PERSONIFICATION,

BALLAD,COUPLET

SUBMITTED BY GROUP 3
B A HISTORY AND ENGLISH
GROUP 3
● Divya Prasanth
●Muhsina
●Safwana K
●Vyshnav V G
●Easwari R
PERSONIFICATION
WHAT IS
PERSONIFICATION ?
 Personification is a figure of speech used to
give human qualities to non-human things
like animals,birds,trees or even ideas like
love,death,hatred,anger etc.
 It is used to convey the meaning that an item
or thing has performed an action when in
reality it has not.
 This type of figurative language is used as a
literary device in order to make a piece of
writing more vivid and descriptive.
 It is often used in the way of a metaphor and
gives object, emotions, speech, gestures or
desires.
 It is also used in order to better assist the
reader in understanding the text and can make
a piece of writing more original and unique in
its nature.
Gender of Personified things
 Masculine pronouns are used in things
that are huge, cruel and ugly.
 Feminine pronouns are used in
personifying things that are small,
loving and beautiful.
Example:
 The Ocean is “he”.
 The river is “she”.
 The Sun is “he”.
 The Moon is “she”.
 Death is “he”.
 Love is “she”.
Features of
Personification
 Demonstrate creativity.
 Exercise poetic skill.
 Create humour.
 Enhance imagination.
How can we find personification in
writing?
Personification is a technique
used by many writers to enrich
their language and creating
more compelling descriptions.
We can identify personification
by noticing any moments where
the author describes
something non-human with human
characteristics.
Common examples of
Personification
 The sunflowers hung their heads.
 My phone is not cooperating with me today.
 The school bell called us from outside.
 The leaves waved in the wind.
 The Sun smiled at us.
 The Ocean heaved a sigh.
 The Sun played hide and seek with the clouds.
 Examples from the text book
 “The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable
quays”
(In Memory of WB Yeats)
 “Blue stars shiver in the distance.”
(Tonight I can write the saddest lines)
BALLAD
 A poem or song narrating a story in
short stanzas.
 Traditional ballads are typically of
unknown authorship, have been passed on
orally from one generation to the next.
 Ballads derives from the medieval
French chanson ballad’ee or ballade,
which were originally “dance songs”.
 Ballads were particularly characteristic
of the popular poetry and song of Britain
and Ireland from the Late Middle Ages
until the 19th century.
STRUCTURE
 Core structure for a ballad is quatrain written either in
abcb or abab rhyme scheme.
 The first and third lines are iambic tetrameter, with four
beats per line; the second and fourth lines are in trimeter,
with three beats per line.
 Second and fourth lines of each stanza always rhyme, but
first and third lines of each stanza rhyme occasionally.
 Some ballads feature two lines rather than four, which
form rhymed couplets of seven stressed lines.
Features of Ballad
 Simple language.
 Stories.
 Repetition.
 Dialouge.
 Third person objective narrative.
 Use of supernatural element.
 Theme of ballad:Usually tragic but there
are some ballads which are comic in
nature.
Common examples of Ballad
 The Nut-Brown Maid (Thomas Percy)
 The Rime of Ancient Mariner (S.T.Colerdige)
 The Ballad of a Bachelor (Ellis Parker Butler)

Example from Text book

• La Belle Dame Sans Merci (John Keats)
COUPLET
 A couplet usually consists of two successive lines
that rhyme and have the same metre.
 A couplet can be part of poem or a poem on its
own.
 A couplet must consist of 2 lines that follow each
other and create a complete idea or thought.
 English poet Sir Philip Sidney drew attention to
the poetic devices when he outlined the purpose of
couplets in his book The Countess of Pembroke’s
Arcadia (1590).
 Different types of couplets in
Poetry
 In a formal couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there is a
grammatical pause at the end of a lines of verse.
 In a run-on couplet ,the meaning of first line continues to the second.
 Heroic couplet: This is the most common couplet used in english poetry.
 Split couplet: Split couplet have assymetrical rythms.
 Chinese couplet:Couplets have been used in chinese poetry for two thousand
years.In the Chinese poetry, couplets are written as individual poems.
 Qasida: A qasida is an arabian poem that is a series of couplets.There can be a
dozen of couplets in qasida.
 Purpose of
Couplet
 Gives rhythm.
 Creates imagery in few words.
 Emphasis an idea in 2 lines.
 Give conclusion.
Common examples of Couplets

 “Looking to the sea, it is a line

of unbroken mountains”.
 “I made the cookies one by one
I hear the bell , so they are done”.
 “His red sports car is just a dream”
it needs no gas ,it runs on steam”

Example from the Text book

“So long as men can breathe, or eye can see,

So long lives this, and this gives lives to thee.”
(Sonnet 18-William Shakespeare)
REFERENCE
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ga7LyR4c3E
 https://literarydevices.net/personification/
 https://examples.yourdictionary.com/couplet-examples.html
 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballad
 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couplet
 https://www.masterclass.com/articles/poetry-101-what-is-a-
couplet-in-poetry#what-is-the-purpose-of-a-couplet-in-poetry
Thank you