Poetic Terms
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ahenderson123 on December 6, 2009
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59 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 alliteration | the repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the beginnings of words. "Gnus never know pneumonia" is an example since, despite the spellings, all four words begin with the "n" sound. |
| allusion | a reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well-known historical or literary event, person, or work. When T.S. Eliot writes, "To have squeezed the universe into a ball" in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," he is alluding to the lines "Let us roll our strength and all/ Our sweetness up into one ball" in Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress." |
| apostrophe | a figure of speech in which someone (usually, but not always absent), some abstract quality, or a nonexistent personage is directly addressed as though present. |
| assonance | the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds. "A land laid waste with all its young men slain" repeats the same "a" sound in "laid," "waste," and "slain." |
| blank verse | unrhymed iambic pentameter. The meter of most of Shakespeare's plays. |
| cacophony | a harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds or tones. It may be an unconscious flaw in the poet's music, resulting in harshness of sound or difficulty of articulation, or it may be used consciously for effect, as Browning and Eliot often use it. |
| caesura | a pause, usually near the middle of a line of verse, usually indicated by the sense of the line, and often greater than the normal pause |
| consonance | the repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words. The term usually refers to words in which the ending consonants are the same but the vowels that precede them are different. It is found in the following pairs of words: "add" and "read," "bill and ball," and "born" and "burn." |
| couplet | two-line stanza, usually with end-rhymes the same |
| devices of sound | the techniques of deploying the sound of words, especially in poetry. Among them are rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia. The devices are used for many reasons, including to create a general effect of pleasant or of discordant sound, to imitate another sound, or to reflect a meaning |
| dramatic poem | a poem which employs a dramatic form or some element or elements of dramatic techniques as a means of achieving poetic ends |
| elegy | a sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet's meditations upon death or another solemn theme |
| end-stopped | a line with a pause at the end. Lines that end with a period, a comma, a colon, a semicolon, an exclamation point, or a question mark |
| enjambment | continuation of the sense and grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next. |
| eye rhyme | rhyme that appears correct from spelling, but is half-rhyme or slant rhyme from the pronunciation. Examples include "watch" and "match," and "love" and "move." |
| figurative language | writing that uses figures of speech (as opposed to literal language or that which is actual or specifically denoted) such as metaphor, irony, and simile. It uses words to mean something other than their literal meaning. "The black bat night has flown" is it, with the metaphor comparing night and bat. "Night is over" says the same thing without it |
| free verse | poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical. The poetry of Walt Whitman is perhaps the best-known example |
| hyperbole | a deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration. It may be used for either serious or comic effect |
| imagery | the images of a literary work; the sensory details of a work; the figurative language of a work. It has several definitions, but the two that are paramount are the visual auditory, or tactile images evoked by the words of a literary work or the images that figurative language evokes. |
| irony | the contrast between actual meaning and the suggestion of another meaning. |
| verbal irony | a figure of speech in which the actual intent is expressed in words which carry the opposite meaning |
| internal rhyme | rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end. |
| lyric poem | any short poem that presents a single speaker who expresses thoughts and feelings. Love lyrics are common, but lyric poems have also been written on subjects as different as religion and reading. Sonnets and odes are these |
| metaphor | a figurative use of language in which a comparison is expressed without the use of a comparative term like "as," "like," or "than." |
| meter | the repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry; emphasizes the musical quality of the language and often relates directly to the subject matter of the poem. Each unit is known as a foot. |
| narrative poem | a non-dramatic poem which tells a story or presents a narrative, whether simple or complex, long or short. Epics and ballads are examples |
| octave | an eight-line stanza; often refers to the first division of an Italian sonnet. |
| onomatopoeia | the use of words whose sound suggests their meaning. Examples are "buzz," "hiss," or "honk. |
| oxymoron | a form of paradox that combines a pair of contrary terms into a single expression. This combination usually serves the purpose of shocking the reader into awareness. Examples include "wise fool," "sad joy," and "eloquent silence." |
| paradox | a situation or action or feeling that appears to be contradictory but on inspection turns out to be true or at least to make sense. |
| parallelism | a similar grammatical structure within a line or lines of poetry |
| personification | kind of metaphor that gives inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics. |
| poetic foot | a group of syllables in verse usually consisting of one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables associated with it |
| iambic | unstressed, stressed |
| quatrain | a four-line stanza with any combination of rhymes. |
| rhyme | close similarity or identity of sound between accented syllables occupying corresponding positions in two or more lines of verse |
| rhyme scheme | pattern of end rhyme |
| rhythm | recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables. |
| satire | writing that seeks to arouse a reader's disapproval of an object by ridicule; usually comedy that exposes errors with an eye to correct vice and folly. |
| scansion | a system for describing the meter of a poem by identifying the number and the type(s) of feet per line. |
| monometer | one foot per line |
| dimeter | two feet per line |
| trimeter | three feet per line |
| tetrameter | four feet per line |
| pentameter | five feet per line |
| hexameter | six feet per line |
| heptameter | seven feet per line |
| octameter | eight feet per line |
| sestet | a six-line stanza; refers to the second division of an Italian sonnet |
| simile | a directly expressed comparison; a figure of speech comparing two objects, usually with "like," "as," or "than." |
| sonnet | normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem. The conventional Italian, or Petrarchan is rhymed abba, abba, cde, cde; the English, or Shakespearean, is rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg. |
| stanza | usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme |
| style | the mode of expression in language; the characteristic manner of expression of an author. |
| symbol | something that is simultaneously itself and a sign of something else. For example, winter, darkness, and cold are real things, but in literature they are also likely to be used as _____of death. |
| synecdoche | a form of metaphor which in mentioning a part signifies the whole. For example, we refer to "foot soldiers" for infantry and "field hands" for manual laborers who work in agriculture. |
| tercet | stanza of three lines in which each line ends with the same rhyme. |
| theme | the main thought expressed by a work. In poetry, it is the abstract concept which is made concrete through its representation in person, action, and image in the work. |
| tone | the manner in which an author expresses his or her attitude; the intonation of the voice that expresses meaning. (Remember that the "voice" need not be that of the poet.) Tone is described by adjectives, and the possibilities are nearly endless. Often a single adjective will be enough, and tone may change from stanza to stanza or even line to line |
| understatement | opposite of hyperbole. It is a kind of irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is. |
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