Help
Options
Didn't know it?
click below
click below
Knew it?
click below
click below
Don't Know
Remaining cards (0)
Know
retry
shuffle
restart
0:00
Embed Code - If you would like this activity on your web page, copy the script below and paste it into your web page.
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Normal Size Small Size show me how
Poetry Terms
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Alliteration | The repetition of identical consonant sounds, most often the sounds beginning words, in close proximity. Example: pensive poets, nattering nabobs of negativism. |
| Allusion | Unacknowledged reference and quotations that authors assume their readers will recognize. |
| Apostrophe | Speaker in a poem addresses a person not present or an animal, inanimate object, or concept as though it is a person. |
| Assonance | The repetition of identical vowel sounds in different words in close proximity. Example: deep green sea. |
| Blank verse | Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Example: Shakespeare's plays. |
| Caesura | A short but definite pause used for effect within a line of poetry. |
| Consonance | Counterpart of assonance; the partial or total identity of consonants in words whose main vowels differ. Example: shadow meadow; pressed, passed; sipped, supped. |
| couplet | Two successive rhyming lines. Couplets end the pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet. |
| diction | Word choice. level of formality that a speaker uses (formal, neutral, or low). |
| dramatic monologue | A type of poem, derived from the theater, in which a speaker addresses an internal listener or the reader. |
| End-stopped line | A line ending in a full pause, usually indicated with a period or semicolon. |
| Enjambment | A line having no end punctuation but instead runs over to the next line. |
| Foot (prosody) | A measured combination of heavy and light stresses. The numbers of feet are as follows: monometer (1 foot), dimeter (2 feet), trimeter (3 feet), tetrameter (4 feet), pentameter (5 feet), hexameter (6 feet), heptameter (7 feet). |
| Hyperbole (overstatement) | exaggeration for effect |
| litotes | understatement for effect, often used for irony. |
| Iambic pentameter | An iamb (iambic) is an unstressed and stressed foot. Iambic pentameter is five feet of iambs; the most natural and common kind of meter in English. |
| Image/imagery | Images are references that trigger the mind to fuse together memories/experiences of sight (visual), sounds (auditory), tastes (gustatory), smells (olfactory), and sensations of touch (tactile). |
| Internal rhyme | An exact rhyme (rather than rhyming vowel sounds, as with assonance) within a line of poetry: "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary. |
| Metaphor | A comparison between two unlike things, which describes one thing as if it were something else. Does not use "like" or "as" for the comparison, |
| Metaphysical conceit | extended metaphor or simile that links two apparently unrelated fields or subjects in an unusual and surprising conjunction of ideas. Example: stiff twin compasses//the joining together of lovers like legs of a compass. |
| Meter | The stressed and unstressed syllabic pattern within the lines of a poem. It is regular, unlike rhythm, which can be more random. Example: iambic pentameter. |
| Octave | An eight line stanza, or the first eight lines of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, unified by rhythm, rhyme, and topic. |
| Onomatopoeia | A blending of consonant and vowel sounds designed to imitate or suggest the activity being described. Example: buzz, slurp. |
| Paradox | A rhetorical figure embodying a seeming contradiction that is nonetheless true |
| Personification | Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things or abstractions |
| Prosody | The study of meter, rhythm, and intonation in poetry |
| Quatrain | A four-line stanza or poetic unit. In an English or Shakespearean sonnet, a group of four lines united by rhyme. |
| Refrain | Repeated word or series of words in response or counterpoint to the main verse, as in a ballad |
| Rhyme | The repetition of identical concluding syllables in different words, most often at the ends of lines |
| Double rhyme or trochaic rhyme | Rhyming words of two syllables in which the first syllable is accented (flower, shower) |
| Triple rhyme or dactylic rhyme | Rhyming words of three or more syllables in which any syllable but the last is accented. Example: Macavity/gravity/depravity. |
| Eye rhyme | Words that seem to rhyme because they are spelled identically but pronounced differently. Example: bear/fear, dough/cough/through/bough. |
| Slant rhyme | A near rhyme in which the concluding consonant sounds are identical but not the vowels. Example: sun/noon, should/food, slim/ham. |
| Rhyme scheme | The pattern of rhyme, usually indicated by assigning a letter of the alphabet to each rhyme at the end of a line of poetry. |
| Scan (scansion) | The process of marking beats in a poem to establish the prevailing metrical pattern. |
| Sestet | A six-line stanza or unit of poetry. |
| Simile | A direct comparison between two dissimilar things; uses "like" or "as" to state the terms of the comparison. |
| Sonnet | A closed form consisting of fourteen lines of rhyming iambic pentameter. Modern sonnets, however, can deviate from meter and rhyme. |
| Shakespearean or English sonnet | 3 quatrains and a couplet, often with an argument in the quatrains being resolved in the couplet. The turning or “volta” occurs in the third quatrain. Rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. |
| Petrarchan or Italian sonnet | 8 lines (the "octave") and 6 lines (the "sestet") of rhyming iambic pentameter, with a turning or "volta" at about the 8th line. Rhyme scheme: abba abba cdcdcd (or cde cde). |
| Stanza | A group of poetic lines corresponding to paragraphs in prose; the meters and rhymes (if present) are usually repeating or systematic. |
| Synaesthesia | A rhetorical figure that describes one sensory impression in terms of a different sense, or one perception in terms of a totally different or even opposite feeling. Example: "green thought." |
| Syntax | Word order and sentence structure. |
| Volta | The "turning" point of a sonnet, where a shift in tone, diction, or argument occurs. |
Created by:
studying11