poetry terms

Rivera 1 Useful Literary Terms – Poetry 1. Allegory – Narrative or description that has a second meaning beneath the surface one; major interest is in the ulterior meaning. It is unlike an extended metaphor in that it involves a system of related comparisons. 2. Alliteration – Repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words. 3. Allusion – A reference to something in history or previous literature; it is, like a richly connotative word or symbol, a means of suggesting far more than it says. Extreme economy – exercises of mind of reader to make the connection for himself. A brief, often indirect reference to a person, event, or work of art. 4. Analogy – To use a familiar concept to explain an abstract concept. 5. Apostrophe: Addressing someone absent or something nonhuman as if it were alive and present and could reply to what is being said. A figure of speech in which an absent person or concept is called upon. 6. Assonance – Repetition of vowel sounds. 7. Auditory – Appeal to the sense of hearing. 8. Blank Verse – Unrhymed iambic pentameter verse. 9. Cacophonous – Harsh-sounding. 10. Connotation – What a word suggests beyond what it expresses. 11. Consonance – Repetition of consonant sounds within the same line. 12. Denotation – Dictionary meaning of a word. 13. Didactic Poetry – a. Fitted or intended to teach. b. Intended to convey instruction and information as well as pleasure and entertainment. c. Making moral observation. 14. Euphonious – Pleasing in sound. 15. Foot – The basic unit of verse meter consisting of any of various fixed combinations or groups of stressed and unstressed or long and short syllables. 16. Free Verse – Verse whose meter is irregular in some respect or whose rhythm is not metrical. 17. Gustatory – The sense of taste. 18. Imagery – Representation through language of sense experience – visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, ESP. Recreates experience. 19. Irony – Implies some sort of discrepancy or incongruity. a. Dramatic Irony – discrepancy between what the speaker says and what the author means. b. Irony of Situation – discrepancy between the actual circumstances and those that would seem appropriate or between what one anticipates and what actually comes to pass. c. Verbal Irony – saying the opposite of what one really means. 20. Kinesthetic – Appeal to the sense of motion.

Adapted from a Handout by Professor Mabel Ortiz; Prepared by Adrian Rivera

Rivera 2 21. Line – A unit in the rhythmic structure of verse formed by the grouping of a number of the smallest units of rhythm (as metrical feet); often a horizontal row of written or printed characters. 22. Metaphor – Implied comparison of something. Figurative language which means something other than it is; cannot be taken literally. A figure of speech involving an implied comparison. 23. Meter – A systematically arranged and measured rhythm in verse; continuously repeats a single basic pattern. Verse form. 24. Metonymy – Use of something closely related for the thing actually meant. Substitution of the whole for the part or by the part. 25. Olfactory – Appeal to the sense of smell. 26. Onomatopoeia – The use of words whose sound suggests the sense (i.e. boom! Wham! Pow!). Words used to imitate the sound of something being spoken about. 27. Overstatement (Hyperbole) – Exaggeration in the service of truth. A figure of speech involving great exaggeration for expressive or comic effect. 28. Oxymoron – A combination of contradictory or incongruous words. 29. Paradox – Apparent contradiction which is nevertheless somehow true. 30. Paraphrase – Prose meaning. 31. Personification – Giving the attributes of a human being to an animal, object, or idea. To take an object and refer to it as a person. 32. Refrain – A regularly recurring phrase or verse, especially at the end of each stanza or division of a poem or song. 33. Repetition – Repeating the same word. 34. Rhetorical Poetry – Grandiloquent – lofty or pompous (excessively elevated) or ornate (showy) 35. Rhythm – An ordered recurrent alternation of strong and weak elements in the flow of sound and silence in speech; the aspect of music comprising all the elements (as accent, meter) that relate to forward movement. 36. Sarcasm – Colloquial ridicule; intended to wound the feelings. 37. Satire – Literary ridicule with the purpose of revealing a person’s follies to himself or others in order to bring about reform. 38. Scansion – The analysis of verse to show its meter. 39. Sentimetality – The quality or state of being governed by the emotions or feelings, especially to excess or in affectation. 40. Simile – Expressed comparison by means of a word or phrase such as like, as, than, similar to, or resembles. A figure of speech involving a comparison explicit by the use of the words like or as. 41. Sonnet – A fixed verse form consisting of fourteen lines that are typically five-foot iambics rhyming according to a prescribed scheme. a. English (Shakespearean) – consists of three quatrains and a couplet with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg. b. Italian (Petrarchan) – consists of an octave rhyming abba abba and a sestet rhyming in any of the various patterns (as cde cde or cdc dcd).

Adapted from a Handout by Professor Mabel Ortiz; Prepared by Adrian Rivera

Rivera 3 42. Stanza – A division of a poem consisting of a series of lines arranged together in a usually recurring pattern of meter and rhyme. 43. Symbol – Means what it is and something more. 44. Synedoche – Use of the part for the whole. Substitution of the part for or by the whole. 45. Tactile – An appeal to the sense of touch. 46. Thermal – Appeal to the physical sensations of heat or cold. 47. Tone – Writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward his subject, his audience, or himself; emotional meaning. 48. Total Meaning of a Poem – That which it communicates. 49. Understatement – Saying less than one really means. 50. Verse – Satirical writing.

Adapted from a Handout by Professor Mabel Ortiz; Prepared by Adrian Rivera