Poetry Terms

Question 1

Caesura

Answer 1

A break in a line of poetry; this can sometime be used for emotional effect.
“Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind…”

Question 2

Allusion

Answer 2

a reference to literature or scripture that calls up all of the ideas represented by that reference to support the themes and central ideas of a text.

For example, a reference to Ebeneezer Scrooge immediately invokes the idea of cruel parsimony.

Question 3

Internal Rhyme

Answer 3

When words within a line of poetry rhyme.

Question 4

Juxtaposition

Answer 4

Literally meaning “placing next to”. Poets can create a significant effect
(often contrast) by choosing to place one idea, word, or image next to another:

“Parents, dogs, foreigners, PREDATORY
GIRLS stand round the pond like minutes on a clock.”

Question 5

Symbol

Answer 5

An object (living or inanimate) which stands for or represents something else.

For example, scales represent justice, the swastika Nazi Germany and Fascism, a clenched fist aggression and raised arms or a white flag surrender. Some symbols are cultural and sometimes poets create personal symbols.

Question 6

Onomatopoeia

Answer 6

Use of words which imitate the sound they mean

e.g. splash, rustle, clatter, bang, crunch.

Question 7

Stanza

Answer 7

Group of lines within a poem. The ballad, for example, is in four-line stanzas.

Question 8

Connotation

Answer 8

Meaning by association which is evoked by a word, as opposed to the literal sense of a word or its strict dictionary definition which is called its denotation.

Question 9

Enjambment

Answer 9

A line which ends before the sentence does and so the reader must carry on to the next line without a pause to find the sense.

Question 10

Simile

Answer 10

Imaginative comparison which uses “as”, “like” or “than”.

The sentence “John is taller than Fred” is a statement of fact which does not involve the imagination. However “John is taller than two ladders” is a simile. Beware leaping to conclusions: the words “as”, “like” or “than” are used in constructions other than similes.

When you read, check that there is some kind of imaginative connection in use.

Question 11

Rhyme scheme

Answer 11

A pattern of rhyme. In identifying a rhyme scheme we call the first line A.

If the second line rhymes with the first, this is also called A; if not it becomes B and so on all
the way through the poem.

Limericks rhyme AABBA.

Question 12

Alliteration

Answer 12

Uses the same SOUND at the beginnings of words which are close together:
“Bruise us with Bitterness”

Question 13

Enumeration

Answer 13

Listing. Public speaking and writing are more persuasive when examples
are enumerated.

Question 14

Personification

Answer 14

A kind of metaphor where an object or abstract is treated as if it were
human.

Wilfred Owen describes the misery of having no shelter from the weather in “Exposure”:

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray.

Question 15

Metaphor

Answer 15

Common figurative device in which one thing is described imaginatively in terms of another.

Unlike the simile, a metaphor does not use “as”, “like” or “than”.

For example, “My vegetable love…”

Question 16

Double Entendre

Answer 16

A double entendre is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially awkward, sexually suggestive, or offensive to state directly.

Question 17

Assonance

Answer 17

(internal) repetition of vowel sounds: “little kittens”

Question 18

Synaesthesia

Answer 18

A kind of metaphor which mixes two senses, like ‘a blue note’ which applies a visual adjective to an auditory noun.

Question 19

Hyperbole

Answer 19

Exaggeration for emphasis or other rhetorical effect

For example in Andrew Marvell’s carpe diem poem To His Coy Mistress:

My vegetable love should grow
- Vaster than empires - , and more slow;
An hundred years should got to praise
Thine eyes and on thine forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest.

Question 20

Metonymy

Answer 20

The substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant

For example suit for business executive, or the track for horse racing.

Question 21

Iambic Pentameter

Answer 21

A line of writing that consists of ten syllables in a specific pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, or a short syllable followed by a long syllable.

Question 22

Volta

Answer 22

In a sonnet, the volta is the turn of thought or argument:

In Petrarchan or Italian sonnets it occurs between the octave and the sestet, and in Shakespearean or English before the final couplet.

Question 23

Couplet

Answer 23

A pair of lines in a poem which rhyme.

Many scenes in Shakespeare’s plays end with a rhyming couplet. This is thought to be a useful cue for the next actors to come on stage.

Shakespearean and Spenserian sonnets end with a couplet.

Question 24

Tone

Answer 24

the attitude the author has to his [or her] listener–which in turn affects the listener’s attitude to the literary work.

The tone may be, for example, formal, serious, or passionate; intimate, light-hearted, or calmly meditative; witty or ironic.

The term is usually used to refer to the tone of language in narrative or drama, or the tone of a narrative or lyric persona.

Question 24

Tone

Answer 24

the attitude the author has to his [or her] listener–which in turn affects the listener’s attitude to the literary work.

The tone may be, for example, formal, serious, or passionate; intimate, light-hearted, or calmly meditative; witty or ironic.

The term is usually used to refer to the tone of language in narrative or drama, or the tone of a narrative or lyric persona.

Question 25

Tone

Answer 25

the attitude the author has to his [or her] listener–which in turn affects the listener’s attitude to the literary work.

The tone may be, for example, formal, serious, or passionate; intimate, light-hearted, or calmly meditative; witty or ironic.

The term is usually used to refer to the tone of language in narrative or drama, or the tone of a narrative or lyric persona.

Question 26

Tone

Answer 26

the attitude the author has to his [or her] listener–which in turn affects the listener’s attitude to the literary work.

The tone may be, for example, formal, serious, or passionate; intimate, light-hearted, or calmly meditative; witty or ironic.

The term is usually used to refer to the tone of language in narrative or drama, or the tone of a narrative or lyric persona.

Question 27

Diction

Answer 27

The choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing.

Question 28

Bildungsroman

Answer 28

A novel dealing with one person’s formative years or spiritual education.

Question 29

Epistolary

Answer 29

Literary work written in the form of letters.

Question 30

Vernacular

Answer 30

The language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a particular country or region.

Question 31

Character Arc

Answer 31

A character arc is the transformation or inner journey of a character over the course of a story. If a story has a character arc, the character begins as one sort of person and gradually transforms into a different sort of person in response to changing developments in the story.