francais

Poésie lyrique

A genre of poetry written primarily in the first person ('je') where the poet expresses personal emotions, sensations, and impressions (such as melancholy, nostalgia, or the pain of absence) and celebrates the beauty of language.

Alexandrin

A classic French verse line consisting of exactly 12 syllables, traditionally divided by a central pause.

Décasyllabe

A verse line composed of exactly 10 syllables.

Octosyllabe

A verse line composed of exactly 8 syllables.

Quatrain

A poetic stanza composed of 4 lines of verse.

Tercet

A poetic stanza composed of 3 lines of verse.

Sizain

A poetic stanza composed of 6 lines of verse.

Hémistiche

One half of a poetic line of verse, especially on either side of the caesura in an alexandrine.

Césure

The formal pause or cut dividing a line of verse into two distinct hemistichs.

Rimes plates

A paired rhyme scheme following the pattern AA BB CC.

Rimes croisées

An alternating rhyme scheme following the pattern ABAB.

Rimes embrassées

An enclosed rhyme scheme following the pattern ABBA.

Règle du « e » muet

The versification rule stating that a final 'e' is pronounced before a consonant, elided before a vowel, and never counted at the end of a line.

Enjambement

A versification technique where a syntactic phrase continues past the end of one verse into the following line without a strong pause at the break.

Allitération

The stylistic repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds within a verse or sentence.

Assonance

The stylistic repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds within a verse or sentence.

Dénotation

The primary, objective, literal definition of a word or expression as found in a dictionary.

Connotation

The secondary, subjective associations, feelings, values, or judgments (meliorative or pejorative) attached to a word.

Romantisme

A 19th-century literary and artistic movement that fled modernity and materialism to seek refuge in untamed nature, the past, and love, portraying humanity as subordinate or contemplative before imposing natural landscapes.

Impressionnisme

A late 19th-century art movement influenced by the Industrial Revolution and the Republic that broke away from classical painting to capture everyday life, atmospheric light, and personal perception.

Paysage intérieur

A poetic concept introduced by Charles Baudelaire where sensory impressions (such as scent) trigger an imagined, dreamlike mental landscape expressing deep inner desires rather than depicting external reality.

Attribut du C.O.D.

An essential verbal complement that expresses a quality, state, or designation of the direct object (C.O.D.) through an attributive verb, which cannot be removed without fundamentally altering sentence meaning.

Verbes attributifs du C.O.D.

Verbs expressing judgment (croire, estimer, trouver, penser) or transformation/designation (rendre, faire, élire, nommer, appeler) that introduce an object complement (attribut du C.O.D.).

Symbolisme

A late 19th-century literary movement represented by Verlaine and Rimbaud that preferred the dreamlike, ambiguous, and mysterious to concrete reality, seeking rare sensations beyond physical appearances.

Accord du participe passé avec « être »

The grammatical rule stating that a past participle used with the auxiliary 'être' always agrees in gender and number with the subject of the verb.

Accord du participe passé avec « avoir »

The grammatical rule stating that a past participle used with the auxiliary 'avoir' never agrees with the subject, but agrees in gender and number with the direct object (C.O.D.) only if that C.O.D. is placed before the verb.

Vers libre

Poetic verse that does not adhere to classical constraints of fixed syllable counts or rhyme schemes.

Verset

A long, rhythmically cadenced poetic line characteristic of modern and contemporary poetry that lacks fixed meter.

Poème en prose

A poetic composition written in paragraphs of prose rather than lines of verse while preserving poetic rhythm, imagery, and musicality.

Reprise anaphorique

A noun, noun phrase, or pronoun used to refer back to an entity already mentioned in a text to avoid repetition, enrich meaning, or express a perspective.

Anaphore (figure de style)

A rhetorical device consisting of repeating the exact same word or group of words at the beginning of successive verses, phrases, or clauses.