Poetry Definitions - Introduction to Poetry | ENGL 3050, Study notes of Poetry

Download Poetry Definitions - Introduction to Poetry | ENGL 3050 and more Study notes Poetry in PDF only on Docsity! Meter  Alexandrine o A verse of iambic hexameter — i.e., a verse of six feet, each of which has the stress on the second beat  Amphibrach / amphibrachic foot o Amphibrachic (the noun is "amphibrach"): also called "rocking rhythm," three syllables--a stressed syllable between two unstressed syllables, as in the first five feet of this line from Swinburne: "(The search, and) (the sought, and) (the seeker,) (--the soul and) the body that is."  Anapest / anapestic foot o Anapestic (opposite of dactylic; the noun is "anapest"): two light syllables followed by a stressed syllable ("The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold" --Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib").  Blank verse o The verse form most like everyday human speech; blank verse consists of unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter. Many of Shakespeare’s plays are in blank verse  Dactyl / dactylic foot o The metrical pattern in which each foot consists of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed ones (opposite of anapestic; the noun is "dactyl"): a stressed syllable followed by two light syllables ("Eve, with her basket, was / Deep in the bells and grass" --Ralph Hodgson's "Eve").  Diameter o Two feet  Duple meter o Duple meters, such as iambs, trochees, and spondees, have two beats per foot 1  Free verse o Poetry characterized by varying line lengths, lack of traditional meter, and nonrhyming lines  Heptameter o Seven feet  Hexameter o Six feet  Iamb / iambic foot o A metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one  Meter o When rhythm is regular, it is often called meter. Each verse is made up of a number of metrical feet. Use a pair of terms to describe a line of verse: first, an adjective for the basic kind of foot. Typical feet include iambs (the most common in English poetry), trochees, and spondees. Less common are dactyls, anapests, and amphibrachs. o The second term gives the number of feet in each line. The most common in English are pentameter (five beats per verse) and tetrameter (four beats per verse); other possibilities are monometer, dimeter, trimeter, and hexameter. o No meter is perfectly regular. Apart from the theoretical problem that no two syllables will receive precisely the same stress, most poets (even the most apparently regular) try to vary their verse by introducing occasional metrical substitutions.  Monometer o One feet  Octameter 2 Dante composed his Divine Comedy in terza rima, but although Wyatt introduced the form early in the sixteenth century, it has not been a common meter in English, in which rhymes are much harder to find than in Italian. Shelley, however, used it brilliantly in "Ode to the West Wind," and it occurs also in the poetry of Milton, Browning, and T. S. Eliot.  Quatrain o The quatrain, or four-line stanza, is the most common in English versification and is employed with various meters and rhyme schemes. The ballad stanza (in alternating four- and three-foot lines) is one common quatrain, and the heroic quatrain, in iambic pentameter rhyming abab, is the stanza of Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."  Ballad stanza o The ballad stanza, named for its frequent use in traditional ballads, is quatrains of alternating tetrameter and trimeter, rhyming either abab or abcb.  Sestet o The last six lines of the Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet.  Rhyme royal o Rhyme Royal was introduced by Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde and other narrative poems; it is believed to take its name, however, from its later use in the verses of King James I of Scotland. It is a seven-line, iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc.  Octave o The last eight lines of the Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnet.  Ottava rima o Ottava rima, as the Italian name indicates, has eight lines; it rhymes 5 abababcc. Like terza rima and the sonnet, it was brought from Italian into English by Wyatt. Although employed by a number of earlier poets, it is peculiarly the stanza which helped Byron discover what he was born to write, the satiric Don Juan:  Sonnet o The sonnet is a lyric poem written in a single stanza, which consists of fourteen iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. The rhyme in English usually follows one of two main patterns  Italian Sonnet  Specific rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme is A-B-B-A. The sestet may have C-D-E, C-D-E, or C-D-C C-D-C  English Sonnet  Sometimes known as the shakespearian sonnet. Two Quatrains. A-B-A-B, C-D-C-D, E-F-E-F, G-G-  Spencerian Sonnet  The Quatrains interlock A-B-A-B B-C-B-C C-D-C-D E-E Other  Caesura o A pause somewhere in the middle of a verse. Some lines have strong (easily recognizable) caesurae, which usually coincide with punctuation in the line, while others have weak ones. It's conventional to mark them with a double bar; the closest HTML allows me to come is ||.  End-stopped lines o When the units of sense in a passage of poetry coincide with the verses, and the sense does not run on from one verse to another, the lines are said to be end-stopped. When the verse length does not 6 match the length of the units of sense (clauses, sentences, whatever), the lines are said to be enjambed.  Enjambment o When the units of sense in a passage of poetry don't coincide with the verses, and the sense runs on from one verse to another, the lines are said to be enjambed. When the verse length matches the length of the units of sense (clauses, sentences, whatever), the lines are said to be end-stopped. The term comes from the French for "straddling," since sentences "straddle" several lines. For examples, see the entry for end-stopped.  Alliteration o The repetition of sounds, especially consonant sounds, within a passage of prose or verse. The repetition of vowel sounds is sometimes distinguished from alliteration and called assonance. Consonance is a kind of alliteration in which a similar sequence of consonants is varied by a changing vowel sound, as in "top, tap, tip."  Assonance o The repetition of vowel sounds within a short passage of verse or prose is called assonance. When the repeated sounds are consonants, use either consonance or the more familiar term alliteration.  Anaphora o Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or lines.  Ballad o The ballad is a narrative meant to be sung, usually composed inthe ballad stanza. Although some ballads are carefully crafted poems written by literate authors and meant to be read silently (such as those in Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge), the folk ballad (or 7