AP Literary Devices

a character who is presented as a contrast to a second character so as to point to or show to advantage some aspect of the second character.

• protagonist

• foil

• nemesis

• antagonist

a reference, typically brief, to a person, place, thing, event, or other literary work with which the reader is presumably familiar.

• allegory

• antidote

• allusion

• malapropism

a special kind of novel that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of its main character, from his or her youth to adulthood.

• Victorian

• novella

• fantasy

• bildungsroman

is a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to signify the whole, or vice-versa.

• metonymy

• juxtaposition

• synecdoche

• zeugma

is a rhetorical device that features the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive sentences, phrases, or clauses.

• anaphora

• epistrophe

• cadence

• assonance

is a narration or description in which events, actions, characters, settings or objects represent specific abstractions or ideas; the meaning behind the surface narrative has even greater value as a literary work.

• parable

• adage

• allegory

• symbolism

is a poetic phrase or speech made by a character that is addressed to a subject that is not literally present in the literary work. The subject may be dead, absent, an inanimate object, or even an abstract idea

• aside

• soliloquy

• apostrophe

• monologue

a literary device that reflects the writer’s attitude toward the subject matter or audience of a literary work.

• mood

• diction

• tone

• point of view

a figure of speech in which one object or idea takes the place of another with which it has a close association.

• juxtaposition

• synecdoche

• metonymy

• zeugma

is a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two non-similar things. As a literary device, metaphor creates implicit comparisons without the express use of “like” or “as.”

• simile

• juxtaposition

• metaphor

• personification