UIL Literary Criticism: Poetry Explication and Concepts

Poetry Explicated: Byron and Auden

  • George Gordon, Lord Byron: Don Juan

    • Metrical Structure: Uses iambic pentameter.
    • Rhyme and Ending Types: Features both feminine endings/rhyme and masculine endings/rhyme.
    • Literary Devices: Employs alliteration, sigmatism, aporia, and apostrophe.
    • Mosaic Rhyme: Uses heteromerous (mosaic) rhyme (e.g., "intellectual" / "henpeck'd you all").

  • W. H. Auden: "Song [Fish in the unruffled lakes]"

    • Imagery: Utilizes visual and auditory imagery, along with pathetic fallacy and anthropomorphism.
    • Structural Devices: Includes anaphora, asyndeton, run-on lines, and the use of an absent rhyme for emphasis.
    • Sound Devices: Features assonance, alliteration, consonance, sigmatism, and specific vocalic quality.
    • Concepts: Employs reification, metaphor, and contrast.

  • George Gordon, Lord Byron: The Destruction of Sennacherib

    • Meter: Written in anapestic tetrameter.
    • Devices: utilizes simile, anaphora, and visual imagery.
    • Prosody: Features a wrenched accent in the final line of the excerpt.

Analytical Poetry: Ghiselin, Frost, and Longfellow

  • Brewster Ghiselin: "Rattler, Alert"

    • Sensory Imagery: Rich in visual, auditory, tactile, and olfaction-based imagery.
    • Structure: Includes direct address, scansion, and specific meter.
    • Specific Device: Uses a kenning ("bloodleap at my wrist").

  • Robert Frost: "Once by the Pacific" and "Acquainted with the Night"

    • "Once by the Pacific": Focuses on the "misty din" and "dark intent," concluding with an allusion to God's command to "Put out the light."
    • "Acquainted with the Night": Characterized by the repetitive "I have" structure and the imagery of the "luminary clock."

  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "Aftermath"

    • Theme: Contrast between the first harvest and the "rowen mixed with weeds" (the aftermath).
    • Imagery: Transitions from summer fields to the falling of snow and the "silence and the gloom."

Classical and Contemporary Forms

  • William Shakespeare: Sonnet XXXV

    • Metaphorical Faults: Uses natural imagery (thorns, mud, eclipses, cankers) to describe human errors.
    • Legal Diction: Employs terms like "authórizing," "trespass," "advocate," and "lawful plea."

  • A. E. Stallings: "Aftershocks"

    • Controlling Image: An earthquake used as a metaphor for a relationship.
    • Key Phrases: "Terra infirma" and the "fault" (the geological crack and the interpersonal mistake).

Essential Literary Concepts for Explication

  • Metrical Feet: Notable types include anapest, dactyl, iamb, pyrrhic, spondee, and trochee.
  • Rhyme Variations: Includes feminine, masculine, true, eye, and heteromerous (mosaic) rhymes.
  • Stanza Forms: Reference to heroic couplets, envelope stanzas, quatrains, and various sonnets (Petrarchan, Shakespearean, Spenserian).
  • Technical Terms:
    • Inversion: Also known as hyperbaton or anastrophe.
    • Elision: Also referred to as syncope.
    • Omission: Use of asyndeton or absent rhyme for effect.
    • Tropes: Zeugma, synecdoche, metonymy, litotes, and chiasmus.