AP Literature & Composition

Vocabulary List 7
April 12, 2010
M. Messner

Study and learn the following words for your vocabulary quiz this week. This will be list 3 of 4 that will be included in your
first vocabulary test on Friday, April 30th.

1. Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet—A sonnet consisting of an octave and a sestet, all in iambic pentameter, with the
rhyme scheme abbaabba cdecde or abbaabba cdcdcd. The turn typically occurs between the octave and sestet, around
linen nine of the poem.

2. Protagonist—The main figure in a work of literature. A story’s plot hinges equally on the protagonist’s efforts to
realize his or her desires and to cope with failure if and when plans are thwarted and desires left unfulfilled.

3. Pun—A play on words that reveals different meanings in words that are similar or even identical.

4. Quatrain—A four-line stanza. Quatrains are the most popular stanzaic form in English poetry because they are
easily varied in meter, line length, and rhyme scheme.

5. Realism—A mode of literature in which the author depicts characters and scenarios that could occur in real life.
Unlike fantasy or surrealism, realism seeks to represent the world as it is.

6. Refrain—A line or stanza that is repeated at regular intervals in a poem or song.

7. Round Character—A character with complex, multifaceted characteristics. Round characters behave as real
people. For example, a round hero may suffer temptation, and a round villain may show compassion.

8. Run-On Line—A line of poetry that, when read, does not come to a natural conclusion where the line breaks.

9. Satire—An artistic critique, sometimes heated, on some aspect of human immorality or absurdity.

10. Sestet—Six lines of poetry grouped together in a stanza or a unit of though, as in the Petrarchan sonnet where the
last six lines of the poem resolve the idea or question set up by the initial octave.

11. Sestina—A poem of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoi (the final stanza of a sestina which summarizes the
entire poem), usually unrhymed, in which each stanza repeats the end words of the lines of the first stanza, but in
different order, the envoi using the six words again, three in the middle of the lines and three at the end.

12. Shakespearean (English) Sonnet—A sonnet form composed of three quatrains and a final couplet, all in iambic
pentameter and rhymed abab cdcd efef gg. The turn occurs in the final couplet of the poem.

13. Situational Irony—A situation portrayed in a poem when what occurs is the opposite or very different from
what’s expected to occur.