AP Lit terms 31-45
epic
A long narrative poem on a serious subject chronicling heroic deeds and important events. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, John Milton's Paradise Lost, Old English Beowulf, and Dante's Divine Comedy are all examples of epics.
Ode
A lyric poem that is serious and thoughtful int one and has a very precise, formal structure. John Keat's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" -- THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? Ex:Ode to Aphrodite- Sappho
elegy
A lyrical poem written to commemorate someone who is dead. The word is also used to refer to a serious meditative poem produced to express the speaker's melancholy thoughts. Example: "Here Captain! dear father!/This arm beneath your head;/It is some dream that on deck,/You've fallen cold and dead."-"O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman ex:In Memory of W. B. Yeats, by W. H. Auden
Iambic Pentameter
A metrical pattern in poetry wich consits of 5 iambic feet per line (iambic foot consisting of one unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable) Ex-Sonnet XVIII - William Shakespeare- Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?/Thou art more lovely and more temperate:/Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,/And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Anything by shakespeare is written in iambic pentameter
Caesura
A pause within a line of poetry that contributes the the rhythm of the line; can occur anywhere within the line ex: Know then thyself//,presume no God to scan; /The proper study of Mankind// is Man./ Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,/ A being darkly wise, and rudely great: -Alexander Pope * A caesura usually indicated by the symbol //; as shown in the example. ex: Camerado, // I'll give you my hand! I give you my love // More precious than money.
Refrain
A phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated throughout a poem, usually after each stanza example: Like the chorus in a song repeated example:The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.
Pun
A play on words that relies on a word having more than one meaning or sounding like another word. ex: I went out with a coal miner's daughter. I guess you could say I was carbon dated; What's the tallest building in the city? The library because it's so many stories high!
ballad
A poem that tells a story similar to a folk tale or legend and often has a repeated refrain: La Belle Dam sans Merci, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Tam Lin
Narrative Poem
A poem that tells a story; may be short or long, and its story may be simple or complex Ex. Homer's The Odyssey Ex:The Clouds
End- Stopped Rhyme
A poetic line that has a pause at the end; usualy represent normal speech patterns and are often marked by punctuation ex. A thing of beauty is a joy forever- Keat *When viewed in terms of normal conversation this line would have a pause at the end (read just like it is said)
Octave
A poetic stanza of 8 lines, usually forming one part of a sonnet. Often times the first 8 lines of a sonnet, usually presents a situation, attitude, or problem. ex: The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.- Wordsworth
Sestet
A stanza consisting of exactly six lines. Ex: Often times the final 6 lines of a sonnet which comments on or resolves the problem in the octave. Ex: I will put Chaos into fourteen lines And keep him there; and let him thence escape If he be lucky; let him twist, and ape Flood, fire, and demon --- his adroit designs Will strain to nothing in the strict confines Of this sweet order, where, in pious rape, I hold his essence and amorphous shape, Till he with Order mingles and combines. Past are the hours, the years of our duress, His arrogance, our awful servitude: I have him. He is nothing more nor less Than something simple not yet understood; I shall not even force him to confess; Or answer. I will only make him good.- Malay
Quatrain
A stanza or poem of four lines. Ex: This is an example of a quatrain taken from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancienct Mariner"; "All in a hot and copper sky/ The bloody Sun, at noon,/ Right up above the mast did stand,/ No bigger than the moon." Ex: "Hope" is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all. -Emily Dickinson
Stress
A stress places more emphasis on one syllable than on another. We say SYLlable not syllABle, EMphasis not emPHAsis ex: aPOStrophe not apostroPHE
Sestina
A structured 39-line poem consisting of 6 stanzas of 6 lines each, followed by a 3 line stanza. The word that ends each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas. Ex: "Sestina" by Algernon Charles Swinburne and "All-American Sestina" and "When Madness Rides on Moonlight"
Haiku
A style of lyric poetry borrowed from the Japanese that typically presents an intense emotion or vivid image of nature, which, traditionally, is designed to lead to a spiritual insight. Haiku is a fixed poetic form, consisting of seventeen syllables organized into three unrhymed lines of fivem seven, and five syllables. Today, however, many poets vary the syllabic count in their haiku. Ex: As the wind does blow/Across the trees, I see the/Buds blooming in May. I walk across sand/And find myself blistering/In the hot, hot heat. Ex: The Ap test is tuesday/ I would like to get a five/ that is unlikely
Lyric Poem
A type of brief poem that expresses personal emotions and thoughts of the speaker; important to realize that the speaker is not necessarily the person even though it is written in the first person Ex. "l(a" by E.E. Cummings; no speaker is specified, but a mood and emotion are projected (for full text see p. 579 in Bedford) Ex: Waiting for Sunrise, James Goff
Villanelle
A type of fixed form poetry consisting of 19 lines of any length, divided into six stanzas: five tercets and a concluding quatrain. Ex: "Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath and "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night" by Dylan Thomas, "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
Colloquialism
A type of informal diction that reflects casual, conversational language and often includes slang expressions Ex. "dude;" "fresh;" "skur;" "YOLO" ex: "sketch"
Dramatic Monologue
A type of poem in which a character, the speaker, addresses a silent audience in such a way as to reveal, unintentionally, some aspects of his/her personality or temperament example: Romeo and Juliet, My Last Duchess, The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock
figure of speech
A way of saying one thing in terms of something else. Example 1: The diner leaped from his table and roared at the waiter. Example 2: And all of our yesterdays have lighted fools/ The way to a dusty death. Out, out brief candle! (from Macbeth) example: simile, metaphor
Tercet
A 3-line stanza. When all three lines rhyme, it's a triplet. Ex: This poem contains two tercets: "Whenas in silks my Julia goes\ Then, then, methink, how sweetly flows/ That liquefaction of her clothes./ Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see/ That brace vibration, each way free/ O, how that glittering taketh me." ex: O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,/ Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead/ Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing
hyperbole
A boldly exaggerated statement that adds emphasis without intending to be literally true. Hyperbole may be used for serious, comic, or ironic effect. Ex: He ate everything in the house, He was so hungry that he could eat a horse, this is going to take a bazillian years. Ex:This is the best food anyone has ever eaten
Allusion
A brief reference to a person, place, thing, event, or idea in history or literature. example:"I was surprised his nose was not growing like Pinocchio's." This refers to the story of Pinocchio, where his nose grew whenever he told a lie. It is from The Adventures of Pinocchio, written by Carlo Collodi. ex: When she lost her job, she acted like a Scrooge, and refused to buy anything that wasn't necessary." Scrooge was an extremely stingy character from Charles Dickens', A Christmas Carol.
epigram
A brief, pointed, and witty poem, often rhyme and are written in couplets. Example: What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole/ Its body brevity, and wit its soul. ex:To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.
Stanza
A division/unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form. Stanzas have similar or identical patterns in rhyme or meter, or stanzas can vary from one to the next example: couplets (2 line); quatrain (4 line); tercet (3 line)
Personification
A figure of speech in which things or abstract ideas are given human attributes: dead leaves dance in the wind, blind justice. example: The sun smiled
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, The detective listened to her tales with a wooden face.
Onomatopoeia
A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds. Example- buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clip and tick-tock are all onomatopoeia. Example- Keat's "Ode to Nightingale"- "The moan of doves in immemorial elms/and murmuring of innumerable bees." The repeated m/n sounds reinforce the idea of murmuring of insects on a warm summer day. "SPLAT! the plate fell on the floor"
Sonnet
A fixed form of lyric poetry that consists of 14 lines, usually written in iambic pentameter. Ex: "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" by John Keats, also more famously Shakespeare's 127 sonnets including; "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" and "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun". Also notable is William Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much With Us".
Parody
A humorous interpretation of another usually serious work, it can take any fixed or open form because parodists imitate the tone, language, or shape of the original work in order to deflate the subject matter, making the original work seem obsurd. Ex: A Visit from St. Sigmund by X.J. Kennedy is a parody of "The Night Before Christmas" as it ridicules psychological treatment practices. "Oh Captain, Shift Captain"
Pentameter
A line of poetry that has five metrical feet. Used in Shakespeare, syllables alternate between stressed and unstressed beats. Example from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" : And I do love thee: therefore, go with me; I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee, And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep; (Act 3, Scene 1) ex: anything shakespeare, iambic and also tracheo
Tetrameter
A line of verse consisting of four metratical feet example: In English, the most common foot or measure is the iamb, which is a pair of syllables that follow this pattern: ta TUM. Iambic tetrameter has four such feet, for a total of eight syllables. A line of poetry is in iambic tetrameter if it follows this pattern: ta TUM ta TUM ta TUM ta TUM.
Free Verse
Also called open form poetry, free verse refers to poems characterized by their nonconformity to established patterns of meter, rhyme, and stanza. Free verse uses elements such as speech patterns, grammar, emphasis, and breath pauses to decide line breaks, and usually does not rhyme. Ex: Fog by Carl Sandburg: The fog comes/on little cat feet./It sits looking/over harbor and city/on silent haunches/and then moves on. Ex: After the Sea-Ship by Walt Whitman: After the Sea-Ship, after the whistling winds;/After the white-gray sails, taut to their spars and ropes,/Below, a myriad, myriad waves, hastening, lifting up their necks, /Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship:/ Waves of the ocean, bubbling and gurgling, blithely prying,/Waves, undulating waves, liquid, uneven, emulous waves,/Toward that whirling current, laughing and buoyant, with curves, /Where the great Vessel, sailing and tacking, displaced the surface;
Slant Rhyme
Another term for half- rhyme; a rhyme in which the vowel sounds are not identical ex. Years/ yours; dark/heart *I sat in the dark/ nursing my broken heart. *Also an example of enjambment (you're welcome) Example: Wilt/welt
Romanticism
Artistic movement of the 1700s. Emphasis in such poetry is placed on the personal experiences of the individual. From a technical standpoint, they moved poetry into a more simplistic, symbolic and more free-form style. example:Eros by Ralph Waldo Emerson; Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats;Beauty
Connotation
Associations or implications that go beyond the literal meaning of a word, which derive from how the word has been commonly used and the associations people make with it. Ex. The word "home" has the connotations of emotion, refuge, resting place, family,etc.
couplet
Consists of two lines that usually rhyme and have the same meter. Shakespearean sonnets often end in a couplet. Example: One science only will one genius fit/ So vast is art so narrow human wit. ex:"The time is out of joint, O cursed spite That ever I was born to set it right!"
Oxymoron
Figure of speech containing two seemingly contradictory expressions. "Sweet sorrow" "Silent scream" "Walking dead" -Type of paradox that uses two contradictory words used to make a statement more powerful. Mr. Nabors' favorite oxymoron: "down escalator." How is this possible? ex: crash landing, sweet tart, taped live
Synechdoche
Figure of speech in which part of something is used to signify the whole. ex: Nice set of wheels! (talking about the car) ex: "I'll have your head"
Metonymy
Figure of speech in which something closely associated with the subject is substituted for it. example: In a corner, a cluster of lab coats made lunch plans. (cluster of lab coats=doctors) ex: In Stockholm, Sweden, where Obama was traveling on Wednesday, the White House praised the vote and said that it would continue to seek support for a 'military response (the white house=the people who work in there)
Litotes/understatement
Figure of speech that says less than what is intended. Opposite of hyperbole. Usually has an ironic effect and is sometimes used for comic purposes. Ex- Mark Twain's statement "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." ex:The ice cream was not too bad.
Limerick
Humorous style of fixed form poetry. Usually consists of 5 lines with an aabbarhyme scheme. Subject ranges from silly to the obscene. Ex-Edward Lear's work-There was an Old Man with a beard,/Who said, 'It is just as I feared!/Two Owls and a Hen,/Four Larks and a Wren,/Have all built their nests in my beard!'/ by Edward Lear ex: There was a young lady of station "I love man" was her sole exclamation But when men cried, "You flatter" She replied, "Oh! no matter Isle of Man is the true explanation.
Enjambent/ Run-on Line
In poetry when one line ends without a pause and continues into the next line for its meaning; also called a run-on line ex. My heart leaps up when I behold/ A rainbow in the sky- Wordsworth
Situational Irony
Irony involving a situation in which actions have an effect that is opposite from what was intended, so that the outcome is contrary to what was expected. A person who claims to be vegan but will eat a slice of pepperoni pizza because they are hungry. What if--hypothetically--Mr. VanDell were pulled over for speeding in a school zone? That would be oddly funny because in that specific situation, the last person you'd expect to find himself in this predicament would be the driver's education teacher.
Cacophony
Language that is discordant or difficult to pronounce ex. "never my numb plunker fumbles"- John Updike "peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" ex: "how much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.
Persona
Literally, a mask; in literature, the speaker created by a writer to tell a story or to speak in a poem; a persona is not a character in a story, no does the persona necessarily reflect the author's personal voice Ex. In Randall Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," we know the speaker is clearly not the poet because the speaker has died (for full text see p. 616 in Bedford) Ex: Marlow from Heart of Darkness
Simile
Makes an explicit comparison between two things by using words such as "like, as, than, appears, seems." cute as a kitten, busy as a bee, life is like a box of chocolates
Apostrophe
Poem which is directly addressed to a person or thing (often absent). "Oh Death, where is thy sting?" ex:Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee! I have thee not, and yet I see thee still." ex:"Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky."
blank verse
Poetry that is written in unryhmed iambic pentameter (rythem but does not ryhmed) ; Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in blank verse: Macbeth excerpt " Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow; creeps in this pretty pace from day to day; to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools...". Mending Walls by Robert Frost
Euphony
Refers to pleasant sounds that are created by smooth consonant; agreeable sound ex. Ripple, beautiful singing voice
Meter
The arrangement of a line of poetry by the number of syllables and the rhythm of accented (or stressed) syllables. Ex - Iambic: Shall I compare thee to a summers day (10 syllables) the stressed syllables are capitalized and the feet are separated: [shall-I]-[com-PARE]-[thee-TO]-[a-SUM]-[mer's-DAY] ex: Trochaic (8 syllables)
Anaphora
The deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets" (Winston Churchill)
Denotation
The dictionary meaning of a word Ex. The definition of "home" is a residence or fixed dwelling ex: the definition of "chair" is a place to sit down
foot
The metrical unit by a which a line of poetry is measured. Usually consists of one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables. Examples: away (one stressed and one unstressed), understand (two unstressed and one stressed.)
End Rhyme
The most common form of rhyme in poetry where the rhyme comes at the end of the line ex. It runs through the reeds/ And away it proceeds,/ Through meadows and glade,/ In sun and in shade. ex: I like to run/ It's always for fun
Syntax
The ordering of words into meaningful verba patterns, such as phrases, sentences, and clauses; poets often manipulate syntax, changing conventional word order, to place emphasis on certain words Ex. Emily Dickinson writes about being surprised by a snake in her poem "A narrow Fellow in the Grass" and includes this line: "His notice sudden is." In addition the the alliterative hissing s-sounds here, Dickinson also manipulates the line's syntax so that the verb "is" appears unexpectedly at the end, amking the snake's hissing presence all the more "sudden."
Accent
The prominence or emphasis given to a syllable or word: " Is she content with the contents of the package?" Think about the where the accent is for the word "content". ex: "I suspect that the suspect escaped" the word suspect
Consonance
The repetition of similar consonant sounds, especially at the end of words: home/same, worth/breath, loss/pass, confess/dismiss. These are examples are words that sound similar but are not perfect rhymes example: wilt/welt
alliteration
The repetition of the same or similar sounds at the beginning of words: " Peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" "descending dew drops". "Luscious lemons". "Silly snake"
Assonance
The repetition pr pattern of similar sounds, especially vowel sounds: "as sleep under the tree." Repeats the "ee" sound ex: "Sick from the sip"
Deus ex machina
This refers to a character or force that appears at the end of a story or play to help resolve conflict. The direct translation is god from a machine. In ancient Greek drama, gods were lowered onto the stage by a mechanism to extricate characters from a seemingly hopeless situation. The phrase has come to mean any turn of events that solve the character's problems through an unexpected and unlikely intervention. An example of this is in the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when Harry is in the chamber of secrets and the sword is dropped by the phoenix who cries on him and saves his life.
Rhyme
When the final consonant or vowel sound in two or more words are the same or similar example:slime/time; part/heart; sick/slick
Diction
Writer's choice of words, phrases, sentence structures, and figurative language which combine to help create meaning Ex. A quote from Jim in Huck Finn: ""Dah you goes, de ole true Huck; de on'y white genlman dat ever kep' his promise to ole Jim." We can see that the way his speech is written projects his cultural roots, living in the South, etc. ex:"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on" Notice the use of formal "ye" instead of informal "you". The formality here is due to the respect the urn inspires in Keats.
Paradox
a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth. "This is the beginning of the end" -Paradox because beginning and end contradict each other but it also is true for certain situations. ex:"War is peace." "Freedom is slavery." "Ignorance is strength."
Verbal Irony
irony in which a person says or writes one thing and means another, or uses words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of the literal meaning. "Two households, both alike in dignity,..." Prologue from Act I of Romeo and Juliet. One may think that they are dignified, but as the play goes on we learn that they are anything but. From Shrek; Donkey: "Can I stay with you?" Shrek: "Sure" Donkey: "Really?" Shrek: "No." Sarcasm is a widely used example of verbal irony.
Dramatic Irony
irony that is inherent in speeches or a situation of a drama and is understood by the audience but not grasped by the characters in the play. Macbeth appears to be loyal to Duncan but he is actually planning on killing him. So the audience knows what he is plotting but Duncan does not.
image/imagery
language that addresses the senses example: It smelled of cinnamon on Christmas morning example: The blanket was soft like a lamb