English 12 Bc Provincial Vocabulary

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Alliteration

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The repetition of identical consonant sounds at the beginning of closely associated words. For example, "Peter Piper Pecked"

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Allusion

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A brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or fictitious, or to a work of art or fiction.

Allusion is most typically a casual reference to a famous historical or literary figure or event. An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion.

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Apostrophe

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when an absent person, an abstract concept, or an important object is directly addressed.

Example:
With how sad steps, O moon, thou climbest the skies. Busy old fool, unruly sun.

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Assonance

Back 4

repetition of vowel sounds but not consonant sounds as in consonance.

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Ballad

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A relatively short narrative poem, written to be sung, with a simple and dramatic action.

The ballad stanza is four lines; commonly, the first and third lines contain four feet or accents, the second and fourth lines contain three feet.

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Blank Verse

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Blank verse (also called unrhymed iambic pentameter) - unrhymed lines of ten syllables each with the even-numbered syllables bearing the accents.

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Caesura

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A pause within a line of poetry that contributes to the rhythm of the line.

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Elegy

Back 8

A somber poem or song that praises or laments the dead.

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Epic

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An extended narrative poem recounting actions, travels, adventures, and heroic episodes and written in a high style (with ennobled diction, for example).

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Eulogy

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Speech or written work paying tribute to a person who has recently died; speech or written work praising a person (living, as well as dead), place, thing, or idea.

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Free Verse

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Form of poetry that ignores standard rules of meter and rhyme in favor of the rhythms of ordinary conversation.

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Heroic Couplet

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Unit of two rhyming lines in iambic pentameter. Following is an example:

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Hyperbole

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Exaggeration; overstatement.

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Image

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a word or phrase in a literary text that appeals directly to the reader's taste, touch, hearing, sight, or smell.

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Irony

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An attribute of statements in which the meaning is different--or more complicated--than it seems.

A form of sarcasm, verbal irony is a rhetorical device in which the speaker either severely understates his point or means the opposite of what he says.

Dramatic irony arises in situations where two or more individuals have different levels of understanding or different points of view. More specifically, it occurs when the audience or certain characters in a play know something that another character does not.

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Lyric

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a short, highly formal, song-like poem, usually passionate and confessional, often about love; a song expressing a private mood or an intense personal feeling.

The sonnet and the ode are two specific types of lyric.

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Metaphor

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a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to a person, idea, or object to which it is not literally applicable.

It is an implied analogy or unstated comparison which imaginatively identifies one thing with another.

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Metonymy

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Like synecdoche, this term refers to figurative language that uses particular words to represent something else with which they are associated.

Metonymy is when one term is substituted for another term with which it is closely associated ("crown" or "sceptre" stands duty for "monarch").

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Meter

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The meter in poetry involves exact arrangements of syllables into repeated patterns called feet within a line. Meters are regularized rhythms.

An arrangement of language in which the accents occur at apparently equal intervals in time.

Each repeated unit of meter is called a foot.

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Ode

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A lyric poem with a dignified theme that is phrased in a formal, elevated style. Its purpose is to praise and glorify.

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Onomatopoeia

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The formation and use of words that suggest, by their sounds, the object or idea being named or the imitation of natural sounds by words such as “bang” or “buzz.”

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Oxymoron

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A figure of speech in which two contradictory words or phrases are combined to produce a rhetorical effect by means of a concise paradox.

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Paradox

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A statement that is apparently self-contradictory or absurd but really contains a possible truth.

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Personification

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A figure of speech in which abstractions, animals, ideas, and inanimate objects are endowed with human form, character, traits, or sensibilities.

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Pun

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A play on words or the humorous use of a word emphasizing a different meaning or application.

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Quatrain

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Usually a stanza or poem of 4 lines. However, a quatrain may also be any group of 4 lines unified by a rhyme scheme.

Quatrains usually follow an abab, abba, or abcb rhyme scheme.

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Refrain

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A word, phrase, line, or group of lines repeated regularly in a poem, usually at the end of each stanza.

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Rhyming Couplet

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A rhyming couplet is where the 2 lines rhyme with each other and a whole poem may be made up couplets where each pair of lines rhyme with each other.

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Sestet

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The last six lines of a Petrarchan (or Italian) sonnet.

Usually has a rhyme scheme of cdecde.

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Simile

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A comparison made between two dissimilar things through the use of a specific word of comparison such as Like, as, than, or resembles. The comparison must be between two essentially unlike things.

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Sonnet

Back 31

A lyric poem of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to certain definite patterns.

It usually expresses a single, complete thought, idea, or sentiment.

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Petrarchan Sonnet

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Italian form of sonnet. Tends to have a turning point after the first 2 quatrains before the concluding sestet.

Rhyme scheme:

abbaabba, then:

1) cddcdd, 2) cdecde, 3) cdcdcd

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Shakespearean Sonnet

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Has 3 quatrains followed by a concluding couplet.

Rhyme scheme:

abab, cdcd, efef, gg

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Stanza

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A group of lines forming a unit in a poem.

A stanza may be as short as the couplet, two rhyming lines.

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Symbol

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Any object, person, place, or action that has a meaning in itself and that also stands for something larger than it does, such as a quality, an attitude, a belief, or a value.

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Synecdoche

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Understanding one thing with another; the use of a part for the whole, or the whole for the part. (A form of metonymy.)

Example: The U.S. won three gold medals. (Instead of, The members of the U.S. boxing team won three gold medals.)

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Theme

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The central and dominating idea in a literary work. A theme may also be a short essay such as a composition. In addition, the term means a message or moral implicit in any work of art.