Debra Bronstein
English 78A
Poetry Terms
Allegory: a narrative either in prose or verse were the agents and actions are contrived by the author to make
coherent sense on the literal or primary level of signification, and at the same time to signify a second, deeper
meaning. There are two types of allegory: historical and political in which the characters and actions signified
literally in their turn represent historical personages or events and the allegory of ideas in which the literal
characters represent concepts and the plot represents an abstract doctrine or thesis.
Alliteration: repetition of a speech sound in a sequence of nearby words. This is usually applied only to
consonants. Example: Peter Piper picked a pepper.
Allusion: Passing reference without explicit identification, to a literary or historical person, place or event, or to
another literary work or passage.
Anaphora: repetition of a word or words at the beginning of two or more successive verses, clauses, or
sentences.
Apostrophe; a digression in the form of an address to someone not present, or to a personified object or idea.
Example: “O Death, where is thy sting?”
Archaisms: The literary use of words and expressions that have become obsolete in the common speech of an
era.
Assonance: The repetition of identical or similar vowels, especially in stressed syllables, in a sequence of
nearby words. Example: If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song
Blank Verse: Consists of lines of iambic pentameter which are unrhymed. Of all English metrical forms, it is
closest to the natural rhythms of English speech, and at the same time is flexible and adaptive to diverse levels
of discourse.
Cacophony: harsh, discordant, unpleasant sounds
Caesura: a break, esp. a sense pause, usually near the middle of a verse, and marked in scansion by a double
vertical line. Example: know then thyself ‖ presume not god to scan.
Conceit: An extended metaphor. Usually a far-fetched and unusually elaborate comparison.
Connotation: The implication of the word. The secondary or associated meanings and feelings which the word
commonly conveys.
Consonance: The repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants, but with a change in the intervening
vowel. Example: “Out of this house”—said rider to reader.
Couplet: A pair of two rhyming lines
Denotation: dictionary definition of the word
Ellipses: Omitted words
End-Stopped line: The line of poetry ends with a mark of punctuation
Enjambment: the running on of the thought from one line, couplet, or stanza to the next without a syntactical
break.
Euphony: agreeableness of sound; pleasing effect to the ear, esp. a pleasant sounding or harmonious
combination or succession of words
Hyperbole: exaggeration or bold overstatement
Iambic Pentameter: within series of unstressed/stressed syllables within a 5-foot line.
Irony: the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning. Example: the irony of
her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend
Lyric: short poem consisting of the utterance by a single speaker, who expresses a state of mind or a process of
perception, thought and feeling.
Metaphor: Comparison between two dissimilar things without using like or as. Example “O my love is a red,
red rose”
Meter: the measurement of rhythm in a poem
Metonymy: a figure of speech that consists of the use of the name of one object or concept for that of another to
which it is related, or of which it is a part, as “scepter” for “sovereignty,” or “the bottle” for “strong drink,”
Octave: Section of 8 lines in a Petrarchan Sonnet
Onomatopoeia: a word or combination of words, whose sound seem to resemble closely the sound it denotes:
Example: hiss, buzz, bang.
Oxymoron: contradictory terms are used in conjunction. Example: living death
Paradox: A statement that seems on its surface to be logically contradictory or absurd, yet turns out to be
interpretable in a way that makes good sense.
Persona: the narrator of or a character in a literary work, not always identified with the author.
Personification: the attribution of a personal nature or character to inanimate objects or abstract notions, esp. as
a rhetorical figure.
Petrarchan Sonnet: Italian sonnet form popularized by Petrarch, consisting of an octave with the rhyme scheme
abbaabba and a sestet with one of several rhyme schemes, as cdecde or cdcdcd.
Pun: a play on words that are either identical in sound, homonyms or very similar in sound, but are different in
meaning
Pyrrhic: Two unstressed syllables within a foot of poetry
Quatrain: Stanzas of four lines, usually rhyme alternately (abab). Shakespearean sonnets are divided into 3
quatrains and a couplet
Rhetorical Question: a question which is not asked in order to request information or to invite a reply, but to
achieve a greater expressive force than a direct assertion.
Rhyme Scheme: The organization of rhymes within a poem. A rhyme is the repetition of accented sounds in
words, usually those falling at the end of verse lines.
Satire: literary form s which diminish or derogate a subject by making it ridiculous and by evoking toward it
amusement, scorn, or indication. This is done ultimately to effect social change.
Shakespearean Sonnet: English sonnet popularized by Shakespeare, consisting of 4 quatrains, usually with the
rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef (also known as the problem), and a concluding couplet with the rhyme scheme
of gg (also known as the solution). Between the problem and the solution is the volta, or a change.
Simile: Comparison between two distinctly different things explicitly indicated by using like or as. Example: “O
my love’s like a red, red rose.”
Sonnet: 14 line, iambic pentameter poem
Speaker: the voice of the poem
Spondee: Two stressed syllables within a foot of poetry
Stanza: a verse paragraph
Synecdoche: substitution of the part for the whole: Example: “lend a hand” for a job
Trochee: Stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable in a foot of poetry
Drama Terms:
Catharsis: purging or purification. The special effect of tragedy where the emotions of pity and fear that have
been aroused in the audience by the events of the drama are purged by the end.
Classical Unities: Also known as the Three Unities as outlined by Aristotle: Unity of Action the action of the
play should approximate the actual conditions of the staging of the play. Unity of Time: The time represented
should be limited to 2-3 hours (or at most a day), Unity of Place: the action represented should be limited to a
single location. Shakespeare rarely adheres to the unities
Chorus : In ancient Greek plays, the chorus was a group of people, wearing masks who sang or chanted verses
while performing dance-like maneuvers. Within the plays, they served as commentators on the dramatic actions
and events and expressed traditional moral, religious, and social attitudes.
Comedy: a play of light and humorous character with a happy or cheerful ending; a dramatic work in which the
central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion, usually
marriage. Social circumstances are often addressed and rectified in comedies.
Dramatis Personae: List of characters in the play
In Medias Res: In the middle of things
Setting: The general locale, historical time and social circumstances in which the action occurs
Soliloquy: the act of talking to oneself, whether silently or aloud. The character, alone on the stage, utters his
thoughts aloud.
Stock Characters: Character types that occur repeatedly in a particular literary genre so they are recognizable as
part of the conventions of the form. For example, Greek comedy used the stock characters of the impostor or
self-deceiving braggart, the self-derogatory and understating character, the buffoon and the rustic.
Subplot: The secondary plot
Temporal Setting: The historical time of the play
Theme: The main idea of a literary work
Thrust Stage: a stage that extends beyond the proscenium arch and is usually surrounded on three sides by seats.
Tragedy: Dramatic representations of serious actions which eventuate in a disastrous conclusion for the
protagonist (usually death).