Poetry Terms Flashcards
metaphor
a comparison between two things that does NOT use any helping words.
simile
a comparison made between two things that use helping words such as “like,” “as,” “than,” or “resembles.”
conceit
an extended metaphor with complex logic, or a startling comparison, that governs poetic passage or an entire poem.
personification
a special kind of metaphor that gives human attributes to a nonhuman object, such as an animal, object, or concept.
apostrophe
when a poem’s speaker addresses someone absent, someone dead, or something nonhuman as if it were present and could respond.
synechdoche
the use of the part for the whole.
metonymy
the use of something losely related for the thing actually meant.
paradox
an apparent contradiction that is nevertheless somehow true.
hyperbole
an overstatement or extravagant exaggeration, so far exaggerated that it cannot be taken literally.
understatement
a poem says less than it means. It can sometimes coexist with verbal irony.
sarcasm
literature that ridicules human folly or vice in order to bring about somekind of reform.
situational irony
a discrepancy between actual circumstances and thos would seem appropriate or expected.
verbal irony
to say the opposite of what you mean. It is unlike sarcasm, which aims to hut, or satire, which aims to change, its goal is to be figurative–to say more than it seems.
dramatic irony
when the audience knows something that a character does not.
alliteration
the repetition of the INITIAL CONSONANT sounds.
