part dramatic arc: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution (denouement). Gustav Freytag derived it from Greek tragedy and Shakespeare in 'Die Technik des Dramas' (1863).
- Exposition introduces the characters, setting, and situation at the start of a narrative. Effective exposition embeds context within action so it does not feel like backstory dumped on the reader.
- Conflict is the central tension that drives narrative. Traditional categories include character vs. character, character vs. society, character vs. nature, character vs. self, and character vs. fate or the supernatural.
- Climax is the turning point of greatest tension or change. After the climax, the outcome is no longer in doubt — even if the falling action takes time to play out.
- Denouement (resolution) is the unraveling after the climax — loose ends are tied, consequences are revealed, and the new state of affairs becomes visible. Some modern works refuse denouement and end ambiguously.
- Narration (NAR) is the act of telling a story — including who tells it, from what perspective, with what knowledge, and how reliably. AP Lit treats narrative perspective as a key interpretive choice, not a neutral conduit.
- First-person narration uses 'I' or 'we' and limits the reader to what the narrator knows, perceives, and chooses to disclose. The narrator may be a major character (Jane Eyre), a minor character (Nick Carraway), or a witness.
- Third-person omniscient narration has access to multiple characters' thoughts and to information they do not share. Third-person limited stays inside one character's perspective. Third-person objective reports only what is observable.
- An unreliable narrator gives a version of events the reader has reason to doubt — through self-deception, bias, ignorance, immaturity, or active deceit. Wayne Booth coined the term in 'The Rhetoric of Fiction' (1961).
- Free indirect discourse blends the narrator's third-person voice with a character's interior speech — without quotation marks or 'he thought.' Jane Austen pioneered it in English; James Joyce and Virginia Woolf extended it.
- Stream of consciousness is a narrative technique that presents the unedited flow of a character's thoughts, sensations, and associations — often jumping in syntax and time. Examples: Molly Bloom's soliloquy in Ulysses, Mrs Dalloway, The Sound and the Fury.
- Tone is the writer's or narrator's attitude toward the subject or audience, conveyed through diction, syntax, and detail. Mood is the emotional effect on the reader. The same scene can have a sardonic tone but a sorrowful mood.
- Diction is word choice. Critics analyze diction along several axes: formal/informal, abstract/concrete, monosyllabic/polysyllabic, Anglo-Saxon/Latinate, denotation/connotation. Diction shapes both meaning and tone.
- Syntax is sentence structure — length, complexity, parallelism, inversion, fragment. Long, embedded sentences slow attention; short sentences create emphasis or urgency. AP Lit asks how syntax cooperates with meaning.
- Denotation is a word's literal dictionary meaning. Connotation is the emotional or cultural baggage it carries. 'House' and 'home' have similar denotations but very different connotations.
- Imagery is sensory language — not only visual, but auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory, and kinesthetic. Strong imagery activates the reader's body, not just their eye.
- A simile is an explicit comparison using 'like' or 'as.' A metaphor is an implicit comparison without those markers. 'Life is a journey' (metaphor); 'Life is like a journey' (simile).
- A conceit is an extended, elaborate metaphor that sustains the comparison through development and detail. Donne's compass conceit in 'A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning' is the canonical example of a metaphysical conceit.
- Personification gives human qualities, agency, or emotion to non-human entities. When the personified entity is abstract (Justice, Death) addressed directly, the device shades into apostrophe and allegory.
- A symbol is a concrete object, image, or action that represents something abstract beyond itself — while remaining literally present in the work. A symbol differs from allegory in that the literal level retains weight.
- Allegory is a sustained correspondence in which characters, settings, and events systematically stand for ideas. Pilgrim's Progress, Animal Farm, and The Lord of the Flies invite allegorical reading at varying levels of strictness.
- An allusion is a brief, indirect reference to another text, person, place, or event — usually expecting the reader to recognize it. Biblical, classical, and Shakespearean allusions dominate the AP canon.
- Hyperbole is deliberate exaggeration for emphasis or comic effect; understatement (litotes when phrased as negation) deliberately downplays. Both depend on the reader detecting the distance from literal truth.
- Irony has three main varieties. Verbal irony: saying the opposite of what is meant. Situational irony: outcome contrary to expectation. Dramatic irony: audience knows what a character does not.
- Paradox is a statement that seems contradictory but reveals a deeper truth on reflection — 'The child is father of the man' (Wordsworth). An oxymoron is a compressed paradox in a phrase — 'sweet sorrow,' 'living death.'
- Metonymy substitutes a closely related word for the thing itself — 'the crown' for monarchy, 'the White House' for the executive. Synecdoche is the special case where a part stands for the whole — 'all hands on deck.'
- Apostrophe addresses an absent person, abstraction, or object as though present and able to respond. 'O Death, where is thy sting?' (1 Corinthians) and Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale' use apostrophe centrally.
- A motif is a recurring image, phrase, situation, or idea within a work that supports a theme. Eyes in The Great Gatsby; blood in Macbeth; light/dark in Romeo and Juliet.
- Theme is the central insight a work develops about human experience — expressible as a complete claim. 'Death' is a topic; 'Death levels social distinctions' is a theme. AP Lit insists themes be argued, not labeled.
- Structure (STR) is the arrangement of parts — chapters, scenes, acts, stanzas, lines — and the relationships among them. Beginnings, endings, juxtapositions, and turns of attention are all structural choices that carry meaning.
- In medias res ('into the middle of things') is a structural choice to begin the action mid-event, leaving exposition for later. The Iliad, Paradise Lost, and most thriller novels open this way.
- A frame narrative is a story that contains another story — Wuthering Heights (Lockwood and Nelly frame Heathcliff and Catherine); Heart of Darkness (Marlow tells his Congo journey to listeners on a Thames boat).
- Foreshadowing is the planting of hints about what will come. Effective foreshadowing rewards rereading and avoids being so obvious it removes suspense.
- Flashback (analepsis) interrupts chronological order to show an earlier event. Flash-forward (prolepsis) shows a later event. Both shift narrative time to recontextualize the present scene.
- Juxtaposition places two elements — characters, settings, images — side by side to invite comparison. Antithesis is the rhetorical version: balanced opposites in syntax ('It was the best of times, it was the worst of times').
- A poem's speaker is the voice the poem creates — not necessarily the poet. AP Lit always distinguishes speaker from poet, even in apparently autobiographical lyrics.
- A lyric poem expresses the speaker's thoughts or feelings — short, intense, often first-person. A narrative poem tells a story. A dramatic monologue gives a speaker addressing an implied listener at a charged moment.
- Browning's 'My Last Duchess' is the textbook example of dramatic monologue: a Duke speaks to an unseen emissary about his late wife, betraying his own jealousy and cruelty through what he discloses.
- Meter is the rhythmic pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line. The basic unit is the foot. Identifying meter is called scansion.
- An iamb is a foot of one unstressed then one stressed syllable (da-DUM): 'be-LIEVE,' 'a-GAIN.' Iambic meter dominates English verse because it mirrors natural English speech.