GCSE Poetry terms Flashcards
Triples or the rule of three
Use of three words, ideas, or phrases to help the reader recall the information or to emphasise a point.
Churchill: “I have nothing to offer but ‘blood, sweat, and tears’”
Emotive language
Use of language designed to have an emotional impact - to make an appeal to your heart.
‘Abandoned children found in filthy, flea-infested flat…’ (bbc bitesize example, great to say out loud)
“Shame on you!”
“Why would you leave me here all alone without a friend in the world except you?” Blinkety blink…
Philosophically this is considered a fallacy - in which the conclusion does no necessarily follow from the propositions: just because someone appeals to the heart to encourage you to act in a way does not mean that the action will be good or you must send money!
Rhetorical question:
A question not expecting an answer from the audience/reader
Used to introduce a topic.
“What is a rhetorical question? Well, let me tell you…”
Personification
giving an object (or animal) human characteristics or feelings
The cat mused upon the death of the mouse.
The table waited patiently for the guests to arrive.
The mountain stared down ominously at the climbers.
Pathetic fallacy
The description of the atmosphere reflects the emotions of the characters in a story.
“It was a dark, stormy night, when the murderer entered the old castle…” [Think how this used in films…]
Oxymoron
two or more contradictory terms, e.g, “deafening silence” “lazy worker” “poor rich girl”
Setting
The context in which the story takes place:
House, fields, beach, space, sea, zoo, underground …
Settings usually change with the story or a story may take place in the same setting.
Also - what time period? contemporary, historical, future …
Mood or atmosphere
The general atmosphere that the author creates.
- suspenseful
- fearful
- calm
- mysterious
- wonderous
- exciting
- adventurous
- thrilling
- satirical
- pantomime
- dark
- lonely, bleak
- miserable
- hopeless
- chaotic or anarchic
- loving
- contented
- kind
- friendly, welcoming
- idyllic
- absurd (theatre of the absurd -post WW2 writers such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionescu)
- silly (many Monty Python sketches)
Language use in general
How the author pulls us into the atmosphere of a story or into a character’s mind.
How the author creates suspense or wonder with emotive language and imagery.
Does the author focus on details or the adventure using strong verbs, short sentences?
Is the author using dialect for characters to give a sense of locality?
Final resolution or “denouement”
“The final part of a play, film, narrative or poem in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.
Alliteration
Repeated first letter or sound;
silly sounds
boutiful bargains
think thoughtfully then thank the Thuringian. (person of a German state called Thuringia)
Assonance
repeated vowel (often in the middle of word)
“I lie down by the side fo my bride”/”Fleet feet sweep by sleeping geese”/”Hear the lark and harden to the barking of the dark fox gone to ground” by Pink Floyd
Read more at http://examples.yourdictionary.com/assonance-examples.html#3H9V6xqdKz0AWMPW.99
an acrostic poem
An acrostic poem is a poem in which the letters of each line spell out a word, name, or phrase when read vertically - usually the first letter of the stanza is used but can also be the last.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “An Acrostic”:
Elizabeth it is in vain you say
“Love not”-thou sayest it in so sweet a way:
In vain those words from thee or L.E.L.
Zantippe’s talents had enforced so well:
Ah! if that language from thy heart arise,
Breath it less gently forth-and veil thine eyes.
Endymion, recollect, when Luna tried
To cure his love-was cured of all beside-
His follie-pride-and passion-for he died.
allusion
a reference to another event, person, place, or work of literature.
The allusion is usually implied rather than an explicit (telling us where it comes from) and provides another layer of meaning to what is being said.
Films may refer to other films (esp. in comedies); authors may allude to other authors to make fun of them;
ambiguity
Use of language where the meaning is unclear or has two or more possible meanings or interpretations.
E.g., “Peter and Paul went into the shop and he bought a packet of crisps and a copy of Dickens’s Great Expectations.” Who was doing the buying?
It could be created by a weakness in the writer’s expression - they’re not being clear in what they mean, but it is more likely it is a deliberate device used by the writer to create layers of meaning.
Weak, or DANGLERS - when the meaning is lost accidently, such as, “The man killed the student with a book.” Hmmm?! Did he kill a student who happened to be holding a book, or did he kill the student by using a book as a weapon?
“Leaving home, the weather was bright and sunny.” I presume the weather left its home in this one…
Deliberate - when the ambiguity is used for effect as in puns, double entendre, equivocation.
Great play on words (pun) from Carry on Cleo - as Caesar is attacked, he calls out, “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” (A phonic - sound - pun)
“Do you believe in clubs for young people?” someone asked W.C. Fields. “Only when kindness fails,” he replied.
anthropomorphism
the endowment of human characterisctics to something that is not human –
The table waited patiently for the diners to sit.
The tree sighed as the highwayman passed; it knew what was waiting the robber around the corner.
assonance
the repetition of similar vowel sounds
colloquial
ordinary, everday speech and language
connotation
an implication or association attached to a word or phrase. It is suggested or felt rather than being explicit.
From litcharts.com:
- Words can have positive, negative or neutral connotations. For instance, the word “peace” has a positive connotation, “coffin” has a negative one, and “table” is neutral.
- The connotations a word carries are often subjective, meaning that they might change depending on an individual’s experience, geographical location, or time period. In other words, connotation is deeply dependent on context. (Table may refer back to a romantic encounter between two people or to a scene of murder and a weapon was placed on ‘the table’…-editorial addition to text)
- Writers may use connotation to evoke specific emotions in their readers without explicitly telling them what to feel. Connotation is vital to the arts, but is also extremely useful in business, advertising, and politics.
diction
the choice of words a writer uses. Another word for “vocabluary”
empathy
a feeling on the part of the reader of sharing the particular experience being described by the character or writer
end stopping
a verse line with a pause or stop at the end of it.
enjambement
a line of verse that flows on into the next line without a pause
to maintain a flow of narrative or
description.
figurative language
language that is symbolic or metaphorical and not meant to be taken literally
imagery
the use of words to create a picture or “image” in the mind of the reader. Images can relate to any of the senses, not just sight.
internal rhyme
rhyming words within a line rather than at the end of lines
irony
at its simplist level, it means saying one thing while meaning antoher. It occurs where a word or phrase has one surface meaning but another contradictory, possibly opposite meaning is implied. Irony is often confused with sarcasm. SARCASM is spoken, relying on the tone of voice and is much more blunt than irony.
metaphor
a conparison of one thing to another to make the descrption more vivid. The metaphor actually states that one thing is another.
His face was a true harvest festival.
meter
the regular use of unstressed and stressed syllables in poetry
tum ti tum ti tum ti tum
what is narrative in poetry?
telling a story through verse in poetry
E.g. An Irish Airman Foresees His Death by W B Yeats
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
onomatopoeia
the use of words whose sounds copies the thing or process they describe – e.g. “bang, crash, or ping”
pathos
the effect in literature which makes the reader feel sadness or pity
(compare to logos, and ethos - logos deploys logic, reason, science; ethos appeals to character, usually trustworthy)
Personification
the attribution of human feelings, emotions, or sensations to an inanimate object. Personification is a type of metaphor where human qualities are given to things of abstract ideas
point of view
a story can be told by one of the characters or from another point of view. The point of view can change from one part of the story to another when events are viewed through the minds of two or more characters
protagonist
the main character or speaker in a poem, monologue, play, or story.
pun
a play on words that have similar sounds but quite different meanings
- for humour, ambiguity, highlight a word, or irony.
“‘Mine is a long and a sad tale!’ said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing. ‘It is a long tail, certainly,’ said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse’s tail; ‘but why do you call it sad?’
rhyme
corresponding sounds in words, usually at the end of each line, but not always
rhyme scheme
the pattern of rhymes in a poem
usually denoted as AABB, or ABAB, or ABABCDCD, etc.
rhythm
The ‘movement’ of the poem as created through the meter and the way that language is stressed within the poem
From Shakespeare’s The Tempest - read it out loud to hear the rhythm
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell:
satire
the highlighting or exposing of human failings or foolishness through ridiculing them
Satire can range from being gentle and light to extremely biting and bitter in tone
Eg Don Quixote by Cervantes; Catch-22 by Heller; The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov.
simile
the comparison of one thing to another in order to make the description more vivid using like or as
- She dances like a dervish.*
- He stomped like a brontosaurus up the stairs.*
- They were as intelligent as smart phones, except I couldn’t switch them off…*
sonnet
A fourteen-line poem, usually with 10 syllables in each line.
There are several ways in which the lines can be organised, but they often consist of an octave and a sestet (8 lines followed by 6)
stanza
the blocks of lines into which a poem is divided. (Sometimes these are, less precisely, refered to as verses, which can lead to confusion as poetry is sometimes called ‘verse’)
structure
the way a poem or play or other piece of writing has been put together
style
the individual way in which the writer has used language to express his or her ideas
narrative style
descriptive style
persuasive style
educational / expository style
reflective style
symbol
like the use of images, symbols present things which represent something else. In very simple terms, a red rose can be used to symbolisee love; distant thunder can symbolise approaching trouble.
Symbols can be very subtle and multi-layered in their significance and association for people (personal, national, cultural, religious, commercial)
syntax
the way in which sentences are structured. Sentences can be structured in different ways to achieve different effects
Theme
the central idea or ideas that a writer explores through a text
We usually ask what is the theme of this story or poem? There can be many sub-themes or alternative themes.
Eg Is the big theme of Great Expectations the life and characters of early 19thC London, or how expectations and reality can clash? There are others… role of money, class, redemption, innocence, loss, grief, friendship.
haiku
The haiku is a Japanese poetic form that consists of three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third.
“A World of Dew” by Kobayashi Issa
A wórld of dew, (5)
And within every dewdrop (7)
A world of struggle. (5)
NB: first ‘world’ has 2 syllables, second time has only 1!
Free verse
Free verse:
may or may not rhyme
irregular number of lines per stanzas
irregular number of syllables
irregular meter
(popular in modern poetry)
tercet
in poetry: three lines
quatrain
in poetry: four lines
villanelle
(advanced vocabulary)
old style of French poetry made up of 19 lines
and following other rules,
e. g., five stanzas of three lines + one of four
rhymes: ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
limerick
a style of poem used generally for humorous effect (often rude as well!)
: made popular by Edward Lear (19thC)
: rhyming scheme of AABBA
My firm belief that Pizarro… by Aldous Huxley
My firm belief is, that Pizarro
Received education at Harrow -
This alone would suffice,
To account for his vice,
And his views superstitiously narrow.
what is an ode?
**style of poem from Ancient Greece
ode comes from aeidein which means to sing or chant**
an ode today is usually written about something or someone loved or adored or celebrated
Ode on a Grecian Urn - John Keats
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’
Ode to My Socks
by Pablo Neruda - 1904-1973
Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder’s hands,
two socks as soft
as rabbits.
I slipped my feet
into them
as though into
two
cases
knitted
with threads of
twilight
and goatskin.
Violent socks,
my feet were
two fish made
of wool,
two long sharks
sea-blue, shot
through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons:
my feet
were honored
in this way
by
these
heavenly
socks.
They were
so handsome
for the first time
my feet seemed to me
unacceptable
like two decrepit
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that woven
fire,
of those glowing
socks.
Nevertheless
I resisted
the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere
as schoolboys
keep
fireflies,
as learned men
collect
sacred texts,
I resisted
the mad impulse
to put them
into a golden
cage
and each day give them
birdseed
and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers
in the jungle who hand
over the very rare
green deer
to the spit
and eat it
with remorse,
I stretched out
my feet
and pulled on
the magnificent
socks
and then my shoes.
The moral
of my ode is this:
beauty is twice
beauty
and what is good is doubly
good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool
in winter.
what is an elegy?
Poetry: whatever the style used, elegies are about a person who has died; so an elegy could be a sonnet, free verse, haiku, etc:
To an Athlete Dying Young
BY A. E. HOUSMAN
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.
what is a ballad?
A ballad tells a story, usually dramatic.
The style is often of the form of four lines rhyming ABAB or ABCB, but while the structure and style may differ, the subject is always a dramatic story!
The Solitary Reaper
William Wordsworth - 1770-1850
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?—
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o’er the sickle bending;—
I listen’d, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
sestet
six lines
cinquain
five lines (of a stanza)
couplet
two lines (of a stanza)
what is the difference between a stanza and a verse
For literature or language exams!
a stanza = a collection of lines in a poem separated by a double space
a verse = a single line in a stanza or a poem (or a collection of lines) based on their rhyme and meter
(NB ‘verse’ can also mean a stanza or a the whole poem in everday language)
What is an adage?
cf. cliché
A brief piece of wisdom or advice
E.g.
Things are not always what they seem.
Be content with what you have.
United we stand, divided we fall
what is a cliché?
a well-known, perhaps overly used belief about life
(adage = wisdom, cliché = overly used)
e.g.,
you can’t always judge a book by its cover
the grass is always greener on the other side
play your cards right
what is an allegory?
a story within a story
E.g., Animal Farm is about a group of animals who rise up and take over a farm.
The allegory points to the Russian Revolution and how the revolution did not change the lives of most people that much and the revolutionaries ended up being like the tyrants that they had overthrown..
anecdote
a short story that is appropriate for the topic being discussed.
e.g. I’m exploring the life of Thales and am explaining how he was getting excited about looking at the stars when he fell into a well. The student replies with an anecdote: “That reminds me of my dad - he was so excited about showing mum a gorgeous full moon one night that as he raced to tell her, he tripped over a ball and fell into our pond!”
antithesis
cf. juxtaposition
the opposite of an idea or statement
That’s one small step for a man – one giant leap for mankind. (Neil Armstrong, 1969)
juxtaposition
cf antithesis
deliberate use of contrasting ideas
“I can bring you in cold or I can bring you in warm” - The Mandalorian, episode 1.
Or Romeo’s juxtapositions showing his madness (he’s madly in love, but Rosaline has rejected him)
Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,
sick health!
what is an aposiopesis?
Clue - it’s the Greek for silent…so when would it be used in speech?
when a sentence is left deliberately cut off.
Greek aposiōpan = silent
Why? It may show a speaker or writer’s desire to avoid continuing and allowing the listener or reader to finish the sentence in their own way.
“Then there was the time when we were all supposed to be ready to go to the airport, and …” Yes, we all knew what happened. It was a painful and embarrassing memory to all of us.
“Yes, I can quite imagine …” grandmother nodded with a knowing eye that made me uncomfortable. She had a way of doing that, not finishing her sentences, but the meaning would pour out nonetheless.
“Your family are just … “ she pulled a face.
“I think I’m beyond anger! I could … I could …” He grasped his hair and shook violently.
archaism
a word or phrase that was used in the past but is not so used today.
E.g., “I shan’t go to the shops!”
(instead of “I won’t go to the shops!”)
“I daresay, it will rain later.”
what is an asyndeton?
Think of this sentence and what is missing:
“I came, I saw, I conquered.”
when a speaker or writer misses out conjunctions between phrases (for, and, yet, but, etc.) for effect
An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was thick, warm, heavy, sluggish. - Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
what is bathos?
an abrupt change in description to the surprising, silly or absurd
From Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.
“Why, what did she tell you?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
what is burlesque?
an absurd imitation or comic exagerration of something such as a dramatic scene
(from Italian - burlesco = to ridicule)
Types:
parody (mimicking a style) - eg The songs of Weird Al Jankovic are burlesque imitations of the originals.
mock-heroic eg Monty Python’s Holy Grail
travesty: vulgar or lewd (rude) imitation of a significant work (eg Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and the treatment of Pyramus and Thisbe)
cacophony
series of harsh, discordant sounding words
cacophony = kako - ill; phōnos = sound
EG Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
catharsis
release of strong emotions
Gk: kathairein - to cleanse
climax
a story’s central turning point,
the moment of peak tension or conflict
the answer to a story’s mystery
the beginning of a story’s resolution
(image: Freytag’s pyramid of literary climax)
consonance
a figure of speech (artistic use of language) in which the same consonant sound repeats
E.g.,
Finally, enough terrific phantoms floated around to frighten even tough Phoebe.
(/f/ sound even though with different spellings)
Consonance is repetition of consonant sounds:
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. King James Bible. Psalm 23
[Assonance on the other hand is repetition of vowel sounds: “Hey, wait! Don’t blame me! Nate and James are the perpetrators!”]
connotation
vs
denotation
connotation = the array of emotions and ideas suggested by a word in addition to its dictionary definition; the array can be positive, neutral or negative.
“She is hot … (I really fancy her!)”
denotation = literal meaning of a word (not the feelings/ideas that the word suggests)
“She is hot … (Call a doctor!)”
zoomorphism
giving a human or thing animal characteristics
verb
a doing or being word
I swim in the sea in the sultry summers.
I am warm today.
Powerful verbs draw the readers into the imagery compared to weaker verbs.
Consider:
She read the paper for an hour. (weak)
She scrutinised the paper for an hour. (strong)
Verbs can thus affect:
Reader’s engagement.
Clarity or detail of what’s going in.
Tone and voice.
Help the flow of the narrative - speed it up or slow it down.
Tom sprinted down the road throwing glances behind him as he fled the gang running behind him.
Active versus passive can also have an effect on who/what is important. Look at the subject (who is person/thing doing the action):
The boy kicked the window.
The window was kicked by the boy.
Our attention shifts from the boy to the window in the second example.
asyndectic
lack of conjunctions
eg. I came, I saw, I conquered.
What is deitic? (adv)
Understanding the word from the context.
caesura
“A caesura is a pause that occurs within a line of poetry, usually marked by some form of punctuation such as a period, comma, ellipsis, or dash.
“In fair Verona, where we lay our scene.”
