Genres
Particular categories of literary work
Pedagogy
theory of teaching
aesthetic
a sense of what you want to see in a work of art
allusions
references
revision
the act of reconsidering and altering a piece of writing
free verse
a composition not in metrical writing
prose poem
a composition that looks very much like the paragraph you are now reading but has all the heightened, compressed, and figurative language found in poetry.
prose
the ordinary language of writing and speaking
cliché
an overused phrase or formulaic structure with a predictable conclusion
etymology
derivation
imagery
mental pictures or impressions that evoke one of the five senses
lines
those entities that begin on the left side of the page and end somewhere on the right
stanzas
are made by grouping lines together
meter
a regular pattern of accented and unaccented syllables
rhythm
a variable but nevertheless recognizable pattern of strong and weak elements in a poem (usually used instead of meter when describing prose)
symbols
acts, sounds, or objects that signify something other than themselves
diction
the choice of the words themselves
syntax
the way that words are put together to form phrases in a sentence
lyric poem
“any fairly short, non-narrative poem presenting a single speaker who expresses a state of mind or a process of thought and feeling” (Defined by M. H. Abrams)
narrative
storytelling
chapbooks
a short book of poetry, usually fewer than thirty-two pages
end-stopped
a line that ends with any sort of punctuation (a period, semicolon, comma, or dash)
enjambment
to wrap a line in the middle of a sentence so that related words are in different poetic lines
couplet
two lines of verse that are connected in some way
tercet
a group of three lines
quatrain
a group of four lines of poetry
quintet
five lines
sestet
six lines
septet
seven lines
octet
eight lines
meter (second definition)
the arrangement of words in a poem based on the relative stress of their syllables
scansion
the process of counting the number of stressed and unstressed syllables and analyzing their patterns
foot
the basic metrical unit in poetry
iamb (iambic)
_ /
trochee (trochaic)
/ _
anapest (anapestic)
_ _ /
dactyl (dactylic)
/ _ _
spondee (spondaic)
/ /
pyrrhic (pyrrhic)
_ _
monometer
one foot
dimeter
two feet
trimeter
three feet
tetrameter
four feet
pentameter
five feet
hexameter
six feet
heptameter
seven feet
octameter
eight feet
prosody
the study of metrical structure
end rhyme
“the agreement of two metrically accented syllables and their terminal consonants” (defined by Mary Kinzie)
connotations
the meanings a word suggests rather than specifically names or describes
single (masculine) rhyme
perfect rhymes
perfect rhymes
the correspondence between the two rhyme sounds is exact
falling (feminine) (weak) rhyme
the rhyme is a stressed syllable followed by one or more unstressed syllables
Triple rhyme
have three of the same syllables
polysyllabic rhyme
rhymes of more than one syllable
double rhyme
a rhyme with two rhyming syllables
light verse
poetry, usually rhymed, that treats its subject in a comic or good-natured manner
slant rhymes
the vowel sounds may be either similar or significantly dissimilar, and the rhymed consonants maybe similar rather than identical.
sight (eye) rhymes
words that look as if they should rhyme, even though they don’t when we say them aloud
Internal rhyme
occurs within a single line of poetry
alliteration
the repetition of initial consonant sounds
consonance
the recurrence of consonant sounds
assonance
repetition of vowel sounds without the repetition of similar end consonants
figurative language
“a deviation from what speakers of a language apprehend as the ordinary, or standard, significance of words, in order to achieve some special meaning or effect” (defined by M.
H. Abrams)
style
the author’s selection and placement of words in a line, lines in a stanza, and stanzas in a poem
Metaphor
a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily denotes one thing is applied to something else in order to suggest an analogy or a likeness between the two things (Your smile is a bouquet of daffodils)
Simile
a figure of speech that states a likeness between two unlike things (Your smile is like a bouquet of daffodils)
tenor
the subject to which a metaphor is applied (your smile)
vehicle
the metaphoric term itself (bouquet of daffodils)
metonymy
the name of something is substituted with the name of something closely associated with it (the White House means the president of the U.S.A.)
synecdoche
a kind of metonymy although the term is more often used when a part is used to describe the whole (All hands on deck means more than just the crew’s hands)
personification
the awarding of human attributes to an abstraction or nonhuman thing
pun
a play on the multiple meaning of a word or its relation to other words that sound like it
Verisimilitude
the incongruity between the way things appear and the way they actually are
verbal irony
whens someone says one thing but means another
situation irony
the results of a situation are distinctly different than one might expect
tone
the style and manner of expression
archaic language
language that evokes an earlier time
sonnet
fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter, with varying rhyme schemes
Shakespearean sonnet
its three rhyming quatrains- abs cdc efef are followed by a final couplet that rhymes gg
Petrarchan sonnet
italian sonnet. abbaabba cedecde
villanelle
five tercets and a final quatrain.
Typically in iambic pentameter