Poetry and Prose Terms

Allusions

can reference literary works including myths and sacred texts; other works of art including paintings and music; or people, places, or events outside the text. Because of shared knowledge about a reference, allusions create emotional or intellectual associations and understandings.

Antecedent

a word, phrase, or clause that precedes its referent. Referents may include pronouns, nouns, phrases, or clauses.

Connotations

Words with multiple meanings add nuance or complexity that can contribute to interpretations of a text.

Referents

are ambiguous if they can refer to more than one antecedent, which affects interpretation.

Understatement

minimizing an aspect of an object focuses attention on that trait and conveys a perspective about the object.

Tone

The attitude of narrators, characters, or speakers toward an idea, character, or situation emerges from their perspective and may be referred to as tone. In a text, it influences readers' interpretation of the ideas associated with those things.

Mood

the emotional atmosphere of a literary work. Do NOT confuse with tone.

Catharsis

the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition. The resolution of the anticipation, suspense, or central conflicts of a plot may be referred to as the moment of catharsis or emotional release.

Conflict

tension between competing values either within a character, known as internal or psychological, or with outside forces that obstruct a character in some way, known as external.

Dramatic situation

includes the setting and action of the plot and how that narrative develops to place characters in conflict(s), and often involves the rising or falling fortunes of a main character or set of characters.

Exposition

used to introduce background information about events, settings, characters, or other elements of a text to readers.

Flashback

a narrative structure that interrupts the chronology of the plot by going backwards in time.

Foreshadowing

a narrative structure that interrupts the chronology of the plot by giving a hint of future events.

In medias res

a narrative structure that interrupts the chronology by beginning the narrative "in the middle of things."

Irony

Situational or verbal __ is created when events or statements in a text are inconsistent with either the expectations readers bring to a text or the expectations established by the text itself.

Motif

a unified pattern of recurring objects or images used to emphasize a significant idea in large parts of or throughout a text.

Narrative Distance

refers to the physical distance, chronological distance, relationships, or emotional investment of the narrator to the events or characters of the narrative.

Narrators/Speakers

(prose) or speaker's (poetry) relate accounts to readers and establish a relationship between the text and the reader.

Pacing

the manipulation of time in a text. Several factors contribute to the speed of a narrative, including arrangement of details, frequency of events, narrative structures, syntax, the tempo or speed at which events occur, or shifts in tense and chronology in the narrative.

Paradox

occurs when seemingly contradictory elements are juxtaposed, but the contradiction—which may or may not be reconciled—can reveal a hidden or unexpected idea.

Perspective

how narrators, characters, or speakers understand their circumstances, and is informed by background, personality traits, biases, and relationships. Information included and/or not included in a text conveys the pov of characters, narrators, and/or speakers.

Plot

sequence of events in a narrative; events throughout a narrative are connected, with each event building on the others, often with a cause-and-effect relationship.

Point of view

to the position from which a narrator or speaker relates the events of a narrative. contributes to what narrators, characters, or speakers can and cannot provide in a text based on their level of involvement and intimacy with the details, events, or characters.

First-person

narrators are involved in the narrative; their relationship to the events of the plot and the other characters shapes their perspective.

Third-person

narrators are outside observers OR narrators' knowledge about events and characters may range from observational to all-knowing, which shapes their perspective. The outside perspective of narrators may not be affected by the events of the narrative.

Resolution

A character's responses to the ___ of the narrative—in their words or in their actions—reveal something about that character's own values; these responses may be inconsistent with the previously established behaviors or perspectives of that character

Setting

includes the time and place during which the events of the text occur and the social, cultural, and historical situation during which the events of the text occur.

Stream of consciousness

A narrative structure that recounts the events of a story by replicating the flow of thoughts from a character.

Suspense

a crucial plot element and is the intense feeling that a reader or an audience goes through while waiting for the outcome of certain events.

Symbol

When a material object comes to represent, or stand for, an idea or concept, it becomes a ___. an object that represents a meaning, so it is said to be symbolic or representative of that meaning. can represent different things depending on the experiences of a reader or the context of its use in a text. are so common and recurrent that many readers have associations with them prior to reading a text. Others are more contextualized and only come to represent certain things through their use in a particular text. When a character comes to represent, or stand for, an idea or concept, that character becomes symbolic; some characters have become so common they are archetypal.

Tension

a balance maintained in an artistic work between opposing forces or elements; a controlled dramatic or dynamic quality. often used to evoke emotions such as worry, anxiety, fear and stress.

Agency

a character's power, control, determining actions.

Antagonist

opposes the protagonist (main character) and may be another character, the internal conflicts of the protagonist, a collective (such as society), or nature.

Archetypes

Some patterns in dramatic situations are so common that they are considered ____, and create certain expectations for how the dramatic situations will progress and be resolved.

Contrasts

the result of shifts or juxtapositions (the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with effect) or both. Shifts may be signaled by a word, a structural convention, or punctuation. can be introduced through focus; tone; point of view; character, narrator, or speaker perspective; dramatic situation or moment; settings or time; or imagery. Shifts may emphasize contrasts between particular segments of a text. The differences highlighted by a ___ emphasize the particular traits, aspects, or characteristics important for comparison of the things being contrasted. ___ often represent conflicts in values related to character, narrator, or speaker perspectives on ideas represented by a text. ____ often represent contradictions or inconsistencies that introduce nuance, ambiguity, or contradiction into a text. As a result, makes texts more complex.

Dynamic Character

(a character who changes or develops within a text) who develops over the course of the narrative often makes choices that directly or indirectly affect the climax and/or the resolution of that narrative. Character changes can be visible and external, such as changes to health or wealth, or can be internal, psychological, or emotional changes; external changes can lead to internal changes, and vice versa. Some characters remain unchanged or are largely unaffected by the events of the narrative. Often the change in a character emerges directly from a conflict of values represented in the narrative.

Epiphany

While characters can change gradually over the course of a narrative, they can also change suddenly as the result of a moment of realization. allows a character to see things in a new light and is often directly related to a central conflict of the narrative.

Foil characters (foils)

(a character whose qualities are in contrast with the qualities of another character to highlight the traits of the other character) serve to illuminate, through contrast, the traits, attributes, or values of another character.

Protagonist

The main character in a narrative.

Diction

a writer's choice of words; a word's connotation, the
meaning of a word beyond its dictionary definition (or denotation). Feelings are often evoked through the
emotional value of a work; contributes to details

Details

ideas and information the writer chooses to reveal; _______ the writer omits are often extremely important; often contrast or speaker

Contrast

the result of shifts or juxtapositions or both; shifts may be signaled by a word, a structural
convention, or punctuation

Speaker

narrator of a poem who establishes a relationship between the reader and the text

Perspective

how speakers understand their circumstances

Imagery

when the writer appeals to the senses to create a mental picture for the reader: gustatory, olfactory, visual,
auditory, tactile, organic, and kinesthetic

Syntax

arrangement of words, including anaphora, repetition, antithesis, and parallelism

Anaphora

a deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses

Repetition

repeated words or phrases in close proximity

Antithesis

direct opposites juxtaposed in a balanced manner: "Hope is the ____________ of despair."

a figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas

Parallelism

repetition of grammatical form: "Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's . . ."

Figure of Speech

artful variations on the way ideas are expressed; language that is not literal, including allusion, apostrophe, conceit. hyperbole, irony, metaphor, onomatopoeia, oxymoron, paradox, personification, pun, simile, symbol, and understatement

Allusion

a reference to an event, a person, a place or object in history or literature

Apostrophe

when someone absent or dead or something nonhuman is addressed as if it were alive and
present and could reply

Conceit

a startling extended metaphor ingeniously worked out and developed

Hyperbole

a deliberate, often ironic exaggeration; it exaggerates, and in so doing, adds a perspective

Irony

the intended meaning of works or a situation is the opposite of their expected meaning

Metaphor

a comparison which does not use like or as; the thing being compared is the main subject, and
the thing to which it is compared is the comparison subject

Onomatopoeia

a work whose sound closely resembles the sound of the event or object named.

Oxymoron

a contradictory phrase: "a mournful optimist" and "Slavery was a living death."

Paradox

a contradiction or juxtaposition that is nevertheless true: "The last shall be the first."

Personification

giving human qualities to an inanimate object, entity, or idea

Pun

a play on words: "Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man."

Simile

a comparison using like or as

Symbol

a word or phrase that represents what it is and other things, including the meaning; it can be an
object, setting, or a character

Understatement(meiosis)

an intentional often ironic lack of emphasis; it minimizes, and, in so doing, adds a perspective about the subject

Sound devices

choices a writer makes to impact meaning through the sound of the language, including alliteration and approximate/slant rhyme

Alliteration

the repetition of consonant sound in the beginnings of nearby words

Approximate or slant rhyme

a term used for words in a rhyming pattern that has sound correspondence, but are not perfect rhymes

Tone

attitude of the speaker or author toward the subject

Meter

in poetry, the regular recurrence of a rhythmic sound pattern. The pattern is created by the repetition of a certain number
of accented or stressed syllables.

Foot

the basic unit of poetic measurement. The most useful for your analytical purposes is iamb

iamb

iamb-one unaccented syllable then one accented syllable(-/) as in expel.
Number of feet to a line:
Two=dimeter Three=trimeter Four=tetrameter Five=pentameter Six=hexameter Eight=octameter:

Free verse

unrhymed; any or mixed meters.

Blank verse

unrhymed iambic pentameter, therefore, 10 syllables per line of unaccented and then accented syllables.

Closed form

predictable patterns in the structure of lines, stanzas, meter, or rhyme

Open form

do not follow predictable patterns in the structure of lines, stanzas, meter, or rhyme

Narrative( type of poetry)

tells a story

Dramatic( type of poetry)

tells a story in monologue or dialogue

Lyric Poem

expresses thought or feeling; has a song-like quality; includes ode, elegy, and sonnet

Ode

poem in praise

Elegy

poem on death

Sonnet

14 lines, iambic pentameter, usually 8 lines with a question or idea or problem, 6 lines answer, following a strict rhyme scheme. Sections of a sonnet are often divided into the lines of poetry (which usually indicate a shift in meaning)

Adjectives and Adverbs

qualify or modify the things they
describe and affect readers' interaction with the text; contribute to sensory imagery; not only qualify or modify the things they describe but also convey a perspective
toward those things; contributes to sensory imagery.

Couplet

two lines of poetry that rhyme

Italian Sonnet

14 lines sonnet

octave + sestet (8 lines and 6 lines)

English Sonnet

14 lines sonnet

3 quatrains + couplet (3x4 lines and 2 lines)

Ballad Meter

four-line stanzas usually rhyming abcb with the first and third lines carrying four accented syllables and the second and fourth carrying three

Didactic Poem

Poetry that instructs, either in terms of morals or by providing knowledge of philosophy, religion, arts, science, or skills

Heroic Couplet

two end-stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc with the thought usually completed in the two-line unit

Epic Poem

a long poem, typically one derived from ancient oral tradition, narrating the deeds and adventures of heroic or legendary figures or the history of a nation (ex. The Odyssey)

Metonymy

a figure of speech which is characterized by the substitution of a term naming an object closely associated with the word in mind for the word itself

(ex. “Ride” = Car)

Synecdoche

a form of metaphor which in mentioning a part signifies the whole

(ex. “Wheels” = Car)