APEX AP English 12 Semester 2 Key Terms – Flashcards

Chinua Achebe (1930 - ), a famous Nigerian novelist and writer, wrote the essay "An Image of Africa: Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'" in 1974. It's well known because Achebe was the first critic to accuse Joseph Conrad of racism.

Being emotionally isolated or disassociated.

A fictional story or narrative poem that conveys a message, idea, or concept that exists outside of the text; the message can't be found in the literal meaning of the story.

The re-echoing of sounds to create effect and meaning in poetry.

A brief reference to a person, place, or event that readers are expected to recognize. Through the association with the reference, the meaning of the work becomes enhanced.

As defined in the 1920s, it is the idea that one can achieve material wealth and, thus, happiness through hard work.

A form of parallel syntactical construction that creates emphasis through the repetition of the same word, or words, at the beginning of successive clauses.

A short account of a funny, interesting, or pertinent incident.

Annotating a work of fiction is a method of marking passages in a text to track important elements.

The central opponent of the main character or protagonist.

This island in the Caribbean has a long history of colonialization. Named by Christopher Columbus in 1493, the overwhelming majority of its people are of African heritage, descendants of slaves who were brought over during colonial times to work the island's sugar plantations.

Repetition of the same grammatical forms with the use of opposing or contrasting ideas; a figure of speech that contrasts one term against its direct opposite.

As a figurative term, it means to address an inanimate object as though it could answer.

A stage that is set in the middle of the audience in order to allow the audience to feel close to the action and characters on the stage.

When you write about a literary work, your goal is to support each point you make with appropriate references to the work. This type of writing is known as persuasive, or argumentative, writing.

A brief comment that is addressed to the audience. It is presumed to be inaudible to anyone else on the stage. It allows the characters to reveal inner thoughts or feelings.

The process by which national, ethnic, racial, or other distinct community groups become "Americanized," or blend into American culture by losing their distinct cultural characteristics.

The repetition of a vowel sound that can occur either initially or internally.

The feeling or disposition presented in the poem.

A poem written about the morning (usually a love song). This type of poem sings to the situations of lovers in the morning.

Jane Austen (1775 - 1817) published six novels that satirized the female traditions of sentimentality and romance. Drawing portraits of country gentry, she examined the morals of the private sphere. She often wrote about the marriage game, focusing on the predicament of middle-class women who were dependent on men for their survival, since they could only escape their families through marriage.

James Baldwin (1924 - 1987) was a popular contemporary writer who chronicled the African American experience. He wrote about what it meant to be both African American and homosexual in relation to white society. He published two novels, "Giovanni's Room" (1952) and "Another Country" (1962), in addition to several collections of essays and a book of short stories, "Going to Meet the Man" (1965).

The ballad was originally a narrative song. The speaker of a ballad relates a story in stanza form, usually in quatrains. Ballads often have a consistent meter (same rhythm pattern in each stanza) and repeat key phrases.

In the 1950s, the Beat movement began its attack on middle-class materialism.

Beatniks spoke for the rebellious generation who rejected mainstream society. This group was characterized by experimentation with drugs and Eastern religions. Allen Ginsberg's long poem "Howl," published in 1956, became symbolic of the howls of protest marking the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Language that contains stereotypical generalizations about race, gender, religion, and sexuality.

One of the most famous poets of the contemporary period was Elizabeth Bishop (1911 - 1979), who wrote about personal feelings through descriptions of landscapes and surroundings. In her work, landscapes often dwarf humans, and human frailty is contrasted with nature's strength.

William Blake (1757 - 1827) was the most mystical of the Romantic poets. In "Songs of Innocence" (1789) and "Songs of Experience" (1794), Blake used the forms of popular songs and children's rhymes to contrast childhood innocence with the world of social experience. He opposed the rationalism and materialism of his time.

A type of poetry that has a meter but no rhyme scheme.

The process of writing as many thoughts down as you can about a particular idea in order to better understand what you're thinking. The three kinds of brainstorming are free writing, branching, and bubble brainstorming.

A prewriting exercise that allows you to organize the ideas from your notes as if they were branches on a tree. To start branching, write a central topic in the middle of a page; think of this as the trunk of the tree. Then, think of everything you associate with that topic. Start drawing lines out from the center and write your ideas on the lines. Your associated ideas are the branches of the tree. You can draw smaller and smaller lines from the branches for other related ideas.

Anne Brontë (1820 - 1849) published two novels: "Agnes Grey" (1847) draws on her experience as a governess, and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" (1848) describes an alcoholic's decline.

Charlotte Brontë's (1816 - 1855) second novel was "Jane Eyre" (1847). Brontë was sent to a school similar to the one in the novel and worked as a governess. Brontë published two other novels while she was alive, "Shirley" (1849) and "Villette" (1853). Her last novel, "The Professor" (1857), was published after her death. She wrote under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848) wrote poetry and novels. She published only one novel, "Wuthering Heights" (1847), which is famous for its energy and passion, as well as for its complicated narrative structure.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 - 1861) was a poet, accomplished scholar and translator of Greek, as well as a strong supporter of feminist causes and the abolition of slavery. She wrote political, anti-slavery poems, as well as poems criticizing the poverty of British children.

A prewriting exercise in which you put any idea you think might be interesting in a circle and then draw lines out from it to other circles. You put associated ideas in those circles.

When words combine to create unpleasant sounds.

The "tune" of a poetic line when it's read aloud. It is often used in modern poetry to replace formal meter.

A natural pause within a line of poetic verse.

This Greek term literally means "purification" or "purging." In Aristotle's classic definition of tragedy, catharsis is the ultimate emotional goal of the playwright.

The role or part in a performance that represents a personality type and generally performs the actions of the plot.

This type of character undergoes a transformation as a result of the conflicts he or she encounters.

This type of character has a lack of complexity. He or she has only a single trait. Minor characters tend to be flat.

This type of character is fully developed and resembles a real person. He or she tends to be the main character in the drama.

This type of character does not change considerably as the drama unfolds.

Sandra Cisneros (1954 - ) is one of the most well-known writers of contemporary multicultural literature. Merging the line between poetry and fiction, Cisneros writes about the Latino community. Circa 1983, she published "The House on Mango Street," an award-winning collection of short narratives.

In 1964, the U.S. government passed the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed segregation in public places and guaranteed legal equality to African Americans.

A technique that helps you interpret and write about literature. The idea behind it is that any small section of a text, when analyzed closely, will also reveal a richer, more accurate interpretation of the whole text.

The sense that the issues raised in a story have been satisfactorily resolved.

The Cold War had its origin during the Yalta Conference in 1945. At the conference, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill allowed Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin to claim portions of conquered Germany as spoils of the war. The division of Germany into Eastern and Western states represented the splitting of the world into Communist and non-Communist blocs. Hostility between the two blocs continued for several decades. The Cold War ended in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834), along with William Wordsworth, published the "Lyrical Ballads" in 1798. He belonged to the first generation of Romantic poets. "Lyrical Ballads" affirmed the importance of imagination over reason and emotions over logic. It used the popular ballad form to express a love of nature and a respect for regular people.

An art technique where many separate, sometimes dissimilar, or unexpected, images are placed together in one piece of work.

Language found in everyday speech.

An informal saying that is more appropriate for familiar conversation than for formal speech or writing.

Educating a colonized people in the history and language of its colonizers; usually depicting the colonizers' culture as superior to the indigenous one. This education usually demands that those being colonized give up their cultural heritage.