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Lit-crit terms
English Literary Terms
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Anaphora | A device of repitition, in which the same expression (word or words) is repeated at the beginning of two or more lines, clauses, or sentences. Ex. (pg. 20 & 25) |
| Apostrophe | A figure of speech in which someone (usually but not always absent), some abstract quality, or a noneistent personage is directly addressed as though present. Ex. (pg. 7 & 9) |
| Enjambment | The continuation of the sense and grammatical construction of a line on to the next verse or couplet. Enjambment occurs in run-on lines and offers contrast to end-stopped lines. Ex. (pg. 4) |
| Free verse | Free verse poetry has evolved as poets have sought more freedom to establish new forms that do not conform to established patterns of rhyme or meter. |
| Haiku | A form of Japanese poetry that gives-usually in three lines of fice seven, and five syllables-a clear picture designed to arouse a distinct emotion and suggest a specific spiritual insight. |
| Hyperbole | Exaggeration. The figure may be used to heighten effect, or it may be used for humor. |
| Metaphor | A metaphor is a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things, without using like or as. (ex. pg. 27-28) |
| Metonymy | Substitution of the name of an obect closely associated with a word for the word itself. we substitute "the crown" fpr the king and "the white house" for the executive branch of government. |
| Pathetic fallacy | A type of personification that credits animals. ideas, abstractions, and inanimate ovjects with human characteristscs of emotion. It is the carrying over to inanimate ovjects of the moods and passions of a human being. Too impassioned descrip. of nature. |
| Personification | Figure of speech that endows animals, ideas, abstractions and inanimate ovjects with human characteristscs. For example: The mold sang in the bleached valleys under the rose. |
| Prosopopoeia | Personification; however, the thing personified is capable of speech and often does speak. For example in the first chapter of Proverbs: Wisdom cries aloud in the street; In the markets she raises her voive; On the top of the walls she cries out;.... |
| Simile | A figure of speech in whihc a similarity between two ovjects are directly expressed, as in Milton's "A dungeon horrilble, on all sides round/As one great furnace flamed," The comparison is made directly with the use of the words like or as. |
| Eynedoche | A trope in which a part signifies the whole or the whole signifies the part, Examples, we say threads for clothes, wheels for car. |
| Spenserian stanza | A stanza of nine iambic lines, the first eight in pentameter and the ninth in hexameter ex. (pg. 34) |
| Symbol | A symbol is an image that evokes an objective, concrete reality and prompts that reality to suggest another level of meaning. "The Scarlet Letter" is in reality a visible, tangible letter, but it suggest multiple meanings such as Adultury, Able, and Angel |
| Ballad Stanza | The ballad stanza "consists of four lines, rhyming abcb, with the first and third lines carrying four accented syllables and the second and fourth carrying three. There is variation in the number of unstressed syllables. |
| Dramatic Monologue | Written in blank verse; unrhymed iambic pentameter. A dramatic monologue is "a poem that reveals 'a soul in action' through the speech of one character in a dramatic situation." ex. (pg. 11) |
| Elegy | "A sustained and formal poem setting forth meditations on death or another solemn theme. The mediation often is occasioned by the death of a particular person, but it may be a generalized observation or the expression of a solemn mood. ex. (pg. 9) |
| Rondel | A French verse form a variant of the rondeau. It consists of thirteen or fourteen lines. The rhyme pattern is abbaabababbaab. |
| Rondeau | Set French verse pattern, actificial but very popular with many English poets. rondeau consists characteristically of fifteen lines, the ninth and fifteenth being a short refrain. Only two rhymes are allowed, the rhyme scheme running aabba aabc aabbac. 12 |
| Sonnet - Shakespherean/English | The characteristcs of the Shakesspearean sonnet are as follows: fourteen lines written in iambiv pentameter a rhyme pattern of abab cdcd efef gg. The rhyme pattern forms three quatrains and ends with a couplet. |
| Sonnet - Italian/ Petrarchan | fourteen linesof iambiv pentameter. The first eight lines is called the octave, which raises a question or presents a problem. The las six lines is called the sestet which answers the question or desc. the sol.to the problem. 8 - abba abba. 6 - cdecde (8) |
| Villanelle | Fixed form, originally French, employing only two rhymes and repeating two of the lines according to a set pattern. Line 1 is repeated as lines 6, 12, and 18; line 3 as lines 9, 15, and 19. The first and third lines return as a rhymed couplet at the end. |
| Ode | Single, unified strain of exalted lyrical verse directed to a single purpose and dealing with one theme. It is elaborate, dignified, and imaginative. The form is more complicated than most lyric types. It is divided into strophe, antistrophe, and epode. |
| Monometer | Verse written in one-foot lines (18) |
| Dimeter | Verse written in two-foot lines (18) |
| Trimeter | Verse written in three-foot lines (21) |
| Tetrameter | Verse written in four-feet lines (22-23) |
| Pentameter | Verse written in five-foot lines (24) |
| Hexameter | Verse written in six-foot lines (25) |
| Heptameter | Verse written in seven-foot lines |
| Octameter | Verse written in eight-foot lines (25) |
| Epic | Long narrative poem in elevated style presenting characters of high position in adventures forming an organic whole through their relation to a central heroic figure and through their development of episodes important to the history of a nation or race. |
| Forces | gods, angels, and demons |
| Blank Verse | A poem that cntains lines of iambiv pentameter and no rhyme is called blank verse. |
| Types of sound units : feet | Iamb Trochee Anapest Dactyl Spondee Pyrrhic Amphribrach: Amphimacer |
| Eye Rhyme | Also called sight rhyme, is when the words look like a rhyme but do not sound like a rhyme as in bough-cough, or watch-match or love-move. |
| Feminine Rhyme | A rhyme in which the rhyming stressed syllables are followed by an undifferentited identical unstressed syllable, as waken and forsaken. Also called double rhyme. |
| Masculine rhyme | The rhyming sound is restricted to the final accented sylable of the line as in fan and ran |
| Near rhyme | also called slant rhyme or approximate rhyme the sounds are almost but not exactly alike. Most frequently poets employ near rhyme when the consonant sounds are identical but are preceded by different vowels as in ping/pong, home/same, and worth/breath |
| Oblique rhyme | Approximate but not true rhyme; oblique rhyme is another term for near rhyme, half rhyme, and slant rhyme |
| Internal rhyme | Rhyme contained within a line of verse: The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story; The long light shakes acrosss the lakes And the wild cataract leaps in glory. from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "blow, Bugle, Blow" |
| Heroic couplet | consists of rhymed iambiv pentameter such as aabbccddee and so on. |
| Free Verse | "By the eighteenth century, a few fareeing poets could manage without rhyme, meter, or regular rhythm...In the nineteenth century, Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman continued the tradition." Come to mean unrhmed lines without regular rhythm. |
| Rhyme Scheme | The same letter of the alphabet is assigned to each similar sound at the end of a line. Thus, the pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg. The pattern of a Petrarchan sonnet is abba abba cde cde; A Spenserian stanza is ababbcbcc. |
| Shakespearean or English sonnet rhyme scheme | abab dvd efef gg |
| Petrarchan or Italian sonnet rhyme scheme | abba abba cde cde |
| Spenserian sonnet rhyme scheme | abab bcbc cdcd ee |
| Rhyme royal rhyme scheme | ababbcc |
| Ballad stanza rhyme scheme | abcb defe |
| Villanelle | aba aba aba aba aba abaa |
| Terza rima | aba bcb cdc ded |
| Triplet | aaa bbb |
| Poem | a cultural artifact of some sort. Most are literary compositions with an orderly arrangement of parts composed to give aesthetic or emotional pleasure |
| Poesie or poesy | synonym of poetry until about 1650; archaic term now |
| Poetics | system or body of theory about poetry; the principles and rules of poetic composition |
| canto | section or division of a long poem. Derived from the Latin cantus (song), the word originally signified a section of a narrative poem of such lenth as to be sung by a minstrel in one singing. |
| prelude | a short poem introductory in character, prefixed to a long poem or to a section of a long poem |
| lyric | brief subjective poem strongly marked by immagination, meody, and emotion, and creating a single, unified impression |
| Complaint | lyric poem, common in the middle ages and the renaissance, in which the poet laments the unresponsiveness of his mistress, bemoans his unhappy lot and seeks to remedy it or regrets the sorry state of the world. |
| Canzone | lyrical poem, a song or ballad. It is a short poem of equal stanzas and an ENVOY of fewer lines than the stana |
| Elegiac | a DISTICH for lamenting or commemorating the dead |
| lament | a poem expressing grief, usually more intense and more personal than in COMPLAINT |
| blason | an ordered poem of praise or blame, proceeding detail by detail; also, an ENCOMIUM for one's beloved. |
| Prose Poem | a poem printed as PROSE, with both margins justified. |
| Narrative poem | a poem that tells a story. Ex: epics ballads, metrical romances. |
| LAY | a song or short narrative poem |
| LAI | sames as LAY |
| Companion poems | poems designed to complement each other Each is complete by itself but each is enriched and broadened when viewed with its companion poem. Ex: Milton's "L'Allegro" and "II Penseroso" as well as Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained |
| Dramatic Poetry | strictly speaking, poetry employing dramatic form or techinique, including dialogue, monologue, tense situations, and emotional conflict. |
| Choreopoem | combines dance and oetry so that each omplements the other in a highly dramatic way. |
| Lyrical Drama | dramatic poem in which the for of drama is used to express lyric themes instead of relying on a story as teh basis of the action. |
| Conversaton Piece | Someof Horace's workds are alled sermones, which does not mean "sermon" but rather "discourse" or "Conversation" with an addressee and some element of serious SATIRE, usually rep. only one side of the conversation. |
| Gnomic | aphoristic moralistic, sententious, from gnome, a Greek poem that expressed a general truth. The "Gnomic Poets" arranged their wise sayings in a series of maxims; the term gnomic was applied to poetry that dealt in a sententious way with ethical ?'s |
| Confessional poetry | Work of a group of contemporary poets whose poetry features a public and sometimes painful display of private, personal matters. The poet seems to address teh audience directly, without a persona. |
| Pure Poetry | oetry free from conceptualized statement or moral preachment; or those portions of a poem remaining after such materials as can be paraphrased adequately in prose are removed. |
| Pastoral | a poem treating of shepherds and rustic life, after the latin for "shepherd," pastor |
| pastoral Elegy | Poem employing conventional Pastoral Imagery, written in dignified, serious language, and taking as its theme the expression of grief at the loss of a friend or important person. |
| IDYLL | poetic genra that is short and possesses marked descriptive, narrative,and pastoral qualities. |
| Bucolic | pastoral writing that deals with rural life in a manner rather formal and fanciful; simple poetry with a rustic background |
| Enclogue | In greek it means "selection" and was applied to various kinds of poems. It is a formal pastoral poem with : the singing match; the rustic dialogue: two "rude swains" engaged in banter; the dirge or lament for a dead shepherd; the love-lay |
| Clinamen | a trope, meaning a "swerving away," latterly adopted in Harold Bloom's criticism to describe the inaugural gesture of a typical "strong" post-Enlightment lyric. |
| Metaphysial poetry | the work of the 17th century "Metaphysical Poets" revolting against the conventions of Elizabethan love poetry, in particular the Petrarchan conceit. THey used simple diction and imagery from common rough speech. |
| Meditative poetry | certain kinds of metaphysical poetry of the 16th and 17th centuries that yoke religious meditation with Renaissance poetic techniques, usually dealing with memorable moments of self-knowledge and of union with some transcendent reality. |
| Cavalier lryic | poem characteristic of the Cavalier lyricists; lighthearted in tone;graceful, melodious, and polished in manner; artfully showing Latin classical influences; sometimes licentious and cynical or epigrammatic and witty. |
| Didactic poetry | poetry intended to teach a lesson |
| Definition poem | an Elizabethan mode defined by Louis Martz as "a rapid sequence of analogies." |
| Boasting poem | a poem in which the characters boast of their exploits; frequently found in oral literaturs and in works such as ballds and epics. |
| Epideictic poetry | poetry writeten for special occasions, primarily for the pleasure and edification of its audience. |
| Encomium | poem in praise of a living person, object, or event, but not a god, delivered before a special audience. |
| Epithalamium | poem written to celebrate a wedding |
| topographical poetry | poetry in which "the fundamental subject is ome particular landscape" |
| Georgic | poem about farming and the practical aspects of rustic life; named for Virgil's Georgics |
| Pastourelle | a medieval dialogue poem in which a shepherdess is wooed by a man of higher social rank |
| Melic poetry | poetry written to be accompaned by the lyre or flute |
| pruning poem | poem in which succeeding rhyme words have initial sounds or letters pared away. For example, the last words in each line might be "charme" then "harm" then "arm" |
| Doggerel | Rude verse. Any poorly executed attempt at poetry |
| Dub | poetry originating in Jamaica around 1975 with words improvised to a background of recorded music |
| Haiku | japanese poem that state-in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables-a clear picture designed to arouse a distinct emotion and suggest a specific spiritual insight. |
| Senryu | named for karai senry, the senryu has the same form as the haiku-seventeen syllables arranged in lines of five, seven , and five syllables-but a different spirtit, relying on humo or satire rather than conventions related to certain seasons. |
| Tanka | japanese poem with thirty-one syllables, arraged in five lines, each of seven syllables, except the first and third, which are each of five |
| carmen figuratum | figure poem so written that the form of the printed words sugggests the subjet matter. Ex. "mOon" or "bOsOm." |
| Shaped verse | same as carmen figuratum |
| altar poem, figure poem, or pattern poem | same as carmen figuratum, frequently the shape of an altar or a cross. |
| Echelon | one of a group of lines printed stepwise across and down a page. |
| Cubist poetry | poetry that attempts to do in verse what cubist painters do on canvas; that is take the elements of an experience ragment them, and arange them in a meaningful new synthesis |
| square poem | has a certain number of syllables per line and the same number of lines in a stanza. Ex: twelve lines with twelve syllables each. |
| Couplet | Two consecutive lines of verse with end rhymes |
| Heroic couplet | iambic pentameter lines rhymed in pairs |
| open couplet | couplet in which the 2nd line is not complete but depends on succeeding material for completion E: Thats y last Duchess painted on teh warll looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now... |
| closed couplet | two successive lines rhyming aa and containing a grammatically complete, independent statement. It is called "closed" because its meaning is completed within the two lines and doesn't depend on what is before it or what follows it. |
| Short Couplet | an octasyllabic couplet; two rhyming lines of iambiv or trochaic tetrameter |
| Poulter's Measure | couplet, now rarely used, with a first line in iambic hexameter and a second line in iambic heptameter, an adaptation of short measure |
| distich | a couplet. Any two consecutive lines in similar form. |
| ghazal | flexible lyric form, usually in a small number of couplets with or without rhyme, first employed in various middle eastern literatures. |
| kyrielle | rare french form, usually composed of short rhymed couplets with a word or larger verbal group repeated as refrain. |
| Foog | unit of rhyme in verse |
| Iamb | a foot consisting of an unaccented syllable and an accented. It is the most common rhythm in English verse. ex:"return" |
| Trochee | foot consisting of an accented and an unaccented sylable, as in the word "happy" |
| Choree | obsolete equivalent of trochee; now preserved only in choriambus |
| spondee | a foot composed of two accented syllables, in "childhood" and "fotball" |
| Pyrrhic or dibrach | foot of two unaccented syllables |
| dipody or dipodic verse | measure consisting of two metrical feet, usually slightly different |
| triple meter | feet with three syllables |
| Dactyl | foot consisting of one accented syllable followed by two unaccented as in "mannequin" |
| Anapest | metrical foot consisting of three syllables, with two unaccented syllables folllowed by an accented one. Ex. "contravene" and like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb" |
| Amphibrach | Metrical foor consisting of three syllables, the first and last unaccented the second accented ex: "arrangement" |
| Amphimacer | metrical foot consisting of three syllables, the first and last accented, teh second unaccented. ex. "nevermore" |
| Tribrach | foot of three short or unstressed syllables. |
| Bacchius | three-sylable foot usually defined quatitatively as a short foollowed by two longs or qualitatively as a weak followed by two strongs. Ex "aboveboard" |
| Antibacchius | metrical foot of three syllables of which the first two are stressed and the third unstressed or the first two are long and the thrird short. Ex. "high mountain" |
| Choriambus | foot in which two accented syllables flank two unaccented syllables. Ec. "year upon year" |
| Paeon | a foot consisting of one long or stressed syllable and three short or unstressed syllables. Ex: "vegetable." |
| Ionic | classical foot with two long and two short syllables. |
| Equivalence or substitution | term for the use of one kind of foot in place of that normally emanded by the pattern of a verse, as a trochee for an iamb, etc. |
| compensation | means of making up for omissions in a line, usually with a pause. |
| scansion | system for describing conventional rhythms by dividing lines into feet. indicating the locations of accents and counting the syllables |
| scazon or choliamb | deliverate reversal of an iamb. this rare and delicate effort occurs at the end of a line when a trochee or dactul takes the place of the iamb or anapest that the ear has been conditional to expect. |
| syzygy | two coupled feet serving as a unit. Consonant sounds at the end of one word and the beginning of another that can be spoken together easily; "yoking together" of the end of one word with the beginning of the next Ex. "the boss speaks" |
| sesquipedalian | literally a foot and half used for a style unduly and pretentiously polysyllabic. |
| catalexis | incompleteness of the last foot of a line; truncation by omission of one or two final syllables; the opposite of anacrusis. |
| Brachycatalexis | catalexis of two syllables |
| headless line | line from which an unstressed syllable has been dropped at the beginning. |
| Acatalectic | metrically complete; applied to lines that carry out the basic metrical and rhythmic patterns of a poem |
| hypercatalectic | line with an extra syllable at the end. |
| stich | word or stem meaning "line," as in Hemistich or distich |
| hemistich | half line |
| monostich | poem consisting of one line |
| distich | couplet |
| run on lines | carying over of grammatical structure from one line to the next. opposite of end-stoppped lines |
| enjambment | continuation of the sense and grammatical construction of a line on to the next verse or couplet |
| end-stopped lines | lines in which both the grammatical structure and the sense reach completion at the end. |
| logaoedic | line composed of anapests and iambs or of dactyls and trochees, an mixed rhythm |
| heroic quatrain | four lines of iambiv pentameter |
| envelope | line or group of lines enclosing a body of verse, giving a sense of structure and closure; sometimes a complete stanza may be repeated to form an envelope |
| duple meter | line consisting of two syllables |
| triplet | sequence of three rhyming lines, sometimes introduced as a variation in the heroic couplet |
| pherecratean | in classical prosody a cariable three-foot quantitative line most often spondee-dactyl-spondee or spondee-dactyl-trochee |
| heroic line | iambiv pentameter is called the heroic line because it is often used in epic or heroic poetry. In classical literature the heroic line was dactylic hexameter; in French it was the Alexandrine |
| Octosyllabic verse | poetry in lines of eihgt syllables; usually applied to tetrameter verse in iambic or trochaic feet |
| octet | group of eight lines of verse |
| Decasyllabic | line cmposed of ten syllables |
| dizain | verse of ten lines |
| virgule | slanting or an upright line used in prosody to mark off feet |
| headless line | line from which an unstressed syllable has been dropped at the beginning |
| acephalous | same as headless line |
| catalexis | incompleteness of the last foot of a line |
| anacrusis | term denoting one or more extra unaccented syllables at the beginning rhythi=ig pattern of a poem |
| roundel | variation of the rondeu; generally attributed to Swinburne |
| Roundelay | modificatio of the rondel; simple poem of about 14 lines in which part of one line frequently recurs as a refrain |
| pyramidal line | line in which there is a symmetrical distribution of syllables per word |
| sotadic | classical wuantitative line consisting of three greater ionic feet followed by a spondee, used occasionally for humorous or satirical verse and in palindrome |
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