ap lit&comp poetry
Order by
66 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 alliteration | The repetition of initial consonant sounds. |
| anaphora | A rhetorical device of repeated the same word or words at the end of two or more lines of poetry. |
| apostrophe | A rhetorical device in which an absent or imaginary person or an abstraction is directly addressed as though present. |
| assonance | Repetition of vowel sounds. When it occurs at the end of lines, assonance rhyme does not have the same consonant sounds, so it is not full rhyme. |
| ballad | A narrative poem often using common meter and sometimes including a refrain. Popular ballads were originally set to music, whereas modern, literary ballads were written to be read. |
| blank verse | Unhrymed iambic pentameter. This meter is well-adapted to dramatic verse in English, such as Shakespeare's plays, as well as to any long poem. In the nineteenth century and modern times it has been used extensively in lyric poetry. Blank verse is marked by freedom from rhyme, a shifting caesura (pause), and a frequent enjambment, producing verse paragraphs more often than stanzas. |
| cacophony | A combination of harsh, unpleasant sounds, used consciously for effect; the opposite of Euphony. |
| caesura | A pause in a line of poetry created not by the meter, but by the natural speaking rhythm, sometimes coinciding with punctuation. |
| carpe diem poetry | From the Latin, the admonition often translated as "seize the day" is more accurately "pluck, as the ripe fruit or flower." It was first used by Horace in classical Rome, and is a common theme in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English love poetry: yield to love while you are still young and beautiful. |
| common meter | Alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, in four-line stanzas typically rhyming ABAB or ABCB. Also called hymn meter and ballad meter. |
| complain | A lyric poem of lament, regret, and sadness which amy explain the speaker's mood, describe its cause, discuss remedies, and appeal for help. The blues is a musical counterpart to the literary form. |
| conceit | A metaphor of great ingenuity in which a fanciful notion, an elaborate analogy, or a striking parallel between seemingly dissimilar things is spun out at length. A conceit is paradoxical , witty, and startling. |
| connotation | Beyond denotation (the literal, basic meaning of a word), connotation is the emotional implications and associations that a word carries. The reader must understand how the word is used in context in order to interpret the emotional coloring. See Denotation. |
| consonance | Though the final consonants in several stressed syllables agree, the vowel sounds that precede them are different. At the end of a line of poetry, consonance is not full rhyme. |
| continuous form | Poetry not divided into stanzas. Couplet- A unit of two consecutive lines of verse with the same rhyme. In an open couplet, the second line depends on the next for completion, and the rhyme is subtle. A closed couplet is grammatically complete, closed box often characterized by the symmetry created by caesura, parallelism, and antithesis. Couplets are often pentameter lines, sometimes tetrameter; a closed couplet neatly ends and Elizabethan sonnet. See Sonnet. |
| denotation | The literal, basic meaning of a word, independent of emotional associations. See Connotation. |
| diction | The choice of individual words and patterns of words. Diction can help to establish the distinction between the narrative voice and the dialogue or help differentiate between characters. It can indicate social class, educational level,even emotional state. Patterns of diction can be predominantly formal, informal, or neutral; positive or negative in connotation; euphonious of cacophonous in sound; concrete or abstract; specific or general; mono- or polysyllabic. |
| double rhyme | Rhyming stressed syllables followed by identical unstressed syllables. If both syllables are identical, it is sometimes called compound rhyme. This patter was once called feminine rhyme, an allusion to its being weaker than full or perfect rhyme ("Masculine" rhyme). Too much double rhyme in a serious poem can have an inadvertent comic effect. |
| dramatic monologue | The speaker is addressing a silent, identifiable listener in a single, sustained utterance. This form is similar to interior monologue. |
| elegy | A formal poem meditating on death or another solemn theme, often a lamentation for a particular person. |
| end-stopped lines | a line of poetry that ends when the grammatical unit ends. Its opposite is enjambment. |
| enjambment | From the French meaning" a striding over," this term describes a line of poetry in which the sense and grammatical construction continue on to the next line. In an enjambed line, the lack of completion creates pressure to move rapidly to the closure promised in the next line. |
| envoy | A conventionalized stanza at the close of a poem, which is addressed to a prince or a patron, usually having four lines rhyming ABAB, and sometimes repeating the refrain line of the poem. The envoy may provide a summary or simply serve to dispatch the poem. |
| epic | A long narrative poem retelling the episodes of importance to a nation's history or legend. The epic os characterized by a vast setting, a hero of great color and superhuman courage, the interest and intervention of supernatural forces, and a sustained, elevated style. |
| epigram | A pithy saying, which, in its classical mode, is compressed, balanced, and polished. It is often used for satire, and is both witty and memorable. |
| euphony | Euphonious sounds are pleasant. Unlike the cacophonous, such sounds are easy to articulate. Though sound cannot be separated from meaning in general, voiced consonants (b,d,g,v,z) are softer than the abrupt sounds of the unvoiced(p,t,k,f,and s) and simples vowels are more pleasant than diphthongs. |
| explication | the close analysis of the meanings, relationships, and ambiguities of words, images, and other small unites of a literary work. |
| figurative language | Figures of speech are any intentional departures from the normal order, construction, or meaning of words. They call attention to themselves, either because they are rhetorical figures producing special effects or because they are tropes, loosely called metaphors, involving basic changes in meaning. See Rhetorical devices. |
| free verse | Poetry without a regular pattern of meter and rhyme, relying on other elements for its structure. |
| heroic couplets | Iambic pentameter lines rhymed in pairs. Used in seventeenth-century poetic drama and alter by Pope and Dryden, this form is marked by the use of the caesura, symmetry and balance, and antithesis, and is often epigrammatic. |
| hyperbole | A figure of speech in which one says more than one means, overstating and exaggerating. It may be used for humor or to heighten another effect. |
| imagery | A literal and concrete representation of a sensory experience or an object that can be known by the senses. Imagery may be visual, of course, but may also be auditory, gustatory, olfactory, or tactile. Imagery may be presented in patterns (e.g., all pleasant or all unpleasant, or all relying on a particular sense). Imagery appeals to sensuous experience or to memory. |
| italian sonnet | Also called Petrarchan after its most famous practitioner. The fourteen lines are broken into an octave and a sestet, with no more than five rhymes:ABBAABBA CDEDE. A variation of four rhymes is ABBAACCA CDCDCD. The sense of the lines falls into groups that are not rhyme groups, thus avoiding couplets (AB-BA, AC-CA). There is a marked turn at the end of the octave from the question to answer, narrative to comment, or proposition to application. See Sonnet . |
| line length | The terms for different line lengths use a numerical prefix (one to eight) and "meter," or measure: monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter,heptameter, and octameter. |
| literal language | The factual sort of discourse that is without embellishment,though not necessarily flat; the opposite of figurative. |
| lyric verse | A short poem expressing an emotional state or a process of thought. It is often melodic and euphonious, and creates a single, unified impression. Sonnets, odes, elegies, and countless nonce forms are lyrics, the most frequently used poetic expression. |
| metaphor | An implied comparison in which two unlike things are linked by a surprising similarity. Either thing or both may be unstated. The actual subject may be called the tenor, and the thing with which it is identified may be called the vehicle. The grounds are the aspect of the vehicle that apply to the tenor. See Analogy. |
| meter | The repeated pattern of unstressed syllabus in a line of poetry. Of the four common meters in English, two are duple (two syllables in a foot) and two are triple (three syllables in a foot). each kind of foot may be either rising (accented syllable at the end) or falling (accented syllable at the beginning). The Greek names of the meters are iambic for duple rising, trochaic for duple falling, anapestic for triple rising, and dactylic for triple falling. The meter is a predominant patter, with judicious substitutions for variety and emphasis, variations on a theme. |
| metonymy | A figure of speech in which an associated word rather than the literal word is used, as using a part to stand for the whole. |
| metrical substitution | Variations on the basic metrical pattern. The most common involve substituting a trochee for an iamb at the beginning of a line for emphasis (initial inversion); using a spondee (two accented syllables) for emphasis; using pyrrhics (two unaccented symbols) to speed the line; and ending the line with an extra, unaccented syllable to form a double rhyme. |
| mock heroic | A satiric mode that applies the lofty style of the epic to a trivial subject, giving it a dignity which it does not deserve and thus ridiculing it. This mode may also mock epics themselves, and the absurdity of the epic hero's pretentious qualities. Also called burlesque |
| octave | Any eight-line stanza, but most frequently applied to the first eight lines of an Italian sonnet, typically rhyming ABBAABBA and ending with a full stop. See sonnets. |
| ode | Exalted lyrical verse that is elaborate, solemn, and stately. Having formal divisions in classical poetry, it tends now to have no set form. The ode often uses apostrophe, and is typically a public poem with a lofty subject. |
| onomatopoeia | A Greek term for imitative sounds; the sound of the word suggests its meaning. Though sometimes the suggestion is largely associative, the pattern of sound echoes the denotation of the word. |
| oxymoron | A greek word meaning dull/sharp, this rhetorical device is a self-contradictory combination of words. |
| paradox | This rhetorical device is a seemingly contradictory or absurd statement that is actually well-founded, often with unexpected meaning, and always pointing to a truth. Epigrams are based on paradoxes. |
| paraphrase | A restatement of a passage that retains the meaning while changing it to ordinary form and syntax and usually retains the point of view of the passage. When a difficult passage of poetry is paraphrased, it is explained sentence by sentence, with figurative language changed to literal. |
| personification | A figure of speech at endows ideas, abstractions, or inanimate objects with human form. |
| prosody | Principles of versification, especially meter, line length, rhyme scheme, and stanza form. |
| refrain | One of more words repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza. A refrain may have slight variations, sometimes of great significance. |
| rhetorical accent/stress | In opposition to metrical accent, a stress on what would normally be an unaccented syllable, which clarifies the meaning or intention of the sentence. |
| rhyme | Sound correspondence often found at the ends of lines of poetry (end rhyme)or within the line (internal rhyme). Rhyme unifies a stanza, and separates it from the next one or, if enjambment is used, it creates a sense of forward movement. A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming sounds, indicated by a letter of the alphabet for each similar sound. Perfect rhyme, also called true rhyme or full rhyme, has the same vowel, but a different preceding consonant. It is the strongest and most forceful rhyming sound. Double rhyme has a rhyming stressed syllable followed by an identical unstressed syllable. The effect is weaker than perfect rhyme. Triple rhyme has a rhyming stressed syllable, then two identical unstressed syllables. The effect tends to be humorous. Slant rhyme, also called imperfect, partial, near, and half rhyme. depends on close but not identical sound correspondences. Eye-rhyming words have the same spelling, but different pronunciations. Identical rhyme occurs with words having different spellings but the same pronunciation. |
| rime royal | A stanza with seven lines of iambic pentameter rhyming ABABBCC. |
| scansion | The system for describing conventional rhythms by dividing lines into syllables and laying bare the essentials pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in order to discover the predominant rhythm in a poem. |
| sestina | A fixed poetic form of six, six-lined stanzas and a three-line envoy. It is unrhymed, but has a fixed pattern of end words in a different sequence in each stanza. The envoy uses three of the words at the ends of its three lines, and the other three somewhere within the lines. |
| sibilance | Hissing sounds represented by S, Z, and SH. |
| similie | A similarity between two essentially unlike things that is directly expressed; the tenor is said to be like or as the vehicle. See Analogy. |
| sonnet | A fixed form that derives from the Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet, 14 lines of iambic pentameter divided into an octave and sestet and rhyming ABBAABBA CDECDE. Its Elizabethan (Shakespearean) form preserves this meter and length, but decides into three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Modern poets continue to ring changes on this enduringly popular lyric form. See Italian Sonnets. |
| spondee | Two accented syllables, sometimes substituted for an iambic foot in a line of poetry to provide emphasis. |
| stanza forms | Groups of lines with breaks in between, named for their number of lines: Couplet (2), tercet (3), quatrain (4), cinquain (5), sestet (6), septet (7), also called Rime Royal, ottava rima (8), spenserian (9), Many poets invented a stanza for one poem only, called a nonce form. The form of a poem with no stanza breaks may be called "continuous form." |
| symbol | An image with another level of meaning; something that is itself and also stands for something else. A symbol combines the literal and sensuous qualities of an image with an abstract aspect, suggesting complex, multiple meanings. |
| synecdoche | The figurative use of a narrower term for a wider one or vice versa; the part signifies the whole or the whole the part. |
| synesthesia | Describing one kind of sensation in terms of a other, e.g., sound as color, color as sound, sound as taste, color as temperature |
| tone | The author's attitude toward the audience or the subject, implied or related directly through authorial voice Shifts in tone may be indicated by transitional words(but, yes, nevertheless, however,although) that signal a turn; by a sharp contrast in diction; or a by a change in sentence length. See Authorial Voice. |
| trochee | A falling duple foot, sometimes substituted for an iambic foot in a line of poetry for emphasis, often at the beginning of the line. |
| couplet | A unit of two consecutive lines of verse with the same rhyme. In an open couplet, the second line depends on the next for completion, and the rhyme is subtle. A closed couplet is grammatically complete, closed box often characterized by the symmetry created by caesura, parallelism, and antithesis. Couplets are often pentameter lines, sometimes tetrameter; a closed couplet neatly ends and Elizabethan sonnet. |
First Time Here?
Welcome to Quizlet, a fun, free place to study. Try these flashcards, find others to study, or make your own.