AP Lit Poetry Terms!

alliteration

alliteration

the repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the beginnings of words. “Gnus never know pneumonia” is an example of ________ since, despite the spellings, all four words begin with the “n” sound.

allusion

a reference in a work of literature to something outside the work, especially to a well–known historical or literary event, person, or work. When T.S. Eliot writes, "To have squeezed the universe into a ball" in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," he is ________ing to the lines "Let us roll our strength and all/ Our sweetness up into one ball" in Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress."

antithesis

a figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas, as in “Man proposes; God disposes.” ________ is a balancing of one term against another for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness. The second line of the following couplet by Alexander Pope is an example of ________: The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, And wretches hang that jury–men may dine.

apostrophe

a figure of speech in which someone (usually, but not always absent), some abstract quality, or a nonexistent personage is directly addressed as though present. Following are two examples of ________: Papa Above! Regard a Mouse. –Emily Dickinson Milton! Thou shouldst be living in this hour; England hath need of thee . . .. –William Wordsworth

assonance

the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds. “A land laid waste with all its young men slain” repeats the same “a” sound in “laid,” “waste,” and “slain.”

ballad meter

a four–line stanza rhymed abcd with four feet in lines one and three and three feet in lines two and four. O mother, mother make my bed. O make it soft and narrow. Since my love died for me today, I’ll die for him tomorrow.

blank verse

unrhymed iambic pentameter. ________ ________ is the meter of most of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as that of Milton’s Paradise Lost.

cacophony

a harsh, unpleasant combination of sounds or tones. It may be an unconscious flaw in the poet’s music, resulting in harshness of sound or difficulty of articulation, or it may be used consciously for effect, as Browning and Eliot often use it. See, for example, the following line from Browning’s “Rabbi Ben Ezra”: Irks care the crop–full bird? Frets doubt the maw–crammed beast?

caesura

a pause, usually near the middle of a line of verse, usually indicated by the sense of the line, and often greater than the normal pause. For example, one would naturally pause after “human’ in the following line from Alexander Pope: To err is human, to forgive divine.

conceit

an ingenious and fanciful notion or conception, usually expressed through an elaborate analogy, and pointing to a striking parallel between two seemingly dissimilar things. A ________ may be a brief metaphor, but it also may form the framework of an entire poem. A famous example of a ________ occurs in John Donne’s poem “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” in which he compares his soul and his wife’s to legs of a mathematical compass.

consonance

the repetition of similar consonant sounds in a group of words. The term usually refers to words in which the ending consonants are the same but the vowels that precede them are different. ________ is found in the following pairs of words: “add” and “read,” “bill and ball,” and “born” and “burn.”

couplet

a two–line stanza, usually with end–rhymes the same.

devices of sound

the techniques of deploying the sound of words, especially in poetry. Among ________ ________ ________ are rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia. The ________ are used for many reasons, including to create a general effect of pleasant or of discordant sound, to imitate another sound, or to reflect a meaning.

diction

the use of words in a literary work. ________ may be described as formal (the level of usage common in serious books and formal discourse), informal (the level of usage found in the relaxed but polite conversation of cultivated people), colloquial (the everyday usage of a group, possibly including terms and constructions accepted in that group but not universally acceptable), or slang (a group of newly coined words which are not acceptable for formal usage as yet).

didactic poem

a poem which is intended primarily to teach a lesson. The distinction between ________ ________ and non–________ ________ is difficult to make and usually involves a subjective judgement of the author’s purpose on the part of the critic or the reader. Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism is a good example of didactic poetry.

dramatic poem

a poem which employs a dramatic form or some element or elements of dramatic techniques as a means of achieving poetic ends. The dramatic monologue is an example.

elegy

a sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet’s meditations upon death or another solemn theme. Examples include Thomas Gray’s “________ Written in a Country Churchyard”; Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam; and Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”

end–stopped

a line with a pause at the end. Lines that end with a period, a comma, a colon, a semicolon, an exclamation point, or a question mark are – lines. True ease in writing comes from Art, not Chance, As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

enjambment

the continuation of the sense and grammatical construction from one line of poetry to the next. Milton’s Paradise Lost is notable for its use of ________, as seen in the following lines: . . . .Or if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d Fast by the oracle of God, . . . .

extended metaphor

an implied analogy, or comparison, which is carried throughout a stanza or an entire poem. In “The Bait,” John Donne compares a beautiful woman to fish bait and men to fish who want to be caught by the woman. Since he carries these comparisons all the way through the poem, these are considered “________ ________.”

euphony

a style in which combinations of words pleasant to the ear predominate. Its opposite is cacophony. The following lines from John Keats’ Endymion are ________ous: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

eye rhyme

rhyme that appears correct from spelling, but is half-rhyme or slant rhyme from the pronunciation. Examples include “watch” and “match,” and “love” and “move.”

feminine rhyme

a rhyme of two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed, as “waken” and “forsaken” and “audition” and “rendition.” ________ ________ is sometimes called double rhyme.

figurative language

writing that uses figures of speech (as opposed to literal language or that which is actual or specifically denoted) such as metaphor, irony, and simile. ________ ________ uses words to mean something other than their literal meaning. “The black bat night has flown” is ________, with the metaphor comparing night and bat. “Night is over” says the same thing without ________ ________.

free verse

poetry which is not written in a traditional meter but is still rhythmical. The poetry of Walt Whitman is perhaps the best–known example of ________ ________.

heroic couplet

two end–stopped iambic pentameter lines rhymed aa, bb, cc with the thought usually completed in the two–line unit. See the following example from Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock: But when to mischief mortals bend their will, How soon they find fit instruments of ill!

hyperbole

a deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration. It may be used for either serious or comic effect. Macbeth is using ________ in the following lines: . . . .No; this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.

imagery

the images of a literary work; the sensory details of a work; the figurative language of a work. ________ has several definitions, but the two that are paramount are the visual auditory, or tactile images evoked by the words of a literary work or the images that figurative language evokes. When an AP question asks you to discuss ________, you should look especially carefully at the sensory details and the metaphors and similes of a passage. Some diction is also ________, but not all diction evokes sensory responses.

irony

the contrast between actual meaning and the suggestion of another meaning. Verbal ________ is a figure of speech in which the actual intent is expressed in words which carry the opposite meaning. ________ is likely to be confused with sarcasm, but it differs from sarcasm in that it is usually lighter, less harsh in its wording though in effect probably more cutting because of its indirectness. The ability to recognize ________ is one of the surer tests of intelligence and sophistication. Among the devices by which ________ is achieved are hyperbole and understatement.

internal rhyme

rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end. The following lines contain ________ ________: Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping. . suddenly there came a tapping . . . .

lyric poem

any short poem that presents a single speaker who expresses thoughts and feelings. Love ________s are common, but ________ ________s have also been written on subjects as different as religion and reading. Sonnets and odes are ________ ________.

masculine rhyme

rhyme that falls on the stressed and concluding syllables of the rhyme-words. Examples include “keep” and “sleep,” “glow” and “no,” and “spell” and “impel.”

metaphor

a figurative use of language in which a comparison is expressed without the use of a comparative term like “as,” “like,” or “than.” A simile would say, “night is like a black bat”; a ________ would say, “the black bat night.”

meter

the repetition of a regular rhythmic unit in a line of poetry. The ________ of a poem emphasizes the musical quality of the language and often relates directly to the subject matter of the poem. Each unit of ________ is known as a foot.

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. In this way we commonly speak of the king as the “crown,” an object closely associated with kingship.

mixed metaphors

the mingling of one metaphor with another immediately following with which the first is incongruous. Lloyd George is reported to have said, “I smell a rat. I see it floating in the air. I shall nip it in the bud.”

narrative poem

a non–dramatic poem which tells a story or presents a narrative, whether simple or complex, long or short. Epics and ballads are examples of ________ ________.

octave

an eight–line stanza. Most commonly, ________ refers to the first division of an Italian sonnet.

onomatopoeia

the use of words whose sound suggests their meaning. Examples are “buzz,” “hiss,” or “honk.”

oxymoron

a form of paradox that combines a pair of contrary terms into a single expression. This combination usually serves the purpose of shocking the reader into awareness. Examples include “wise fool,” “sad joy,” and “eloquent silence.”

paradox

a situation or action or feeling that appears to be contradictory but on inspection turns out to be true or at least to make sense. The following lines from one of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets include ________es: Take me to you, imprison me, for I Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

parallelism

a similar grammatical structure within a line or lines of poetry. ________ is characteristic of Asian poetry, being notably present in the Psalms, and it seems to be the controlling principle of the poetry of Walt Whitman, as in the following lines: . . . .Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them. Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

paraphrase

a restatement of an ideas in such a way as to retain the meaning while changing the diction and form. A ________ is often an amplification of the original for the purpose of clarity.

personification

a kind of metaphor that gives inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics.

poetic foot

a group of syllables in verse usually consisting of one accented syllable and one or two unaccented syllables associated with it. The most common type of ________ are as follows: iambic u / trochaic / u anapestic u u / dactylic / u u pyrrhic u u spondaic / / The following poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge illustrates all of these feet except the pyrrhic ________: Trochee trips from long to short. From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot! yet ill able Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable. Iambics march from short to long; With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.

pun

a play on words that are identical or similar in sound but have sharply diverse meanings. ________s can have serious as well as humorous uses. An example is Thomas Hood’s:" They went and told the sexton and the sexton tolled the bell.”

quatrain

a four–line stanza with any combination of rhymes.

refrain

a group of words forming a phrase or sentence and consisting of one or more lines repeated at intervals in a poem, usually at the end of a stanza.

rhyme

close similarity or identity of sound between accented syllables occupying corresponding positions in two or more lines of verse. For a true ________, the vowels in the accented syllables must be preceded by different consonants, such as “fan” and “ran.”

rhyme royal

a seven–line stanza of iambic pentameter rhymed ababbcc, used by Chaucer and other medieval poets.

rhythm

the recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables. The presence of ________ic patterns lends both pleasure and heightened emotional response to the listener or reader.

sarcasm

a type of irony in which a person appears to be praising something but is actually insulting it. Its purpose is to injure or to hurt.

satire

writing that seeks to arouse a reader’s disapproval of an object by ridicule. ________ is usually comedy that exposes errors with an eye to correct vice and folly. ________ is often found in the poetry of Alexander Pope.

scansion

a system for describing the meter of a poem by identifying the number and the type(s) of feet per line. Following are the most common types of meter: monometer one foot per line dimeter two feet per line trimeter three feet per line tetrameter four feet per line pentameter five feet per line hexameter six feet per line heptameter seven feet per line octameter eight feet per line Using these terms, then, a line consisting of five iambic feet is called “iambic pentameter,” while a line consisting of four anapestic feet is called “anapestic tetrameter.” In order to determine the meter of a poem, the lines are “scanned,” or marked to indicate stressed and unstressed syllables which are then divided into feet. The following line has been scanned: u / u / u / u / u / And still she slept an az ure– lid ded sleep

sestet

a six–line stanza. Most commonly, ________ refers to the second division of an Italian sonnet.

simile

a directly expressed comparison; a figure of speech comparing two objects, usually with “like,” “as,” or “than.” It is easier to recognize a ________ than a metaphor because the comparison is explicit: my love is like a fever; my love is deeper than a well. (The plural of “________” is “________s” not “________ies.”)

sonnet

normally a fourteen–line iambic pentameter poem. The conventional Italian, or Petrarchan ________ is rhymed abba, abba, cde, cde; the English, or Shakespearean, ________ is rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

stanza

usually a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme.

strategy (or rhetorical strategy)

the management of language for a specific effect. The ________ or ________ ________ of a poem is the planned placing of elements to achieve an effect. The ________ ________ of most love poems is deployed to convince the loved one to return to the speaker’s love. By appealing to the loved one’s sympathy, or by flattery, or by threat, the lover attempts to persuade the loved one to love in return.

structure

the arrangement of materials within a work; the relationship of the parts of a work to the whole; the logical divisions of a work. The most common units of ________ in a poem are the line and stanza.

style

the mode of expression in language; the characteristic manner of expression of an author. Many elements contribute to ________, and if a question calls for a discussion of ________ or of “________stic techniques,” you can discuss diction, syntax, figurative language, imagery, selection of detail, sound effects, and tone, using the ones that are appropriate.

symbol

something that is simultaneously itself and a sign of something else. For example, winter, darkness, and cold are real things, but in literature they are also likely to be used as ________s of death.

synecdoche

a form of metaphor which in mentioning a part signifies the whole. For example, we refer to “foot soldiers” for infantry and “field hands” for manual laborers who work in agriculture.

syntax

the ordering of words into patterns or sentences. If a poet shifts words from the usual word order, you know you are dealing with an older style of poetry or a poet who wants to shift emphasis onto a particular word.

tercet

a stanza of three lines in which each line ends with the same rhyme.

terza rima

a three–line stanza rhymed aba, bcb, cdc,etc. Dante’s Divine Comedy is written in ________ ________.

theme

the main thought expressed by a work. In poetry, it is the abstract concept which is made concrete through its representation in person, action, and image in the work.

tone

the manner in which an author expresses his or her attitude; the intonation of the voice that expresses meaning. (Remember that the “voice” need not be that of the poet.) ________ is described by adjectives, and the possibilities are nearly endless. Often a single adjective will be enough, and ________ may change from stanza to stanza or even line to line. ________ is the result of allusion, diction, figurative language, imagery, irony, symbol, syntax, and style.

understatement

the opposite of hyperbole. It is a kind of irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is. For example, Macbeth, having been nearly hysterical after killing Duncan, tells Lenox, “’Twas a rough night.”

villanelle

a nineteen–line poem divided into five tercets and a final quatrain. The ________ uses only two rhymes which are repeated as follows: aba, aba, aba, aba, aba, abaa. Line 1 is repeated entirely to form lines 6, 12, and 18, and line 3 is repeated entirely to form lines 9, 15, and 19; thus, eight of the nineteen lines are refrain. Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” is an example of a ________.