Poetry Literary Terms, Nealley
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Created by:
WHHN on January 14, 2012
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Mr. Jones AP English Lit Terms
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33 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Ode | A typically lyrical verse written in praise of, or dedicated to someone or something which captures the poet's interest or serves as an inspiration for the piece. Ex: Ode on a Grecian Urn, Keats |
| Elegy | A mournful, melancholic or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead. Ex: O Captain! My Captain!, Whitman |
| Lyric | A genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. Ex: She dealt Her pretty Words like Blades-, Dickinson |
| Narrative | Poetry that has a plot. Ex: The Author of Her Book, Bradstreet |
| Dramatic | Verse that occurs in a dramatic work, such as a play, composed in poetic form. Ex: A Midsummer's Night Dream, Shakespeare |
| Persona | A social role or a character played by an actor. Ex: Song of Myself, Whitman |
| Metaphor | A literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea. Ex: I could not stop for Death, Dickinson |
| Dimeter | A line of verse with two feet Ex: "A Wooden way" [After great pain, a formal feeling comes—] by Emily Dickinson |
| Trimeter | A line of verse with three feet Ex: "The whiskey on your breath" My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke |
| Tetrameter | A line of verse with four feet Ex: "The golf links lie so near the mill" [The golf links lie so near the mill] by Sarah Cleghorn |
| Pentameter | A line of verse with five feet Ex: "with her hemline. Chairman Mao put forward" Of Time and the Line by Charles Bernstein |
| Hexameter | A line of verse with six feet Ex: "they are like great runners: they know they are alone" Sex without Love by Sharon Olds |
| iamb | A metrical foot comprising of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable Ex: "he wouldn't" Lies by Martha Collins |
| Troche | A metrical foot comprising of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable Ex: "Into it," The Beautiful Changes by Richard Wilbur |
| Simile | A figure of speech that directly compares two different things, usually by employing the words "like" or "as". Ex: "Your teeth are like stars; They come out at night. They come back at dawn When they're ready to bite." Rogers |
| Personification | Any attribution of human characteristics (or characteristics assumed to belong only to humans) to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. Ex: "Death be not Proud" Donne |
| Symbol | Something that represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it in order to communicate meaning. Ex: The Captain in "O Captain! My Captain!" Whitman |
| Couplet | A pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter. Ex: "True wit is nature to advantage dress'd; What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd." Pope |
| Tercet | It is composed of three lines of poetry, forming a stanza or a complete poem. Ex: "Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red. Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed." Shelley |
| Quatrain | A stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines of verse. Ex: "The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me." Gray |
| Cinquain | A class of poetic forms that employ a 5-line pattern. Ex: "Listen... With faint dry sound, Like steps of passing ghosts, The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees And fall." Crapsey |
| Anapestic | Two syllables followed by one longer syllable. Ex: The word Seventeen. |
| Dactylic | One long syllable followed by two syllables. Ex: The word Poetry. |
| Litotes | The intentional understatement of something for emphasis. Ex: Not unnatractive, as opposed to attractive. |
| Hyperbole | The use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device. Ex: (Whitman 30) The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know very well where they are..." |
| Imager | Figurative description or illustration. Ex:(Whitman 31) "You flagg'd walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges! You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lined sides! you distant Ships!" |
| Alliteration | The repetition of a particular sound: Ex: (Whitman 31) "You air...You objects...You light...You paths...You glagg'd...You gerries///you planks...you timber...you distant" |
| Assonance | The repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and consonance serves as one of the building blocks of verse. Ex) Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn (Song of Myself by Walt Whitman) |
| Consonace | A stylistic device characterized by the repetition of the same consonant two or more times in short succession. Ex) And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain (The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe) |
| Diction | In its original, primary meaning, this refers to the writer's or the speaker's distinctive vocabulary choices and style of expression in a poem or story. A secondary, common meaning of the word is the distinctiveness of speech the art of speaking clearly so that each word is clearly heard and understood to its fullest complexity and extremity, and concerns pronunciation and tone, rather than word choice and style. Ex) A narrow fellow in the grass ... Without a tighter breathing, And zero at the bone. (A Narrow Fellow in the Grass by Emily Dickinson) |
| Tone | A literary technique that is a part of composition, which encompasses the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work. Ex) 'm going out to clean the pasture spring; (light, informing tone) (By Robert Frost) |
| Allusion | A figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. Ex) "I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save the Planet Earth." (Barrack Obama) |
| Refrain | The line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song. Ex) Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'... She shall press, ah, nevermore!...Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'... Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'...(The Raven) |
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