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the addition of an extra unstressed syllable or two at the start of a line of verse (but these additions are not considered part of the regular metrical count) |
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| "sieze the day". Refers to a common theme in classical literature that the reader should make the most out of life and should enjoy it before it ends. Example: "To his Coy Mistress" by Andrew Marvell |
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Shortening of a poetic line. In poetry, a catalectic line is shortened or truncated so that unstressed syllables drop from a line.
Antonym: Acatelctyic (normal line with expected number of syllables) |
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Literary scheme in which the author introduces words of concepts in a particular order, then later repats those terms or similar ones in reversed or backwards order. It involves taking parallelism and deliberately turning it inside out, creating a "crisscross" pattern.
For example: "By day the frolic, and the dance by night." If we draw the words as a chart, the words form an "x" (hence the word's Greek etymology, from chi meaning "x"):
[image]
The sequence is typically a b b a or a b c c b a.
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| A Poem that is associated with another poem. For example William Blake's Songs of Innocence(1789) and Songs of Experience(1794) . Many poems in Songs of Innocence has its "companion" or a counterpart in Songs of Experience with the same title as well as accompanying artwork. |
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| A poem of lament, often directed at an ill-fated love. It may also be a satiric attack on social injustice and immorality as in "The Lie" by Sir Walter Raleigh(1554-1618). The Lie rails against institutional hypocrisy and human vanity. |
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| Poems dealing with agriculture |
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| Any of the wandering students/clerics in medieval Europe remembered for their satirical verses and poems in praise of debauchery and against the church and pope in the 12th and 13th centuries. Interested in riotous living, they described themselves to be followers of the legendary Bishop Golias. They wrote in Latin. Their form of satire helped new forms of verse and inspired Jonathan Swift and Samuel Butler. |
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| A long literary work (usually prose) in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society's imminent downfall. Jeremiah: OT."Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" by Jonathan Edwards (1741). |
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| Part of the Imagist movement. There must be a positive connection between the emotion the poet is trying to express and the object, image, or situation in the poem that helps to convey the emotion to the reader. The poet has to provoke the audiene to feel as the speaker does through images, actions and characters. "Show not tell" |
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| Greek word that signifies "a dance and hymn with a specific rhythm which is endued with an absolving in healing power". Currently means "any song of praise to a deity". |
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| When the writer establishes similar patterns of grammatical structure and length. |
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| An Anglo-Saxon singer or musician who would perdorm in a mead hall. |
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A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme originating in Italy and brought to England by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey in the 16th century. Literally a “little song,” the sonnet traditionally reflects upon a single sentiment, with a clarification or “turn” of thought in its concluding lines.
The Petrarchan sonnet, perfected by the Italian poet Petrarch, divides the 14 lines into two sections: an eight-line stanza (octave) rhyming ABBAABBA, and a six-line stanza (sestet) rhyming CDCDCD or CDEEDE. John Milton’s “When I Consider How my Light Is Spent” and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee” employ this form.
The Italian sonnet is an English variation on the traditional Petrarchan version. The octave’s rhyme scheme is preserved, but the sestet rhymes CDDCEE. See Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt, I Know Where Is an Hind” and John Donne’s “If Poisonous Minerals, and If That Tree.”
Wyatt and Surrey developed the English (or Shakespearean) sonnet, which condenses the 14 lines into one stanza of threequatrains and a concluding couplet, with a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG (though poets have frequently varied this scheme; see Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth”). George Herbert’s “Love (II),” Claude McKay’s “America,” and Molly Peacock’s “Altruism” are English sonnets. |
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Sprung Rhythm/Accentual Rhythm
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| A term invented by the poet-priest Gerard Manley Hopkins to describe his personal metrical system in which the major stresses are "sprung" from each line of poetry. Accent falls on the first syllable of every foot and a varying number of unaccented syllables following the accented one, but all feet last an equal amount of time when being pronounced. |
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| A word, place, character or object that means something beyong what it is on a literal level. In literature, symbols can be cultural, contextual or personal. An object, a setting or even a character can represent another more general idea. Allegories are narratives read in such a way that nearly every element servs as an interrelated symbol, and the narrative's meaning can be read either literally or as a symbolic statement about a political, spiritual or psychological truth. |
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| Frequent use of words, places, character or objects that mean something beyond what they are on a literal leve. |
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| A medieval love poet of southern France between 1100-1350 who wrote and sang about the theme of fin amour (courtly love). Troubadours were noteworthy for their creativity and experimentation in metrical forms. They wrote in langue d'oc and they influenced Dante and Petrarch. |
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| Of or characteristic of a prophet; oracular. |
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| In a general sense, form is the means by which a literary work expresses its content. In poetry, form is usually used to describe the design of a poem. |
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Vers Libre/ Free Verse
Poetry based on the natural rhythms of phrases and |
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| normal pauses rather than the artificial constraints of metrical feet. This poetry often involves the counterpoint of stressed and unstressed syllabled in upredictable but clever ways. Walt Whitman made it popular but traces of it can be found in Milton's work. |
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| A traditional verse from requiring certain predetermined elements of structure-- for example, a stanza pattern, set meter, or predetermined line length. |
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| A generic term that describes poetry written in pattern of meter, rime, lines, or stanzas. A closed form adheres to a set structure. |
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| Verse that has no set scheme- no regular meter, rime or stanzaix pattern. (Free verse/Vers libre) |
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| contains 5 iambic feet per line (iambic pentameter) and is not rimed. "blank" means unrimed. |
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| a two-line stanza in poetry, usually rimed and with lines of equal length |
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| two rimed lines of iambic pentamenter that usually contain an independent and complete thought or statement. (Heroic couplet) |
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| a stanza consisting of four lines, it is the most common stanza form used in English language poetry. |
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| a long narrative poem tracing the adventures of a popular hero. epic poems are usually written in a consisttent form and meter throughout. |
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| a very short, comic poem, often turning at the end with some sharp wit or unexpected stinger. |
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| poetic language printed in prose paragraphs, but displaying the careful attention to sound, imagery and figurative language characteristic of poetry. |
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| a visual poetry composed exclusively for the page in which a picture of image is made of printed letters and words. concrete poetry attempts to blur the line between language and visual objects, usually relying on puns and cleverness. |
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| a sschool of criticism that focuses on the form of a literary work. a key method that formalists use is close reading, a step-by-step- analysis of the lements in a text. |
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| using knowledge of an author's life to gain insight into a poem. Although the work is understood to be an independent creation, the biography of the author provides the practical assitance of underscoring subtle or important meanings. |
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| investigates the social, cultural and intellectual context that produced the poem. it includes the author's biography and milieu |
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| applies pscyhological analysis to authors and.or fictional characters in order to understand the underluying motivations and meanings of a literary work. |
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| pracitce of analyzing a literary work by looking for recurrent universal patterns. archetypes and Carl Jung. |
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| examines the cultural, economic, and political context in which it was written or received. explores the relationship of the artist and society |
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| examines the way in which sexual identity influences the creation, interpretation and evaluation of literary works. feminism, gay culture and the men's movement all play key roles in gender criticism |
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| Reader-Response Criticism |
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| analyzes the literary work by decribein what happens in the reader's mind while interpreting the text. assumes that no literary text exists independently of the reader's imagination and there are no fixed interpretations of any works. |
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| Deconstructionist Criticism |
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| challenges that language can properly represent reality. literary texts have no single meaning, pays attention to how language is used rather than what is said. challenges binary oppositions and preconceived notions. |
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| contemporary interdisciplinary field of academic study that focuses on understanding the social power encoded in "texts" which may include any analyzable phenomenon from a traditional poem to an advertising image or actor's face. |
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