Glossary of Poetic Terms

English IA| UNAM Letras Modernas

Accent

The prominence or emphasis given to a syllable or word. In the word ‘poetry’, the accent (or stress)
falls on the first syllable.

Allegory

A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the
form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities. The most famous example in
English is John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in which the name of the central character, Pilgrim,
epitomizes the book's allegorical nature. Kay Boyle's story "Astronomer's Wife" and Christina
Rossetti's poem "Up-Hill" both contain allegorical elements.

Alliteration

The repetition of the same or similar sounds at the beginning of words. Some famous examples of
alliteration are tongue twisters such as ‘She sells seashells by the seashore’ and ‘Peter Piper picked a
peck of pickled peppers’.

Analepsis

Also known as flashback “ is a literary device in narrative, in which a past event is narrated at a point
later than its chronological place in a story.”

Analogy

An agreement or similarity in some particulars between things otherwise different; sleep and death,
for example, are analogous in that they both share a lack of animation and a recumbent posture.

Sidelight: Prevalent in literature, the use of an analogy carries the inference that if things agree in
some respects, it's likely that they will agree in others.

Anapest

Two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one, as in com-pre-HEND or in-ter-VENE. An

anapestic meter rises to the accented beat as in Byron's lines from "The Destruction of Sennacherib":
"And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, / When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep
Galilee."

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Allusion

An implied or indirect reference to something assumed to be known, such as a historical event or

personage, a well-known quotation from literature, or a famous work of art, such as Keats' allusion to
Titian's painting of Bacchus in "Ode to a Nightingale."

Sidelight: An allusion can be used by the poet as a means of imagery, since, like a symbol, it can
suggest ideas by connotation. Like allegories and parodies, its effectiveness depends upon the reader's
acquaintance with the reference alluded to.

Antithesis

A figure of speech in which words and phrases with opposite meanings are balanced against each
other. An example of antithesis is "To err is human, to forgive, divine." (Alexander Pope)

Apostrophe

Words that are spoken to a person who is absent or imaginary, or to an object or abstract idea. The
poem God's World by Edna St. Vincent Millay begins with an apostrophe: "O World, I cannot hold
thee close enough!/Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!/Thy mists that roll and rise!"

Assonance

The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told
him of my woe." Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" contains assonantal "I's" in the
following lines: "How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, / Till rising and gliding out I
wander'd off by myself."

Asyndeton (uh-SIN-duh-tahn)

The omission of conjunctions that ordinarily join coordinate words and phrases, as in "see no evil,
hear no evil, speak no evil" or “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

Ballad

A poem that tells a story similar to a folk tale or legend and often has a repeated refrain. The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is an example of a ballad.

Blank verse

Poetry that is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in blank
verse.

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Caesura

A natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of the line. There is a caesura
right after the question mark in the first line of this sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "How do I
love thee? Let me count the ways."

Cataphora

The use of a grammatical substitute (like a pronoun) which has the same reference as the next word
or phrase, as "before him, John saw a sea of smiling faces."

Character

An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Literary characters may be major or minor, static
(unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change). In Shakespeare's Othello, Desdemona is a major
character, but one who is static, like the minor character Bianca. Othello is a major character who is
dynamic, exhibiting an ability to change.

Characterization

The means by which writers present and reveal character. Although techniques of characterization
are complex, writers typically reveal characters through their speech, dress, manner, and actions.
Readers come to understand the character Miss Emily in Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" through
what she says, how she lives, and what she does.

Chiasmus (kye-AZ-mus)

An inverted parallelism; the reversal of the order of corresponding words or phrases (with or without
exact repetition) in successive clauses which are usually parallel in syntax, as in Pope's "a fop their
passion, but their prize a sot," or Goldsmith's "to stop too fearful, and too faint to go."

Sidelight: While the term, chiasmus, is usually used in reference to syntax and word order, it also
includes the repetition in reverse of any element of a poem, including sound patterns.

Sidelight: An antimetabole (an-tye-muh-TAB-uh-lee) is a type of chiasmus in which the words

reversed involve a repetition of the same words, as "do not live to eat, but eat to live," or Shakespeare's
"Remember March, the ides of March remember." The distinction is not generally observed, however.

(See also Anastrophe, Hypallage)

(Compare Envelope, Palindrome)

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Closed form

A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in such elements as
rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern. Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" provides
one of many examples. A single stanza illustrates some of the features of closed form:

Whose woods these are I think I know./His house is in the village though./He will not see me
stopping here/To watch his woods fill up with snow.

Conceit

A fanciful poetic image or metaphor that likens one thing to something else that is seemingly very
different. An example of a conceit can be found in Shakespeare's sonnet "Shall I compare thee to a
summer's day?".

Connotation

The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets, especially, tend
to use words rich in connotation. Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"
includes intensely connotative language, as in these lines: "Good men, the last wave by, crying how
bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, / Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Consonance

The repetition of similar consonant sounds, especially at the ends of words, as in lost and past or
confess and dismiss.

Convention

A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus in Greek tragedy, the inclusion of
an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a villanelle. Literary
conventions are defining features of particular literary genres, such as novel, short story, ballad,
sonnet, and play.

Couplet

In a poem, a pair of lines that are the same length and usually rhyme and form a complete thought.
Shakespearean sonnets usually end in a couplet.

Dactyl

A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones, as in FLUT-ter-ing or BLUE-ber-ry. The

following playful lines illustrate double dactyls, two dactyls per line:

Higgledy, piggledy,/Emily Dickinson/Gibbering, jabbering.

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Denotation

The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word's denotative meaning against its
connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications. In the following lines from Peter
Meinke's "Advice to My Son" the references to flowers and fruit, bread and wine denote specific
things, but also suggest something beyond the literal, dictionary meanings of the words:

To be specific, between the peony and rose/Plant squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes;/Beauty is
nectar and nectar, in a desert, saves--[...] and always serve bread with your wine./But, son, always
serve wine.

Dialogue

The conversation of characters in a literary work. In fiction, dialogue is typically enclosed within
quotation marks. In plays, characters' speech is preceded by their names.

Diction

The selection of words in a literary work. A work's diction forms one of its centrally important
literary elements, as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify
themes, and suggest values. We can speak of the diction particular to a character, as in Iago's and
Desdemona's very different ways of speaking in Othello. We can also refer to a poet's diction as
represented over the body of his or her work, as in Donne's or Hughes's diction.

Elegy

A poem that laments the death of a person, or one that is simply sad and thoughtful. An example of
this type of poem is Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."

Ellispis (ih-LIP-suss), pl. Ellipses (ih-LIP-seez)

The omission of a word or words necessary to complete a grammatical construction, but which is
easily understood by the reader, such as "the virtues I esteem" for "the virtues which I esteem." Also,
the marks (. . .) or (--) denoting an omission or pause.

Sidelight: Other terms involving omissions in grammatical construction include: asyndeton, which
omits conjunctions; zeugma and syllepsis, which use one word to serve for two; and aposiopesis,
which omits a word or phrase at the end of a clause or sentence for effect.

Elision

The omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable to preserve the meter of a line of poetry. Alexander
uses elision in "Sound and Sense": "Flies o'er th' unbending corn...."

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Enallage (en-AL-uh-jee)

The effective use of a grammatically incorrect part of speech in place of the correct form, e.g., present
tense in place of past tense, plural for singular, etc., as in Punch magazine's "you pays your money,
and you takes your choice."

Enjambment

The continuation of a complete idea (a sentence or clause) from one line or couplet of a poem to the
next line or couplet without a pause. An example of enjambment can be found in the first line of
Joyce Kilmer's poem Trees: "I think that I shall never see/A poem as lovely as a tree." Enjambment
comes from the French word for "to straddle."

Envoy

The shorter final stanza of a poem, as in a ballade.

Epanalepsis (ehp-uh-nuh-LEP-sis)

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated after intervening matter, as "Weep no more,
woeful shepherds, weep no more," from Milton's Lycidas. More specifically, the repetition, placed at
the end of a sentence, line, clause, or phrase, of the word or words at the beginning of the same
sentence, line, clause or phrase.

Epigraph

A quotation, or a sentence composed for the purpose, placed at the beginning of a literary work or
one of its separate divisions, usually suggestive of the theme.

Epic

A long, serious poem that tells the story of a heroic figure. Two of the most famous epic poems are
the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer, which tell about the Trojan War and the adventures of Odysseus
on his voyage home after the war.

Epigram

A very short, witty poem: "Sir, I admit your general rule,/That every poet is a fool,/But you yourself
may serve to show it,/That every fool is not a poet." (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

Epistrophe(ehp-ISS-truh-fee)

Also called epiphora, the repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive phrases or verses,
as in Lincoln's "of the people, by the people, for the people."

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Epithet

An adjective or adjectival phrase, usually attached to the name of a person or thing, such as "Richard
the Lion-Hearted," Milton's "ivy-crowned Bacchus" in "L'Allegro," or Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn."

Sidelight: With epithets, poets can compress the imaginative power of many words into a single
compound phrase.

Sidelight: An epithet may be either positive or negative in connotation or allusion and sometimes
may be freshly coined, like a nonce word, for a particular circumstance or occasion.

Eulogy

A speech or writing in praise of the character or accomplishments of a person. (See also Encomium)

Euphemism (YOO-fuh-mizm)

The substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression to replace one that might offend or suggest
something unpleasant, for example, "he is at rest" is a euphemism for "he is dead." (Contrast
Dysphemism)

Eyphony (YOO-fuh-nee)

Harmony or beauty of sound which provides a pleasing effect to the ear, usually sought-for in poetry
for effect. It is achieved not only by the selection of individual word-sounds, but also by their
arrangement in the repetition, proximity, and flow of sound patterns.

Sidelight: The consonants considered most pleasing in sound are l, m, n, r, v, and w. The harsher
consonants in euphonious texts become less jarring when in the proximity of softer sounds. Vowel
sounds are generally more euphonious than the consonants, so a line with a higher ratio of vowel
sounds will produce a more agreeable effect; also, the long vowels in words like moon and fate are
more melodious than the short vowels in cat and bed. But the most important measure of euphonic
strategies is their appropriateness to the subject.

(See also Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance, Modulation, Sound Devices)

(Compare Resonance)

(Contrast Cacophony, Dissonance)

Euphuism (YOO-fyuh-wizm)

An ornate Elizabethan style of writing marked by the excessive use of alliteration, antithesis and
mythological similes. The term derives from the elaborate and affected style of John Lyly's 16th
century romance, Euphues.

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Extended metaphor

A metaphor which is drawn-out beyond the usual word or phrase to extend throughout a stanza or
an entire poem, usually by using multiple comparisons between the unlike objects or ideas.

Sidelight: Tennyson's "Crossing the Bar," demonstrates the effectiveness of this device: metaphorically,
he compares a sandbar in the Thames River over which ships cannot pass until high tide, with the
natural time for completion of his own life's journey from birth to death.

Falling meter

Poetic meters such as trochaic and dactylic that move or fall from a stressed to an unstressed syllable.
The nonsense line, "Higgledy, piggledy," is dactylic, with the accent on the first syllable and the two
syllables following falling off from that accent in each word. Trochaic meter is represented by this
line: "Hip-hop, be-bop, treetop--freedom."

Feminine rhyme

A rhyme that occurs in a final unstressed syllable: pleasure/leisure, longing/yearning.

Figurative language

A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal
meaning of their words. Examples include hyperbole or exaggeration, litotes or understatement,
simile and metaphor, which employ comparison, and synecdoche and metonymy, in which a part of a
thing stands for the whole.

Figure of sound

See Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance, Euphony, Resonance, Sound Devices

Figure of speech

A verbal expression in which words or sounds are arranged in a particular way to achieve a particular
effect. Figures of speech are organized into different categories, such as alliteration, antithesis,
assonance, hyperbole, litotes, metaphor, metonymy, onomatopoeia, simile, and synecdoche.

Foil

A character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a play or story. Laertes, in Hamlet, is a
foil for the main character; in Othello, Emilia and Bianca are foils for Desdemona.

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Foot

Two or more syllables that together make up the smallest unit of rhythm in a poem. For example, an
iamb is a foot that has two syllables, one unstressed followed by one stressed. An anapest has three
syllables, two unstressed followed by one stressed.

Free verse

Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme. The verse is "free" in not being bound by earlier
poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme
scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad. Modern and contemporary poets of the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries often employ free verse. Williams's "This Is Just to Say" is one of many
examples.

Heroic couplet

A stanza composed of two rhymed lines in iambic pentameter.

Hypallage (high-PAL-uh-jee)

A type of hyperbaton involving an interchange of elements in a phrase or sentence so that a displaced

word is in a grammatical relationship with another that it does not logically qualify, as in:

With rainy marching in the painful field

---Shakespeare, Henry V, IV.iii

Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?

--- Shakespeare, Othello, IV.ii

While the cock . . .

Stoutly struts his dames before;

--- Milton, "L'Allegro"

(Compare Anastrophe, Chiasmus)

Hyperbole

A figure of speech in which deliberate exaggeration is used for emphasis. Many everyday expressions
are examples of hyperbole: tons of money, waiting for ages, a flood of tears, etc. Hyperbole is the
opposite of litotes.

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Hyperbaton (hi-PER-buh-tahn)

An inversion of the normal grammatical word order; it may range from a single word moved from its
usual place to a pair of words inverted or to even more extremes of syntactic displacement. Specific
types of hyperbaton are anastrophe, hypallage, and hysteron proteron.

Sidelight: The poetic use of hyperbaton is the principal difference in diction between poetry and
prose. Poets utilize it to meet the needs of meter or rhyme, for emphasis or rhetorical effect, and to
temper the flow of narrative.

Iamb

A metrical foot of two syllables, one short (or unstressed) and one long (or stressed). There are four
iambs in the line "Come live/ with me/ and be/ my love," from a poem by Christopher Marlowe. (The
stressed syllables are in bold.) The iamb is the reverse of the trochee.

Iambic pentameter

A type of metre in poetry, in which there are five iambs to a line. (The prefix penta- means "five," as in
pentagon, a geometrical figure with five sides. Meter refers to rhythmic units. In a line of iambic
pentameter, there are five rhythmic units that are iambs.) Shakespeare's plays were written mostly in
iambic pentameter, which is the most common type of meter in English poetry. An example of an
iambic pentameter line from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is "But soft!/ What light/ through
yon/der win/dow breaks?" Another, from Richard III, is "A horse!/ A horse!/ My king/dom for/ a
horse!"

Idyll

Either a short poem depicting a peaceful, idealized country scene, or a long poem that tells a story
about heroic deeds or extraordinary events set in the distant past. Idylls of the King, by Alfred Lord
Tennyson, is about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Image

A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the pattern of
related details in a work. In some works one image predominates either by recurring throughout the
work or by appearing at a critical point in the plot. Often writers use multiple images throughout a
work to suggest states of feeling and to convey implications of thought and action. Some modern
poets, such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, write poems that lack discursive explanation
entirely and include only images. Among the most famous examples is Pound's poem "In a Station of
the Metro":

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/Petals on a wet, black bough.

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Imagery

The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work.
Imagery of light and darkness pervade James Joyce's stories "Araby," "The Boarding House," and "The
Dead." So, too, does religious imagery.

Irony

A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and
what is expected to happen in life and in literature. In verbal irony, characters say the opposite of
what they mean. In irony of circumstance or situation, the opposite of what is expected occurs. In
dramatic irony, a character speaks in ignorance of a situation or event known to the audience or to
the other characters. Flannery O'Connor's short stories employ all these forms of irony, as does Poe's
"Cask of Amontillado."

Kenning

A compound word or phrase similar to an epithet, but which involves a multi-noun replacement for a
single noun, such as wave traveler for boat or whale-path for ocean, used especially in Old English,
Old Norse and early Teutonic poetry. A type of periphrasis, some kennings are instances of metaphor,
metonymy, or synecdoche.

Sidelight: Beowulf, the oldest known epic poem in English, contains numerous examples of kennings.
Milton used the kenning, day-star, for sun, in Lycidas.

(See also Ricochet Words, Tmesis)

Limerick

A light, humorous poem of five lines with the rhyme scheme of aabba.

Literal language

A form of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their words denote. See
Figurative language, Denotation, and Connotation.

Litotes

A figure of speech in which a positive is stated by negating its opposite. Some examples of litotes: no
small victory, not a bad idea, not unhappy. Litotes, which is a form of understatement, is the opposite
of hyperbole.

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Lyric

A poem, such as a sonnet or an ode, that expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet. A lyric poem
may resemble a song in form or style.

Metaphor

A figure of speech in which two things are compared, usually by saying one thing is another, or by
substituting a more descriptive word for the more common or usual word that would be expected.
Some examples of metaphors: the world's a stage, he was a lion in battle, drowning in debt, and a sea
of troubles.

Metre (meter in USA)

The arrangement of a line of poetry by the number of syllables and the rhythm of accented (or
stressed) syllables.

Metonymy

A figure of speech in which one word is substituted for another with which it is closely associated.
For example, in the expression The pen is mightier than the sword, the word pen is used for "the
written word," and sword is used for "military power."

Mimesis (mih-MEE-sis)

Literally, imitation or realistic representation -- but its poetic significance is more specific: it refers to
the combination of sound in phonetic symbolism and onomatopoeia (sound suggestion) with the
connotative, symbolic, and synesthetic effects of the words themselves and their syntactic
arrangement to resemble, reinforce, shape, and temper their lexical sense in a manner that mirrors
the meaning. In An Essay on Criticism, Pope simplified with the precept, "the sound must seem an
echo to the sense." He wrote the following couplet to illustrate:

Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows.

(See also Ekphrasis, Sound Devices)

Mixed metaphor

A metaphor whose elements are either incongruent or contradictory by the use of incompatible
identifications, such as "the dog pulled in its horns" or "to take arms against a sea of troubles."

Sidelight: The effect of a mixed metaphor can be absurd as well as sublime.

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(See also Catachresis, Enallage, Malapropism, Oxymoron, Paradox, Synesthesia)

Narrative

Telling a story. Ballads, epics, and lays are different kinds of narrative poems.

Octave

An eight-line unit, which may constitute a stanza; or a section of a poem, as in the octave of a sonnet.

Ode

A lyric poem that is serious and thoughtful in tone and has a very precise, formal structure. John
Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a famous example of this type of poem.

Onomatopoeia

A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds. Examples of onomatopoeic words are
buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clop, cock-a-doodle-do, pop, splat, thump, and tick-tock. Another example of
onomatopoeia is found in this line from Tennyson's Come Down, O Maid: "The moan of doves in
immemorial elms,/And murmuring of innumerable bees." The repeated "m/n" sounds reinforce the
idea of "murmuring" by imitating the hum of insects on a warm summer day.

Open form

A type of structure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and consistency in
such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure. E.E. Cummings's
"[Buffalo Bill's]" is one example. See also Free verse.

Oxymoron (ahk-see-MOR-ahn)

The conjunction of words which, at first view, seem to be contradictory or incongruous, but whose
surprising juxtaposition expresses a truth or dramatic effect, such as, cool fire, deafening silence, wise
folly, etc.

Sidelight: An oxymoron is similar to a paradox, but more compact, usually consisting of just two
successive words.

(See also Catachresis, Enallage, Malapropism, Mixed Metaphor, Synesthesia)

(Compare Antiphrasis, Antithesis)

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Pantoum

The pantoum is a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth
lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is
often the same as the first.

Paradox

A statement which contains seemingly contradictory elements or appears contrary to common sense,
yet can be seen as perhaps, or indeed, true when viewed from another angle, such as Alexander Pope's
statement, in An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, that a literary critic could "damn with faint praise."

Sidelight: A paradox can be in a situation as well as a statement. The effectiveness of a paradox lies in
the startling impact of apparent absurdity on the reader, which serves to highlight the truth of the
statement. An oxymoron is similar to a paradox, but more compact.

Sidelight: Sometimes an entire poem centers on a paradoxical situation or statement, as in Richard

Lovelace's "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars."

(See also Catachresis, Enallage, Malapropism, Mixed Metaphor, Synesthesia)

(Compare Hudibrastic Verse, Satire)

Parallelism

The repetition of syntactical similarities in passages closely connected for rhetorical effect, as in
Pope's An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot:

Happy my studies, when by these approved!

Happier their author, when by these beloved!

The repetitive structure, which is commonly used in elevated prose as well as poetry, lends wit or
emphasis to the meanings of the separate clauses, thus being particularly effective in antithesis.

Sidelight: Sometimes the use of parallel structures is extended throughout an entire poem.

(Compare Anadiplosis, Anaphora, Echo, Epistrophe, Epizeuxis, Incremental Repetition,

Polysyndeton, Refrain, Stornello Verses)

Parody

A ludicrous imitation, usually intended for comic effect but often for ridicule, of both the style and
content of another work. The humor depends upon the reader's familiarity with the original.

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Sidelight: Sir John Suckling's poem, "A Ballad upon a Wedding," is a parody of an epithalamium.

(See also Allusion, Antiphrasis, Burlesque, Hudibrastic Verse, Irony, Lampoon, Mock-Epic,
Pasquinade, Satire )

(Compare Cento, Pastiche)

Paronomasia

A play on words in which the same word is used in different senses or words with slight differences
in sound are used in opposition to each other for a rhetorical contrast; a pun.

(Compare Antanaclasis, Syllepsis)

Pastoral

A poem that depicts rural life in a peaceful, idealised way.

Pathetic fallacy

The ascribing of human traits or feelings to inanimate nature for eloquent effect, especially feelings
in sympathy with those expressed or experienced by the writer, as a "cruel wind," a "pitiless storm,"
or the lines from Shelley's Adonais:

Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,

And the Wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.

Sidelight: The term was coined in 1856 by John Ruskin, an English painter, art critic and essayist.
While his intent was derogatory, the term is now applied in a neutral sense as a less formal type of
personification.

Pathos

A scene or passage in a work evoking pity, sorrow, or compassion in the audience or reader, such as
the poignant summation of the old man's grief in Wordsworth's Michael:

Many and many a day he thither went,

And never lifted up a single stone.

Sidelight: The use of understatement (meiosis) is often an effective way of achieving pathos.

(Compare Bathos)

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Pentameter

A line of poetry that has five metrical feet.

Perfect rhyme

Also called true rhyme or exact rhyme, a rhyme which meets the following requirements: (1) an exact
correspondence in the vowel sound and, in words ending in consonants, the sound of the final
consonant, (2) a difference in the consonant sounds preceding the vowel, and (3) a similarity of
accent on the rhyming syllable(s).

Sidelight: A rhyme in which the perfect correspondence of sound is extended to include the
consonant preceding the vowel, thus resulting in an identical pronunciation, but with different
meaning and spelling, as in bear and bare, is said to be enriched and is called rich rhyme or rime
riche (reem REESH). If the sound and spelling are the same, but the sense differs, as in blow (air
movement) and blow (a sudden shock), it is called equivocal rhyme or rime equivoque (reem
eh-kwee-VOHK). Both of these are types of identical rhymes. However, the terms rich rhyme,
equivocal rhyme, and identical rhyme are misleading because, in a poetic sense, they are not
considered to be legitimate rhymes.

(See also End Rhyme, Feminine Rhyme, Internal Rhyme, Masculine Rhyme)

Periphrasis (puh-RIF-ruh-sis)

The substitution of an elaborate phrase in place of a simple word or expression, as "fragrant beverage
drawn from China's herb" for tea. Other examples include James Thomson's "the bleating kind," for
sheep, in The Seasons, and Milton's "he who walked the waves," for Jesus in Lycidas.

Sidelight: A periphrasis may be used as a euphemism as well as an embellishment. It can also be used
for humorous effect.

(Compare Epithet, Kenning)

Personification

A figure of speech in which nonhuman things or abstract ideas are given human attributes: the sky is
crying, dead leaves danced in the wind, blind justice.

Point of view

The angle of vision from which a story is narrated. See Narrator. A work's point of view can be: first
person, in which the narrator is a character or an observer, respectively; objective, in which the
narrator knows or appears to know no more than the reader; omniscient, in which the narrator
knows everything about the characters; and limited omniscient, which allows the narrator to know
some things about the characters but not everything.

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Pleonasm (PLEE-uh-nazm)

Redundancy; the use of more words than necessary to express the sense of a thing, but which often
stress or enrich the thought, such as, "I touched it with my own hands" or "a tiny little acorn."

(Compare Tautology)

Polyptoton (puh-LIP-tuh-tahn)

A figure of speech in which a word is repeated in a different form of the same root or stem, as
Shakespeare's "then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright," or repeated with its word class
changed into a different part of speech, as Tennyson's "my own heart's heart, and my ownest own,
farewell."

The juxtaposition of common roots with different endings in a polyptoton produces a rhyme-like
effect -- although not a true rhyme, it is sometimes referred to as a grammatical rhyme.

Sidelight: Similar to the polyptoton, but without involving repetition, is the anthimeria, frequently
used by Shakespeare, which turns a word from one part of speech into another, usually in the making
of verbs out of nouns, as in, "I'll unhair my head." Cummings boldly turned a verb and an adjective
into nouns in the line, "they sowed their isn't they reaped their same."

(See also Antanaclasis, Epanalepsis, Epizeuxis, Ploce)

Polysyndeton (pah-lee-SIN-duh-tahn)

The repetition of a number of conjunctions in close succession, as in, "we have men and arms and
planes and tanks."

(Compare Anadiplosis, Anaphora, Echo, Epistrophe, Epizeuxis,

Incremental Repetition, Parallelism, Refrain, Stornello Verses)

(Contrast Asyndeton)

Prolepsis

Also known as flashforward is “the representation of a thing as existing before it actually does or did
so, as in he was a dead man when he entered.”

Prosopoeia (pruh-soh-puh-PEE-uh)

A figure of speech in which an imaginary or absent person is represented as speaking. (Compare

Apostrophe, Personification)

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Pun

A word play suggesting, with humorous intent, the different meanings of one word or the use of two
or more words similar in sound but different in meaning, as in Mark A. Neville's:

Eve was nigh Adam

Adam was naive.

Sidelight: Clench is an obsolete word for pun. John Dryden (1631-1700), in "An Essay on Dramatic
Poesy," wrote (referring to Shakespeare): "He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating
into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast."

(See also Ambiguity, Denotation, Equivoke, Paronomasia)

(Compare Antanaclasis, Syllepsis)

Pyrrhic

A metrical foot with two unstressed syllables ("of the").

Quatrain

A four-line stanza in a poem, the first four lines and the second four lines in a Petrachan sonnet. A
Shakespearean sonnet contains three quatrains followed by a couplet.

Recognition

The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is. Sophocles' Oedipus
comes to this point near the end of Oedipus the King; Othello comes to a similar understanding of
his situation in Act V of Othello.

Refrain

A phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated throughout a poem, usually after every stanza.

Repetition

A basic artistic device, fundamental to any conception of poetry. It is a highly effective unifying force;
the repetition of sound, syllables, words, syntactic elements, lines, stanzaic forms, and metrical
patterns establishes cycles of expectation which are reinforced with each successive fulfillment.

Sidelight: Repetition is so important to poetry that a large number of poetic devices are based on its
different applications. Sometimes variations from the expected repetitions can also achieve a
significant effect.

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Resonance

The quality of richness or variety of sounds in poetic texture, as in Milton's:

and the thunder . . . ceases now

To bellow through the vast and boundless Deep.

(See also Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance)

(Compare Euphony)

Rhetorical Question

A question solely for effect, with no answer expected. By the implication that the answer is obvious, it
is a means of achieving an emphasis stronger than a direct statement, as in Shelley's "Ode to the West
Wind:"

O, Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Rhyme

The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or more words. When the rhyme
occurs in a final stressed syllable, it is said to be masculine: cat/hat, desire/fire, observe/deserve. When
the rhyme occurs in a final unstressed syllable, it is said to be feminine: pleasure/leisure,
longing/yearning. The pattern of rhyme in a stanza or poem is shown usually by using a different
letter for each final sound. In a poem with an aabba rhyme scheme, the first, second, and fifth lines
end in one sound, and the third and fourth lines end in another.

Rhyme royal

A type of poetry consisting of stanzas of seven lines in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme
ababbcc. Rhyme royal was an innovation introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Rhythm

The recurrence of accent or stress in lines of verse. In the following lines from "Same in Blues" by
Langston Hughes, the accented words and syllables are underlined:

I said to my baby,/Baby take it slow..../Lulu said to Leonard/I want a diamond ring

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Rising meter

Poetic meters such as iambic and anapestic that move or ascend from an unstressed to a stressed
syllable. See Anapest, Iamb, and Falling meter.

Satire

A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. Swift's
Gulliver's Travels is a famous example. Chekhov's Marriage Proposal and O'Connor's "Everything
That Rises Must Converge," have strong satirical elements.

Scansion

The analysis of a poem's metre. This is usually done by marking the stressed and unstressed syllables
in each line and then, based on the pattern of the stresses, dividing the line into feet.

Sestet

A six-line unit of verse constituting a stanza or section of a poem; the last six lines of an Italian
sonnet. Examples: Petrarch's "If it is not love, then what is it that I feel," and Frost's "Design."

Sestina

A poem of thirty-nine lines and written in iambic pentameter. Its six-line stanza repeat in an intricate
and prescribed order the final word in each of the first six lines. After the sixth stanza, there is a
three-line envoi, which uses the six repeating words, two per line.

Sigmatism

The intentional repetition of words with sibilant speech sounds closely spaced in a line of poetry, as
in:

She sells sea-shells by the sea shore

(See Alliteration)

Simile

A figure of speech in which two things are compared using the word "like" or "as." An example of a
simile using like occurs in Langston Hughes's poem Harlem: "What happens to a dream deferred?/
Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?"

Sonnet

A lyric poem that is 14 lines long. Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnets are divided into two quatrains and a
six-line "sestet," with the rhyme scheme abba abba cdecde (or cdcdcd). English (or Shakespearean)

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sonnets are composed of three quatrains and a final couplet, with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef
gg. English sonnets are written generally in iambic pentameter.

Sound devices

Resources used by writers of verse to convey and reinforce the meaning or experience of poetry
through the skillful use of sound.

Sidelight: Sound devices are often combined, as in Coleridge's effective use of alliteration, assonance,
and consonance in the opening line of "Kubla Khan." Other devices that contribute to the sound are
rhyme, onomatopoeia, cacophony, caesura, phonetic symbolism, rhythm, and meter.

(See also Mimesis)

Stanza

Two or more lines of poetry that together form one of the divisions of a poem. The stanzas of a poem
are usually of the same length and follow the same pattern of metre and rhyme.

Spondee

A metrical foot represented by two stressed syllables, such as KNICK-KNACK.

Stress

The prominence or emphasis given to particular syllables. Stressed syllables usually stand out because
they have long, rather than short, vowels, or because they have a different pitch or are louder than
other syllables.

Style

The way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse, and
develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques. See Connotation,
Denotation, Diction, Figurative language, Image, Imagery, Irony, Metaphor, Narrator, Point of view,
Syntax, and Tone.

Subject

What a story or play is about; to be distinguished from plot and theme. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"
is about the decline of a particular way of life endemic to the American south before the civil war. Its
plot concerns how Faulkner describes and organizes the actions of the story's characters. Its theme is
the overall meaning Faulkner conveys.

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Syllepsis (suh-LEP-sus)

A type of zeugma in which a single word, usually a verb or adjective, agrees grammatically with two
or more other words, but semantically with only one, thereby effecting a shift in sense with the other,
as in "colder than ice and a usurer's heart," or Pope's:

Or stain her Honour, or her new Brocade.

Sidelight: Because of the shift in sense, the syllepsis is related to the pun or paronomasia.

(Compare Hendiadys, Prolepsis)

Symbol

An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond
itself. The glass unicorn in The Glass Menagerie, the rocking horse in "The Rocking-Horse Winner,"
the road in Frost's "The Road Not Taken"--all are symbols in this sense.

Syncope (SIN-koh-pee)

A type of elision in which a word is contracted by removing one or more letters or syllables from the
middle, as ne'er for never, or fo'c'sle for forecastle.

(Compare Aphaeresis, Apocope, Synaeresis, Synaloepha)

Synecdoche

A figure of speech in which a part is used to designate the whole or the whole is used to designate a
part. For example, the phrase "all hands on deck" means "all men on deck," not just their hands. The
reverse situation, in which the whole is used for a part, occurs in the sentence "England beat France
in the final game," where England and France stand for "the English team" and "the French team,"
respectively.

Syntax

The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. The organization of words
and phrases and clauses in sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue. In the following example, normal
syntax (subject, verb, object order) is inverted:

"Whose woods these are I think I know."

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Synesthetic metaphor

A metaphor that suggests a similarity between experiences in different senses, as "a gourmet of
country music."

(See also Conceit, Kenning, Mixed Metaphor)

Tautology

The unnecessary and excessive repetition of the same idea in different words in the same sentence, as
"the room was completely dark and had no illumination," or "a breeze greeted the dusk and nightfall
was heralded by a gentle wind."

(Compare Pleonasm)

Tercet

A three-line stanza, as the stanzas in Frost's "Acquainted With the Night" and Shelley's "Ode to the
West Wind." The three-line stanzas or sections that together constitute the sestet of a Petrarchan or
Italian sonnet.

Tetrameter

A line of poetry that has four metrical feet.

Theme

The idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in
the form of a generalization. See discussion of Dickinson's "Crumbling is not an instant's Act."

Tone

The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work, as, for example,
Flannery O'Connor's ironic tone in her "Good Country People." See Irony.

Trochee

A metrical foot of two syllables, one long (or stressed) and one short (or unstressed). An easy way to
remember the trochee is to memorize the first line of a lighthearted poem by Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, which demonstrates the use of various kinds of metrical feet: "Trochee/ trips from/ long to/
short." The trochee is the reverse of the iamb.

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Trope

A figure of speech, such as metaphor or metonymy, in which words are not used in their literal (or
actual) sense but in a figurative (or imaginative) sense.

Understatement

A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of
exaggeration. The last line of Frost's "Birches" illustrates this literary device: "One could do worse than
be a swinger of birches."

Verse Form

“Verse forms do not define poetic form: they simply express it.” (Stand and Boland 3) This includes
forms like villanelle, sestina, sonnet, etc...

Villanelle

A nineteen-line lyric poem that relies heavily on repetition. The first and third lines alternate
throughout the poem, which is structured in six stanzas --five tercets and a concluding quatrain.
Examples include Bishop's "One Art," Roethke's "The Waking," and Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into
That Good Night."

Zeugma (ZOOG-muh)

A figure of speech in which a single word, usually a verb or adjective, is used in the same grammatical
and semantic relationship with two or more other words, as in "my father wept for woe while I for
joy," or Pope's:

Obliged by hunger, and request of friends.

(See also Syllepsis)

(Compare Ellipsis, Hendiadys, Prolepsis)

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