IB English HL Poetry terms

Allegory

A description that has a second, usually moral meaning.

Accent

a stressed syllable or ictus; "When shall we three meet again?"

Alliteration

using the same consonant to start two or more stressed words or syllables in a phrase or verse line, or using a series of vowels to begin such words or syllables in sequence; Tyger, Tyger burning bright;

Allusion

a reference to a historical, mythic, or literary person, place, event, movement, etc.; Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

Anadiplosis

a repetition of the last word in a line or segment at the start of the next line,or segment; My conscience hath a thousand several tongues/And every tongue brings in a several tale, /And every tale condemns me for a villain.-Shakespeare, Richard III.

Anaphora

Repetition of the same word or words from the beginning of sentences, lines, or phrases.

Antithesis

the juxtaposition of contrasting words or ideas to give a feeling of balance

Apostrophe

an exclamatory rhetorical figure of speech, when a speaker or writer breaks off and directs speech to an imaginary person or abstract quality or idea.

Ars Poetica

A poem about poetry.

Assonance

the rhyming of a word with another in one or more of their accented vowels, but not in their consonants; sometimes called vowel rhyme. To Autumn by John Keats the line : "Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;"

Caesura

a stop or pause in a metrical line, often marked by punctuation or by a grammatical boundary, such as a phrase or clause; To be or not to be || that is the question. A cut or break in a line, could be a comma or a semicolon.

Cacophony

harsh-sounding language; Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll/'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe/All mimsy were the borogoves,/And the mome raths outgrabe.

Chiasmus

repetition of any group of verse elements in reverse order; Samuel Johnsons "For we that live to please, must please to live."

Consonance

The repetition of consonant sounds NOT in the beginning of a word (which would be alliteration). Enforces relation.

Enjambment

the running over of a sentence or phrase from one verse to the next, without terminal punctuation, hence not end-stopped. Such verses can be called run-on lines.

Epic

an extended narrative poem with a heroic or superhuman protagonist engaged in an action of great significance in a vast setting (often including the underworld and engaging the gods). Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene

Euphony

a pleasing harmony of sounds.

Extended Figure

An apostrophe, simile, metaphor, etc. which is developed throughout a poem.

Hyperbole

exaggeration beyond reasonable credence. An example is the close of John Donne's holy sonnet "Death, thou shalt die!"

Incantation

Use of words to create an archaic effect (such as in Macbeth).

Incremental repetition

Repetition of succeeding stanzas with small substitutions of changes.

Internal Rhyme

normally end-rhyme, that is, lines of verse characterized by the consonance of terminal words or syllables. Rhymed words conventionally share all sounds following the word's last stressed syllable. Thus "tenacity" and "mendacity" rhyme, but not "jaundice" and "John does," or "tomboy" and "calm bay." The rhyme scheme is usually the pattern of end-rhymes in a stanza, each rhyme being encoded by a letter of the alphabet from a onwards.

Metaphor

a comparison that is made literally, either by a verb (for example, John Keats' "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" from his "Ode on a Grecian Urn")

Metonymy

figure of speech in which the poet substitutes a word normally associated with something for the term usually naming that thing; "big-sky country" for western Canada. Substitutes the name of one thing with something closely associated with it.

Motif

an image or action in a literary work that is shared by other works and that is sometimes thought to belong to a collective unconsciousness; "Nevermore" in Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven

Onomatopoeia

an instance where the sound of a word directly imitates its meaning (for example, "choo-choo," "hiss")

Oxymoron

an expression impossible in fact but not necessarily self-contradictory, such as John Milton's description of hell as "darkness visible" in Book I of Paradise Lost.

Periphrasis

using a wordy phrase to describe something for which one term exists; "death;s other self" for "sleep"

Personification

an anthropomorphic figure of speech where the poet describes an abstraction, a thing, or a non-human form as if it were a person. William Blake's "O Rose, thou art sick!"

Portmanteau

Lewis Carrolls phrase for a neologism created by combining two existing words. His Jabberwocky for example, fuses "lithe" and a term like "slight" or "slimy" to produce "slithy" in the line "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves."

Refrain

A repeated line, phrase, sentence, etc. which appears throughout a poem

Rhetorical Poetry

Poetry written in superfluous language with the intention of being overdramatic.

Rhyme

normally end-rhyme, that is, lines of verse characterized by the consonance of terminal words or syllables; Silent, silent Night;Quench the holy light/Of thy torches bright.

Rhythm

an audible metrical pattern inside verse boundaries established by the pause; By the shore of Gitchie Gumee,/By the shining Big-Sea-Water,/At the doorway of his wigwam,/In the pleasant Summer morning,/Hiawatha stood and waited./

Simile

a comparison made with "as," "like," or "than." "O My Loves like a red, red rose."

Stanza

a group of verses separated from other such groups in a poem and often sharing a common rhyme scheme; Do not go gentle into that good night,/Old age should burn and rave at close of day;/Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Symbol

something in the world of the senses, including an action, that manifests (reveals) or signifies (is a sign for or a pointer to) a thing, or what is abstract, otherworldly, or numinous; Any image or action termed a Jungian archetype is also symbolic in that it manifests something in the collective unconscious of human beings.

Synaesthesia

A blending of sensations, describing one kind of sensation in terms of another, thus mixing senses. "How sweet the sound."

Synecdoche

a figure of speech where the part stands for the whole (for example, "I've got wheels" for "I have a car").

Terzain

a stanza of three lines; Lewis Turco's Terzanelle in Thunderweather

Theme

a prevailing idea in a work, but sometimes not explicitly stated, as in Ogden Nash's "Candy is dandy, / But liquor is quicker," which is about neither candy nor liquor.

Tone

the poet's attitude to the poem's subject as the reader interprets that, sometimes through the tone of the persona or speaker

Understatement

Expressing an idea with less emphasis or in a lesser degree than is the actual case; "He's no dummy."