Grade 8 English – Week 4: Poetry Analysis Vocabulary

A set of vocabulary flashcards covering key literary terms, authors, and poetic devices from the Grade 8 Week 4 lesson on analyzing Afro-Asian poetry.

Character

A person, animal, being, creature, or thing that takes part in the action of a story.

Panchatantra

An ancient Indian collection of inter-woven animal fables told in prose and poetry.

Climax

The turning point of a story, where the main conflict reaches its highest intensity.

Character vs. Society

An external conflict in which a character struggles against social customs, traditions, or laws.

Chinua Achebe

Nigerian author of the novel “Things Fall Apart.”

Poetry

The oldest literary form that expresses human experience through rhythmic, figurative, and structural language.

Poem

A piece of literature that uses poetic elements—sense, sound, and structure—to convey meaning and emotion.

Trope

A catch-all term for figures of speech that say one thing while imaginatively implying another.

Metaphor

An implied comparison between two unlike things that share a common quality. (Example: “All the world is a stage.”)

Simile

A stated comparison using “like” or “as” between two unlike things. (Example: “as big as the mountain”).

Personification

A figure of speech that gives human qualities to inanimate objects or abstractions. (Example: “The sky is crying.”)

Antithesis

A figure of speech that uses parallel structure to express opposite or contrasting ideas. (Example: “When love was murdered, hate was born.”)

Tone

The author’s or persona’s attitude toward the subject, shown through word choice, punctuation, and sentence structure.

Mood

The atmosphere of a literary work; the overall feeling it evokes in the reader.

Rhyme

The repetition of similar sounds in two or more words, typically at the ends of lines.

Rhyme Scheme

The pattern of end-rhymes in a poem, labeled with letters such as AABB or ABAB.

Meter

The basic rhythmic structure of a poetic line, defined by the number of syllables and the pattern of stresses.

Foot (poetic)

The smallest rhythmic unit in a line of poetry, consisting of a set pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Iamb

A metrical foot with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (da-DUM).

Trochee

A metrical foot with a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (DUM-da).

Dactyl

A metrical foot with one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables (DUM-da-da).

Anapest

A metrical foot with two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable (da-da-DUM).

Tetrameter

A poetic line containing four metrical feet.

Pentameter

A poetic line containing five metrical feet.

Hexameter

A poetic line containing six metrical feet.

Heptameter

A poetic line containing seven metrical feet.

Octameter

A poetic line containing eight metrical feet.

Rabindranath Tagore

Indian poet and first Asian Nobel Laureate in Literature (1913); author of “The Tame Bird and the Free Bird.”

Li Po (Li Bai)

Celebrated Chinese poet; wrote “Down from the Mountain.”

David Diop

Senegalese poet known for “Africa, my Africa,” exploring colonialism and African resilience.

Afro-Asian Poem

A poem originating from African and Asian cultures that reflects their beliefs, history, and experiences.