AP Lit TermsJanse Schermerhorn

Litotes

Definition: understatement, especially that in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary

Examples: Not bad at all New York is not an ordinary city Your comments are not useless.

Local Color

Definition: The customs, manner of speech, dress, or other typical features of a place or period that contribute to its particular character.

Examples: The dialect Huck use in Huck Finn The traditions, dress, and speech used in

Pride and Prejudice

Lyric Poem

Definition: A type of emotional songlike poetry, distinguished from dramatic and narrative poetry Example:

Sonnet Number 18, written by William Shakespeare:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date.Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed,

And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature's changing course

untrimmed. Many lyric poems are about love, but they can

be about anything which stirs the emotions.