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
Poetic Techniques
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Theme | Central topic or idea that is repeated in a piece of writing/what a poem is about. |
| Imagery | A collection of mental pictures that we create in our minds. |
| Images can be VISUAL | we can see them |
| Images can be AUDITORY | we can hear them |
| Images can be TACTILE | we can touch them |
| Images can be OLFACTORY | we can smell them |
| Images can be SENSUOUS | we can feel/taste their texture |
| Mood | The emotion that the poem expresses e.g. happy, sad, regretful etc |
| Repetition | Repeating a word or phrase to emphasise its importance/ create a regular rhythm.eg. “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone /It’s with O’Leary in the grave.” |
| Simile | A special kind of image, when you compare two things in some way, using the words as, like or than to make the comparison. For example: ‘The sun in the distance was like a gold coin’. |
| Metaphor | An image created when you state that one thing is something else because it seems or appears like that thing not using the words as or like. E.g. ‘Tread softly because you thread on my dreams’. (He is comparing the delicacy of the dreams to fragile cloths |
| Alliteration | Words which begin with the same consonant in close proximity. E.g. “Burning bright,” and “frame thy fearful symmetry”. |
| Sibilance | Repetition of S sounds in close proximity E.g. ‘In the sun the slagheap slept’. |
| Assonance | Similar vowel sound in close proximity. It is the vowel sound and not just the vowel letter that creates assonance. E.g. "Poetry is old, ancient, goes back far. It is among the oldest of living things”. |
| Personification | When objects take on/are given human characteristics e.g. ‘The ocean heaved a sigh’. |
| Contrast | Placing wo very different things side by side. This allows writer to emphasise differences between two things. |
| Symbolism | A word becomes a sign of something other than simply itself. e.g. The heart is an organ that pumps blood around the body, but it is also a symbol of love. |
| Onomatopoeia | When a word imitates the sound it is describing e.g. tick-tock of a clock, buzzing of a bee. The reader can hear what is being described. |
| Hyperbole | When the poet deliberately exaggerates to make a point. E.g. ‘These books weigh a tone’, ‘The path went on forever’. This adds drama, humour and/or emphasis. |
| Enjambment | It can be defined as a thought or sense, phrase or clause, in a line of poetry that does not come to an end at the line break but moves over to the next line – run-on-lines. |
| Free Verse | Poetry that is free from any rules of rhyme. |
| Musical Quality | of a poem is generated by assonance, alliteration and onomatopoeia. |
| Rhythm | The beat of a poem. |
| Rhyming Scheme | When we describe a rhyming scheme, we refer to lines that rhyme with one another by the same letter. E.g. ABAB |
| Rhyming Couplet | A Rhyming Couplet is two lines of a poem of the same length that rhyme. |
| Tone | The tone is the voice of the poet or the speaker of the poem, and their emotions are determined by the tone of the poem e.g. happy, grumpy tone etc |
| Sonnet | A poem of 14 lines which is supposed to obey certain rules. |
| Atmosphere | The atmosphere of the poem is linked to the setting of the poem. Where the poem is taking place can influence our feelings. |
| Irony | Irony can occur when people say things that can be taken at face value but may also have a second and contradictory level of meaning. For example, a character stepping out into a hurricane and saying, “What nice weather we're having!”. |
| Rhetorical Question | When a writer asks a question with an obvious answer, to which an answer is not known or a question that a writer asks immediately after answering it. It is asked, not for an answer, but for effect. |
| Cacophony | Cacophony is the use of a mixture of harsh and inharmonious sounds. In poetry the term refers to the use of words with sharp, harsh, hissing, and unmelodious sounds – primarily those of consonants. E.g. The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! |
| Elegy | An elegy is a sad poem, usually written to praise and express sorrow for someone who is dead. Although a speech at a funeral is a eulogy, you might later compose an elegy to someone you have loved and lost to the grave. |
| Neologism | Neologism is defined as a new word or a new use for an old word, or the act of making up new words. E.g. “Truthiness.” |
| Quatrain | A four lined stanza/verse in a poem. |
| Refrain | Refrain is a verse, a line or a group of lines that appears at the end of stanza or appears where a poem divides into different sections. ... Refrain is a poetic device that repeats, at regular intervals, in different stanzas. |
Created by:
B-K
Popular English Vocabulary sets