Drummond / AP
Technical Terms
Literary Periods/Genres
Old English / Anglo-Saxon
Middle English
Modern English
Elizabethan
Metaphysical
Augustan
Romantic
Victorian
Modernist
Postmodern
Ca. 450-12C. Alliterative verse. Germanic language. Medial
caesura, 2 stresses each side.
Ca. 11C-15C. William brings Norman language. Knights, castles,
Domesday book. Courtly Love.
15C - . Emerges at time of GVS and printing press (Caxton).
English renaissance. Man at center. Love poetry. Models from
classics or Italy (Petrarch). Sonnets. Shakespeare, Jonson,
Sidney, Spenser.
Donne, Herrick, Herbert, Marvell. Unusual conceits, syntactically
complex, difficult poetry. Love poetry and religious poetry.
Pope, Swift, Johnson. Satire, dry, ironic. Heroic couplets. Urban,
urbane. Man is fallen, let’s work with this corrupt system.
Rational.
Rejects Augustan. Imagination > Reason; Youth > Age; Nature >
City. The divine in nature. Revolution. The Sublime.
Industry and machines here to stay. Worried. Nostalgic for past.
Crisis of Faith.
First World War as traumatic wound. No order, only chaotic
reality. Inward focus on the mind.
“Jouissance” – play. Sardonic take on modernism. Surface
appreciated, “meaning” questioned or disputed.
Verse structures / Forms
Ballad / ballad stanza
Blank verse
Heroic couplets
Ottava Rima
Sonnet
Villanelle
Quatrain, abab/abcb, usually 4/3/4/3 beats; medieval, folk, revived
by Romantics. Often strange, supernatural topics, but not always.
Narrative. Death.
Shakespeare’s plays. Iambic pentameter, unrhymed
18C satire. Iambic pentameter, rhyming couplets. Good vehicle for
irony (why?)
Eight line stanza (octave) of abababcc; iambic pentameter. Most
famous example = Byron’s Don Juan.
14 line poem, usually i.p.
Petrarchan/Italian: abbaabbacdecde or cdcdcd. change in focus
after 8th line (octave/sestet) = volta
Shakespearean/English: ababcdcdefefgg
Spenserian: ababbcbccdcdee
Shakespeare called a 14 liner a quatorzain, and a 12 liner a douzain.
19 line poem. 5 tercets, concluding quatrain. 1st and 3rd line of first
stanza = repeated at end of alternate stanzas and then as final
couplet of poem. Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gently . . .”
Drummond / AP
Sestina
Terza Rima
Haiku
Quatrain
Tercet
Couplet
6 sestets, tercet envoi
aba/bcb/cdc/ded Dante, Divine Comedy
tercet, 5-7-5 syllables
4 line chunk
3 line chunk
2 link chunk
Meter/Rhythm
Meter
Feet
Number
Iambic Pentameter
Reversed foot
Rising / Falling rhyme
Enjambement
Scansion / scanning
Free verse
Made up of 2 elements: (1) pattern of stressed and unstressed
syllables (foot), and (2) number of feet
iamb (x / ), trochee (/ x), anapaest (x x /), dactyl (/ x x), pyrrhic
(xx), spondee (/ / )
mono / di / tri / tetra / penta / hexa / hepta / octa / nona / deca / etc
The most common meter in English. Normal breath length?
Tetrameter is next most common (see ballads, for example)
Usually at start of line – stress order is reversed compared to
normal pattern (you get a trochee instead of an iamb)
Rising used to be called “masculine” rhyme = stress at end of line
Falling used to be called “feminine” r = unstress at end of line
“Striding over” (Fr.) from one line to the next; opposite = “endstopping,” which can be commas or periods or whatever.
The act of assigning stress/unstress to syllables of poetry
Poetry that lacks a discernable meter. 20C -
Sounds
Rhyme
Alliteration
Assonance
Consonance
Anaphora
Polyptoton
Caesura
Dissonance
Homonym
Onomatopoeia
External – rhyme you’re used to, at the end of the line. Internal – words
within lines or from line to line within the line. Half/slant rhyme – doesn’t
quite rhyme (sing/thin, real/school). Eye r. – lull/full (looks like it rhymes)
Repetition of consonants at the beginning of words
Repetition of vowels, usually at the beginning of words
Repetition of sounds generally. Usually used for sounds at the end of
words, like the “ck” of “lack” and “buck” and “stock.”
Repetition of words/phrases
Repetition of related words (done, doing, doneness)
Pause/break during line of poetry (special case: medial caesura in OE)
(=cacophony) harsh-sounding words (“bare black cliff”); opposite of
mellifluous sounds, or euphony (“lo! the level lake”). Long and short
vowels and hard/soft consonants are relevant here.
Same sound and spelling but different origin and meaning. Eg rest (repose
vs. remainder)
Word imitates sound. Dong, crackle, moo, pop, whizz.
Drummond / AP
Various important words
Ambiguity is often at the center of many poems or lines of poetry. Don’t be
afraid of assigning ambiguity to meaning – poetry is usually the place
writers go to when it can’t be expressed in prose. In other words, as
facebook would put it, It’s Complicated.
allegory
allegory is a story or narrative which can be read on two levels,
or which has two different meanings.
braggadocio*
empty vaunting; the talk of a braggart
conceit / extended metaphor
characteristic of metaphysical poetry (and followers, such as T.
S. Eliot, or Michael Donaghy). Long metaphor, threaded
through a stanza or the whole poem
denote vs. connote
d = dictionary; c = associations
diction
word choice
elegy
Poem for the dead (or more generally sad)
encomium
Praise piece
epithalamion
Marriage poem
eulogy
Poem or piece in praise of dead (Zoolander)
figures of speech / figurative
What makes poetry “poetic”? Not restricted to poetry, the
language
elements that remove language from “normal” or “literal.” For
example:
Simile
comparison between two distinctly different things prefaced by
“like” or “as”
Metaphor
Similar to simile but the comparative like/as is missing. Tenor
is subject of metaphor; vehicle is the unexpected comparison.
(mixed metaphor is combo of 2 or more vehicles, often leads to
foolishness; dead metaphor is a m. used so much that it has
ceased to be thought of as metaphorical, like “leg of a table.”)
Metonymy
(Grk “change of name”) – name of s. is changed to something
with which it is closely associated. “The crown” for the king.
Synecdoche
(Grk “taking together”) – part signifies whole. “Three keels
crossed the water.”
Personification
or prosopopoeia. Inanimate object or abstract concept is spoken
of as though it were endowed with life.
imagery
The mental snap-shots. Look for concrete nouns.
oxymoron
Contradiction. Think paradox.
paean
Song or hymn of joy
parody
Imitation of another’s style in a way which makes that style
ridiculous (usually achieved through exaggeration)
pastiche
Patchwork of words or sentences or longer passages from
various authors or one author.
prosody
Study of versification in poetry – as in, meter, rhyme, stanza
forms. Word is often used loosely to mean paying close
attention to the way a poem is structured.
pun / quibble
Play on words (double meanings)
Pastoral
Mode in poetry which pays attention to nature and is usually
ambiguity
Drummond / AP
sprezzatura*
symbol
syntax
tautology
very idyllic (think shepherds, nymphs, singing, etc)
pose of effortlessness
Object which stands for or represents something else. Scales =
justice, Cross = Christianity, goat = lust, etc.
Word order
Same thing said again, i.e. redundant. I myself personally.
*these are cool words and you should just know them.