Vocab 121-150

 Lyrical Poetry

Poetry which expresses an emotion

• Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate..."

Explanation: This sonnet expresses the poet's admiration and deep emotions for a beloved.

Meter

The pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry

• Trees by Joyce Kilmer

  “I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree.” 

  
  

  Explanation: This line follows a regular meter with alternating stressed and unstressed syllables.

  
  

Meter, Hexameter

Six feet per line of poetry

• Now had the season returned, when the nights grow colder and longer, And the retreating sun the sign of the Scorpion enters. 

  
  

  Explanation: Each line contains six metrical feet

  
  

Meter, Pentameter

Five feet per line of poetry; the most common meter in English poetry

• William Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

  “To be, or not to be, that is the question”

Meter, Scansion

The marking of meter in a poem

• Marking syllables to identify the poem’s rhythm.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which a term naming an object is substituted for another word with which it is closely associated

• Harry S. Truman

  “You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.”

  
  

  Washington is representing the U.S political system

  
  

Mock Heroic

A type of satire using elevated style out of proportion to its trivial subject

• Shrek - Rescues Fiona from the dragon in a clumsy and humorous way.

  
  

  Subverting expectations of a knightly rescue by adding comedic elements

  
  

Mood

The overall atmosphere of a work established through the description of setting and the choice of objects being described

• Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven:

  "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary..."

  
  

  Dark descriptions creates a gloomy, melancholic mood.

  
  

Motif

Recurring Image

• Not the same as a theme, but can be used to understand the theme

• The expression: “fair is foul, and foul is fair” from Macbeth could be used to show good versus evil, and how things may not always be as they are perceived.

• “The Yellow Brick Road”, to show the character’s journey in The Wizard of Oz

Myth

Traditional tale of unknown authorship involving gods and goddesses or other supernatural beings, often explaining aspects of nature

Greek Mythology

• Pandora’s Box

• Orpheus and Eurydice

• Medusa

Narrator

The person telling the story

• In The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway is the narrator

• In the Novel Passing Irene Redfield is the narrator

  
  

Naturalism

19^th Century literary movement in which characters are doomed by heredity and/or environment

• In Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family faces many challenges because of their environment

Novel of Manners

Narrative which defines social customs of a specific group, usually the upper-middle class

• Hamlet

- customs of royalty

- social expectations

Octave

An eight-line poem OR the first eight lines of an Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet

• Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare

  Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

  Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

  And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

  Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

  And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

  And every fair from fair sometime declines,

  By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed;

  
  

 Ode

a long lyrical poem, formal in style and complex in form, often written in commemoration or celebration of a special person, quality, object, or occasion

• Aphra Behn, “On Desire”

  Oh! mischievous usurper of my peace;
  Oh! soft intruder on my solitude,
  Charming disturber of my ease,
  That hast my nobler fate pursued,
  And all the glories of my life subdued.

Onomatopoeia

Use of words whose sounds imitate their meaning

Examples:

• Words like “buzz”, “splash”, “whoosh”, “boom”

Oxymoron

Figure of speech that combines contradictory terms

• Example:
  “Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate! / O any thing, of nothing first create! / O heavy lightness, serious vanity, / Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms, / Feather of lead, right smoke, cold fire, sick health / Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! / This love feel I, that feel no love in this.” (Romeo and Juliet 1.1.170-177)

  
  

Pacing

Rate of movement (tempo) in a work; may be slower with exposition and description and faster with dramatic incidence

• Example: 

  Actions scenes in books or movies are more fast paced to be exciting while the world-building parts are slower in order to build context of the work

Parable

Story with an implied or stated moral

• Examples: 

  The Tortoise and the Hare

  The Boy Who Cried Wolf

  The Prodigal Son (from the Bible)

Paradigm

A model, ideal, or standard 

• Examples:
  Archetypes and plot types that many characters and structure from different works follow.

Parallel Structures

The use of components in a sentence that are grammatically the same; or similar in their construction, sound, meaning, or meter

• Examples: 

  “I came, I saw, I conquered.” from Julius Caesar

  “The government is of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Paradox

A statement of situation that appears contradictory, but isn’t

• Example:

  “Ay truly, for the power of beauty will sooner / transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than / the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox,  but now the time gives it proof” (Hamlet 3.1.121-125)

 Parody

A rewording of a popularly recognized work to make fun of something

• Examples: 

  The movie The Starving Games a parody of The Hunger Games

Pastoral Poem

Poem which often depicts an imaginary life in the country filled with happy characters such as shepherds and nymphs; Events and dialogues are idealized, not realistic.

• Example:

  The Shepherd’s Song

  By Edmund Spenser

  Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a briar;

  Sweet is the juniper, but sharp his bough;

  Sweet is the eglantine, but pricketh near;

  Sweet is the fir bloom, but his branch is rough.

  Sweet is the cypress, but his rind is tough,

  Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill;

  Sweet is the broom-flower, but yet sour enough;

  And sweet is moly, but his root is ill.

  
  

Periodic Sentence

A sentence which does not complete its thought until the very end due to introductory modifiers, interrupting modifiers, etc.

• Example:

  Despite the heavy rain, the howling wind, and the treacherous roads, they arrived safely at their destination.

Persona

The mask or voice of the author in a work

• Example: 

  In Catcher in the Rye, the author Salinger  uses the mask/voice of a teenage boy to tell the story.

Personification

A specific type of metaphor in which inanimate objects are given human qualities

• Example:

  Charles Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities"

  “The wood saws howled, and the planes groaned aloud on the blocks of wood. The guillotine hissed in the morning air.”

Picaresque

Novel which usually presents the life story of quick-witted rogues and their adventures, often in episodic style

• Example:

  “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain

Plot

Sequence of events

• Any story that has multiple points connecting throughout it.

Plot, Climax

The decisive or turning point in a story or play when the action changes course and begins to move towards resolution

• Example:

  When Katniss kills President Coin in Snows public execution in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay