Victorian Poetry Flashcards
Ballad
a song or songlike poem that tells a story
Blank Verse
poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter
Couplet
two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme
Free Verse
poetry that has no regular meter or rhyme scheme
Octave
an eight-line stanza or poem or the first eight lines of an Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet
Ode
a complex, generally long, lyric poem on a serious subject
Quatrain
a four-line stanza or poem or a group of four lines unified by a rhyme scheme
Sestet
a six-line stanza or poem or the last six lines of an Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet
Sonnet
a fourteen-line lyric poem, usually written in iambic pentameter, that has one of several rhyme schemes
Dramatic Monologue
a poem in which a character addresses one or more listeners who remain silent or whose replies are not revealed
Lyric
poetry that focuses on expressing emotions or thoughts, rather than on telling a story
Epic
a long narrative poem that relates the great deeds of a larger-than-life hero who embodies the values of a particular society
Simile
a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things by using a connective word such as like, as, than, or resembles
Metaphor
a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two seemingly unlike things without using a connective word
Personification
a kind of metaphor in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it were human
Pun
a play on the multiple meanings of a word or on two words that sound alike but have different meanings
Alliteration
the repetition of consonant sounds in words that are close to one another
Approximate Rhyme
words in a rhyming pattern that have some kind of sound correspondence but are not perfect rhymes
Assonance
the repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds in words that are close together
Onomatopoeia
the use of a word whose sounds imitates or suggests its meaning
Refrain
a repeated word, phrase, line, or group of lines
Apostrophe
a figure of speech in which a speaker directly addresses an absent or dead person, an abstract quality, or something nonhuman as if it were present and capable of responding
Hyperbole
a figure of speech that uses exaggeration to express strong emotion or create a comic effect
Metonymy
a figure of speech in which something closely related to a thing or suggested by it is substituted or the thing itself
