Literary terms

sprung rhythm

A metrical system devised by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889, one of the greatest poets of the Victorian era) composed of one- to four-syllable feet that start with a stressed syllable. It was designed to imitate the rhythm of natural speech, in contrast to the monotony of iambic pentameter. Example: "The Windhover" (1877) by Gerard Manley Hopkins "I caught this morning morning's minion, king- dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird, - the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!"

caesura

A natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of the line. This may come in the form of any sort of punctuation which causes a pause in speech, such as a comma, semicolon, full stop, etc. It is especially common and apparent in Old English verse. Example: "Lo! we Spear-Danes, in days of yore..." ("Beowulf") Example: "I sing of arms and the man, who first from the shores of Troy..." ("The Aeneid")

appositive

A noun or a pronoun placed beside another noun or pronoun to identify or describe it. Example: "A Hanging" (1931) by George Orwell "We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages." In this line, "the condemned cells" is a noun phrase, while "a row of sheds" is an appositive that explains this noun phrase.

roman á clef

A novel describing real-life events behind a facade of fiction (e.g. Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises // Plath's The Bell Jar)

picaresque

A novel, typically loosely constructed along an incident-to-incident basis, that follows the adventures of a more or a roguish, but appealing, hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society and whose primary concerns are filling his belly and staying out of jail. Examples: Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders" (1722) (one of only female rogues!), William Makepeace Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" (1847), Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884)

formalist criticism

A predominantly Russian school of 1920s that attempted to discern the underlying laws that shape a literary text (the features that make it "literature") Keywords: defamiliarization, devices (e.g. plot, story, voice, etc.)

masculine rhyme

A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (aka, regular old rhyme). Example: "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1923) by Robert Frost "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. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near, Between the woods and frozen lake, The coldest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound's the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. 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."

New Historicism

A school of criticism stemming from Marxist criticism. Argues that culture and social institutions produce discernible effects on literature. Keyword: ideology (as in, ideology is not a veneer to be stripped off of a work, but is a proper object of analysis itself)

fabliau

A short comic tale with a bawdy element (typically a cuckolded husband), akin to the "dirty story" (e.g. Chaucer's The Miller's Tale)

chiasmus

A statement consisting of two parallel parts in which the second part is structurally reversed

villanelle

19-line poetic form consisting of five tercets (three-line stanzas) followed by a quatrain (four-line stanza) with the rhyme scheme ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA Example: "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" (1951) by Dylan Thomas Example: "One Art" (1979) by Elizabeth Bishop

sestina

39-line poem of six stanzas of six lines each plus a final stanza (an envoi) of three lines. There is no rhyme. Instead, one of six words is used as the end word of each of the poem's lines according to a fixed pattern. *If you see a poem of six-line stanzas based on a pattern of repeated end-words, it's a sestina!* Example: "Sestina of Tramp-Royal" (1896) by Rudyard Kipling

Curtal sonnet

A form invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is an eleven-line sonnet, but it consists of precisely ¾ of the structure of a Petrarchan sonnet shrunk proportionally --> octave of a sonnet becomes a sestet // the sestet becomes a quatrain // plus an additional "tail piece" Example: "Pied Beauty" by Gerard M. Hopkins *"Glory be to God for dappled things - * *For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;* *For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;* *Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;* *Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plough;* *And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.* *All things counter, original, spare, strange;* *Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)* *With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;* *He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:* *Praise him.*

Kunstlerroman

A kind of Bildungsroman, a novel about an artist's growth to maturity (e.g. Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man // D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers)

bob and wheel

A structural device common in the Pearl Poet's poetry (author of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," an alliterative poem written in 14th-century Middle English). Characterized by five lines with rhyming structure ababa. The first of these lines contains one stress and is called the bob. The four lines that follow have each three stresses and are together called the wheel. Example: "On mony bonkkes ful brode Bretayn he settes with wynne, Where werre and wrake and wonder Bi sythes has wont therinne, And oft bothe blysse and blunder Ful skete has skyfted synne." The "with wynne" is the "bob", and it is immediately followed by the four-line "wheel" with its own rhymes and rhythm. Generally the content of the bob and wheel functions as a refrain or an ironic counterpoint to the stanza that preceded it.

kenning

A stylistic device (derived from Norse and Anglo-Saxon poetry) defined as a two-word phrase that describes an object through metaphors Example: "The Seafarer" (1911) by Ezra Pound "May I for my own self song's truth reckon, Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days Hardship endured oft. Bitter breast-cares have I abided, Known on my keel many a care's hold, And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent. That he on dry land loveliest liveth, List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea, Deprived of my kinsmen; Over the whale's acre, would wander wide Eager and ready, the crying lone-flyer, Whets for the whale-path the heart irresistibly." Here, "whale-path," "whale-road," and "whale's acre" refer to the ocean. "Breast-hoard" refers to the heart

pathetic fallacy

A term coined by John Ruskin (1819-1900). It refers to ascribing emotion and agency to inanimate objects. Example: Ruskin's famous line: "The cruel crawling foam."

synaesthesia

A term referring to phrases that suggest an interplay of the senses. E.g. "hot pink" Example: "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats "Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker of the warm South..."

pastoral elegy

A type of poem that takes the form of an elegy (a lament for the dead) sung by a shepherd. In this conventionalized form, the shepherd who sings the elegy is a stand-in for the author, and the elegy is for another poet. Example: John Milton's "Lycidas" (1638) and Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Adonais" (1821, a lament for John Keats).

terza rima

An Italian stanzaic form, used most notably by Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy, consisting of three-line stanzas (tercets) with interlocking rhyme schemes (ABA BCB CDC DED, etc.). A concluding couplet rhymes with the penultimate line of the last tercet. Example: "Ode to the West Wind" (1820) by Percy Bysshe Shelley "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, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!"

psychological criticism

An approach to literature that examines and emphasizes what Marxist-influenced criticism doesn't. It's concerned with universals of human consciousness and the ways in which essential aspects of the human psyche manifests themselves in literature (e.g. Freudian criticism, archetype/myth criticism).

octave

An eight-line stanza or poem; also, the first eight lines of an Italian/Petrarchan sonnet

litotes

An understatement created through a double negative (or more precisely, negating the negative). Example: "That [sword] was not useless / to the warrior now." (Beowulf) Example: From the Book of Acts in the Bible: "Paul answered, 'I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city. Please let me speak to the people.'" (Acts 21:39)

alexandrine

Another name for iambic hexameter (a line of verse that has six iambic feet). The ninth and final line of a Spenserian stanza is an example. Example: "The Faerie Queene" (1590) by Edmund Spenser "Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske, As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds, Am now enforst a far unfitter taske, For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds, And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds; Whose prayses having slept in silence long, Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds To blazon broad emongst her learned throng: Fierce warres and faithfull loues shall moralize my song."

New Criticism

Argued that other critical approaches were polluted by speculations about authorial intent and effusions about aesthetics ("intentional fallacy" and "affective fallacy"). Loathed summarization ("heresy of paraphrase") and glorified ambiguity ("close reading"). Influential New Critics: T.S. Eliot, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, I.A. Richards, John Crowe Ransom, F.R. Leavis

hamartia

Aristotle's term for "the tragic flaw," referring to the protagonist's error or fatal flaw that leads to a chain of plot actions culminating in a reversal from felicity to disaster. What qualifies as the error or flaw can include an error resulting from ignorance, an error of judgment, a flaw in character, or a wrongdoing. Examples: Oedipus, in his hasty temper, is tragically flawed. Macbeth, in his lust for power, is also tragically flawed.

structuralism

Challenged the belief that a work of literature reflected a given reality; instead, a text was constituted of linguistic conventions (semiotics) and situated among other texts. Holds that meaning is hardly ever intrinsic, only produced by structure. These critics analyzed material by examining underlying structures, such as characterization or plot, and attempted to show how these patterns were universal and could thus be used to develop general conclusions about both individual works and the systems from which they emerged. The terms "sign," "signifier," and "signified" are clear indicators of this mode of criticism. Look for descriptions of text in terms of binary oppositions, center and periphery, vertical axis and horizontal axis. Derived from linguist Ferdinand Saussure. Gained popularity in the 1950s and 1960s.

doggerel

Crude, simplistic verse, often in sing-song rhyme (e.g. limericks)

archetype/myth criticism

Drawn from theories of Carl Jung and anthropologist James G. Frazer. Looks for recurring symbols, motifs, character types, and plots, finding them in sources across cultures and time periods. These archetypes point to needs and urges within human psyche and can reveal "collective unconscious." Important figures: Joseph Campbell ("The Hero With a Thousand Faces"), Northrop Frye

ottava rima

Eight-line stanza (usually iambic pentameter) rhyming ABABABCC. Example: "Don Juan" (1819) by Lord Byron Example: "Sailing to Byzantium" (1928) by William Butler Yeats "That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees, —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect."

Marxist Criticism

Emphasizes the economic situation from which literature emerges and in which it was/is consumed (literature is NOT timeless, fixed creations). More broadly, argues that works of literature are products of a specific context which must be addressed. Inspires many other schools of criticism, most importantly New Historicism. Keywords: base and superstructure (that is, material economic reality and cultural superstructure built upon it), proletariat, class, means of production, bourgeoisie, imperialism, dialectical materialism

bildungsroman

German term meaning a "novel of education." It typically follows a young person over a period of years, from naïveté and inexperience through the first struggles with the harsher realities and hypocrisies of the adult world. Example: "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916) by James Joyce and "The Catcher in the Rye" (1951) by J. D. Salinger are both classic examples of coming-of-age novels.

personification

Giving an inanimate object human qualities or form. Example: This excerpt from "The Train" by Emily Dickinson demonstrates this, as the train in the poem is said to "lap," "lick," and "step": "I like to see it lap the miles, And lick the valleys up, And stop to feed itself at tanks; And then, prodigious, step..."

Lacanian criticism

Idea that language shapes and structures the unconscious (reverse of Freud, who believes the unconscious comes first and language is mapped on to it). Key terms: mirror, phallus, signifier/signified, substitution, desire, jouissance, objet petit a, and the three orders - imaginary, symbolic and real.

gothic explique

In Gothic novels, the logical explanation at the end of the book of an event that at first seems supernatural. This becomes a major component of detective fiction (a la Scooby Doo).

reader-response criticism

Insists that reader's experience of a text is the literary event, not what occurs on the page.

hudibrastic

It refers specifically to the couplets of rhymed tetrameter lines (eight syllables long; aa, bb, cc, dd, etc.) that are deliberate, humorous, ill-rhythmed, ill-rhymed, "bad poetry" Example from Butler's "Hudibras": "We grant, although he had much wit He was very shy of using it As being loathe to wear it out And therefore bore it not about, Unless on holidays, or so As men their best apparel do. Besides, tis' known he could speak Greek As naturally as pigs squeak."

"The Golden Bough"

James G. Frazer - encyclopedic study of myth and ritual. Archetype/myth criticism.

"The Hero with a Thousand Faces"

Joseph Campbell - transcultural examination of the surprisingly consistent figure of the mythic hero. Archetype/myth criticism.

free verse

Nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech. Walt Whitman is one of the best-known free verse poets of the 19th century, as well as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound in the 20th century.

georgic

Not to be confused with pastoral poetry, which idealizes life in the countryside, georgic poems deal with people laboring in the countryside, pushing plows, raising crops, etc. Example: The work from which this term was derived is an excellent example of the term itself: Virgil's "Georgics". Essentially, it's a poem about the virtues of the farming life.

neoclassical unities

Principles of dramatic structure derived from Aristotle's "Poetics." Referred to as such because of their popularity in the neoclassical movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The essential unities are of time, place, and action: -To observe unity of time, a work should take place within the span of one day. -To observe the unity of place, a work should take place within the confines of a single locale. -To observe unity of action, a work should contain a single dramatic plot, with no subplots.

poioumenon

Refers to a specific type of metafiction in which the story is about the process of creation and explores boundaries of reality and fiction. In many cases, the book will be about the process of creating the book or includes a central metaphor for this process. Examples: "Tristram Shandy" (1760s) by Laurence Sterne); "Sartor Resartus" (1836) by Thomas Carlyle; "Pale Fire" (1962) by Vladimir Nabokov

revenge tragedy

Renaissance/Elizabethan subgenre (16th and 17th centuries); a style of drama in which the basic plot was a quest for vengeance and which typically featured scenes of carnage and mutilation Example: Thomas Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy" (1592); Shakespeare's "Hamlet" (1609)

assonance

Repetition of a vowel sound within two or more words in close proximity

rhyme royal

Seven-line, iambic pentameter stanza with rhyming ABABBCC. It was popularized by Geoffrey Chaucer and termed "royal" because his imitator, James I of Scotland, employed it in his own verse. Example: "Troilus and Criseyde" (mid-1380s) by Geoffrey Chaucer "And so bifel, whan comen was the tyme Of Aperil, whan clothed is the mede With newe grene, of lusty Veer the pryme, And swote smellen floures white and rede, In sondry wises shewed, as I rede, The folk of Troie hir observaunces olde, Palladiones feste for to holde." Example: "Resolution and Independence" (1807) by William Wordsworth "There was a roaring in the wind all night; The rain came heavily and fell in floods; But now the sun is rising calm and bright; The birds are singing in the distant woods; Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods; The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters; And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters."

Spenserian sonnet

Spenser was the first to modify the Petrarchan form, introducing sonnets written with 3 quatrains (ABAB BCBC CDCD) ending in a rhyming couplet (EE) *ONE FINAL COUPLET PLUS TWO COUPLETS IN THE BODY* Example: "Amoretti" by Edmund Spenser "What guile is this, that those her golden tresses She doth attire under a net of gold; And with sly skill so cunningly them dresses, That which is gold or hair, may scarce be told? Is it that men's frail eyes, which gaze too bold, She may entangle in that golden snare; And being caught may craftily enfold Their weaker hearts, which are not yet well aware? Take heed therefore, mine eyes, how ye do stare Henceforth too rashly on that guileful net, In which if ever ye entrapped are, Out of her bands ye by no means shall get. Folly it were for any being free, To covet fetters, though they golden be."

In Memoriam stanza

Stanza composed of four lines (quatrain) in iambic tetrameter with a rhyme scheme of ABBA. The form was named for the pattern used by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his poem "In Memoriam," which, following an 11-stanza introduction, begins: "I held it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things."

flat and round characters

Terms coined by E.M. Forster to describe characters built around a single dominant trait (flat characters), and those shaded and developed with greater psychological complexity (round characters). Example of the flat: The character of Mrs. Micawber in Charles Dickens's "David Copperfield" is a flat character. Example of round: Anna Karenina in Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" is a round character.

decorum

The appropriate rendering of a character, action, speech, or scene (i.e. a character's speech should be appropriate to his or her social station; the subject or theme must be dealt with in the proper diction, meter, form, and tone). This is one of the neoclassical principles of drama, outlined by Aristotle and maintained by Roman poet Horace. Example: In Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," the characters regularly exhibit decorum in the way they speak.

anthropomorphism

The assigning of human attributes, such as emotions or physical characteristics, to nonhumans, most often plants and animals. It differs from personification in that it is an intrinsic premise and an ongoing pattern applied to a nonhuman character throughout a literary work. Example: The character of Aslan in C.S. Lewis's "The Chronicles of Narnia" is a lion, but is addressed and behaves as a human. Example: All the characters of George Orwell's anti-Communist novel "Animal Farm" are anthropomorphic.

post-structuralism / deconstruction

The name for critical schools that make use of and critique structuralism. Deconstruction is most important. Whereas structuralism posits a tidy structure to meaning, deconstruction focuses on displacements, excesses, gaps as integral to meaning. Key terms of deconstruction: erasure, trace, bracketing, differance, slippage, dissemination, logocentrism, indeterminancy, decentering. Key terms of PS in general: mimesis, alterity, marginality, desire, lack.

ballad

The typical stanza of the folk ballad and intended to be sung. It consists of simple stanzas and usually has a refrain with rhyme scheme ABCB. Example: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Freudian criticism/Psychoanalytic criticism

Uses Freud's theories to analyze literature. Harold Bloom is a famous example. His theory of authorial production states that authors subconsciously position their work against that of other, earlier authors (or "strong poets") Keywords: Oedipal complex, libido, id, ego, superego, subconscious, repression, resistance

Old English verse

Verse characterized by the internal alliteration of lines and a strong midline pause (caesura) Example: "Beowulf" "Protected in war; so warriors earn Their fame, and wealth is shaped with a sword."

zeugma

a figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses (e.g., with weeping eyes and hearts)

Sturm und drang

a late-18th-century German literary movement characterized by works containing rousing action and high emotionalism that often deal with the individual's revolt against society Examples: Goethe's dramatic poem/tragic play "Faust" (1808 and 1832) and Schiller's "The Robbers" (1781)

aubade

a love poem set at dawn which bids farewell to the beloved (e.g. "The Sunne Rising" by John Donne)

allusion

a reference to someone or something, usually literary Example: "Call me Ishmael." This opening line from "Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville alludes to the biblical figure of Ishmael. Example: The title of William Faulkner's novel, "The Sound and the Fury" is an allusion to Shakespeare's "Macbeth:" "...it is a tale/told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/signifying nothing."

apostrophe

a technique by which a writer addresses an inanimate object, an idea, or a person who is either dead or absent Example: "Macbeth" (1606) by William Shakespeare "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." In his mental conflict before murdering King Duncan, Macbeth has a strange vision of a dagger and talks to it as if it were a person. Example: John Donne, in his poem "The Sun Rising" (1633), directly addresses the sun itself: "Busy old fool, unruly sun,/Why dost thou thus,/Through windows, and through curtains call on us?"

gerund

a verb acting as a noun clause (usually the "-ing" form of the verb) Example: "Eating worms is bad for your health."

euphuism

an elegant Elizabethan literary style marked by excessive use of balance, antithesis, and alliteration and by frequent use of similes drawn from mythology and nature (term derived from Lyly's "Euphues" (1580)) Example: The character of Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet demonstrates this literary device, exemplified by his most famous lines: "To thine own self be true." "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." "Brevity is the soul of wit."

conceit

an extended witty, paradoxical, or startling metaphor that develops a comparison which is exceedingly unlikely but is, nonetheless, intellectually imaginative. Example: "Romeo and Juliet" (~1595) by William Shakespeare "Thou counterfeit'st a bark, a sea, a wind; For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea, Do ebb and flow with tears; the bark thy body is, Sailing in this salt flood; the winds, thy sighs; Who, raging with thy tears, and they with them, Without a sudden calm, will overset Thy tempest-tossed body." He compares Juliet to a boat in a storm. The comparison is an extended metaphor in which he compares her eyes to a sea, her tears to a storm, her sighs to the stormy winds, and her body to a boat in a storm.

poetic inversions

an inversion of the normal grammatical word order (e.g. "seas incarnadine" from Macbeth // "chains adamantine" from Paradise Lost)

infinitive

an unconjugated verb with "to" in front of it Example: "To be, or not to be."

invocation of muse, starts in media res, epic catalogs, epic simile, interfering supernatural beings, resolved by great contest/battle/deed

characteristics of epic

vocative

expression of direct address Example: "Sit, Ubu, sit!"

predicate

further information about the subject (a verb, plus adjectives, adverbs, etc.) Example: "This test is really bogus."

substantive

group of words acting as a noun Example: "Doing homework is not fun.")

auxiliary

helping verb (usually form of "be," "have" or "do") Example: "I am working on it."

feminine rhyme

lines rhymed by their final two syllables (usually the penultimate syllables are stressed and final syllables unstressed) A pair of lines ending "running" and "gunning" would be an example of feminine rhyme. Example: "Sonnet 20" by William Shakespeare: "A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion; A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted With shifting change, as is false women's fashion..."

heroic

major literary mode in Elizabethan/Renaissance poetry; a verse form suited to the treatment of heroic or elevated themes Example: Edmund Spenser's epic poem "Faerie Queene" (1590)

pastoral

major literary mode in Elizabethan/Renaissance poetry; a work that deals with the lives of people, especially shepherds, in the country or in nature; emphasizes love, singing, leisure, humility, contentment Example: Christopher Marlowe's poem "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" (1599)

decorum, unity of time (span of single day), unity of place (single setting), unity of action (single plot, no subplots)

neo-classical dramatic principles (from Aristotle's Poetics)

indicative

plain old verb in present tense Example: "John plays with the ball."

synecdoche/metonymy

referring to a whole person or object by just one of its items or features Example: the famous line, "The pen is mightier than the sword," from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's play "Richelieu" (1839). The sentence is essentially saying that the written word is often more powerful and influential than acts of war and violence, but it uses the pen to represent the written word, and the sword to represent violent acts.

deus ex machina (god from the machine)

refers to the circumstance where an implausible concept or a divine character is introduced into a storyline, for the purpose of resolving its conflict and procuring an interesting outcome. Euripides was one of the most prominent users of deus ex machina (e.g. "Medea," "Orestes," etc.).

Homeric epithet

repeated descriptive phrase, as found in Homer's epics. Example: "Rosy-fingered dawn," "the wine-dark sea," and "the ever-resourceful Odysseus" are all examples.

heroic couplets

rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter, much used by Chaucer in the 14th century and the poets of the 17th and 18th centuries such as Alexander Pope ("Eloisa to Abelard") and John Dryden ("An Essay on Criticism").

skeltonics

short verses of an irregular meter and usually with rhymed couplets; used for comedy and satire (named after poet John Skelton (1460-1529))

blason

singling out parts of a woman's body and making metaphors/similes for them. The device was made popular by Petrarch and used extensively by Elizabethan poets. Example: "Epithalamion" (1595) by Edmund Spenser "Her goodly eyes lyke Saphyres shining bright, Her forehead yvory white, Her cheekes lyke apples which the sun hath rudded, Her lips lyke cherryes charming men to byte, Her brest like to a bowle of creame uncrudded, Her paps lyke lyllies budded, Her snowie necke lyke to a marble towre, And all her body like a pallace fayre, Ascending uppe with many a stately stayre, To honors seat and chastities sweet bowre."

Italian/Petrarchan sonnet

sonnet that divides the 14 lines into two sections: an eight-line stanza (octave) rhyming ABBAABBA, and a six-line stanza (sestet) rhyming CDCDCD or CDEEDE *NO FINAL COUPLETS* Example: "How do I love thee?" (1850) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right; I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death."

Shakespearean sonnet

sonnet written in iambic pentameter with three quatrains (four lines each with rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF) and ending in a rhyming couplet (GG) *ONE FINAL COUPLET* Example: "Sonnet 18" (1609) by 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: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee."

participle

the "-ed" form of a verb Example: "John has played with the ball many times."

Spenserian stanza

the nine-line stanza used by Spenser in "The Faerie Queene," consisting of eight iambic pentameter lines and an alexandrine, with the rhyme scheme ababbcbcc. Example: "The Faerie Queene" (1590) by Edmund Spenser "Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske, As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds, Am now enforst a far unfitter taske, For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds, And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds; Whose prayses having slept in silence long, Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds To blazon broad emongst her learned throng: Fierce warres and faithfull loues shall moralize my song."

anaphora

the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses

periphrasis

the use of excessive and longer words to convey a meaning which could have been conveyed with a shorter expression, or in a few words Can be used to different effects (comedy, earnestness, ignorance, etc.)

blank verse

unrhymed iambic pentameter Features include: - A conventional meter that is used for verse drama (especially in Shakespeare's plays) and long narrative poems; - Frequent use in descriptive and reflective poems and dramatic monologues (the poems in which a single character delivers his thoughts in the form of a speech); - Composition in any kind of meter.

imperative

verb used for issuing commands Example: "Do it now!"

subjunctive

verb used to express conditional or counterfactual statements Example: "If I were a rich man..."

subordinate conjunction

word that introduces subordinate clause (e.g. "since") Example: "Since you're awake, I'll just turn on the TV."

epithalamium

work (esp. poem) written to celebrate a wedding Example: Edmund Spenser's "Epithalamium": "Song! made in lieu of many ornaments, With which my love should duly have been dect, Which cutting off through hasty accidents, Ye would not stay your dew time to expect, But promist both to recompens; Be unto her a goodly ornament, And for a short time an endlesse moniment."