AP Literary Term List
ALLEGORY
A figurative illustration of truths or generalizations about human conduct or experience in
a narrative or description by the use of symbolic fictional figures and actions which the
reader can interpret as a resemblance to the subject's properties and circumstances.
Sidelight: Though similar to both a series of symbols and an extended
metaphor, the meaning of an allegory is more direct and less subject to
ambiguity than a symbol; it is distinguishable from an extended
metaphor in that the literal equivalent of an allegory's figurative
comparison is not usually expressed.
Sidelight: Animal Farm is a good example of an allegory. Orwell
never says that Napoleon is a representation of Stalin, but he is.
ALLITERATION
Also called head rhyme or initial rhyme, the repetition of the initial sounds (usually
consonants) of stressed syllables in neighboring words or at short intervals within a line
or passage, usually at word beginnings, as in "wild and woolly," or the line from Shelley's
"The Cloud":
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
Sidelight: Alliteration has a gratifying effect on the sound, gives
a reinforcement to stresses, and can also serve as a subtle connection
or emphasis of key words in the line, but alliterated words should not
"call attention" to themselves by strained usage.
What’s the effect of alliteration? Whatever you make it. Make
some connection to the meaning or ideas in the poem and you’ll be
in good shape.
ALLUSION
An implied or indirect reference to something assumed to be known, such as a historical
event or personage, a well-known quotation from literature, or a famous work of art, such
as Keats' allusion to Titian's painting of Bacchus in "Ode to a Nightingale."
Sidelight: An allusion can be used by the poet as a means of imagery,
since, like a symbol, it can suggest ideas by connotation. Like allegories
and parodies, its effectiveness depends upon the reader's acquaintance
with the reference alluded to.
AMBIGUITY
Applied to words and expressions, the state of being doubtful or indistinct in meaning or
capable of being understood in more than one way, in the context in which it is used.
Sidelight: Ambiguity can result from careless or evasive choice of
words which bewilder the reader, but its deliberate use is often intended
to unify the different interpretations into an expanded enrichment of the
meaning of the original expression.
ANACHRONISM (uh-NAK-ruh-nizm)
The placement of an event, person, or thing out of its proper chronological relationship,
sometimes unintentional, but often deliberate as an exercise of poetic license.
Sidelight: Anachronisms most frequently appear in imaginative
portrayals with historical settings, such as a clock in Shakespeare's Julius
Caesar, and a reference to billiards in Antony and Cleopatra.
ANALOGY
An agreement or similarity in some particulars between things otherwise different; sleep
and death, for example, are analogous in that they both share a lack of animation and a
recumbent posture.
Sidelight: Prevalent in literature, the use of an analogy carries the
inference that if things agree in some respects, it's likely that they will
agree in others.
ANAPEST
In a line of poetry, two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable forming the
pattern for the line or perhaps for the entire poem. The following example is by Robert
Frost:
ANTAGONIST
A person or force which opposes the protagonist in a literary work. In Stephen Vincent
Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster," Mr. Scratch is Daniel Webster's antagonst at the
trial of Jabez Stone. The cold, in Jack London's "To Build a Fire" is the antagonist which
defeats the man on the trail.
ANTITHESIS
A figure of speech in which a thought is balanced with a contrasting thought in parallel
arrangements of words and phrases, such as, "he promised wealth and provided poverty,"
or "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times," or from Pope's An Epistle to Dr.
Arbuthnot:
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Also, an antithesis is the second of two contrasting or opposing constituents, following
the thesis.
APHORISM
A brief statement containing an important truth or fundamental principle.
APOSTROPHE (uh-PAHS-truh-fee)
A figure of speech in which an address is made to an absent or deceased person or a
personified thing rhetorically, as in William Cowper's "Verses Supposed to be Written by
Alexander Selkirk":
O solitude! Where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
An apostrophe is also a punctuation mark used to indicate the omission of letter(s) in an
elision.
Sidelight: When the poet addresses a muse or a god for inspiration, it
is called an invocation.
ARCHAISM (AHR-kee-izm)
The intentional use of a word or expression no longer in general use, for example, thou
mayst is an archaism meaning you may. Archaisms can evoke the sense of a bygone era.
Sidelight: Spenser's The Faerie Queene contains a number of
archaisms. Syntactic inversions such as the hyperbaton can also
provide an archaic effect.
ASIDE
A device in which a character in a drama makes a short speech which is heard by the
audience but not by other characters in the play. In William Shakespeare's "Hamlet," the
Chamberlain, Polonius, confronts Hamlet. In a dialogue concerning Polonius' daughter,
Ophelia, Polonius speaks this aside:
How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter.
Yet he knew me not at first; 'a said I was a fishmonger.
'A is far gone. And truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love,
very near this. I'll speak to him again.ASSONANCE
The repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work, especially in a poem. Edgar Allen Poe's
"The Bells" conains numerous examples. Consider these from stanza 2:
Hear the mellow wedding bellsand
From the molten-golden notes,
The repetition of the short e and long o sounds denotes a heavier, more serious bell than
the bell encountered in the first stanza where the assonance included the i sound in
examples such as tinkle, sprinkle, and twinkle.
AUBADE (OH-bahd)
A song or poem with a motif of greeting the dawn, often involving the parting of lovers,
or a call for a beloved to arise, as in Shakespeare's "Song," from Cymbeline.
BALLAD
A story in poetic form, often about tragic love and usually sung. Ballads were passed
down from generation to generation by singers. Two old Scottish ballads are "Sir Patrick
Spens" and "Bonnie Barbara Allan." Coleridges, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a
19th century English ballad.
BLANK VERSE
Poetry written without rhymes, but which retains a set metrical pattern, usually iambic
pentameter (five iambic feet per line) in English verse. Since it is a very flexible form, the
writer not being hampered in the expression of thought or syntactic structure by the need
to rhyme, it is used extensively in narrative and dramatic poetry. In lyric poetry, blank
verse is adaptable to lengthy descriptive and meditative poems. An example of blank
verse is found in the well-known lines from Act 4, Scene 1 of Shakespeare's The
Merchant of Venice:
The qua | lity | of mer | cy is | not strain'd,
It drop | peth as | the gen | tle rain | from heaven
Upon | the place | beneath; | it is | twice blessed:
It bles | seth him | that gives | and him | that takes;
Sidelight: Blank verse and free verse are often misunderstood or
confused. A good way to remember the difference is to think of the word
blank as meaning that the ends of the lines where rhymes would
normally appear are "blank," i.e., devoid of rhyme; the free in free verse
refers to the freedom from fixed patterns of traditional versification.
BUCOLIC
Derived from the Greek word for herdsman, an ancient term for a poem dealing with a
pastoral subject.
BURLESQUE
A work which is intended to ridicule by the use of grotesque exaggeration or by the
treatment of a trifling subject with the gravity due a matter of great importance.
CACOPHONY (cack-AH-fuh-nee or cack-AW-fuh-nee)
Discordant sounds in the jarring juxtaposition of harsh letters or syllables which are
grating to the ear, usually inadvertent, but sometimes deliberately used in poetry for
effect.
Sidelight: Sound devices are important to poetry. To create sounds
appropriate to the content, the poet may sometimes prefer to achieve a
cacophonous effect instead of the more commonly sought-for euphony.
The use of words with the consonants b, k and p, to cite one example,
produce harsher sounds than the soft f and v or the liquid l, m and n.
CAESURA
A pause within a line of poetry which may or may not affect the metrical count (see #62.
meter). In scansion, a caesura is usually indicated by the following symbol (//). Here's an
example by Alexander Pope:
Know then thyself,//presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind//is Man
CARPE DIEM (KAHR-peh DEE-em)
Latin for "seize the day," a common motif in lyric verse throughout the history of poetry,
with the emphasis on making the most of current pleasures because life is short and time
is flying, as in Robert Herrick's, "To the Virgins" or Edward Fitzgerald's The Rubáiyát of
Omar Khayyám.
CATACHRESIS (kata-KREE-sis)
Misuse or abuse of words; the use of the wrong word for the context, as atone for repent,
ingenuous for ingenious, or a forced trope in which a word is used too far removed from
its true meaning, as "melancholy table" or Milton's "blind mouth" in Lycidas.
CHARACTERIZATION
The method a writer uses to reveal the personality of a character in a literary work:
Methods may include (1) by what the character says about himself or herself; (2) by what
others reveal about the character; and (3) by the character's own actions.
CINQUAIN (sing-KANE)
A five-line stanza of syllabic verse, the successive lines containing two, four, six, eight
and two syllables. The cinquain, based on the Japanese haiku, was an innovation of the
American poet, Adelaide Crapsey.
CLIMAX
Rhetorically, a series of words, phrases, or sentences arranged in a continuously
ascending order of intensity. If the ascending order is not maintained, an anticlimax or
bathos results.
Sidelight: The term is usually applied to the point of supreme interest
in a series of thoughts or events, often the turning point of a play or
narrative.
CLOSURE
The effect of finality, balance, and completeness, which leaves the reader with a sense of
fulfilled expectations. Though the term is sometimes employed to describe the effects of
individual repetitive elements, such as rhyme, metrical patterns, parallelism, refrains, and
stanzas, its most significant application is in reference to the concluding portion of the
entire poem.
CONCEIT
An elaborate metaphor, artificially strained or far-fetched, in which the subject is
compared with a simpler analogue usually chosen from nature or a familiar context.
Especially associated with intense emotional or spiritual feelings, they sometimes extend
through the entire length of a poem. An example of a conceit is Sir Thomas Wyatt's "My
Galley," an adaptation of Petrarch's Sonnet 159.
Sidelight: The term is derived from concetto, Italian for "concept."
Most modern conceits are written in a more condensed form.
CONNOTATION
The suggestion of a meaning by a word beyond what it explicitly denotes or describes.
The word, home, for example, means the place where one lives, but by connotation, also
suggests security, family, love and comfort.
Sidelight: Sometimes one of the connotations of a word gains enough
widespread acceptance to become a denotation.
CONSONANCE
The close repetition of the same end consonants of stressed syllables with differing vowel
sounds, such as boat and night, or the words drunk and milk in the final line of
Coleridge's "Kubla Khan."
Sidelight: Consonance most often occurs within a line. When used at
line ends in place of rhyme, as in the words, cool and soul, in the third
stanza of Emily Dickinson's "He Fumbles at your Spirit," it is sometimes
referred to as consonantal rhyme to differentiate it from perfect rhyme
and other types of near rhyme.
Sidelight: In a more general sense, consonance also refers to a pleasing
combination of sounds; sounds in agreement with tone.
CONVENTIONS
In a literary sense, established "codes" of basic principles and procedures for types of
works that are recurrent in literature. The prevailing conventions of their time strongly
influence writers to select content, forms, style, diction, etc., which are acceptable to the
cultural expectations of the public.
Sidelight: A knowledge of conventions, particularly from a historical
aspect, aids the reader in the understanding, interpretation, and
appreciation of literary works, particularly poems following the classical
pastoral and epic conventions.
Sidelight: Conventions can change over time. Their very existence
fosters the emergence of originality and serves as a comparative measure
and contrast to new concepts.
CONVERSATION POEM
A poem whose light, colloquial treatment of a serious subject is intended to resemble
informal conversation. Similar to the dramatic monologue, the term originates from
Coleridge's subtitle for his poem, "The Nightingale."
COUPLET
Two successive lines of poetry, usually of equal length and rhythmic correspondence,
with end-words that rhyme. The couplet, for practical purposes, is the shortest stanza
form, but is frequently joined with other couplets to form a poem with no stanzaic
divisions, as in Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess."
Sidelight: If the couplet is written in iambic pentameter, it is called a
heroic couplet.
DACTYL
In poetry, a metrical pattern consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two
unstressed syllables as in the following example from "The Charge of the Light Brigade"
by Alfred Lord Tennyson:
Note that the metrical pattern in the fourth foot consists of one stressed and one
unstressed syllable, rather than the one stressed and two unstressed syllables necessary to
qualify the foot as dactyllic. A metrical pattern need not be consistent throughout a line or
poem for the work to be labeled as composed in an identifiable meter. However, if
enough of the work is written in an identifiable metrical pattern for the reader to get a
sense of a dominant pattern, then the reader is justified in labeling the pattern.
DENOTATION
The literal dictionary meaning(s) of a word as distinct from an associated idea or
connotation.
Sidelight: Many words have more than one denotation, such as the
multiple meanings of fair or spring. In ordinary language, we strive for a
single precise meaning of words to avoid ambiguity, but poets often take
advantage of words with more than one meaning to suggest more than
one idea with the same word. A pun also utilizes multiple meanings as a
play on words.
DICTION
The choice of words, phrases, sentence structures, and figurative language in a literary
work; the manner or mode of verbal expression, particularly with regard to clarity and
accuracy. The diction of a poem can range from colloquial to formal, from literal to
figurative, or from concrete or abstract.
Sidelight: Poetic diction refers to words, phrasing, and figures not
usually used in ordinary speech and often utilizes archaisms, neologisms,
epithets, kennings, periphrases, connotations, and hyperbaton.
Sidelight: Poets often adapt diction to the form or genre of a poem, for
example, elevated for odes, or folksy for ballads.
DIDACTIC POETRY
Poetry which is clearly intended for the purpose of instruction -- to impart theoretical,
moral, or practical knowledge, or to explain the principles of some art or science, as
Virgil's Georgics, or Pope's An Essay on Criticism.
Sidelight: Didactic poetry can assume the manner and attributes of
imaginative works by incorporating the knowledge in a variety of forms,
such as dramatic poetry, satire, and parody, among others. Allegories,
aphorisms, apologues, fables, gnomes, and proverbs are so closely
related to didactic poetry that they can be considered specific types of
that genre.
Sidelight: Although the instructional purpose is its primary aim,
didactic poetry often contains vivid descriptive passages, digressions,
and thoughtful reflections bearing on the subject matter.
DIRGE
A poem of grief or lamentation, especially one intended to accompany funeral or
memorial rites.
Sidelight: In contrast to an elegy, the principle aim of the dirge is to
lament the dead, rather than to console survivors.
DISSONANCE
A mingling or union of harsh, inharmonious sounds, often deliberately used for effect, as
in the lines from Whitman's "The Dalliance of Eagles:"
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,
Sidelight: The term, dissonance, can also refer to any elements of a
poem which are discordant in the context of their use.
Sidelight: Although often considered synonymous with cacophony, the
term dissonance more strongly implies a deliberate choice.
DITTY
A simple little poem meant to be sung.
DOGGEREL
Originally applied to poetry of loose irregular measure, it now is used to describe crudely
written poetry which lacks artistry in form or meaning. It is sometimes deliberately used,
however, for comic or satirical effect.
DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
A literary work which consists of a revealing one-way conversation by a character or
persona, usually directed to a second person or to an imaginary audience. It typically
involves a critical moment of a specific situation, with the speaker's words
unintentionally providing a revelation of his character, as in Robert Browning's "My Last
Duchess."
ELEGY
A poem of lament, praise, and consolation, usually formal and sustained, over the death
of a particular person; also, a meditative poem in plaintive or sorrowful mood, such as,
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," by Thomas Gray.
Sidelight: The pastoral elegy became conventional in the Renaissance
and continued into the 19th century. Traditionally, pastoral elegies
included an invocation, a lament in which all nature joined, praise,
sympathy, and a closing consolation, as in John Milton's Lycidas.
EMPATHY
The feeling or capacity for awareness, understanding, and sensitivity one experiences
when hearing or reading of some event or activity of others, thus imagining the same
sensations as that of those actually experiencing them.
ENCOMIUM (en-KOH-mee-um)
A speech or composition in high praise of a person, object, or event.
Sidelight: Other terms for works involving praise and commendation
include the panegyric, a more formal and elaborate type of encomium,
and the eulogy, which applies to praise of the character and
accomplishments of a person only; the epinicion is a celebration of
victory in an ode, both the hymn and the paean embrace praise addressed
to gods, while the epithalamium and prothalamium honor a bride and
bridegroom.
ENVOI or ENVOY
A short final stanza of a poem, especially a ballade or sestina, serving as a concise
summary, as in Villon's "Des Dames du Temps Jadis."
Sidelight: The Occitan troubadours' term for an envoi was
tornada (return). They used tornadas in chant royales as well as
ballades.
EPIC
An extended narrative poem, usually simple in construction, but grand in scope, exalted
in style, and heroic in theme, often giving expression to the ideals of a nation or race.
Sidelight: Homer, the author of The Iliad and The Odyssey, is
sometimes referred to as the "Father of Epic Poetry." Based on the
conventions he established, classical epics began with an argument and
an invocation to a guiding spirit, then started the narrative in medias res.
In modern use, the term, "epic," is generally applied to all lengthy works
on matters of great importance.
EPIGRAM
A pithy, sometimes satiric, couplet or quatrain which was popular in classic Latin
literature and in European and English literature of the Renaissance and the neo-Classical
era. Epigrams comprise a single thought or event and are often aphoristic with a witty or
humorous turn of thought. Coleridge wrote the following definition:
What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole,
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
EPIGRAPH
A quotation, or a sentence composed for the purpose, placed at the beginning of a literary
work or one of its separate divisions, usually suggestive of the theme.
EPITAPH
A brief poem or statement in memory of someone who is deceased, used as, or suitable
for, a tombstone inscription; a commemorative lamentation.
EPITHET
An adjective or adjectival phrase, usually attached to the name of a person or thing, such
as "Richard the Lion-Hearted," Milton's "ivy-crowned Bacchus" in "L'Allegro," or
Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn."
Sidelight: With epithets, poets can compress the imaginative power of
many words into a single compound phrase.
Sidelight: An epithet may be either positive or negative in connotation
or allusion and sometimes may be freshly coined, like a nonce word, for
a particular circumstance or occasion.
EULOGY
A speech or writing in praise of the character or accomplishments of a person.
EUPHEMISM (YOO-fuh-mizm)
The substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression to replace one that might
offend or suggest something unpleasant, for example, "he is at rest" is a euphemism for
"he is dead."
EUPHONY (YOO-fuh-nee)
Harmony or beauty of sound which provides a pleasing effect to the ear, usually soughtfor in poetry for effect. It is achieved not only by the selection of individual word-sounds,
but also by their arrangement in the repetition, proximity, and flow of sound patterns.
Sidelight: The consonants considered most pleasing in sound are l, m,
n, r, v, and w. The harsher consonants in euphonious texts become less
jarring when in the proximity of softer sounds. Vowel sounds are
generally more euphonious than the consonants, so a line with a higher
ratio of vowel sounds will produce a more agreeable effect; also, the long
vowels in words like moon and fate are more melodious than the short
vowels in cat and bed. But the most important measure of euphonic
strategies is their appropriateness to the subject.
EXTENDED METAPHOR
A metaphor which is drawn-out beyond the usual word or phrase to extend throughout a
stanza or an entire poem, usually by using multiple comparisons between the unlike
objects or ideas.
Sidelight: Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar," demonstrates the
effectiveness of this device: metaphorically, he compares a sandbar in
the Thames River over which ships cannot pass until high tide, with the
natural time for completion of his own life's journey from birth to death.
FABLE
A brief tale designed to illustrate a moral lesson. Often the characters are animals as in
the fables of Aesop.
FARCE
A type of comedy based on a humorous situation such as a bank robber who mistakenly
wanders into a police station to hide. It is the situation here which provides the humor,
not the cleverness of plot or lines, nor the absurdities of the character, as in situational
comedy. Eugene Ionesco's "Les Chaises" (The Chairs), a one-act drama in which two old
people, isolated on an island prepare for visitors, is an example. The visitors are invisible,
but the stage fills with chairs to accomodate them. In the end, a deaf-mute narrator
"addresses" the couple.
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
The use of words, phrases, symbols, and ideas in such as way as to evoke mental images
and sense impressions. Figurative language is often characterized by the use of figures of
speech, elaborate expressions, sound devices, and syntactic departures from the usual
order of literal language.
FIGURE OF SPEECH
A mode of expression in which words are used out of their literal meaning or out of their
ordinary use in order to add beauty or emotional intensity or to transfer the poet's sense
impressions by comparing or identifying one thing with another that has a meaning
familiar to the reader. Some important figures of speech are: simile, metaphor,
personification, hyperbole, and symbol.
Sidelight: Some rhetoricians have classified over 200 separate figures
of speech, but many are so similar that differences of interpretation often
make their classification an arbitrary judgment. How they are classified,
or "labeled," however, is secondary to the importance of construing their
effect correctly.
Sidelight: Figures of speech are also a means of concentration; they
enable the poet to convey an image with the connotative power of a few
words, where a great many would otherwise be required.
FLASHBACK
A reference to an event which took place prior to the beginning of a story or play. In
Ernest Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilamanjaro," the protagonist, Harry Street, has been
injured on a hunt in Africa. Dying, his mind becomes preoccupied with incidents in his
past. In a flashback Street remembers one of his wartime comrades dying painfully on
barbed wire on a battlefield in Spain.
FOIL
A character in a play who sets off the main character or other characters by comparison.
In Shakespeare's "Hamlet" Hamlet and Laertes are young men who behave very
differently. While Hamlet delays in carrying out his mission to avenge the death of his
father, Laertes is quick and bold in his challenge of the king over the death of his father.
Much can be learned about each by comparing and contrasting the actions of the two.
FORM
The arrangement or method used to convey the content, such as free verse, ballad, haiku,
etc. In other words, the "way-it-is-said." A variably interpreted term, however, it
sometimes applies to details within the composition of a text, but is probably used most
often in reference to the structural characteristics of a work as it compares to (or differs
from) established modes of conventionalized arrangements.
Sidelight: The form of a poem which follows a set pattern of rhyme
scheme, stanza form, and refrain (if there is one), is called a fixed form,
examples of which include: ballade, limerick, pantoum, rondeau, sestina,
sonnet, triolet, and villanelle. Used in this sense, form is closely related
to genre.
Sidelight: While familiarity and practice with established forms is
essential to learning the craft, a poet needn't be slavishly bound by them;
a great poet masters techniques, experiments, and extends his or her
imaginative creativity to new boundaries.
FORESHADOWING
In drama, a method used to build suspense by providing hints of what is to come. In
Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," Romeo's expression of fear in Act 1, scene 4
foreshadows the catastrophe to come:
I fear too early; for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels and expire the term
Of a despised life closed in my breast
By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
But He that hath the steerage of my course,
Direct my sail! On, lusty gentlemen.
FREE VERSE
A fluid form which conforms to no set rules of traditional versification. The free in free
verse refers to the freedom from fixed patterns of meter and rhyme, but writers of free
verse employ familiar poetic devices such as assonance, alliteration, imagery, caesura,
figures of speech etc., and their rhythmic effects are dependent on the syllabic cadences
emerging from the context. The term is often used in its French language form, vers libre.
Walt Whitman's "By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame," is an example of a poem written in free
verse.
Sidelight: Although as ancient as Anglo-Saxon verse, free verse was
first employed "officially" by French poets of the Symbolist movement
and became the prevailing poetic form at the climax of Romanticism. In
the 20th century it was the chosen medium of the Imagists and was
widely adopted by American and English poets.
Sidelight: One of the characteristics that distinguish free verse from
rhythmical prose is that free verse has line breaks which divide the
content into uneven rhythmical units. The liberation from metrical
regularity allows the poet to select line breaks appropriate to the intended
sense of the text, as well as to shape the white space on the page for
visual effect.
Sidelight: Free verse enjoys a greater potential for visual arrangement
than is possible in metrical verse. Free verse poets can structure the
relationships between white space and textual elements to indicate pause,
distance, silence, emotion, and other effects.
Sidelight: Poorly written free verse can be viewed simply as prose
with arbitrary line breaks. Well-written free verse can approach a
proximity to the representation of living experience.
GENRE (ZHAHN-ruh)
A category of artistic, musical or literary composition characterized by a particular form,
style or content. Poetry, for example, is a literary genre and lyric verse is a poetic genre.
Sidelight: The term, genre, is frequently used interchangeably with
"type" and "kind."
HELICON
A part of the Parnassus, a mountain range in Greece, which was the home of the Muses.
The name is used as an allusion to poetic inspiration.
HEROIC COUPLET
Two successive lines of rhymed poetry in iambic pentameter, so called for its use in the
composition of epic poetry in the 17th and 18th centuries. In neo-classical usage the two
lines were required to express a complete thought, thus a closed couplet, with a
subordinate pause at the end of the first line. Heroic couplets, which are well-suited to
antithesis and parallelism, are also often used for epigrams, such as Pope's:
You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come.
Knock as you please--there's nobody at home.
Sidelight: Poems written in heroic couplets, such as Pope's The Rape
of the Lock, are especially subject to the danger of metrical monotony,
which poets avoid by variations in their placement of caesuras.
HEROIC QUATRAIN or HEROIC VERSE
So named because it is the form in which epic poetry of heroic exploits is generally
written, its rhyme scheme is abab, composed in iambic pentameter verse in English,
hexameter in Greek and Latin, ottava rima in Italian.
Sidelight: The English form of the heroic quatrain is also called the
elegiac stanza for its frequent use in elegiac verse, as in Gray's "Elegy
Written in a Country Churchyard." The form has also been used by other
poets without elegiac intent, as in Shakespeare's sonnets.
HOMONYM
One of two or more words which are identical in pronunciation and spelling, but different
in meaning, as the noun bear and the verb bear.
Sidelight: Although often called homonyms in popular usage (indeed,
in some dictionaries as well), homophones are words which are identical
in pronunciation but different in meaning or derivation or spelling, as
rite, write, right, and wright, or rain and reign. Heteronyms are words
which are identical in spelling but different in meaning and
pronunciation, as sow, to scatter seed, and sow, a female hog.
Homographs are words which are identical in spelling but different in
meaning and derivation or pronunciation, as pine, to yearn for, and pine,
a tree, or the bow of a ship and a bow and arrow.
HYMN
A song or ode of praise, usually
HYPERBOLE (hi-PER-buh-lee)
A bold, deliberate overstatement, e.g., "I'd give my right arm for a piece of pizza." Not
intended to be taken literally, it is used as a means of emphasizing the truth of a
statement.
Sidelight: A type of hyperbole in which the exaggeration magnified so
greatly that it refers to an impossibility is called an adynaton.
IDEALISM
The artistic theory or practice that affirms the preeminent values of ideas and
imagination, as compared with the faithful portrayal of nature in realism.
IMAGERY, IMAGE
The elements in a literary work used to evoke mental images, not only of the visual sense,
but of sensation and emotion as well. While most commonly used in reference to
figurative language, imagery is a variable term which can apply to any and all
components of a poem that evoke sensory experience and emotional response, whether
figurative or literal, and also applies to the concrete things so imaged.
Sidelight: Imaginative diction transfers the poet's impressions of sight,
sound, smell, taste and touch to the careful reader, as in "The Chambered
Nautilus," by Oliver Wendell Holmes, or "The Cloud," by Percy Bysshe
Shelley.
Sidelight: In addition to its more tangible initial impact, effective
imagery has the potential to tap the inner wisdom of the reader to arouse
meditative and inspirational responses.
Sidelight: Related images are often clustered or scattered throughout a
work, thus serving to create a particular tone. Images of disease,
corruption, and death, for example, are recurrent patterns shaping the
tonality of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Imagery can also emphasize a theme,
as do the suggestions of dissolution, depression, and mortality in John
Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale."
IN MEDIAS RES (in MEE-dee-uhs RAYZ)
The literary device of beginning a narrative, such as an epic poem, at a crucial point in
the middle of a series of events. The intent is to create an immediate interest from which
the author can then move backward in time to narrate the story.
Sidelight: In contrast, ab ovo (from the egg) refers to starting at the
chronological beginning of a narrative.
INTERIOR MONOLOGUE
A narrative technique in which action and external events are conveyed indirectly
through a fictional character's extended mental soliloquy of thoughts and feelings.
Sidelight: Interior monologue and "stream of consciousness" are often
used interchangeably, but interior monologue may be limited to an
ordered presentation of rational thoughts, while stream of consciousness
typically includes sensory, associative, and subliminal impressions
intermixed with rational thought.
IRONY
Irony takes many forms. In irony of situation, the result of an action is the reverse of
what the actor expected. Macbeth murders his king hoping that in becoming king he will
achieve great happiness. Actually, Macbeth never knows another moment of peace, and
finally is beheaded for his murderous act. In dramatic irony, the audience knows
something that the characters in the drama do not. For example, the identity of the
murderer in a crime thriller may be known to the audience long before the mystery is
solved. In verbal irony, the contrast is between the literal meaning of what is said and
what is meant. A character may refer to a plan as brilliant, while actually meaning that
(s)he thinks the plan is foolish. Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony.
KENNING
A compound word or phrase similar to an epithet, but which involves a multi-noun
replacement for a single noun, such as wave traveler for boat or whale-path for ocean,
used especially in Old English, Old Norse and early Teutonic poetry. A type of
periphrasis, some kennings are instances of metaphor, metonymy, or synecdoche.
Sidelight: Beowulf, the oldest known epic poem in English, contains
numerous examples of kennings. Milton used the kenning, day-star, for
sun, in Lycidas.
LAMPOON
A bitter, abusive satire in prose or verse attacking an individual. Motivated by malice, it
is intended solely to reproach and distress.
Sidelight: Before the term lampoon was coined, it was called invective
and dates back as far as the origin of poetry itself. It now appears
primarily in prose, however, except for its occasional use in epigrams.
LYRIC VERSE
One of the three main groups of poetry, the others being narrative and dramatic. By far
the most frequently used form in modern poetic literature, the term lyric includes all
poems in which the speaker's ardent expression of a (usually single) emotional element
predominates. Ranging from complex thoughts to the simplicity of playful wit, the power
and personality of lyric verse is of far greater importance than the subject treated. Often
brief, but sometimes extended in a long elegy or a meditative ode, the melodic imagery of
skillfully written lyric poetry evokes in the reader's mind the recall of similar emotional
experiences.
Sidelight: Lyric is derived from the Greek word for lyre and originally
referred to poetry sung to musical accompaniment.
Sidelight: A lyric sequence is a group of poems, mostly lyric verse,
that interact as a structural whole, differing from a long poem by the
inclusion of unlike forms and diverse areas of focus.
MALAPROPISM (MAL-a-prop-izm)
A type of solecism, the mistaken substitution of one word for another that sounds similar,
generally with humorous effect, as in "arduous romance" for "ardent romance." The term
is named for the character, Mrs. Malaprop, in Richard Sheridan's play, The Rivals, who
made frequent misapplications of words, for example:
as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.
Sidelight: The name of Sheridan's character, Mrs. Malaprop, was taken
from the French expression for "inappropriate" or "out of place," mal à
propos.
METAPHOR
A figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one object or idea is
applied to another, thereby suggesting a likeness or analogy between them, as:
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
--- Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubáiyát of Omar
Khayyám
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
--- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ode to the West
Wind"
. . . The cherished fields
Put on their winter robe of purest white.
--- James Thomson, The Seasons
Sidelight: While most metaphors are nouns, verbs can be used as well:
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
--- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Cloud"
Sidelight: The poetic metaphor can be thought of as having two basic
components: (1) what is meant, and (2) what is said. The thing meant is
called the tenor, while the thing said, which embodies the analogy
brought to the subject, is called the vehicle.
Sidelight: Both metaphors and similes are comparisons between things
which are unlike, but a simile expresses the comparison directly, while a
metaphor is an implied comparison that gains emphatic force by its
connotative value.
Sidelight: A word or expression like "the leg of the table," which
originally was a metaphor but which has now been assimilated into
common usage, has lost its figurative value; thus, it is called a dead
metaphor.
Sidelight: Frequently, the term metaphor, as opposed to a metaphor, is
used to include all figures of speech, so the expression, "metaphorically
speaking," refers to speaking figuratively rather than literally.
METAPHYSICAL
Of or relating to a group of 17th century poets whose verse was distinguished by an
intellectual and philosophical style, with extended metaphors or conceits comparing very
dissimilar things.
METONYMY (meh-TAHN-ih-mee)
A figure of speech involving the substitution of one noun for another of which it is an
attribute or which is closely associated with it, e.g., "the kettle boils" or "he drank the
cup." Metonymy is very similar to synecdoche.
Sidelight: Some metonymic expressions, like paleface for white man
or salt for sailor, have become so much a part of everyday language that
they can no longer be considered as figurative in a poetic sense.
MIXED METAPHOR
A metaphor whose elements are either incongruent or contradictory by the use of
incompatible identifications, such as "the dog pulled in its horns" or "to take arms against
a sea of troubles."
Sidelight: The effect of a mixed metaphor can be absurd as well as
sublime.
MOCK-EPIC or MOCK-HEROIC
A satiric literary form that treats a trivial or commonplace subject with the elevated
language and heroic style of the classical epic.
Sidelight: An outstanding example in English verse is Pope's The Rape
of the Lock, which he wrote to expose the absurdity of a threatened feud
between two families over an incident in which a young baron cut a curl
from the head of a society belle.
MOTIF (moh-TEEF)
A thematic element recurring frequently in literature, such as the dawn song of an aubade
or the carpe diem motif.
MUSE
A source of inspiration, a guiding genius.
NARRATIVE
The narration of an event or story, stressing details of plot, incident, and action. Along
with dramatic and lyric, it is one of the three main groups of poetry.
Sidelight: A narrative poem contains more detail than a ballad and is
not intended to be sung.
NEOLOGISM (nee-AH-luh-jizm)
The use of new words or new meanings for old words not yet included in standard
definitions, as in the recent application of the word cool to denote, very good, excellent or
fashionable. Some disappear from usage; others like hip and feedback, for example,
remain in the language.
OCCASIONAL POEM
A poem written for a particular occasion, such as a dedication, birthday, or victory. The
encomium, elegy, prothalamium, and epithalamium are examples of occasional poems.
OCTAVE
A stanza of eight lines, especially the first eight lines of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet.
ODE
A type of lyric or melic verse, usually irregular rather than uniform, generally of
considerable length and sometimes continuous, sometimes divided in accordance with
transitions of thought and mood in a complexity of stanzaic forms; it often has varying
iambic line lengths with no fixed system of rhyme schemes and is always marked by the
rich, intense expression of an elevated thought, often addressed to a praised person or
object.
Sidelight: Two other important forms of the ode arose from classical
poetry; (1) the Dorian or choric ode designed for singing, after which
Pindaric verse was patterned, and (2) the Aeolic or Horatian Ode, of
which "Ode to a Nightingale," considered to be one of John Keats' finest
works, is an example. More commonly used in English poetry, however,
is the irregular form exemplified by Wordsworth's "Ode. Intimations of
Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood."
Sidelight: The irregular ode retains the lofty Pindaric style, but allows
each stanza to establish its own pattern, rather than follow a regular
strophic structure.
ONOMATOPOEIA (ahn-uh-mah-tuh-PEE-uh)
Strictly speaking, the formation or use of words which imitate sounds, like whispering,
clang, and sizzle, but the term is generally expanded to refer to any word whose sound is
suggestive of its meaning, whether by imitation or through cultural inference.
Sidelight: The use of onomatopoeia is common to all types of
linguistic expression, but because sound plays such an important role in
poetry, it provides another subtle weapon in the poetic arsenal for the
transfer of sense impressions through imagery, such as Keats' "the
murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves," in "Ode to a Nightingale."
Sidelight: Though impossible to prove, some philologists (linguistic
scientists) believe that all language originated through the onomatopoeic
formation of words.
OXYMORON (ahk-see-MOR-ahn)
The conjunction of words which, at first view, seem to be contradictory or incongruous,
but whose surprising juxtaposition expresses a truth or dramatic effect, such as, cool fire,
deafening silence, wise folly, etc.
Sidelight: An oxymoron is similar to a paradox, but more compact,
usually consisting of just two successive words.
PARABLE
A brief story, told or written in order to teach a moral lesson. Christ's tale of the Good
Smamritan (Luke 10: 30-7) is an example.
PAEAN (PEE-un)
In modern usage, a hymn of praise, joy, or triumph.
PALINDROME
A word, verse, or sentence in which the sequence of letters is the same forward and
backward, as the word, madam, or the sentence, "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama." A
variation in which the sequence of words is the same forward and backward is called a
word-order palindrome.
Sidelight: The invention of the palindrome has been attributed to
Sotades, a 3rd century Greek writer of lascivious verse, thus the term
sotadic is used in reference to palindromes and/or poetry of a scurrilous
nature.
PANEGYRIC (pan-uh-JEER-ik)
A speech or poem of elaborate praise for some distinguished person, object, or event -similar to, but more formal than an encomium.
PARADOX
A statement which contains seemingly contradictory elements or appears contrary to
common sense, yet can be seen as perhaps, or indeed, true when viewed from another
angle, such as Alexander Pope's statement, in An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, that a literary
critic could "damn with faint praise."
Sidelight: A paradox can be in a situation as well as a statement. The
effectiveness of a paradox lies in the startling impact of apparent
absurdity on the reader, which serves to highlight the truth of the
statement. An oxymoron is similar to a paradox, but more compact.
Sidelight: Sometimes an entire poem centers on a paradoxical situation
or statement, as in Richard Lovelace's "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars."
PARALLELISM
The repetition of syntactical similarities in passages closely connected for rhetorical
effect, as in Pope's An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot:
Happy my studies, when by these approved!
Happier their author, when by these beloved!
The repetitive structure, which is commonly used in elevated prose as well as poetry,
lends wit or emphasis to the meanings of the separate clauses, thus being particularly
effective in antithesis.
Sidelight: Sometimes the use of parallel structures is extended
throughout an entire poem.
PARODY
A ludicrous imitation, usually intended for comic effect but often for ridicule, of both the
style and content of another work. The humor depends upon the reader's familiarity with
the original.
Sidelight: Sir John Suckling's poem, "A Ballad upon a Wedding," is a
parody of an epithalamium.
PASTICHE (pass-TEESH)
An artistic effort that imitates or caricatures the work of another artist.
Sidelight: In a pastiche, the imitation of another work is an end in
itself. Imitation with the intent to mock the original is a parody.
PASTORAL POETRY
Poetry idealizing the lives of shepherds and country folk, although the term is often used
loosely to include any poem featuring a rural aspect.
Sidelight: "Pastor" is the Latin word for shepherd. In classical poetry,
the pastoral conventions featured a shepherd's meditations on themes
such as nature or romance. From another recurrent theme, the expression
of grief over the death of a fellow shepherd, emerged the long-enduring
conventions of the pastoral elegy.
PATHETIC FALLACY
The ascribing of human traits or feelings to inanimate nature for eloquent effect,
especially feelings in sympathy with those expressed or experienced by the writer, as a
"cruel wind," a "pitiless storm," or the lines from Shelley's Adonais:
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,
And the Wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.
Sidelight: The term was coined in 1856 by John Ruskin, an English
painter, art critic and essayist. While his intent was derogatory, the term
is now applied in a neutral sense as a less formal type of personification.
PATHOS
A scene or passage in a work evoking pity, sorrow, or compassion in the audience or
reader, such as the poignant summation of the old man's grief in Wordsworth's Michael:
Many and many a day he thither went,
And never lifted up a single stone.
Sidelight: The use of understatement (meiosis) is often an effective
way of achieving pathos.
PERSONA (pur-SOH-nuh)
The speaker or voice of a literary work, i.e., who is doing the talking. Thus persona is the
"I" of a narrative or the implied speaker of a lyric poem.
Sidelight: Sometimes the author of a poem identifies a created
character as the speaker-- but in the absence of a specific attribution the
term persona is applied in a neutral sense, since it should not be
automatically assumed that a creative work directly reflects the personal
experiences or views of the poet. The use of an identified persona
precludes a potential ambiguity and enables poets to give expression to
things they would prefer not to have attributed to their own person.
Sidelight: In Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," the persona is the
Duke of Ferrara. In John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," the persona is
not identified, so it is up to the reader to infer whether it is the author
himself or a speaker conceived by the poet for a particular effect.
Sidelight: The term, voice, while often used synonymously with
speaker or persona, can also refer to a pervasive presence behind the
fictitious voices that speak in a work, or to Aristotle's "ethos," the
element in a work that creates a perception by the audience or reader of
the moral qualities of the speaker or a character.
PERSONIFICATION
A type of metaphor in which distinctive human characteristics, e.g., honesty, emotion,
volition, etc., are attributed to an animal, object, or idea, as "the haughty lion surveyed his
realm" or "my car was happy to be washed" or "'Fate frowned on his endeavors."
Personification is commonly used in allegory.
Sidelight: "The Cloud" is personified in Shelley's magnificent poem.
PETRARCHAN SONNET (pih-TRAR-kun)
An Italian sonnet form perfected by Petrarch (1304-1374), characterized by an octave
with a rhyme scheme of abbaabba and a sestet rhyming variously, but usually cdecde or
cdccdc. The octave typically introduces the theme or problem, with the sestet providing
the resolution.
Sidelight: Longfellow's "Divina Commedia" and Wyatt's "My Galley"
are examples of Petrarchan sonnets.
POETIC LICENSE
While most often used to describe the poet's liberty to depart from prosaic diction and
standard syntactical structures to achieve a desired effect, poetic license also includes the
freedom for creative deviations from historical fact in the subject matter, such as the use
of anachronisms.
Sidelight: The ultimate measure of poetic license is determined by its
effectiveness.
PROVERB
A brief, pithy, popular saying or epigram embodying some familiar truth, practical
interpretation of experience, or useful thought.
PUN
A word play suggesting, with humorous intent, the different meanings of one word or the
use of two or more words similar in sound but different in meaning, as in Mark A.
Neville's:
Eve was nigh Adam
Adam was naive.
Sidelight: Clench is an obsolete word for pun. John Dryden (16311700), in "An Essay on Dramatic Poesy," wrote (referring to
Shakespeare): "He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating
into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast."
QUATRAIN
A poem, unit, or stanza of four lines of verse, usually with a rhyme scheme of abab or its
variant, xbyb. It is the most common stanzaic form.
Sidelight: The popular quatrain abab rhyme scheme, as in
Wordsworth's "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways," is sometimes
referred to as alternate rhyme or cross rhyme. Its variant, xbyb, is found
in folk ballads. For In Memoriam, Tennyson used an abba scheme, often
called envelope rhyme. Two other rhyming possibilities are aabb, which
can produce an antithetical effect, and monorhymed or nearmonorhymed quatrains, of which the aaxa of Fitzgerald's The Rubáiyát
of Omar Khayyám, is an example. Sometimes two or more quatrains are
interlocked by a chain rhyme, as in the aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd of Frost's
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."
Sidelight: A curtal quatrain is a quatrain in which the fourth line is
shortened.
REALISM
The endeavor to portray an accurate portrayal of nature and real life without the
imaginative representation of idealization.
REFRAIN
A stanza, line, part of a line, or phrase, generally pertinent to the central topic, which is
repeated verbatim, usually at regular intervals throughout a poem, most often at the end
of a stanza, as in Spenser's Prothalamion, or Villon's "Des Dames du Temps Jadis."
Occasionally a single word is used as a refrain, as nevermore in Poe's "The Raven."
Sometimes a refrain is written with progressive variations, in which case it may be
termed incremental repetition.
REPETEND (REP-ee-tend)
The irregular repetition of a word, phrase, or line in a poem. It is a type of refrain, but
differs in that it can appear at various places in the poem and may be only a partial
repetition, as in Poe's "Ulalume."
REPETITION
A basic artistic device, fundamental to any conception of poetry. It is a highly effective
unifying force; the repetition of sound, syllables, words, syntactic elements, lines,
stanzaic forms, and metrical patterns establishes cycles of expectation which are
reinforced with each successive fulfillment.
Sidelight: Repetition is so important to poetry that a large number of
poetic devices are based on its different applications. Sometimes
variations from the expected repetitions can also achieve a significant
effect.
RHETORIC
The art of speaking or writing effectively; skill in the eloquent use of language.
Sidelight: Rhetoric and poetry are inseparable companions.
RHETORICAL QUESTION
A question solely for effect, with no answer expected. By the implication that the answer
is obvious, it is a means of achieving an emphasis stronger than a direct statement, as in
Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind:"
O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
RHYME
In the specific sense, a type of echoing which utilizes a correspondence of sound in the
final accented vowels and all that follows of two or more words, but the preceding
consonant sounds must differ, as in the words, bear and care. In a broader poetic sense,
however, rhyme refers to a close similarity of sound as well as an exact correspondence;
it includes the agreement of vowel sounds in assonance and the repetition of consonant
sounds in consonance and alliteration. Usually, but not always, rhymes occur at the ends
of lines.
Sidelight: Originally rime, the spelling was changed due to the
influence of its popular, but erroneous, association with the Latin word,
rhythmus. Many purists continue to use rime as the proper spelling of the
word.
Sidelight: Differences as well as identity in sound echoes between
words contribute to the euphonic effect, stimulate intellectual
appreciation, and serve to unify a poem. In addition, rhymes tend to
heighten the significance of the words, provide a powerful mnemonic
device, and complement the rhythmic quality of the lines.
Sidelight: Terms like near rhyme, half rhyme, and perfect rhyme
function to distinguish between the types of rhyme without prejudicial
intent and should not be interpreted as expressions of value.
Sidelight: Early examples of English poetry used alliterative verse
instead of rhyme. The use of rhyme in the end words of verse originally
arose to compensate for the sometimes unsatisfactory quality of rhythm
within the lines; variations in the patterns of rhyme schemes then became
functional in defining diverse stanza forms, such as, ottava rima, rhyme
royal, terza rima, the Spenserian stanza, and others. Rhyme schemes are
also significant factors in the definitions of whole poems, such as
ballade, limerick, rondeau, sonnet, triolet, and villanelle.
ROMANTICISM
An 18th century movement revolting against the conventional strictness of neo-classicism
and placing artistic emphasis on imagination and the emotions.
RONDEAU (RAHN-doe)
A fixed form used mostly in light or witty verse, usually consisting of fifteen octo- or
decasyllabic lines in three stanzas, with only two rhymes used throughout. A word or
words from the first part of the first line are used as a (usually unrhymed) refrain ending
the second and third stanzas, so the rhyme scheme is aabba aabR aabbaR.
Sidelight: An example of the rondeau is the best-known poem from
World War I, "In Flanders Fields," by Lt. Col. John McCrae.
Sidelight: The skillful writer of a rondeau, and similar forms, arranges
the repetition of the refrain in such a way that it seems to come naturally,
without being forced.
SATIRE
A literary work which exposes and ridicules human vices or folly. Historically perceived
as tending toward didacticism, it is usually intended as a moral criticism directed against
the injustice or social wrongs. It may be written with witty jocularity or with anger and
bitterness.
Sidelight: Satiric poets often utilize irony, hyperbole, understatement,
and paradox, as in Pope's An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot .
Sidelight: Satire is direct when the author is clearly expressing his own
opinion, as in Pope's example above, and indirect when embodied in a
hypocritical character such as the Pardoner in Chaucer's The Canterbury
Tales.
SERENADE
A lover's song or poem of the evening.
SESTET
A term used for the last six lines of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet to distinguish them
from the preceding octave, or any six-line group that has reason to be similarly
distinguished from its setting.
SESTINA
A fixed form consisting of six 6-line (usually unrhymed) stanzas in which the end words
of the first stanza recur as end words of the following five stanzas in a successively
rotating order and as the middle and end words of each of the lines of a concluding envoi
in the form of a tercet. The usual ending word order for a sestina is as follows:
First stanza, 1- 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6
Second stanza, 6 - 1 - 5 - 2 - 4 - 3
Third stanza, 3 - 6 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 5
Fourth stanza, 5 - 3 - 2 - 6 - 1 - 4
Fifth stanza, 4 - 5 - 1 - 3 - 6 - 2
Sixth stanza, 2 - 4 - 6 - 5 - 3 - 1
Concluding tercet:
middle of first line - 2, end of first line - 5
middle of second line - 4, end of second line - 3
middle if third line - 6, end of third line - 1
The poem, "Will's Place," is an example of a sestina.
SIMILE
A figure of speech in which an explicit comparison is made between two essentially
unlike things, usually using like, as or than, as in Burns' "O, my luve's like A Red, Red
Rose," or Shelley's "as still as a brooding dove," in "The Cloud."
Sidelight: Similes in which the parallel is developed and extended
beyond the initial comparison, often being sustained through several
lines, are called epic or Homeric similes, since they occur frequently in
epic poetry, both for ornamentation and to heighten the heroic aspect.
SOLECISM (SAH-luh-sizm)
An impropriety of speech or a violation of the established rules of syntax.
SOLILOQUY
A talking to oneself; the discourse of a person speaking to himself, whether alone or in
the presence of others. It gives the illusion of being unspoken reflections.
SONNET
A fixed form consisting of fourteen lines of 5-foot iambic verse. In the English or
Shakespearean sonnet, the lines are grouped in three quatrains (with six alternating
rhymes) followed by a detached rhymed couplet which is usually epigrammatic. In the
original Italian form, such as Longfellow's "Divina Commedia," the fourteen lines are
divided into an octave of two rhyme-sounds arranged abba abba and a sestet of two
additional rhyme sounds which may be variously arranged. This latter form tends to
divide the thought into two opposing or complementary phases of the same idea.
Sidelight: A variant of the Shakespearean form is the Spenserian
sonnet which links the quatrains with a chain or interlocked rhyme
scheme, abab bcbc cdcd ee.
Sidelight: The English language contains fewer rhyming possibilities
than Italian, so the Shakespearean adaptation relieved English poets from
the greater difficulty of rhyming in the Italian sonnet format.
Sidelight: A sonnet sequence is a series of sonnets in which there is a
discernable unifying theme, while each one retains its own structural
independence. All of Shakespeare's sonnets, for example, were part of a
sequence.
SPEAKER
See Persona
SPONDEE
A metrical pattern characterized by two or more successively-placed accented syllables.
In the following example from Shakespeare's "Othello," Othello's sleep has been
disturbed by a fight. He angrily demands to know who started the fight that disturbed
him. Not receiving an immediate answer he says:
This is the first instance in the play where Othello shows that he can be ruled by his
emotions. The spondee in the first three feet (followed by an iamb in the remaining feet)
reminds the reader of a bowstring being drawn back before the arrow flies, or of a bull
pawing the ground before charging. This is the use of literary devices: to draw the
reader's attention to some noteworthy phenomenon within the literary work, either to
illuminate or to intensify.
STANZA, STANZAIC
A division of a poem made by arranging the lines into units separated by a space, usually
of a corresponding number of lines and a recurrent pattern of meter and rhyme. A poem
with such divisions is described as having a stanzaic form, but not all verse is divided in
stanzas.
Sidelight: A stanza having lines of the same length and meter, as is the
case in most stanzaic poems, is said to be isometric. The exceptions, such
as the stanzas in tail rhyme and Sapphic verse, in which the lines are not
all of the same length and meter, are said to be anisometric or
heterometric.
Sidelight: The regularity of stanza patterns conveys an impression of
order and the expectation of closure.
Sidelight: A poem in which the lines follow each other without a
formal pattern of stanzaic units is described as having a continuous form,
in which there may be no line groupings at all or only irregular line
groupings, dictated by meaning, as in paragraphs of prose.
STANZA FORMS
The names given to describe the number of lines in a stanzaic unit, such as: couplet (2),
tercet (3), quatrain (4), quintet (5), sestet (6), septet (7), and octave (8). Some stanzas
follow a set rhyme scheme and meter in addition to the number of lines and are given
specific names to describe them, such as, ballad meter, ottava rima, rhyme royal, terza
rima, and Spenserian stanza.
Sidelight: Stanza forms are also a factor in the categorization of whole
poems described as following a fixed form.
STEREOTYPE
An author's method of treating a character so that the character is immediately identified
with a group. A character may be associated with a group through accent, food choices,
style of dress, or any readily identifiable group characteristic. Examples are the rugged
cowboy, the bearded psychiatrist, and the scarred villain. A criticism leveled at TV drama
is that those who produce such dramas use outdated or negative qualities of groups to
stereotype individuals. Ignoring the group's positive qualities, they perpetuate and
strengthen the group's negative image in the minds of viewers. Some examples are: the
Jewish accountant, the corrupt politician, the Black gambler in a zoot suit, and the voice
on the phone in a Middle Eastern accent associated with a bomb threat. A well-known
tobacco company uses the stereotype of the rugged cowboy in its cigarette ads.
STYLE
The poet's individual creative process, as determined by choices involving diction,
figurative language, rhetorical devices, sounds, and rhythmic patterns.
SYMBOL
An image transferred by something that stands for or represents something else, like flag
for country, or autumn for maturity. Symbols can transfer the ideas embodied in the
image without stating them, as in Robert Frost's "Acquainted With the Night," in which
night is symbolic of death or depression, or Sara Teasdale's "The Long Hill," in which
the climb up the hill symbolizes life and the brambles are symbolic of life's adversities.
Sidelight: Symbols can be subject to a diversity of connotations, so
both the poet and the reader must exercise sensible discretion to avoid
misinterpretation.
SYNECDOCHE (suh-NEK-duh-kee)
A figure of speech in which a part of something stands for the whole or the whole for a
part, as wheels for automobile or society for high society.
Sidelight: Synecdoche is so similar in meaning to metonymy that the
latter term is often used for both.
SYNESTHESIA or SYNAESTHESIA (sin-uss-THEE-zhee-uh)
The perception or description of one kind of sense impression in words normally used to
describe a different sense, like a "loud aroma" or a "velvety smile." It can be very
effective for creating vivid imagery.
SYNESTHETIC METAPHOR
A metaphor that suggests a similarity between experiences in different senses, as "a
gourmet of country music."
SYNTAX
The way in which linguistic elements (words and phrases) are arranged to form
grammatical structure.
Sidelight: Poetic syntax often departs from conventional use,
employing devices such as hyperbatons and ploces, among others.
TERCET
A unit or group of three lines of verse which are rhymed together or have a rhyme
scheme that interlaces with an adjoining tercet.
Sidelight: The sestet, or second part of a Petrarchan sonnet, often
consists of two tercets.
Sidelight: A tercet is used as an envoi in a sestina.
TERZA RIMA (tert-suh REE-muh)
A verse form consisting of tercets, usually in iambic pentameter in English poetry, with a
chain or interlocking rhyme scheme, as: aba, bcb, cdc, etc. The pattern concludes with a
separate line added at the end of the poem (or each part) rhyming with the second line of
the preceding tercet or with a rhyming couplet, as in Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind."
Sidelight: The rhyme sound which carries from the middle line of each
tercet to the opening line of the next tercet provides a strong sense of
forward movement to the terza rima.
THEME
The central idea, topic, or didactic quality of a work.
Sidelight: Although theme is often used interchangeably with motif, it
is preferable to recognize the difference between the two terms.
TONE
The poet's or persona's attitude in style or expression toward the subject, e.g., loving,
ironic, bitter, pitying, fanciful, solemn, etc. Tone can also refer to the overall mood of the
poem itself, in the sense of a pervading atmosphere intended to influence the readers'
emotional response and foster expectations of the conclusion.
Sidelight: Another use of tone is in reference to pitch or to the
demeanor of a speaker as interpreted through inflections of the voice; in
poetry, this is conveyed through the use of connotation, diction, figures
of speech, rhythm and other elements of poetic construction.
TRAGEDY
A medieval narrative poem or tale typically describing the downfall of a great person; a
drama, usually in verse, portraying a conflict between a strong-willed protagonist and a
superior force such as destiny, culminating in death or disaster.
TRAGIC HERO
In literature, the tragic hero's error of judgment or inherent defect of character, a "fatal
flaw," combined with essential elements of chance and other external forces, brings about
a catastrophe. Often the error or flaw results from nothing more than personal traits like
probity, pride, and overconfidence, but can arise from any failure of the protagonist's
action or knowledge ranging from a simple unwitting act to a moral deficiency.
Sidelight: The tragic hero is usually of high estate and neither entirely virtuous nor bad.
Hamartia, rather than villainy, is the significant factor leading to his suffering. He evokes
our pity because, not being an evil person, his misfortune is a greater tragedy than he
deserves and is disproportionate to the "flaw." We are also moved to fear, as we
recognize the possibilities of similar errors or defects in ourselves.
TROCHEE
A metrical pattern in a line of poetry characterized by one stressed syllable followed by
one unstressed syllable. The opening line to Vachel Lindsay's "General William Booth
Enters into Heaven" provides an example:
UNDERSTATEMENT
A statement which lessens or minimizes the importance of what is meant. For example, if
one were in a desert where the temperature was 125 degrees, and if one wee to describe
thermal conditions saying "It's a little warm today." that would be an understamement. In
Shakespeare's "Macbeth," Macbeth, having murdered his friend Banquo, understates the
number of people who have been murdered since the beginning of time by saying "Blood
hath been shed ere now."
The opposite is hyperbole.
VILLANELLE
A poem in a fixed form, consisting of five 3-line stanzas followed by a quatrain and
having only two rhymes. In the stanzas following the first stanza, the first and third lines
of the first stanza are repeated alternately as refrains. They are the final two lines of the
concluding quatrain.
Sidelight: The villanelle gives a pleasant impression of simple
spontaneity, as in Edwin Arlington Robinson's "The House on the Hill."
VISUAL/CONCRETE POETRY
Poetry arranged in such a manner that its visual appearance has an elevated significance
of its own, thus achieving an equivalence (or possibly even more) between the sight and
sound of the poem.
Sidelight: While the term, visual poetry, is generally applied to the
definition above, most poets consciously strive to influence the visual
impact of their poems by their selection of line lengths, stanzaic
structures, indentations, white space, punctuation, capitalization, and
type styles. In traditional verse, though, these aspects are subordinate to
the written text.
VOICE
See under Persona
WHIMSY or WHIMSEY
A fanciful or fantastic creation in writing or art.