Some Poetic Terms
Alliteration: The repitition of identical consonant sounds:
Since the siege and the assault was ceased at Troy,
The walls breached and burnt down to brands and ashes,
The knight that had knotted the nets of deceit...
[see also consonance and assonance]
Assonance: The repetition of identical vowel sounds:
As for me, I se e, that tree, is in leaf.
Caesura: A clear break or pause in the middle of a line of poetry. Indicated by parallel lines: "ll"
Some have at first for wits ll then poets passed,
Turned critics next ll and proved plain fools at last.
Concrete (or Shap ed) Poetry: Poems in which the physical shape of the lines on the page has a relationship with the meaning of the words. For example, George Herbert's poem "The Altar" is shaped like an altar; his "Easter Wings" ; looks like a butterfly on the page.
Consonance: Repeating a pattern of consonants, with changes in the vowel sounds. E.g., (from the Norton Anthology), "rider, reader, r aider, ruder.
End Stopped and Run On Lines: "End stopped lines" terminate with a clear conclusion of an idea (and often with a punctuation mark). The two lines immediately a bove from Pope are both "end stopped." "Run on lines" run forward in sense and punctuation into the next line, like the opening line of Milton's "Paradise Lost:"
Of man's first disobedience, an d the fruit
Of that that forbidden tree ...
Genre: A type of thing. E.g., there are three "genres" of literature - poetry, drama and prose. Or, more minutely, "Chivalric romance"or "Petrarchian sonnet" is a "genre" of poetry.
Irony: Technically, a situation in a work of literature in w hich a character does not know something, which the audience does know, which the character should know: e.g., Oedipus Rex does not know that he has killed his dad and married his mom; we do know that; he should. "Irony" should not be confused w ith mere "sarcasm."
Masculine and Feminine (or Single and Double) Rhyme: Masculine or single rhyme is when the last syllable in a line is rhymed and is stressed:
He entered well, by virtuous parts
Got up and thrived, with honest arts.
Feminine or double rhyme is when the stress is on the next to the last syllable, and both f inal sounds rhyme:
And had the Dean in all the nation
No worthy friend, no poor relation?
Meter: [See "Met rics" on Home Page.] The pattern of stressed and unstressed sounds in a poem. E.g., "Iambic meter" is a pattern of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one:
Iambics march from short to long
Myth: An elusive term. Often refers to a story which attempts to explain a natural object or event (e.g., a constellation or annual flood). Or, a fictional tale in which some pervasive human truth is revealed (e.g., "The Oedipus myth").
Onomatopoeia: A long word for a poetic device in which the actual sounds of words is supposed to resemble their sense. Everyone's favorite example is from Tennyson:
The moans of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumberable bees.
Oxymoron: An expression which seems a flat contradiction, e.g., "a thunderous silence" or "a fighting Quaker" (the actual nickname of the football teams at Guilford College, Greensboro, NC!)
Personification: When a non-human thing is given human attributes. In these four lines from James Joyce, the wind, the "shingle" (beach), the pierstakes, and the sea are all personified :
Wind whines and whines the shingle,
The crazy pierstakes groan;
A senile sea numbers each single
Slimesilvered st one.
[This is also a spectacular illustration of alliteration.]
Refrain: A repeated tag in a poem, like the "chorus" of a song. A fam iliar example is Poe's "Quoth the raven 'nevermore'."
Rhyme: [see metrics at Home Page] repitition of the same sounds at the ends of lines of poems:
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
Rhythm: [see metr ics at Home Page] The repeated pattern of stress - or meter - within a poem. "Iambic tetrameter is a repeated pattern of four units or "feet" of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable:
I pu t my hat upon my head
Satire: A type of literature, including poetry, in which foolish behavior or fools are made to appear ridiculous, for the purpose of exposing and preventing folly. For example, Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" exposes the triviality and pettiness of 18th Century aristocratic daily life.
Stanza: Wi thin a poem, a repeated unit of the same number of lines. For example, all of Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" is written in 9-line stanzas; all of Dante's "Divine Comedy" is in 3-line stanzas.
Verse Paragraph. A unit of a poem which, unlike a stanza, is of irregular length, just like a "prose paragraph." Chaucer's "Prologue" to "The Canterbury Tales" is written in rhymed couplets, arrang ed in verse paragraphs.