Unit 2: Sound and syntax

Most techniques for organizing sound and syntax are based on

Parallelism and repetition.

Effects of organized sound and syntax

- To clarify ideas in the text.

- To emphasize important parts of the text.

- To set a particular mood in the work.

Meter

Most oftendirectly affects mood.

Rhetorical question

A question asked not for an answer, but to achieve an effect.

Patterned repetition of sound/syntax/thought

is more common in poetry than in prose.

Repetition

Best used inspoken rather than written literature.

Feminine ending

Masculine ending

- A line ending in an unstressed syllable.

- A line ending with a stressed syllable.

Anaphora

A form of parallelism.

Alliteration

Repetition of initial consonant sounds.

Antithesis

2 adjacent phrases that are parallel syntactically but contrast in meaning

Assonance

Repetition of similar vowel sounds.

Caesura

A significant pause in the middle of a line of poetry.

Chiasmus

2nd of two adjacent phrases that reverses the 1st, inverting parallel structure.

Consonance

Repetition of terminal or internalconsonant sounds.

Enjambment

Lines flowing past the end of one line into another without a pause.

eye rhyme

Word pairs spelled alike but pronounced differently.

Internal rhyme

Rhyme occurring within a single line of poetry.

Slant rhyme

Words with similar but slightly mismatched sounds.

Rhetoric

The art of public speaking.

Christina Rossetti, "Who Has Seen the Wind?"

- Begins each stanza with a rhetorical question.

- Parallelism characterizes the overall structure.

Chavez, "Rattlesnake"

- Uses rhyme.

- Uses alliteration.

- The regular meter in the first stanza is lost in the second stanza because the speaker becomes nervous and warns the snake away-

The rough cadence of the 2nd stanza reflects this nervousness.

John Keats, "On the Grasshopper and the Cricket"

Theme: Poetry provides relief from life's hardships

Uses enjambment to add to the natural flow of the lines.

The overall content exhibits parallelism:

- It has 2 sections: grasshopper, then the cricket.

The same info. is given about each creature in the same order.

1st line of each section is the same.

- Both sections illustrate the same truth sonnet is written in iambic pentameter.

Wagoner, "March for a One-Man Band"

The term "Irrational Anthem" refers to the poem's chaotic performance.

- The meter is irregular: shifts between 2 different feet but has the same number of accents.

- The effect is march-like but off-kilter, again reinforcing the chaotic performance.

Uses onomatopoeia.

Hoey, "Foul Shot"

Creates suspense through lines "And then / And then / And then."

Uses alliteration, rhyme, parallelism (all verbs), and consonance.

Stephen Crane, "A Gray Sleeve"

Major theme is war is a disruption of normal life.

Uses simile, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance, and consonance.

His Sound devices intensify descriptions.

lend seriousness and a sense of significance.

Cacophony brings battle to life, intensifies danger.

John Updike, "Winter Ocean":

uses personification to portray the ocean's defiance

staccato rhythm emphasizes energy and movement

sounds are heavy and cacophonous

thus, ocean is rough, choppy, full of energy

Stafford, "Traveling Through the Dark"

theme is that life's moral dilemmas

often require hard decisions

title has symbolic meaning:

speaker moves through life like a traveler

moves through both real and moral darkness

right choices aren't always clear

Dr. King, "I Have a Dream"

extended metaphor of a check and a bank

to explain the freedoms and opportunities

denied African Americans

the sections beginning with "I have a dream" and "Let freedom ring"

illustrate anaphora

this famous statement is an example of antithesis:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

What is Meter?

A regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables

To describe a particular meter, you need what?

i) the poetic foot

ii) how many times it appears in a line

What is the most common meter in English?

iambic pentameter