poetry Flashcards
What are the typical features of Poetry?
- Brevity
- Overstructuring/Artificiality
- Deviation
- Self-referentiality
- Subjectivity
- Fragile Aesthetic Illusion
Why is defining Poetry so difficult?
- Ancient Genre
- Extremely heterogeneous in form and content
- Criteria have changed over time
definition -> only typical features, generic tendencies, no defining f.
Prototype theory for it!
What are the two types of Brevity?
- Quantitive
- Qualitive
What are the characteristics of Quantitive Brevity?
- reduced length
- short texts
- ‘space-saving code’: vertical structure
- intensified reading experience
- overview of all features
What are the characteristics of Qualitative Brevity?
- reduced content
- little context (on lyrical I)
- fuzzy world building, semantic gaps
- cognitive frames: semantic, prototypical triggers
- Heightend reader activation: filling in the gaps
What are the characteristics to Overstructuring/Artificiality?
- overuse of structure, repetition
- patterning, structure, correspondences/contrasts, similarity,
- order through sameness
- repeated elements establish network of relations, structure, order the meaning
- Order on ALL levels of language (typographical, sound, semantic, aesthetic)
Why does Overstructuring need a different way of reading?
needs a mindful of (formal) details
- Reading poetry: visual and auditive experience (typographical and acoustic information)
Lesen und In-Sich-Hineinsprechen
What is Jakobson’s “Poetic Function”?
- the defining feature of poetry
- deprioritize semantics
- poetry sees words in their linguistic entirety -> all aspects of a word serve a function (stress, syllables, sounds)
- not superficial -> changes the discourse
What is Overstructured Typology?
- ‘shape’ of a poem
- creates expectations
- ‘Verse’: first and last word fixed
- creates additional unit for establishing correspondences
- slows down reading
- draws attention to discourse (self-referentiality)
What is the Overstructured Sound?
- Overstructuring suprasegmental / word& sentence level: stress vs. unstress, metre/rhythm
- Overstructuring phonetic/syllable & sound level: alliteration, assonance, rhyme)
sounds dont mean anything in themselves, effect is determined by poem
What are the characteristics of Deviation?
- Poetry breaks inner- and extratextual rules: inner (rhyme scheme, metre) or extra (grammar, taboos)
- Unpredictability is engaging and creates meaning (reader activation - interest; self-referentiality - attention on discourse level; uniqueness)
example: metaphor
What is Subjectivity?
- personal text/experience
- speaker’s subjective perspective
- speaker is NOT the author (speaker, persona better)
- Overt vs. covert speaker
How do you create Subjectivity?
- 1st person pronoun
- Little info on context
- Emotionality markers
- Individual language use
- Deviation
What are the characteristics of Self-referentiality?
- not just a carrier of meaning
- awareness of constructed-ness of text
- Consequence of overstructuring, deviation, poetic function
What are characteristics of Fragile Aesthetic Illusion?
- Immersion (we know it’s not real but we act like it is)
- Illusion of lyric-world: more sketchy, less immersive bc of static cognitive images, unclear fictional world, distance through deviation (metaphor), focus on form (overstructuring)
But strong speaker illusion! we treat him as if real
Who was Francesco Petrarca?
- lived in 14th century
- Italian poet
- Humanist
- Wrote Sonnet cycle Il Canzoniere (366 poems)
- created the Petracan/Italian sonnet
What is the Story level of the Petracan (Italian) Sonnet?
- courtly love -> unattainable love
- extreme idealisation, praising her perfection
- self-scrutiny, self-definition of the speaker
- Frustration, melancholy, isolation
- Through soul-searching & renunciation
- From erotic love to spiritual love
What is the Discourse Level of the Petracan Sonnet?
- Disciplined structure vs. passionate emotions
- Rhyme scheme: abba abba cdc dcd, octett vs. sestet, volta
- Very artistic, stylised, mannered (no realism)
- Fomulaic e.g. stereotypical ‘blazon’ = description of lady’s assets
What is the Shakespearean (English) Sonnet?
- from Shakespear: 154 sonnets
- arranged in loose cycle
- consists of 3 quartetts, 1 couplet
- iambic pentameter
- argumentative structure
- often a twist in couplet (volta)
argumentative structure: (thesis-antithesis-synthesis; expectation vs. solution; tension vs. solution, claim vs. proof, claim vs. contradiction)
What are the aspects in Shakespeare’s sonnets?
- Characters: poet speaker, ‘dark ‘ lady (representing sexual love), young man (representing spiritual/courtly love), rival poet
- realistic, complex, flawed characters (not stereotypes)
- Themes: immortality of poetry, love in all its aspects
What are the structural levels of lyric text?
- Story level: characters, action, space & time
- Discourse level: external form, suprasegmental level, phonetic level, morphological level, semantic level, communicative level
- special focus on discourse level (overstructuring)
What does the external form consist of?
- Lines (per stanza)
- Number of stanzas
- Number of syllables
- Metre
- Rhyme scheme
- Historically fixed form (ottava rima, sonnet)
stanza: unit of lines, visually marked through typographical spaces
What is the metre?
kind of like the rhythm
- dimeter (two feet)
- trimeter (three feet)
- tetrameter (four)
- pentameter (five)
- hexameter (six)
- no metre = free verse
scan through text, gain feel for rythm (look for content words e.g. noun, verb, adjective), underline ikts (stressed positions) of the natural stress, establish the type of foot, establish number of feet
What are the types of feet?
- Iamb (xx)
- Trochee (xx)
- Dactyl (xxx)
- Anapaest (xxx)
- Spondee (xx)
Iamb: Be-CAUSE, com-PARE, a-RISE
Trochee: MO-ther, FA-ther, TEM-per, E-qual
Dactyl: HEA-ven-ly, MUR-mur-ing, END-less-ly
Anapaest: a-na-PAEST, to the SEA
Spondee: COME HERE, O DARK, CRY, CRY!
What is Prose Rhythm about?
- Reading poem as if it were prose text
- Stressing only content words
- Natural prose sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables -> irregular
What is the verse rhythm?
interplay between metre and prose rhythm, between abstract metrical pattern and natural prose
What is interplay?
tension between abstract, regular matrical norm and concrete realisation
What are some deviations from the metrical scheme?
- Aesthetic appeal through disappointing expectation, counteracts monotony
- Emphasis on rhythmical focal points can mark important meanings
- equivalence between discourse and story: onomatopoeia (word mimicking sound)
makes poem unique
What is Enjambment?
=run on line
when a sentence thought begins in one line and carries onto the next
What is a rhyme?
sameness of sound after last stressed vowel
- preceding consonant differs (mint-flint)
- Correspondence through sameness of sound (repetition, equivalence, correspondences)
consider historical pronunciation tho!
What rhyme schemes do you know?
- Rhyming couplets: aa bb cc
- Alternate/Crossed rhyme: abab cdcd
- Embracing rhyme: abba cddc OR aba cdc
- Intermittent rhyme: xaxa
- Full rhyme: flower, power
- Half rhymes: close but not exact correspondence of sounds e.g. lid/lad
- Masculine rhyme: ends in stressed syllable e.g. ran-man
- Feminine rhyme: ends in unstressed syllable e.g. willow-billow
What are other sound patterns?
- Alliteration: repetition of initial sounds in neighboring words
- Assonance: repetition of internal vowel sounds
- Consonance: repetition of internal consonant sounds
What is a metaphor + its characteristics?
figure of speech, figurative language
- comparison WITHOUT comparison particle (like, as)
- deviation, non-conventional, transfer of meaning
- vehicle: subject whose attributes are borrowed
- tenor: type/intensity of feeling
- Tertium comparationis: attributes that tenor and vehicle have in common
- based on sensual rather than on mental experience (verbal imagery)
What is a poem’s metaphorical structure?
- Isotopies: Which units of meaning are repeated?
- Areas of reference: Which areas of experience do a poem’s metaphors belong to?
- Structure within each individual metaphor
- Relationship/dynamic between a poem’s metaphors
What are all semantic tropes?
- Synaesthesia
- Personification
- Simile
- Metonymy
- Euphemism
- Hyperbole
- Irony
- Litotes
- Oxymoron
What is Synaesthesia?
special type of metaphor, unites several senses
“And the hapless soldier‘s sigh/runs in blood down palace walls“
What is Personification?
special type of metaphor, making something human or animate
“Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade“
What is Simile?
comparison, WITH comparative particle
“you are like a summer‘s day”
What is Metonymy?
vehicle is closely associated with the tenor (real relationship tenro & vehicle)
using a concept for something for something else
„The crown will find an heir“, crown = the monarch
What is Euphemism?
reference to something sad/distasteful by means of a milder, more positive term
To pass away (for dying)
What is Hyperbole?
Excessive exaggeration
An hundred years should go to praise /Thine eyes
What is Irony?
meaning something very different from/the opposite of what is said
“But Brutus says he [Caesar] was ambitious; / And Brutus is an honourable man”
What is Litotes?
reference to something by negating its opposite
Words at once true and kind, or not untrue and not unkind.
What is an Oxymoron?
Combination of contradictory terms
Oh heavy lightness! serious vanity
What are types of syntactic tropes?
- Anaphora: repetition at beginning of verse
- Epiphora: repetition at end of verse
- Chiasmus: reversal of structures in successive clauses
- Ellipsis: omission of syntactic elements
- Parallelism: repetition of syntactic structure
What is Lyric?
An unmediated expression of processes within the poet’s innermost soul, which create emotional interaction with the outside world (experience)
also: stringed instrument (originally refers to songs that were sung)
wants an empathic response
What is the multi-component model?
assembles a number of criteria for definition and systematises the characteristics of poetry
What is the difference between poetry and prose?
- Poetry: is set out on the page in lines
- Prose: runs right to the far edge
What is Implicit Subjectivity?
Textual speaker can only be discerned in the choice of subjective coloration of the content, form of linguistic expression
in accordance with ideal of impersonality that characterises aesthetics, novels and poetry of modernism
What does the level of enounced (content level) encompass?
All entities (people, spaces, objects, moods, thoughts, feelings) that are represented/contained in a text
what of the poem
What does the level of enunciation (textualisation) refer to?
All elements related to the linguistic & formal composition
how of the poem
What is a caesura?
Break in metre which divides up a line of verse into parts
What is a Spenserian stanza?
alexandrine follows eight lines of verse written in iambic pentameters with a rhyme scheme abab bcbcc
What does stichic mean?
poetry that has no stanzaic structure and is composed of lines which follow one another in unbroken sequence
What are heroic couplets?
rhyming couples composed in iambic pentameters
What is a couplet?
paired lines of verse (rhyming pairs)
How can a break in the internal structure be marked?
- shift in communication context
- shift in speech situation
- change of theme
- change in spatial/temporal reference
- formal/stylistic variations
- units of meaning (rhyme scheme)
What is Asyndeton?
succession of words or phrases without conjoining words
syntactic rhetorical figure
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, despair
What is Inversion?
reversal of normal word order
Here rests his head upon the lap of earth
What are the functions of metaphors?
- opening up new possibilites of meaning that cannot be conveyed by fixed expressions
- Denotations
- Connotative power
- Cognitive function (normative, emotional, ideological implications)
What is Isotopy?
when several images are taken from the same semantic field
