Poetry

Question 1

Name the most important features of poetry

Answer 1

• relative brevity
• compression, condensation and reduction of the represented subject matter
• increased subjectivity
• musicality and proximity to songs
• structural and phonological complexity
• morphological and syntactic complexity
• deviation from everyday language and increased artificiality
• increased aesthetic self-referentiality

Question 2

What determines the speech situation in a poem?

Answer 2

• Who is the textual speaker?
• To whom are their remarks addressed?
• Where and when are speaker and addressee situated?
  -> analyse personal and possessive pronouns and their referential functions

Question 3

meter

Answer 3

• organisational principle according to which a line of verse is divided into feet
• differentiated according to the number of stressed syllables -> monometer (1), dimeter (2), trimeter (3), tetrameter (4), pentameter (5) and hexameter (6)

Question 4

foot

Answer 4

smallest rhythmical unit consisting of one stressed and up to two unstressed syllables, e.g. iamb

Question 5

tetrameter

Answer 5

a line with four stressed syllables, also known as ‘four-beat line’

Question 6

enjambement

Answer 6

a “run-on” line that carries over into the next to complete its meaning.

Question 7

caesura

Answer 7

an audible pause internal to a line, usually in the middle.

(An audible pause at the end of a line is called an end-stop.) The French alexandrine, Anglo-Saxon alliterative meter, and Latin dactylic hexameter are all verse forms that call for a caesura.

Question 8

alexandrine

Answer 8

a line consisting of am iambic hexameter with a caesura after the third stress, or the sixth syllable.

Question 9

stanza

Answer 9

a “paragraph” of a poem: a group of lines separated by extra white space from other groups of lines.

a couplet consists of two lines, a tercet of three and a quatrain of four

Question 10

rhyme

Answer 10

generally referring to a rhyme at the end of a line of verse (end-rhyme), with a consonance between all phonemes following the last stressed vowel, and with all rhyming syllables occurring within the same word.

Question 11

free verse

Answer 11

poetry in which the rhythm does not repeat regularly.

Question 12

end rhyme

Answer 12

rhyme between stressed final vowels in lines of verse

Question 13

internal rhyme

Answer 13

special case; full rhyme between two or more words within the same line of verse

Question 14

scansion

Answer 14

the identification and analysis of poetic rhythm and meter. To “scan” a line of poetry is to mark its stressed and unstressed syllables.

Question 15

rhyming scheme

Answer 15

schematic representation of the sequence of end-rhymes:
- rhyming couplets: aa bb cc
- alternate rhyme: abab cdcd
- embracing rhyme: abba cddc
- chain rhyme: aba bcb cdc
- tail rhyme: aab ccb

Question 16

anaphora

Answer 16

the repetition of a word or phrase, usually at the beginning of a line.

Question 17

alliteration

Answer 17

the repetition of sounds in a sequence of words.

Question 18

allegory

Answer 18

narrative with two levels of meaning, one stated and one unstated.

Question 19

apostrophe

Answer 19

direct address to an absent or otherwise unresponsive entity (someone or something dead, imaginary, abstract, or inanimate).

Question 20

assonance

Answer 20

the repetition of vowel-sounds.

Question 21

chiasmus

Answer 21

from the Greek letter Chi ( Χ ), a “crossed” rhetorical parallel. That is, the parallel form a:b::a:b changes to a:b::b:a to become a chiasmus.

Question 22

consonance

Answer 22

the repetition of consonant-sounds.

Question 23

elegy

Answer 23

since the 17th century, usually denotes a reflective poem that laments the loss of something or someone.

Question 24

metonymy

Answer 24

a figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing that is commonly and often physically associated with it, e.g. “White House” for “the President.”

Question 25

simile

Answer 25

a figure of speech that compares two distinct things by using a connective word such as “like” or “as.”

Question 26

synecdoche

Answer 26

a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to represent the whole, e.g. “wheels” for “car.”

Question 27

symbolism

Answer 27

the serious and relatively sustained use of symbols to represent or suggest other things or ideas. (Distinct from allegory in that symbolism does not depend on narrative.)

Question 28

symbol

Answer 28

an image that stands for something larger and more complex, often something abstract, such as an idea or a set of attitudes.

Question 29

onomatopoeia

Answer 29

the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named (e.g. cuckoo, sizzle

Question 30

personification

Answer 30

Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things or abstractions.

Question 31

parallelism

Answer 31

succession of clauses or sentences of the same structure

Question 32

metaphor

Answer 32

word pictures that are used to convey a figurative meaning, a covert comparison

Question 33

iamb

Answer 33

unstressed / stressed

Question 34

trochee

Answer 34

stressed / unstressed

Question 35

dactyl

Answer 35

stressed / unstressed / unstressed

Question 36

anapest

Answer 36

unstressed / unstressed / stressed

Question 37

spondee

Answer 37

stressed / stressed

Question 38

sonnet

Answer 38

a verse form of Italian origin consisting of 14 lines in iambic pentameter with rhymes arranged according to a fixed scheme, usually divided either into octave and sestet or, in the English form, into three quatrains and a couplet