AP Lit Sonnet Vocab

Acrostic

A poem in which the first letter of each line spells out a word, name, or phrase when read vertically

Apostrophe

A type of personification some abstract idea is directly addressed as it is a person who is present.

Ballad

A popular narrative song passed down orally

Blank verse

A poem with irregular rhyme written in iambic pentameter.  Differs from free verse in that it does have a regular meter.

Caesura

A pause in the middle of a line of poetry.

Conceit (Metaphysical Conceit)

an elaborate extended metaphor between two highly dissimilar things, the overarching image at the center of the poem.

Concrete Poetry

Verse that emphasizes nonlinquistic elements in its meaning such as a typeface that creates a visual image of the topic.

Couplet

A pair of succcessive rhyming lines, usually of the same length. “closed” when the lines form a grammatical unit.

Dramatic monologue

a poem in which an imagined pseaker addresses a silent listener, usually not the reader.

Elegy

Melancholy poem that laments its subject’s death and ends in consolation.

Enjambment

The continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza

Epic

A long narrative poem in which a heroic protagonist engages in an action of great mythic or historical significance.

Epigraph

a quote from anotehr poem or work of literature which is included at the top of the poem or the first page of a novel.

Epigram

A pithy, often witty, poem.

Epitaph

A short poem intended for (or imagined as) an inscription on a tombstone and often serving as a brief elegy.

Free verse

Nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech. Does not adhere to a metrical plan in their composition.

Internal rhyme

Rhyme that occurs within a line, rather than at the end.

Lyric

Originally a composition meant for musical accompaniment. The term refers to a short poem in which the poet, the poet’s persona, or another speaker expresses personal feelings.

Octave

8 line stanza/poem

Ode

A formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea.

Pastoral

Verse in the tradition of Theocritus (3 BCE), who wrote idealized accounts of shepherds and their loves living simple, virtuous lives in Arcadia, a mountainous region of Greece.

Quatrain

4 line stanza

Refrain

phrase/line repeated at intervals especially at the end of a stanza.

Romance

French in origin, a genre of long narrative poetry about medieval courtly culture and secret love

Sestet

A six-line stanza, or the final six lines of a 14-line Italian or Petrarchan sonnet.

Sonnet

A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme

English/Shakespearean Sonnet

The rhyme scheme of a Shakesperean Sonnet is ababcdcdefefgg. A Shakespearean Sonnet consists of three quatrains, four line stanzas, and a couplet. Each quatrain is one unit of thought in the poem, similar to a paragraph in prose. The ending couplet comments on the preceding three quatrains.

Petrarchan Sonnet

The rhyme scheme in a Petrarchan Sonnet is abbaabbacdcdcd. In a Petrarchan or Italian Sonnet, the first eight lines are related. Line 9 is called “the turn,” signifying a change in rhyme pattern and a change in subject matter.

Spenserian Sonnet:

The rhyme scheme of a Spenserian Sonnet is ababbcbccdcdee. It resembles the Italian Sonnet’s rhyme scheme and the English Sonnet’s 12-line problem, 2-line solution format.

Stanza

A grouping of lines separated from others in a poem. In modern free verse, the stanza, like a prose paragraph, can be used to mark a shift in mood, time, or thought.

Tercet

A poetic unit of three lines, rhymed or unrhymed.

Terza rima

An Italian stanzaic form A concluding couplet rhymes with the penultimate line of the last tercet

Verse

As a mass noun, poetry in general; as a regular noun, a line of poetry. Typically used to refer to poetry that possesses more formal qualities.

Villanelle

A French verse form consisting of nineteen lines in five tercets followed by a quatrain with the rhyme scheme (based on two rhymes) aba aba aba aba aba abaa.  The first line of the first tercet is repeated as the last line of the second and fourth tercets while the thir line of the first tercet is reated as the last line of the third and fifth tercets. Finally, these two lines are repeated as couplet in the last two lines of the quatrain.

Volta

A rhetorical shift or dramatic change in thought and/or emotion. Turns are seen in all types of poetry, but the volta is most closely associated with the sonnet.

Acatalectic

A line which has the complete number of feet and syllables

Catalectic

A line with incomplete meter, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot

Hypercatalectic

A line which has an extra syllable added to the last dipody (foot of a verse).

Foot

a rhythmic unit into which a line of metrical verse is devided