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a line of iambic hexameter; the final line of a Spenserian stanza is an alexandrine
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| the use of a repeated consonant or sound, usually at the beginning of a series of words |
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| a speech addressed to someone not present, or to an abstraction; "History! You will remember me..." is an example. The innate grandiosity of apostrophe lends itself to parody. |
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| a German term meaning a "novel of education"; coming of age; it typically follows a young person over a period of years, from naivete and inexperience through the first struggles with the harsher realities and hypocrisies of the adult world. |
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| the pause that breaks a line of Old English verse; also, any particularly deep pause in a line of verse. ex: Beowulf |
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| one of the neoclassical principles of drama; decorum is the relation of style to content in the speech of dramatic characters. for example, a character's speech should be appropriate to his or her social station. |
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| a derogatory term used to describe poorly written poetry of little or no literary value |
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| a work, especially a poem, written to celebrate a wedding |
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| a word derived from Lyly's Euphues (1580) to characterize writing that is self-consciously laden with elaborate figures of speech. This was a popular and influential mode of speech and writing in the late sixteenth century. |
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| lines rhymed by their final two syllables. a pair of linds ending "running" and "gunning" would be an example of feminine rhyme; properly, in a feminine rhyme (and not simply a "double rhyme") the penultimate syllables are stressed and the final syllables are unstressed. |
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not to be confused with pastoral poetry, which idealizes life in the countryside, georgic poems deal with people laboring in the countryside, pushing plows, raising crops, etc.
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| Aristotle's term for what is popularly called "the tragic flaw." Hamartia differs from tragic flaw in that hamartia implies fate, whereas tragic flaw implies an inherent psychological flaw in the tragic character. |
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| a repeated descriptive phase, as found in Homer's epics |
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| a term derived from Samuel Butler's Hudibras. It refers specifically to the couplets of rhymed tetrameter lines (well, eight syllables long, anyway) which Butler employed in Hudibras, or more generally to any deliberate, humorous, ill-rhythmed, ill-rhymed, couplets. Butler had a genius for "bad" poetry. |
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| a rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (aka, regular old rhyme) |
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| an understatement created through a double negative (or more precisely, negating the negative). it sounds more complicated than it is. |
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| a term for a phrase that refers to a person or object by a single important feature of the person |
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principles of dramatic structure derived (and applied somewhat too strictly) from Aristotle's Poetics; popular in the neoclassical movement of the 17th and 18th centuries:
1. to observe the unity of time, a work should take place within the span of one day
2. to observe the unity of place, it should take place within the confines of a single locale.
3. to observe the unity of action, a work should contain a single dramatic plot, with no subplots. |
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| a type of poem that takes the form of an elegy (a lament for the dead) sung by a shepherd. in this conventionalized form, the shepherd who sings the elegy is a stand-in for the author, and the elegy is for another poet. |
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| a term coined by John Ruskin; it refers to ascribing emotion and agency to inanimate objects. |
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| a novel, typically loosely constructed along an incident-to-incident basis, that follows the adventures of a more or less scurrilous rogue whose primary concerns are filling his belly and staying out of jail |
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| a form of humorous poetry, using very short, rhymed lines and a pronounced rhythm, made popular by John Skelton. the only real difference between skeltonic and doggerel is the quality of the thought expressed. |
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| the rhythm created and used in the 19th century by Gerald Manley Hopkins. Like Old English verse, sprung rhythm fits a varying number of unstressed syllables in a line--only the stresses count in scansion. |
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| a term referring to phrases that suggest an interplay of the senses. "hot pink" and "golden tones" are examples of synaesthesia. |
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| a phrase that refers to a person or object by a single important feature of the object or person; "a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa." |
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a typical stanza of the folk ballad. the length of the lines in ballad stanzas, just as in sprung rhythm poetry and Old English verse, is determined by the number of stressed syllables only.
rhyme scheme: abcb |
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in memoriam
(stanza type) |
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the stanza composed of four lines of iambic tetrameter
rhyme scheme: abba |
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ottava rima
(stanza type) |
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eight-line stanza (usually iambic pentameter)
rhyme scheme: abababcc |
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rhyme royal
(stanza type) |
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seven-line iambic pentameter stanza
rhyme scheme: ababbcc |
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A nine-line stanza; the first eight lines are iambic pentameter. the final line, in iambic hexameter, is an alexandrine.
rhyme scheme: ababbcbcc |
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this form consists of three-line stanzas with an interlocking rhyme scheme
rhyme scheme:
aba
bcb
cdc
ded
etc.
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| unrhymed iambic pentameter verse |
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| unrhymed verse without a strict meter |
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| verse characterized by the internal alliteration of lines and a strong midline pause called a caesura |
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| italian (or petrarchan) sonnet |
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a 14-line poem rhyming
abbaabba cdecde.
the first eight lines are called the octave; the final six lines (composed of two groups of three, or tercets) are called the sestet
**no final couplet**
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| English (or Shakespearean) sonnet |
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Definition
a 14-line poem rhyming
abab cdcd efef gg
**one final couplet**
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a 14-line poem rhyming
abab bcbc cdcd ee
**one final couplet**
2 couplets in the body** |
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a 19-line form rhyming
aba aba aba aba aba abaa
its most noticable characteristic is the repetition of the 1st and 3rd lines throughout the poem:
aba ab1 ab3 ab1 ab3 ab13 |
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| this is a 39-line poem of six stanzas of six lines each and a final stanza (called an envoi) of three lines; rhyme plays no part in the sestina--instead, one of six words is used as the end word of each of the poem's lines according to a fixed pattern. if you see a poem of six-line stanzas based on a pattern of repeated end words, it is a sestina. |
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