AP English Literature & Composition · Unit 2 · Direct/indirect characterization, foils, archetypes, motivation

Characterization & Development: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)

33 flashcard terms for AP English Literature & Composition Unit 2, written to match the course framework. Read them here, drill them as flashcards, or take the 17-question quiz. Free, no account needed.

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Narrative Technique: Methods author uses to tell story: POV, tense, style, structure, pacing. Together create effect/meaning.
Tense: Past Narration: Most common in fiction; creates distance. Example: \"She walked down the street.\" Standard narrative.
Tense: Present Narration: Immediate, urgent. Example: \"She walks down the street.\" Creates sense of NOW; reader follows moment-to-moment.
Tense: Mixed Tense: Combine past + flashbacks/memories. Example: \"She remembered when...\" Reveals character's past affecting present.
Stream of Consciousness: Imitates thought process: fragmented, associative, non-linear. Reader inside character's mind. Example: Joyce, Woolf.
Free Indirect Discourse: Blends character thoughts with narration (no quotation marks). Example: \"She wondered if he loved her. Impossible.\" Ambiguous whose thought.
Framing Device: Story within story. Outer narrative sets up inner tale. Creates layers, raises questions about reliability, perspective.
Foreshadowing: Author hints at future events. Creates suspense; re-reading reveals clues reader missed. Example: dark weather before tragedy.
Flashback/Exposition: Interrupts present to reveal past. Explains character motivation, backstory, context. Can be narrated or shown as scene.
Pacing: Speed of narrative; varies by length of passages, sentence complexity, dialogue vs. description. Affects reader emotion/engagement.
Dialogue: Characters speak; reveals personality, conflict, relationships. Realistic or stylized? Heavy or sparse? Affects tone/believability.
Repetition & Rhythm: Repeated phrases/images reinforce themes. Sentence rhythm (short/long) affects mood: short = tension, long = flow.
Unit 2 Summary: Narrative technique shapes how story told. POV, tense, pacing, dialogue work together to create meaning and reader experience.
Narrative Pacing: Speed at which events are told. Scene (slow, moment by moment) vs. summary (fast). Slowing down at a moment signals its importance.
In Medias Res: Beginning in the middle of the action, with background filled in later. Creates immediate engagement and reorders how readers assemble cause and effect.
Flashback and Flash-forward: Movements out of chronological order. Ask what the placement of the disruption accomplishes: contrast, irony, explanation of motive.
Epiphany: A sudden moment of insight for a character, often the structural climax of a modern short story (Joyce's Dubliners).
Anticlimax: An expected climax that fizzles or resolves trivially. Frequently a tool of irony or of critique of the character's expectations.

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Stream of Consciousness: Narration that follows the unfiltered flow of a character's thought, often with fragmented syntax and associative leaps.
Retrospective Narration: A first-person narrator recounting events from a later vantage. Creates two selves: the experiencing 'I' and the narrating 'I' who may judge or reinterpret.
Narrative Frame Reliability: When a frame narrator reports another's tale, reliability is layered. Each level of telling can filter, distort, or endorse.
Tone Shift: A change in the speaker's attitude, often signaled by 'but,' 'yet,' a stanza break, or a change in diction. Marking shifts is essential to reading poems and passages.
Speaker vs. Poet: The speaker of a poem is a constructed voice, not necessarily the author. Analyze the speaker's attitude and situation as you would a narrator.
Structure of a Poem: Arrangement into lines, stanzas, and sections; where a poem turns (volta) and how it opens and closes. Structure often mirrors thought.
Enjambment: A line that runs on without punctuation into the next. Creates momentum, double meanings at line breaks, or emphasis on the carried-over word.
End-Stopped Line: A line ending with punctuation and a completed thought. Slows pace and can suggest control, finality, or formality.
Caesura: A pause within a line, often marked by punctuation. Can create hesitation, balance two halves, or emphasize what follows.
Volta: The turn in a sonnet or other poem where argument or attitude shifts (line 9 in Petrarchan, before the couplet in Shakespearean).
Contrast in Poetry: Opposed images, tones, or ideas placed within a poem. Identifying what is contrasted and how the contrast resolves (or fails to) drives interpretation.
Antecedent Scenario: The situation implied to have occurred just before the poem begins. Inferring it clarifies the speaker's occasion for speaking.
Closure: How a poem or story ends: resolved, open, circular, ironic. Ask whether the ending confirms or overturns what came before.
Punctuation as Structure: Dashes, colons, and semicolons organize thought in poems and prose. Dickinson's dashes suspend meaning; a colon promises explanation.
Repetition and Refrain: Recurring words or lines. Meaning often changes with each return as context accumulates (a refrain can shift from comfort to threat).

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