Poetry Literary Terms. Flashcards
What is a ‘Classical’ or ‘Neoclassical’ idea?
They are movements that believe all writing or art should imitate precedents and genres created by the writers or artists of classical civilisations (Greece and Rome).
What’s a ‘ballad’?
A ballad is a word that has changed in meaning. To folklorists, a ‘ballad’ is a song that tells a story, whereas to poets the ballad verse-form is a simple AB, AB rhyme structure with simple rhythms.
What is effusion?
A word meaning a spontaneous expression. It was a concept valued by the Romantic poets.
What is an elegy?
A poem lamenting a dead person or persons. The term ‘elegiac’ meaning ‘mournful’ or ‘conveying loss’ derives from this genre.
What is an epithalamium?
A poem celebrating a wedding.
What is a pastoral poem?
An idealised depiction of rural life, sometimes set in ‘Arcadia’; an eden-like land.
What is a sonnet?
A 14-line poem with a strict rhyme scheme.
Petrarchan sonnets usually have the rhyme scheme a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a, and either c-d-e-c-d-e, or c-d-c-c-d-c, or c-d-c-d-c-d.
A Shakespearean sonnet will end with a couplet: a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g-.
