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105 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
Ballad
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A narrative poem written in four-line stanzas, characterized by swift action and narrated in a direct style. The Anonymous medieval ballad, "Barbara Allan," exemplifies the genre.
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Setting
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The time and place of a literary work that establish its context. The stories of Sandra Cisneros are set in the American southwest in the mid to late 20th century, those of James Joyce in Dublin, Ireland in the early 20th century.
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Narrator
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The voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to be distinguished from the actual living author. For example, the narrator of Joyce's "Araby" is not James Joyce himself, but a literary fictional character created expressly to tell the story. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" contains a communal narrator, identified only as "we." See Point of view.
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Point of view
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The angle of vision from which a story is narrated. See Narrator. A work's point of view can be: first person, in which the narrator is a character or an observer, respectively; objective, in which the narrator knows or appears to know no more than the reader; omniscient, in which the narrator knows everything about the characters; and limited omniscient, which allows the narrator to know some things about the characters but not everything.
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Dialogue
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The conversation of characters in a literary work. In fiction, dialogue is typically enclosed within quotation marks. In plays, characters' speech is preceded by their names.
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listener
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a person, not the reader whom the speaker addresses directly and who is therefore "inside" the poem
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Dramatic monologue
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A type of poem in which a speaker addresses a silent listener. As readers, we overhear the speaker in a dramatic monologue. Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" represents the epitome of the genre.
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specific language
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objects or conditions that can be perceived or imagined
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general language
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signifies broad classes or persons, objects, and phenomena
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concrete diction
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words that emphasize things immediately perceivable by the senses
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abstract diction
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words expressing ideas or concepts
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Diction
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The selection of words in a literary work. A work's diction forms one of its centrally important literary elements, as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values. We can speak of the diction particular to a character, as in Iago's and Desdemona's very different ways of speaking in Othello. We can also refer to a poet's diction as represented over the body of his or her work, as in Donne's or Hughes's diction.
Think of warrior (high diction), soldier (middle), and dogface or grunt (low); or apparel (high), clothes (middle), and duds (low). |
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high or formal diction
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exactly follows the rules of syntax and seeks accuracy of expression even if unusually elevated or complex words are brought into play.
Words that appear a bit more elegant or extravagant. Often formal diction will contain words that are polysyllabic (many syllables |
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Neutral Diction:
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Words that appear ordinary and that you hear everyday. Contractions are often used in
poetry that has neutral diction, as well as a simpler vocabulary. |
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Informal Diction:
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Words and phrases that are slang expressions, or the colloquial – the language of
relaxed activities and friendly conversations. |
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idiom
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An idiom is just a way of expressing something that has been sanctified by use — often in violation of apparent logic, or at least not having an obvious logic behind it.
Some idioms can sometimes be figured out from the component words: if I say something is a dime a dozen, you can probably figure out that it means "cheap" or "common." Others are impossible to figure out logically. If you get on my nerves and I tell you to piss off, I'm asking you to go away — not to urinate from a great height; to kick the bucket has nothing to do with buckets. Native speakers usually have little trouble with these. The trickier ones are the more subtle idioms. For instance, in English it's idiomatic to say "I'm going home," even though with every other destination you need a preposition like to or into: you go to work or into a store. People learning English often have trouble with this, saying things like "I'm going to home." Even native speakers sometimes get into trouble when they start puzzling over the logic of some phrases, and end up with something that "makes sense" in the abstract, but doesn't conform to general usage. People learning the language often want to ask why things are this way; alas, the only answer is, "It just is, that's all." [Entry added 12 July 2005.] |
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dialect
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A dialect is a subset of a language shared by a smaller community, often (but not always) regional: Cockney, for instance, is a dialect of English. A dialect is distinguished from a language by a set of departures from the "norm," but these departures are necessarily shared by some community. (I'll let the linguists wrangle over exactly which communities constitute dialects.)
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slang
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an informal nonstandard vocabulary composed of invented words, changed words, and exaggerated or humorous figures of speech.
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jargon
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Jargon is the bane of too much writing — not only academic writing but business English suffers from jargon and technobabble. Of course some technical terms are useful and even necessary, but the English language should not be abused with these phrases: sign off on, re, imperative, impact, methodology, functionality, network, parameters, &c.
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decorum
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The appropriate adherence to traditional poetic form and content.
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Syntax
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The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. The organization of words and phrases and clauses in sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue. In the following example, normal syntax (subject, verb, object order) is inverted:
"Whose woods these are I think I know." |
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rhetoric
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Rhetoric (from Greek , rhêtôr, orator, teacher) is generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of oral language and written language; however, this definition of rhetoric has been contested since rhetoric emerged as a field of study in Universities. ...
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Parallelism means
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to give two or more parts of the sentences a similar form so as to give the whole a definite pattern.
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repetition
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use of the same words or phrases
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antithesis
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a contrasting situation or idea that brings out surprise and climax
Establishing a clear, contrasting relationship between two ideas by joining them together or juxtaposing them, often in parallel structure. Human beings are inveterate systematizers and categorizers, so the mind has a natural love for antithesis, which creates a definite and systematic relationship between ideas: To err is human; to forgive, divine. --Alexander Pope I want you to be wise in what is good, and innocent in what is evil. --Romans 16:19b That short and easy trip made a lasting and profound change in Harold's outlook. That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. --Neil Armstrong Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures. --Samuel Johnson |
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antimetabole
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Reversal of the order of repeated words or phrases (a loosely chiastic structure, AB-BA) to intensify the final formulation, to present alternatives, or to show contrast:
All work and no play is as harmful to mental health as all play and no work. Ask not what you can do for rhetoric, but what rhetoric can do for you. |
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Denotation
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The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word's denotative meaning against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications. In the following lines from Peter Meinke's "Advice to My Son" the references to flowers and fruit, bread and wine denote specific things, but also suggest something beyond the literal, dictionary meanings of the words:
To be specific, between the peony and rose Plant squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes; Beauty is nectar and nectar, in a desert, saves-- ... and always serve bread with your wine. But, son, always serve wine. |
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Connotation
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The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets, especially, tend to use words rich in connotation. Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" includes intensely connotative language, as in these lines: "Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, / Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
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Imagery
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The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work. Imagery of light and darkness pervade James Joyce's stories "Araby," "The Boarding House," and "The Dead." So, too, does religious imagery.
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Image
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A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the pattern of related details in a work. In some works one image predominates either by recurring throughout the work or by appearing at a critical point in the plot. Often writers use multiple images throughout a work to suggest states of feeling and to convey implications of thought and action. Some modern poets, such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, write poems that lack discursive explanation entirely and include only images. Among the most famous examples is Pound's poem "In a Station of the Metro":
The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. |
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visual images
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is created with pictures (often with a verbal analogue - many visual images are pictures of things representing well-known sayings or phrases).
Visual Images (sight) Example: “The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color light on the sea’s night-purple” “The Purse-Seine” Robinson Jeffers |
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auditory images
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appeals to the sense of hearing.
Auditory Images (sounds) Example: “she quietly rolled flour tortillasthe ‘papas’ cracking in the hot lard would wake me” “My Grandmother Would Rock Quietly and Hum” Leonard Adamé |
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olfactory images
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Pertaining to the sense of smell
Olfactory Images (smells) Example: “The morning comes to consciousness Of faint stale smells of beer From the sawdust-trampled street With all its muddy feet that press To early coffee-stands” “Preludes” T. S. Eliot |
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Gustatory Images
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Gustatory Images (tastes)
Example: “Take out a three-pound leg of lamb, rub it with salt, pepper and cumin, then push in two cloves of garlic splinters” “How to Eat Alone” Daniel Halpern |
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Tactile Images
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Tactile Images (touch)
Example: “The only things moving are swirls of snow. As I lift the mailbox door, I feel its cold iron.” “Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter” Robert Bly |
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kinetic
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images of general motion or movement
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kinesthetic
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images of human or animal movement
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figure of speech
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Literary device used to create a special effect or feeling, often by making some type of comparison. See Hyperbole, Metaphor, Simile, Understatement
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metaphore
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Metaphor
A comparison device where two things are compared directly. Something will be described as though it is actually something else. Example: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.” “In a Station of the Metro” Ezra Pound |
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simile
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Simile
A comparison device where “like” or “as” is used as the clause. Example: “Eyes like the morning star, Cheeks like a rose” “The Colorado Trail” Anonymous |
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paradox
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A paradox is an apparently true statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition. ...
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anaphora
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repetition of the same word or phrase thought a work or section of a work in order to lend weight and emphasis
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Apostrophe
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Apostrophe
Words that are addressed to an absent or imaginary person, an object, or an abstract thought Example: “Love, O love, O careless love” “Careless Love” Anonymous |
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personification
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he endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities. An example: "The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily in the breeze." Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" includes personification.
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Synecdoche
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A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole. An example: "Lend me a hand." See Metonymy.
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Metonymy:
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substituting the name of a thing for that of another closely associated with it (i.e., the White House said today)
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Pun:
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a play on words
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Synesthesia
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is a blending of sensory experiences. (see The Interaction of Vision and Hearing: Synesthesia) Example: Someone might "taste" the color green as being tart.
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Hyperbole
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A figure of speech involving exaggeration. John Donne uses hyperbole in his poem: "Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star."
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Understatement
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A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of exaggeration. The last line of Frost's "Birches" illustrates this literary device: "One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."
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tone
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The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work, as, for example, Flannery O'Connor's ironic tone in her "Good Country People." See Irony.
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irony
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A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature.
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verbal irony
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In verbal irony, characters say the opposite of what they mean. In irony of circumstance or situation, the opposite of what is expected occurs.
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dramatic irony
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In dramatic irony, a character speaks in ignorance of a situation or event known to the audience or to the other characters. Flannery O'Connor's short stories employ all these forms of irony, as does Poe's "Cask of Amontillado."
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situational irony
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irony of a situation is a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results when enlivened by 'perverse appropriateness'. This is a relatively modern use of the term -- see "Usage Controversy", below
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Satire
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A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a famous example. Chekhov's Marriage Proposal and O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge," have strong satirical elements.
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prosody
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the technical analysis of all the sound elements (eg, rhythm, alliteration, rhyme) in poetry or speech.
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Assonance
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The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe." Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" contains assonantal "I's" in the following lines: "How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, / Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself."
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schwa
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in English, the midcentral vowel in an unaccented or unstressed syllable; as the first vowel sound in alone. See also short vowel. 2. the graphic symbol (_) commonly used in phonetic alphabets and pronunciation keys to represent such a vowel.
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diphthong
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a vowel sound produced when the tongue moves or glides from one vowel sound toward another vowel or semivowel sound in the same syllable, as /_/ in buy and the vowel sounds in bee, bay, boo, boy, and bough.
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consonant sounds
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consonant cluster
in a syllable, a sequence of two or more distinguishable consonant sounds before or after a vowel sound, as /skr/ and /mz/ in screams. Also consonant blend. Note: The term refers only to sounds, not to letters representing sounds |
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segments
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individually meaningful sounds
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alliteration:
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The repetition of the same or similar sounds (usually consonants) that are close to one another (e.g. the timid, tiny tadpole).
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Rhyme:
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when two or more words or phrases contain an identical or similar vowel-sound, and the consonant-sounds that follow are identical or similar
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syllable
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a unit of spoken language larger than a phoneme; "the word `pocket' has two syllables"
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phonetic
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1. referring to the nature, production, and transcription of speech sounds.
2. corresponding to pronunciation. 3. agreeing with pronunciation. |
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heavy stress syllables
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intense syllables
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accent or beat
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a heavy stress or accent in a line of poetry. the number of beats in a line usually dictates the meter of the line
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Scansion:
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system of indicating stresses and pauses in poetry using symbols to indicate stressed syllables, unstressed syllables, and pauses (caesuras)
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light stress syllables
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less intense syllables
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meter
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number of feet in its lines
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pentameter
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5 feet in its lines
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tetrameter
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4 feet in its lines
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trimeter
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3 feet in its lines
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dimeter
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2 feet in its lines
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monometer
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1 feet in its lines
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iamb
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a two-syllable metrical foot consisting of one unaccented syllable followed by one accented syllable.
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caesura
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cutting off (pauses)
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Onomatopoeia:
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attempt to represent a thing or action by a word that imitates the sound associated with it (for example, zip, buzz, hiss)
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echoic
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(of words) formed in imitation of a natural sound; "onomatopoeic words are imitative of noises"; "it was independently developed in more than one place as an onomatopoetic term"- Harry Hoijer
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euphony.
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The melodious quality of sound and rhythm that is created by the writer's choice and ar rangement of words. Poets and writers attempting to create euphony in their work draw on literary devices such as alliteration and internal rhyme.
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Cacophony
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(from the Greek word kakophonia - kakos (bad) + phoni (voice, sound)) refers to sound that is harsh and unpleasant-sounding
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exact rhyme
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Perfect rhyme, also called, full rhyme, exact rhyme[1], and true rhyme, is when the later part of the word or phrase is identical sounding to another.[2]
For example: As the days go by I cannot help but sigh Another Example: Look up into the sky Boy it is mighty high |
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Stanza
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A division or unit of a poem that is repeated in the same form--either with similar or identical patterns or rhyme and meter, or with variations from one stanza to another. The stanzas of Gertrude Schnackenberg's "Signs" are regular; those of Rita Dove's "Canary" are irregular.
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Closed form
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A type of form or structure in poetry characterized by regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, and metrical pattern. Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" provides one of many examples. A single stanza illustrates some of the features of closed form:
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. |
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line
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poetic sentence
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Blank verse
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A line of poetry or prose in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare's sonnets, Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost, and Robert Frost's meditative poems such as "Birches" include many lines of blank verse. Here are the opening blank verse lines of "Birches": When I see birches bend to left and right / Across the lines of straighter darker trees, / I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
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Caesura
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A strong pause within a line of verse. The following stanza from Hardy's "The Man He Killed" contains caesuras in the middle two lines:
He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand-like--just as I-- Was out of work-had sold his traps-- No other reason why |
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Couplet
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A pair of rhymed lines that may or may not constitute a separate stanza in a poem. Shakespeare's sonnets end in rhymed couplets, as in "For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings."
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Sonnet
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A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter. The Shakespearean or English sonnet is arranged as three quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet divides into two parts: an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet, rhyming abba abba cde cde or abba abba cd cd cd
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Villanelle
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A nineteen-line lyric poem that relies heavily on repetition. The first and third lines alternate throughout the poem, which is structured in six stanzas --five tercets and a concluding quatrain. Examples include Bishop's "One Art," Roethke's "The Waking," and Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."
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Lyric poem
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A type of poem characterized by brevity, compression, and the expression of feeling. Most of the poems in this book are lyrics. The anonymous "Western Wind" epitomizes the genre:
Western wind, when will thou blow, The small rain down can rain? Christ, if my love were in my arms And I in my bed again! |
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Ode
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A long, stately poem in stanzas of varied length, meter, and form. Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject, such as Horace's "Eheu fugaces," but sometimes a more lighthearted work, such as Neruda's "Ode to My Socks."
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haiku
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A Japanese poem composed of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Haiku often reflect on some aspect of nature.
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Epigram
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A brief witty poem, often satirical. Alexander Pope's "Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog" exemplifies the genre:
I am his Highness' dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you? |
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epitaphs
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a summary statement of commemoration for a dead person
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limerick
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A light, humorous poem of five usually anapestic lines with the rhyme scheme of aabba.
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prose poem
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Prose is writing distinguished from poetry by its greater variety of rhythm and its closer resemblance to the patterns of everyday speech.
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Free verse
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Poetry without a regular pattern of meter or rhyme. The verse is "free" in not being bound by earlier poetic conventions requiring poems to adhere to an explicit and identifiable meter and rhyme scheme in a form such as the sonnet or ballad. Modern and contemporary poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries often employ free verse. Williams's "This Is Just to Say" is one of many examples.
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Open form
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A type of structure or form in poetry characterized by freedom from regularity and consistency in such elements as rhyme, line length, metrical pattern, and overall poetic structure. E.E. Cummings's "[Buffalo Bill's]" is one example.
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symbolism
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The use in poetry of objects that have broad and deep meanings in a particular culture: the flag, the cross, the heart, the phallus, mother and child, Christmas tree. The meaning, of course, is hard to define because it can connect with so many different things.
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symbol
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An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself. The glass unicorn in The Glass Menagerie, the rocking horse in "The Rocking-Horse Winner," the road in Frost's "The Road Not Taken"--all are symbols in this sense.
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Allusion:
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an indirect reference to any person, place, or thing, actual or fictional
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myth
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a traditional story accepted as history; serves to explain the world view of a people
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archetypes
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Universal symbols that speak in the language of the subconscious. They are the ideal images of deities and other powers.
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