Poetic Terms and Literary Devices

Flashcards defining key terms and concepts related to poetic devices and literary analysis from the lecture notes.

Figurative language

Language that is not intended to be taken literally, is more connotative than denotative, or is stylistically marked and deviating from conventional usage.

Allegory

A narrative with two levels of meaning, one stated and one unstated, where the underlying meaning may have theological, moral, or political significance.

Alliteration

The repetition of sounds in a sequence of words.

Apostrophe

A direct address to an absent or otherwise unresponsive entity, such as someone or something dead, imaginary, abstract, or inanimate.

Assonance

The repetition of vowel-sounds.

Beat

A stressed (or accented) syllable.

Caesura

An audible pause internal to a line, usually in the middle.

End-stopped line

A line that ends with a punctuation mark and whose meaning is complete.

Connotation

The implied or suggested meaning associated with a word or phrase.

Consonance

The repetition of consonant-sounds.

Denotation

The dictionary meaning of a word.

Diction

Word choice, specifically the 'class' or 'kind' of words chosen.

Enjambed line

A 'run-on' line that carries over into the next line to complete its meaning.

Foot

The basic unit of accentual-syllabic and quantitative meter, usually combining a stress with one or more unstressed syllables.

Form

The structure of a poem, including its line lengths, line breaks, meter, stanza lengths, and rhyme scheme.

Free verse

Poetry in which the rhythm does not repeat regularly.

Imagery

The visual (or other sensory) pictures used to render a description more vivid and immediate.

Irony

A rhetorical device involving contradictions of expectation or knowledge, divided into three primary types: verbal, situational, and dramatic.

Verbal irony

A type of irony where a speaker says one thing but means something else.

Situational irony

A type of irony where the actual result of an event or process is different from what was expected.

Dramatic irony

A type of irony where the reader or audience knows information that the speaker or characters do not.

Lyric poem

A non-narrative poem, often with songlike qualities, that expresses the speaker's personal emotions and feelings.

Metaphor

A comparison between distinct things or the application of a name or description to something to which it is not literally applicable, without using 'like' or 'as'.

Meter

A regularly repeating rhythm in lines of verse, divided for convenience into feet.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing that is commonly and often physically associated with it.

Onomatopoeia

The use of language that sounds like the thing or action it describes.

Paradox

A situation or phrase that appears to be contradictory but that also contains some measure of truth.

Personification

The endowment of inanimate objects, animals, or abstract concepts with animate or human-living qualities.

Prosody

The systematic study of meter, rhyme, rhythm, and intonation of language found in poetry and prose, or the study of versification.

Refrain

A phrase or line recurring at intervals.

Rhyme scheme

The pattern of rhymes falling at the ends of a poem's lines.

Rhythm

The patterns of stresses, unstressed syllables, and pauses in language.

Simile

A figure of speech that compares two distinct things by using a connective word such as 'like' or 'as'.

Speaker

The 'I' of a poem, equivalent to the 'narrator' of a prose text.

Stanza

A 'paragraph' of a poem consisting of a group of lines separated by extra white space from other groups of lines.

Symbol

An image that stands for something larger and more complex, often something abstract, such as an idea or a set of attitudes.

Symbolism

The serious and relatively sustained use of symbols to represent or suggest other things or ideas, which does not depend on narrative.

Synecdoche

A figure of speech in which a part of an object or idea is used to represent the whole.

Syntax

The arrangement of language and order of words used to convey the poem's content.

Tone

The speaker's or author's attitude toward the reader, addressee, or subject matter.