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AP Lit Poetry Terms
ANAPHORA Repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row.
ANASTROPHE Inversion of the usual, normal, or logical order of the parts of a sentence. Purpose is rhythm or emphasis or euphony. It is a fancy word for inversion.
ANTITHESIS Balancing words, phrases, or ideas that are strongly contrasted, often by means of grammatical structure.
APHORISM brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life, or of a principle or accepted general truth. Also called maxim, epigram.
APOSTROPHE calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a place or thing, or a personified abstract idea. If the character is asking a god or goddess for inspiration it is called an invocation.
APPOSITION Placing in immediately succeeding order of two or more coordinate elements, the latter of which is an explanation, qualification, or modification of the first (often set off by a colon).
ASSONANCE the repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds especially in words that are together.
CACOPHONY AND EUPHONY (See link below regarding soft and harsh sounds.)
CAESURA (pronounced see-ZOO-ra) refers to a break or pause of a line of verse.
Caesurae are categorized based on where they appear in the line. Thus, there are three types:
CONCEIT an elaborate metaphor that compares two things that are startlingly different. Often an extended metaphor.
CONNOTATION the associations and emotional overtones that have become attached to a word or phrase, in addition to its strict dictionary definition.
COUPLET two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry.
ENJAMBMENT the continuation of a sentence or clause across a line break.
EPISTROPHE Device of repetition in which the same expression (single word or phrase) is repeated at the end of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences (it is the opposite of anaphora).
EPITHET an adjective or adjective phrase applied to a person or thing that is frequently used to emphasize a characteristic quality. “Father of our country” and “the great Emancipator” are examples. A Homeric epithet is a compound adjective used with a person or thing: “swift-footed Achilles”; “rosy-fingered dawn.”
INVERSION the reversal of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase.
JUXTAPOSITION poetic and rhetorical device in which normally unassociated ideas, words, or phrases are placed next to one another, creating an effect of surprise and wit. Martin Luther King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
LITOTES (li’ to teez) is a form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form: Hawthorne--- “…the wearers of petticoat and farthingale…stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng…”
IMPLIED METAPHOR does not state explicitly the two terms of the comparison: “I like to see it lap the miles” is an implied metaphor in which the verb lap implies a comparison between “it” and some animal that “laps” up water.
MIXED METAPHOR is a metaphor that has gotten out of control and mixes its terms so that they are visually or imaginatively incompatible. “The President is a lame duck who is running out of gas.”
MOOD an atmosphere created by a writer’s diction and the details selected.
PARADOX a statement that appears self-contradictory, but that reveals a kind of truth.
QUATRAIN a poem consisting of four lines, or four lines of a poem that can be considered as a unit.
REFRAIN a word, phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated, for effect, several times in a poem.
SOLILOQUY a long speech made by a character in a play while no other characters are on stage.
RHYTHM AND METER
RHYTHM a rise and fall of the voice produced by the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in language.
FOOT is a rhythmic unit, a unit of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry
In some poems, each line contains a certain number of feet of iambs, trochees, spondees, dactyls or anapests. A line of one foot is a monometer, 2 feet is a dimeter, and so on -- trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7), and octameter (8). The number of syllables in a line varies therefore according to the meter.
English poetry employs five basic rhythms of varying stressed (/) and unstressed (x) syllables. The feet are iambs, trochees, spondees, anapests and dactyls.
METER is a combination of the number of type of foot and the number of feet.
Unstressed syllables are often notated with a “-” while stressed syllables are often notated with a “/.”
The feet with two-syllables are:
IAMBIC (- /) : That time of year thou mayst in me behold
TROCHAIC (/ -): Tell me not in mournful numbers
SPONDAIC (/ /): Break, break, break/ On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
The feet with three-syllables are:
ANAPESTIC (- - /): And the sound of a voice that is still
DACTYLIC (/ - -): This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlock (a trochee replaces the final dactyl)
AP Lit Poetry Terms
ANAPHORA Repetition of a word, phrase, or clause at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row.
ANASTROPHE Inversion of the usual, normal, or logical order of the parts of a sentence. Purpose is rhythm or emphasis or euphony. It is a fancy word for inversion.
ANTITHESIS Balancing words, phrases, or ideas that are strongly contrasted, often by means of grammatical structure.
APHORISM brief, cleverly worded statement that makes a wise observation about life, or of a principle or accepted general truth. Also called maxim, epigram.
APOSTROPHE calling out to an imaginary, dead, or absent person, or to a place or thing, or a personified abstract idea. If the character is asking a god or goddess for inspiration it is called an invocation.
APPOSITION Placing in immediately succeeding order of two or more coordinate elements, the latter of which is an explanation, qualification, or modification of the first (often set off by a colon).
ASSONANCE the repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds especially in words that are together.
CACOPHONY AND EUPHONY (See link below regarding soft and harsh sounds.)
CAESURA (pronounced see-ZOO-ra) refers to a break or pause of a line of verse.
Caesurae are categorized based on where they appear in the line. Thus, there are three types:
CONCEIT an elaborate metaphor that compares two things that are startlingly different. Often an extended metaphor.
CONNOTATION the associations and emotional overtones that have become attached to a word or phrase, in addition to its strict dictionary definition.
COUPLET two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry.
ENJAMBMENT the continuation of a sentence or clause across a line break.
EPISTROPHE Device of repetition in which the same expression (single word or phrase) is repeated at the end of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences (it is the opposite of anaphora).
EPITHET an adjective or adjective phrase applied to a person or thing that is frequently used to emphasize a characteristic quality. “Father of our country” and “the great Emancipator” are examples. A Homeric epithet is a compound adjective used with a person or thing: “swift-footed Achilles”; “rosy-fingered dawn.”
INVERSION the reversal of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase.
JUXTAPOSITION poetic and rhetorical device in which normally unassociated ideas, words, or phrases are placed next to one another, creating an effect of surprise and wit. Martin Luther King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
LITOTES (li’ to teez) is a form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form: Hawthorne--- “…the wearers of petticoat and farthingale…stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng…”
IMPLIED METAPHOR does not state explicitly the two terms of the comparison: “I like to see it lap the miles” is an implied metaphor in which the verb lap implies a comparison between “it” and some animal that “laps” up water.
MIXED METAPHOR is a metaphor that has gotten out of control and mixes its terms so that they are visually or imaginatively incompatible. “The President is a lame duck who is running out of gas.”
MOOD an atmosphere created by a writer’s diction and the details selected.
PARADOX a statement that appears self-contradictory, but that reveals a kind of truth.
QUATRAIN a poem consisting of four lines, or four lines of a poem that can be considered as a unit.
REFRAIN a word, phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated, for effect, several times in a poem.
SOLILOQUY a long speech made by a character in a play while no other characters are on stage.
RHYTHM AND METER
RHYTHM a rise and fall of the voice produced by the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in language.
FOOT is a rhythmic unit, a unit of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry
In some poems, each line contains a certain number of feet of iambs, trochees, spondees, dactyls or anapests. A line of one foot is a monometer, 2 feet is a dimeter, and so on -- trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5), hexameter (6), heptameter (7), and octameter (8). The number of syllables in a line varies therefore according to the meter.
English poetry employs five basic rhythms of varying stressed (/) and unstressed (x) syllables. The feet are iambs, trochees, spondees, anapests and dactyls.
METER is a combination of the number of type of foot and the number of feet.
Unstressed syllables are often notated with a “-” while stressed syllables are often notated with a “/.”
The feet with two-syllables are:
IAMBIC (- /) : That time of year thou mayst in me behold
TROCHAIC (/ -): Tell me not in mournful numbers
SPONDAIC (/ /): Break, break, break/ On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
The feet with three-syllables are:
ANAPESTIC (- - /): And the sound of a voice that is still
DACTYLIC (/ - -): This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlock (a trochee replaces the final dactyl)
