AP Poetry Terms

When the intended meaning of a statement differs from the apparent meaning

• verbal irony

• free verse

• persona

• dramatic irony

In drama, the presentation of essential information regarding what has occurred prior to the beginning of the play

• exposition

• alliteration

• epistrophe

• consonance

Reference to someone or something that is known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, or another branch of culture.

• catharsis

• allusion

• diction

• metaphor

A figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without the use of specific words of comparison as like, as, than, or resembles

• oxymoron

• anaphora

• hyperbole

• metaphor

An occasion in a play, film, or other work in which a character's words or actions convey a meaning unperceived by the character but understood by the audience

• dramatic irony

• anticlimax

• personification

• diction

A work that makes fun of another work by imitating some aspect of the writers; style

• cliche

• parody

• satire

• aside

the central character in a story, the one who initiates or drives the action

• protagonist

• tragic flaw

• antagonist

• the setting

Two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry

• persona

• couplet

• euphony

• a rap

Story or poem in which characters, settings, and events stand for other people or events or for abstract ideas or qualities

• anaphora

• asyndeton

• allegory

• metonymy

Calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to place or thing, or a personified abstract idea

• apostrophe

• hyperbole

• alliteration

• assonance