AP Spanish Literature and Culture flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Sinalefa

Merging of a final vowel with an initial vowel across a word boundary so two syllables count as one for verse meter, common in Spanish poetry.

Romance meter

A narrative Spanish ballad form of octosyllabic lines with assonant rhyme in the even lines and unrhymed odd lines, often ending on an incomplete final line.

Soneto structure

Fourteen eleven-syllable lines arranged as two quatrains and two tercets, typically developing an idea in the quatrains and resolving it in the tercets.

Narrador testigo

A narrator who is a character or observer inside the story, reporting events without access to other characters' inner thoughts.

Hipérbaton

Inversion of normal word order in a sentence or verse, frequently used in Spanish Golden Age poetry to heighten tone or fit meter.

Anáfora

Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or lines, producing emphasis or rhythmic accumulation.

Metonimia

Naming something by a closely associated thing rather than by itself, as when 'la corona' stands for the monarchy.

Baroque desengaño

A seventeenth-century worldview of disillusionment, treating worldly beauty and honor as fleeting illusions to be exposed by time and death.

Fábula moral

A short narrative with animal or type characters that concludes with an explicit lesson, often stated in a closing sentence or verse.

Ensayo argumentativo

A prose genre in which a single authorial voice develops and defends a thesis through reasoning, examples, and rhetorical appeals.

Crónica literaria

A reportage-style narrative blending factual reporting with the author's personal voice, observation, and interpretation of events.

Tema frente a asunto

El asunto is the concrete subject matter of a text; el tema is the abstract idea the text develops about that subject.

Registro formal

Speech marked by usted address, full verb forms, and technical vocabulary, typical of lectures, announcements, and professional interviews.

Marcador de contraste

A connector such as sin embargo or no obstante that signals the following clause reverses or qualifies the previous statement.

Marcador de consecuencia

A connector such as por lo tanto or así que that signals the following clause is a result of the previous statement.

Diminutivo atenuante

A suffix like -ito or -ico used not for small size but to soften a request, delay bad news, or signal affection or politeness.

Tono inferido

The speaker's attitude inferred from word choice, intonation, and rhetorical questions rather than stated directly in the audio.

Propósito del hablante

The speaker's intended effect on the listener, such as persuading, warning, requesting, or informing, distinct from the topic itself.

Relación entre hablantes

The social distance between speakers, signaled by reciprocal usted versus tú and by interruptions, vocatives, and register shifts.

Segunda escucha

The second playing of an audio passage, used to confirm specific details and numbers after global meaning is established on the first hearing.

Distractor numérico

A number, date, or name spoken in the audio that appears in a wrong answer option but does not answer the question asked.

Pregunta de inferencia

An item asking what the speaker implies or suggests, answered only by a conclusion the passage supports, not by a stated fact.

Tesis comparativa

A single sentence naming both works and the shared theme while asserting a specific similarity or difference the essay will defend.

Evidencia textual

A short quotation or precise paraphrase of a specific moment in the text, used to anchor an interpretive claim in the response.

Análisis de recursos

Naming a literary device, quoting the line where it appears, and explaining its effect on meaning, tone, or structure.

Párrafo de síntesis

The closing body paragraph of a comparative essay that explicitly weighs similarities and differences between the two works discussed.

Conector de cohesión

A linking expression such as por consiguiente, asimismo, or en contraste that makes logical relations between ideas explicit in writing.

Calco sintáctico

An unidiomatic borrowing of English sentence structure into Spanish, such as 'realizar una decisión' instead of 'tomar una decisión'.

Verbo del enunciado

The instruction verb of a prompt (analiza, compara, explica) that determines whether the response must break down, contrast, or give reasons.

Atribución correcta

Matching each device, character, and theme to the right author and title, since a misattributed example undermines the whole argument.

Resumen frente a análisis

Summary retells what happens in a text; analysis explains how formal choices produce meaning, and only the latter earns full credit.

Estructura del ensayo

Introduction with thesis, one body paragraph per work with evidence, and a synthesis paragraph comparing the two texts.