Exam 1 Intro to Lit

Poetry

Language sung/spoken/chanted/written in a pattern that emphasizes relations of words through rhythm or meter (words based on sound & sense)

Form

structural design, organization, or patterning of a text

Content

matter or meaning of a text

Describe the features of a sonnet

-14 Lines
-Rhyme scheme (Petrarchan or Shakespearean)
-Volta
-Meter
-Usually "courtly love" where speaker writes to an "out of reach" woman

Shakespearean sonnet

3 quatrains & 1 couplet

Petrarchan sonnet

2 quatrains (AKA 1 octave) & 1 sestet

Describe the features of a villanelle

-19 lines
-6 stanzas
-5 tercets (ABA) & 1 quatrain (ABAA)
-2 Refrains
-Iambic Pentameter

Describe the features of the elegy

-Sorrow, admiration, celebration, and closure
-About death of a figure/friend or solemn subject
-"Pastoral elegy" from when a shepherd died & others mourned & celebrated w/ elegy to cope

Free verse

doesn't have a regular meter or rhyme scheme, has irregular line lengths

Who created free verse?

Walt Whitman - to reach the common people and wrote the "American Bible" Leaves of Grass as the 'poet of American democracy'

Blank verse

unrhymed iambic pentameter

Foot

One unit of meter

Meter

Pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (synonym for rhythm)

Iamb

A foot that is specifically unstressed followed by stressed

Pentameter

A line made up of 5 feet

Iambic Pentameter

-Line of 5 iambs
-5 feet of unstressed —> stressed pattern

Stress

syllable with greater emphasis than others

Stanza

lines grouped together; stanzas are separated by breaks between them

Couplet

set of 2 lines

Tercet

set of 3 lines

Quatrain

set of 4 lines

Sestet

set of 6 lines

Octave

set of 8 lines

Refrain

repeated line in poetry

Volta

Change/turn in the idea of a poem

Slant rhyme / half rhyme

words that almost rhyme but don't quite

Eye rhyme

rhymes in your eye but not your ear (ie. love and prove)

Enjambment

no punctuation at the end of lines - jammed together and doesn't allow for breaths

End-stopped

punctuation at the end of a line, allows to take a breath

Caesura

punctuation in the middle of a line

Assonance

Repeated vowel sounds over line(s)

Consonance

Repeated consonant sounds in various places of word(s) / line(s)

Alliteration

Same consonant sounds in beginning of words

Anaphora

Repeated word(s) at beginning of lines

Apostrophe

speaker directly addresses someone or thing that's absent or outside of text (ie. "Which are you?")

Paradox

2 conflicting ideas put together to express truth

Personification

non-human thing is given human characteristics

Metaphor

object is described as being the same as another unrelated thing (does not use like or as)

Simile

comparison using "like" or "as"