Literary Terms Flashcards
Literary concepts likely to appear on GRE Subject Eng LIt
Alexandrine
A line of iambic hexameter. The final life of a Spenserian stanza is an alexandrine.
Ex) “A needless alexandrine ends the song / that like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.” (Alexander Pope, “Essay on Criticism”) second line is an alexandrine.
Iambic
A metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
Ex) defeat.
Hexameter
A metrical line of six feet. Southey, Kingsley, Coleridge, Longfellow, Clough, Tennyson, Swinburne experimented with it.
Spenserian Sonnet
Developed and named after Edmund Spenser. The link sonnet. Has the binding couplet of the Shakespearean sonnet at the end.
Rhyme scheme: abab bcbc cdcd ee. Two couplets in the body (bb, cc) and one at the end.
Ex) Edmund Spenser “One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand”
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide and made my pains his prey.
Vain man (said she), that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalise;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quod I); let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame;
My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where, when as death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.
Spenserian Stanza
Form invented by Edmund Spenser. Nine iambic lines, eight are pentameters and last is a hexameter (alexandrine). Rhyme scheme ababbcbcc.
Ex) Edmund Spenser created this stanza for [The Faerie Queene].
Pentameter
Five foot metrical line. Basic line in much English verse, especially blank verse and heroic couplet. Established by Chaucer, Ezra Pound loosened the hold.
Blank Verse
Most widely used of English verse forms, favored by dramatists. John Milton “Paradise Lost”. (Dryden and Pope preferred heroic couplet) Introduced by Earl of Surrey (16th cen.) in his translation of the Aeneid. Unrhymed five-stress lines (iambic pentameters).
Heroic Couplet
Rhymed decasyllables, nearly always in pairs of iambic pentameters. Spenser, Shakespeare, Ben Johnson, Hall, Drayton, Fletcher, Beaumont, Donne, Waller, Denham, Oldham, Dryden, Pope.
Alliteration
Repeated consonant or sound, usually at beginning of series of words.
Allusion
A reference to someone or something, usually literary.
Ex) Herman Melville, Moby Dick. “Call me Ishmael.” (biblical Ishmael)
Ex) William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury. (Shakespeare, Macbeth. “… it is a tale / told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / signifying nothing.”)
Anthropomorphism
The assigning of human attributes (emotions, physical characteristics, etc) to nonhumans (plants, animals). Differs from personification in that it is an intrinsic premise and an ongoing pattern applied to a nonhuman character throughout a literary work.
Ex) Aslan from C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia is a Lion, but addressed and behaves as if is human.
Ex) All the characters from George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
Ex) Greek god Zeus is supposed to be superhuman but often has human emotions and behaviors.
Apostrophe
A speech addressed to someone not present, or to an abstraction.
Ex) “History! You will remember me…” - Innate grandiosity lends itself to parody.
Ex) John Donne in “The Sun Rising”: “Busy old fool, unruly sun, / Why dost thou thus, / Through windows, and through curtains call on us?”
Bildungsroman
German term “novel of education.” Typically follows a young person over a period of years, from naivete&inexperience through struggles with harsher realities&hypocrisies of the adult world.
Ex) James Joyce [A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man] and J. D. Salinger [A Catcher in the Rye], coming-of-age novels.
Caesura
The pause that breaks a line of Old English verse. Also any particularly deep pause in a line of verse.
Ex) “Hwaet! we Gar-Dena | | on geardagum…” (“Lo! we Spear-Danes, in days of yore…”) - Beowulf
Ex) “Arma virumque cano, | | Troiae qui primus ab oris…” (“I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy…”) - Aeneid
Decorum
A neoclassical principle of drama. 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.
Ex) In Oscar Wilde’s [The Importance of Being Earnest]
Doggerel
Derogatory, poorly written poetry of little or no literary value.
Ex) Shakespeare purposely employed doggerel in dialogue between Dromio twins (The Comedy of Errors) for comedic effect.
Ottava Rima
Eight-line Iambic stanza, rhyming abababcc. Introduced to English verse in early 16th cen. by Sir Thomas Wyatt.
Used by Lord Byron in [Beppo (1818)], [The Vision of Judgement (1822)], [Don Juan (1819-24)].
W. B. Yeats “Sailing to Byzantium”. Last stanza in “Among School Children”.
Epithalamium
A work, especially a poem, written to celebrate a wedding.
Ex) Edmund Spenser, “Epithalamium”.
Song! made in lieu of many ornaments,
With which my love should duly have been dect,
Which cutting off through hasty accidents,
Ye would not stay your dew time to expect,
But promist both to recompens;
Be unto her a goodly ornament,
And for short time an endlesse moniment.
Euphuism
Derived from Lyly’s [Euphues (1580)] to characterize writing that is self-consciously laden with elaborate figures of speech. Popular and influential mode of speech and writing in late 16th cen.
Ex) Polonius in Shakespeare’s [Hamlet]. “To thine own self be true.” “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
Feminine Rhyme
Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. To properly be a feminine rhyme (and not just a “double rhyme”) the penultimate syllables are stressed while final syllables are unstressed.
Ex) A pair of lines ending by “running” and “gunning”.
Ex) Shakespeare “Sonnet 20 - A woman’s face with nature’s own hand”
A Woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion…
Flat Characters&Round Characters
Coined by E. M. Forster. Flat Characters are built around a single dominant trait, Round Characters are shaded and developed with greater psychological complexity.
Ex) Mrs. Micawber in Charles Dickens [David Copperfield] is flat, Anna Karenina in Leo Tolstoy’s [Anna Karenina] is round.
Georgic
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.
Ex) Derived from Virgil’s [Georgics], about the virtues of the farming life.
Pastoral
Is of great antiquity, interpenetrates many classical and modern European literature. Idealization of shepherds’ life, features shepherds holding piping contests and writing poems. Later influenced by Christian love.
Ex) Phillip Sydney, [Arcadia]. Christopher Marlowe “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love”
Hamartia
Aristotle’s term for “the tragic flaw”. Tragic flaw implies an inherent psychological flaw in the tragic character, Hamartia implies fate.
Ex) Oedipus, in his hasty temper. Macbeth, in his lust for power.
Homeric Epithet
Repeated descriptive phrase as found in Homer’s epics.
Ex) “Rosy-fingered dawn” “the wine-dark sea” “the ever-resourceful Odysseus”
Hudibrastic
Derived from Samuel Butler’s [Hudribras]. Couplets of rhymed tetrameter lines (eight syllables long at any rate), deliberate, humorous, ill-rhythmed, ill-rhymed couplets.
Ex) We grant, although he had much wit He was very shy of using it As being loathe to wear it out And therefore bore it not about, Unless on holidays, or so As men their best apparel do. Beside, 'tis known he could speak Greek As naturally as pigs squeak.
Tetrameter
Line of four metrical feet, usually iambic or trochaic. Used extensively by many, including Milton, Byron, Scott.
Ex) John Milton [L' Allegro] Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips and Cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles
Trochaic
Having your metrical foot start by a stressed syllable, followed by an unstressed syllable.
Ex) John Milton [L' Allegro] Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips and Cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles
Hyperbole
A deliberate exaggeration.
Ex) Ralph Waldo Emerson “The Concord Hymn”: “Here once embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world.”
Litotes
An understatement created through a double negative / negating the negative.
Ex) Bible, Book of Acts: “Paul answered, ‘I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city. Please let me speak to the people.’” (Acts 21:39)
Masculine Rhyme
Fhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (regular rhyme).
Ex) Robert Frost "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening": Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.
Metonymy
Phrase that refers to a person or object by their single important feature. Differs from Synecdoche in that it is meant to represent something related to that as opposed to the whole.
Ex) Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s play [Richelieu] “The pen is mightier than the sword.”
Neoclassical Unities
Principles of dramatic structure derived from Aristotle’s [Poetics]. Popular in the neoclassical movement of the 17th and 18th centuries.
To observe unity of time, a work should take place within the span of one day.
To observe unity of place, a work should take place within the confines of a single locale.
To observe unity of action, a work should contain a single dramatic plot, with no subplots.
Pastoral Elegy
A poem that takes the form of an elegy (lament for the dead) sung by a shepherd. Shepherd is a stand-in for the author, elegy is for another poet.
Ex) John Milton’s “Lycidas” (dedicated to Edward King). Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Adonais” (dedicated to John Keats)
Pathetic Fallacy
Coined by John Ruskin. Refers to ascribing emotion and agency to inanimate objects.
Ex) John Ruskin “The cruel crawling foam”
Personification
Giving an inanimate object human qualities or form.
Ex) Emily Dickinson "The Train": I like to see it lap the miles, And lick the valleys up, And stop to feed itself at tanks; And then, prodigious, step . . .
Picaresque
A novel typically constructed along an incident-to-incident basis, follows the adventures of a scurrilous rogue whose primary concerns are filling their belly and staying out of jail.
Ex) Mark Twain [Huckleberr Finn]. Daniel Defoe [Moll Flanders].
Antagonist
The main character opposing the protagonist, usually the villain.
Ex) Iago from Shakespeare, [Othello]
Protagonist
The main character, usually the hero.
Ex) Othello from Shakespeare, [Othello]
Skeltonics
Form of humorous poetry made popular by John Skelton. Very short, rhymed lines and a pronounced rhythm. Only difference between Skeltonics and Doggerel is the quality of the thought expressed (Doggerel is lower).
Ex) John Skelton "How the Doughty Duke of Albany" O ye wretched Scots, YePuant pisspots, It shall be your lots To be knit up with knots.
Sprung Rhythm
Created and used in 19th cen. by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Like Old English verse, fits a varying number of unstressed syllables in a line, the scansion counting only the stressed syllables.
Ex) Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Pied Beauty”
Glory be to God for dappled things–
For Skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches; wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced–fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
Scansion
The analysis of metrical patterns in verse. Includes arrangement of accented&unaccented syllables into metrical feet, grouping of lines according to the number of feet, classification of stanza according to the rhyme scheme&number of lines per stanza.
Synaesthesia
Phrases that suggest an interplay of the senses.
Ex) "hot pink" "golden tones" Ex) John Keats "Ode to a Nightingale" Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker of the warm South...
Synecdoche
Phrase that refers to a person or objct by a single important feature of theirs. Differs from Metonymy in that it is meant to represent the whole instead of something related to it.
Ex) T. S. Eliot “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” Claws are meant to represent the whole crab.
Voice
Perspective from which story is written. Literature is most often written from first or third person, rarely second person or first-person plural. Voice often changes within a particular literary work.
First Person
Work is narrated using the pronoun “I”. Narrator may be the protagonist or even an omniscient speaker. “I” may refer to different characters within the same work.
Ex) Percy Bysshe Shelley “Ozymandias”: “I met a traveler from an antique land who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / stand in the desert.” Voice later changes to that of Ozymandias himself.
Ex) Edgar Allen Poe “The Tell-Tale Heart”
Ex) William Faulkner [As I Lay Dying], told from multiple perspectives (particular person) with multiple first-person narratives (voice).
Third Person
Narrated using a name or a third-person pronoun (he, she)
Ex) Samuel Taylor Coleridge “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” : “It is an ancient mariner, And he stoppeth one of three.”
Ex) Most of Jane Austen’s novels including [Pride and Prejudice] and [Persuasion].
Second Person
Author uses pronoun “you”, making the reader an active participant in the work.
Ex) [A Favorite Character/Reader] fanfiction
First person Plural
Narrated using the pronoun “we”. Forces the reader to concentrate what the story is about instead of who is telling it.
Ballad
Typical stanza of the folk ballad. Length of lines are (like sprung rhythm poetry and Old English verse) determined by the number of stressed syllables only.
Rhyme scheme abcb.
Ex) Samuel Taylor Coleridge “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
In Memoriam
Stanza composed of four lines of iambic tetrameter. Rhyme scheme abba.
Ex) A stanza from Alfred, Lord Tennyson. “In Mamoriam A. H. H.”
Rhyme Royal
Seven-line iambic pentameter. Rhyme scheme ababbcc.
Sir Thomas Wyatt “They Flee from Me That Sometime Did Me Seek”:
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild, and do not remember.
Terza Rima
Three-line stanzas with an interlocking rhyme scheme. aba bcb cdc ded.
Ex) Dante Alighieri invented this for [The Divine Comedy]. :
Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To ell
About those woods is hard–so tangled and rough…
Blank Verse
Unrhymed iambic pentameter verse.
Ex) Alfred, Lord Tennyson. “Ulysses”. :
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Free Verse
Unrhymed verse without a strict meter.
Ex) Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” :
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
Old English Verse
Verse characterized by the internal alliteration of lines&strong midline pause called a caesura.
Ex) [Beowulf]:
Protected in war; so warriors earn
Their fame, and wealth is shaped with a sword.
Sonnet
14-line form composed of rhyming iambic pentameter lines.
Italian/Petrarchan Sonnet
Rhymes abbaabba cdecde. First eight lines (abbaabba) are called the octave, final six lines (cdecde) are the sestet, composed of two groups of three (tercets). No final couplets.
ex) John Milton “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent”:
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.
English/Shakespearean Sonnet
Rhymes abab cdcd efef gg. One couplet at the end.
Ex) Shakespeare “Sonnet 73”:
That time of year thou mayst in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed, whereon it must expire,
Consumed by that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.
Villanelle
19-line verse rhyming aba aba aba aba aba abaa. Most noticeable characteristic is the repetition of the first and third lines throughout the poem: 123 xx1 xx3 xx1 xx3 xx13
Ex) Dylan Thomas “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
Sestina
39-line poem. Six stanzas with six lines each, final stanza of three lines named an envoi. No rhyme, instead end word of each line is one of six, according to a fixed pattern. If there is a poem of six-line stanzas based on a pattern of repeated end-words, it is a sestina.
Ex) Rudyard Kipling “Sestina of Tramp-Royal”. Each stanza uses word “die”. :
Speakin’ in general, I ‘ave tried ‘em all,
The ‘appy roads that take you o’er the world.
Speakin’ in general, I ‘ave found them good
For such as cannot use one bed too long,
But must get ‘ence, the same as I ‘ave done,
An’ go observin’ matters till they die.
What do it matter where or ‘ow we die,
So long as we’ve our ‘ealth to watch it all–
The different ways that different things are done,
An’ men an’ women lovin’ in this world–
Takin’ our chances as they come along,
An’ when they ain’t, pretendin’ they are good?
(die, all, done, world, long, good)
Auxiliary
Helping verb. Often a form of “be” “have” do”
ex) I am working on it.
Gerund
Verb acting as a noun clause, usually the “-ing” form of the verb.
Ex) Eating worms is bad for your health.
Imperative
Verb used for issuing commands.
Ex) Do it now!
Indicative
Plain old verb in present tense.
Ex) John plays with the ball.
Infinitive
An unconjugated verb with “to” in front of it.
Ex) To be, or not to be.
Conjugated Verb
Verbs that have changed form according to following characteristics of the situation it is applied in: person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice.
Ex) I speak - She speaks. I spoke - She spoke.
Participle
The “-ed” form of a verb.
Ex) John has played with the ball many times.
Predicate
Further information about the subject (a verb and its cohorts).
Ex) This test is really bogus.
Subjunctive
Verb used to express conditional or counterfactual statements.
Ex) If I were a rich man…
Subordinate Conjunction
A word that introduces a subordinate clause.
Ex) Since you’re awake, I’ll just turn on the TV.
Substantive
A group of words acting as a noun.
Ex) Playing the banjo is extremely annoying.
Vocative
Expression of direct address.
Ex) Sit, Ubu, sit!
Lacanian Criticism (key text)
Famous writings include Jaques Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage in the Formation of the I”. He claims about the word “I”, suggesting that a child’s first (mis)recognization (meconnaisance) of themselves in the mirror is the point they are alienated from themselves (the point they enter the symbolic order).
Lacanian Criticism (relationship with another school)
Endless chain of signifiers has its analogue in Freud’s theory of the interpretation of dreams (chain of substitutions with no clear referent).
For Freud, unconscious comes first, language mapped on it. For Lacan, language structures the unconscious. Lacan is the bridge between psychoanalytic and linguistic criticism (Freud&Hegel read through Saussure). Saussure claimed the discontinuity between signifiers and signified (signifiers “float” in an endless chain of substitution)
Lacanian Criticism (keywords)
mirror, phallus, signifier / signified, substitution, desire, jouissance (physical or intellectual pleasure), objet petit a (unattainable object of desire).
Three orders: imaginary, symbolic, real.
Marxist Criticism (general idea)
Left-wing view of literature.
Texts are not timeless creations subject to universal standards of evaluation and interpretation. Man does not possess essential, unchanging qualities that would produce “great literature” able to reach beyond the ages. An individual, their consciousness, and the products of this consciousness come from a specific cultural and historical context.
Marxist Criticism (keywords)
base and superstructure (material economic reality and the cultural superstructure built upon it)
class, proletariat, means of production, bourgeoisie, imperialism, dialectical materialism.
Marxist Criticism (New Historicism)
Institutions such as language produce effects in people’s conscious. This social-institutional presence in consciousness is ideology. The ideology is not the cover for the “real’ part of literature, rather, this cutural-ideological layer is the proper object of analysis itself.
Encoded ideology supporting the dominant class and the struggling voice of the oppressed ideological subject play central parts.
Marxist Criticism (New Historicism Effects)
Feminist/Black/Post-Colonial Criticism
Influenced by the New Historicist view on ideology and its effect on literature. Investigates definitions/constructions of self, called Identity Criticism.
Psychological Criticism (general view)
Is antithetical to Marxist criticism in that it is concerned with universals of human consciousness and the ways these essential aspects manifest themselves in literature. Considers personality and biographical particulars of the individual author as fields of inquiry (not source of interest for Marxist and Linguist Criticism).
Psychological Criticism (Freudian Criticism) (keywords)
Oedipal complex, libido, id, ego, superego, subconscious, repression, resistance
Psychological Criticism (Freudian Criticism) (author)
Harold Bloom’s theory of “authorial production”: Authors subconsciously position their work agains tthat of another, earlier author who functions as a kind of literary father figure. “strong-poet” is the type of author that exerts this influence.
Psychological Criticism (Archetype / Myth Criticism)
Drawn from Freud collaborator Carl Jung, and from anthropologist James G. Frazer (encyclopedic study of myth and ritual [The Golden Bough]).
Joseph Campbell ([The Hero with a Thousand Faces]), Northrop Frye are important in subsequent development.
Looks for recurring symbols, motifs, character types, plots which can reveal the collective unconscious of humankind (needs and urges deep in the human psyche).
Linguistic Criticism (overview)
Formalism and New Criticism are concerned with particulars of language; Structuralism and Deconstruction with philosophy of language rather than literature per se.
Linguistic Criticism (Formalist Criticism)
Predominantly Russian school of the 1920s. Attempted to find the objectively discernible features that make literature literature.
Centered around the concept of defamiliarization. Devices of plot, story, and voice that made language unfamiliar and signaled the work as an aesthetic object.
Linguistic Criticism (New Criticism) (preeminence)
Dominated American and English universities for several decades mid 20th century. New Critics were not only scholars but formidable stylists (T. S. Eliot, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, I. A. Richards, John Crowe Ransom, F. R. Leavis)
Linguistic Criticism (New Criticism) (idea)
(Similarly to Formalists) thought earlier criticial approaches were polluted by unsustainable speculations, causing “intentional fallacy” and “affective fallacy”.
Absolutely loathed criticism that attempted to define “what Great Writer X was trying to say” (heresy of paraphrase). Words were there on the page; one only need to examine them closely.
Linguist Criticism (New Criticism) (Close Reading)
In case of ambiguity, studies the ambiguity to discern how several readings affect the totality of the piece (close reading).
Most successful with poetry; how words bounce off one another to create packages of irony, ambiguity, symbol, meaning.
Linguist Criticism (Structuralism)
Dominated continental Europe while New Criticism was thriving in U.S. and England. Derived from linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Closely related to semiotics.
Meaning is never intrinsic and only produced by structure, whose fundamental unit is relative difference. sign, signifier, signified. Often describes text in binary oppositions, often spatial metaphors (center&periphery, vertical&horizontal axis)
Linguist Criticism (Post-Structuralism)
Uses structuralist theory and critiques it (deconstruction). Structuralism posits an orderly structure to meaning, deconstruction focuses on displacements, excesses, gaps that structuralists dismiss as exceptional.
erasure, trace, bracketing, differance, slippage, dissemination, logocentrism, indeterminancy, decentering. More generally, mimesis, alterity, marginality, desire, lack.
Linguist Criticism (Reader-Response Criticism)
The reader’s experience of the text is the literary event. Literary works involve implied/ideal reader. Closely allied with Reception Aesthetics, makes use of Marxist/Psychological/Linguistic Theory.
Sometimes, in literary-history mode, examines the aesthetic impact of a work (judging whether the work broke with the aesthetic horizon of expectation of its time)
Alliterative Verse
Similar sounds repeating throughout a line, especially at the start of a word. [Beowulf] has three or four alliterated syllables per line.
Trimeter
A line in a verse containing three metrical feet.
Quatrain
Four-lined stanza in verse, rhymed or unrhymed. Commonest stanza form in European poetry.
Elliptical Poetry
Person who speaks in the poem^reflects the poet is manifested, while using the verbal tools to undermine the coherence of speaking selves.
Ex) Emily Dickinson(1830-1881)
Free indirect discourse
Fictional characters’ sentiments are presented in a way that seems combined with that of the author.
Ex) Jiyoung stared at her, disturbed by the tone of threat in the question - for how could it be anything else?
