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ENGL102 Midterm terms

Terms

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Allegory
A narrative comprised of (at least) two levels: the literal (character, setting, plot) and a parallel symbolic level of ideas, values, virtues or other abstractions. Typically used for didactic or satiric purposes, to dramatize moral, religous, or political issues.
Alliteration
The repetition of first letters/sounds
Allusion
A brief and often indirect reference in a text to a person, place, thing, event or other text.
Apostrophe
A direct address to an absent person, thing or idea - as if it were present and sentient
Assonance
the repetition of vowel sounds
Consonance
related closely to allitereation, it is the repetition of consonant sounds, thought not necessarily of the first letter/sound
Ballad
Originally the traditional form of the European fol song, adapted for poetry during the 17th and 18th centuries. A narrative poem is typically written in common meter
Blank Verse
Metrical (typically Iambic Pentamenter)but unrhymed poetry
Caesura
a pause (typically marked by punctuaion)within a line of poetry.
conceit
an extended and often far-fetched metaphor or simile, characteristic of 17th century so-called "metaphyscal" poetry such as John Donne
Concrete poetry
visual poetry n which indiviudal letters or the pae of peotry itself is used to ceate a visual image.
confessional poetry
a style that became prominent in the 1950s and has doiminated lyric poetry since. The poet exposes private aspects of his or her personal life.
Couplet
Two lines of poetry, usually rhymed and of equal length, standing on their own or used as the building blocks for longer poems.
Heroic couplet
in rhymed iambic pentameter and each pairing contains an independent and compelte throught or statement.
Dramatic monologue
an entire poem written as if it were a speech by a character.
Elegy
a lament, poem of mourning, or mediation, typiclaly written on the occasion of a death or other grave event. Takes a variety of forms.
Enjambment
when one line of poetry flows into the next without a grammatical pause
epic
a long narrative poem written in an elevated style and recounting the exploits of a hero. Usually has a broad cultural significance for a perople of nation.
Found poem
a poem made out of found text that was not originally intended to be poetry (signs, notes, prose, conversations, books)
Free verse
a term applied loosely to any poetry not employing a regular metrical scheme. Also called 'open form' to distinguish it from traditional, metered 'closed form'. The majority of 20th century poetry has been written in this.
Haiku
a traditional Japanese form comprised of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables
Language Poetry
a reaction to confessional poetry beginning in the 1970s. involves not self-expression but an investigation of the material and medium of peotry itself - its words, grammar, and syntax. Heavly influenced by philosophy and literary theory. it seeks to defamiliarize and destablize meaning.
lyric poetry
usually a short poem, often loosely narrative or at least ancedotal, that gives expression to a speaker's feelings, emotional life, or interiority.
metaphor
a figurative comparision asserting tat one thing is something else.
Meter
The systematic organization of lines of poetry into rthymic pattern. Typically, the metrical "feet" are comprised of one stressed and one unstressed syllable. In traditional (closed) English language peotry lines of three (trimeter), four (tetrameter), or five (pentameter) metrical feet tend to predominate. When the rthym is rising - moving from an unstressed to a stressed syllable - it is called iambic. when it is falled (frm stressed to unstressed) it is called trochaic. Iambic pentameter and iambic tetrameter are the most common English meters.
Metonymy
a figure of speech in which one thing stands in place of something else with which it is ocmmonly or closely associated in some way. Differs from metaphor in that metaphor compars things with no prior association.
Modernism
the period in literature (and the arts in general), usually referring to the first, third, or half of the 20th century, in which broad aesthetic changes occured and formal experiements were undertaken. In poetry, closely associated with the rise of free or open verse.
Pastoral
A poetic style (typical of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as of 16th and 17th century English poetry) in which rural life is idealized: the poet ias shepherd or "swain"
Persona
Latin for "mask", it is the purported speaker of the poem
Personification
A figure of speech in which something is given human qualities
Postmodernism
The answer to modernism, thus, whatever has happened in the arts since the first half of the 20th century. Usually associated with an emphasis on process (instead of product), skepticism towards models of truth and vlue, and irreverence towards the tradtions of the past.
Procedural Poem
a poem in which some method of composition or some contraint is deteremined before writing begins, and which shapes or governs the compostion in some way. Neither "open" nor "closed" in the traditional sense.
Refrain
a word, phrase, line, or stanza repeated at intervals throughout a poem
Romanticism
The poetry of the late 18th and early 19th century, associated with the effects of the French Revoltuion, and usually seen as a reaction to the "age of reason" and the rise of science and industry. The values opossed to the latter are those of nature and the subjectiviity of the isolated and creative individual.
Serial poem
a long poem composed of discrete units whose connection is not always direct, immediately recongizable, or logical/narrative. Ofen only the "tone" language, and/or repeated words, phrases, images or ideas provide the connections between the spearate units. Typical of experiemental and radiacal poetries since he 1950s.
Sestina
a cksied firn ub wgucg sux stanzas of six lines each are finished with a three line envoy. The words ending the lines in the first stanza are repaeated in varying orders at the ends of the lines in the subsequent stanzas, with all six repeating words appreaing in the envoy.
Simile
a figure of speech in which a comparison is made of unlike things by claiming likeness or similarity. Connecting words "like" or "as" are typically used.
Sonnet
The dominant form of lyric poetry n the early phases of English lit (16-19th centuries). 14 lines and employes a consistent rhyme and metrical system (usually imabic pentameter). Octave (first 8 lines) and sestet (last six lines) or 3 quatrains and a concluding couplet. There si a "turn" usually after the eighth or twelfth lines.
Spoken word
narrative and relies more upon its verbal performance for its effects. Closely related to "slam poetry", more of a form of stand up commedy or rap music, geared toward shcoking, challenging, or surprising its audience in some way.
symbol
any concrete thing or any action that implies a meaning beyond its literal sense.
synecdoche
a figure of speech, related to metonymy, in which a part stands in for the whole.
Vinanelle
a 19 line poem comprising 5 tercets and a concluding quatrain. Uses a complex system of refrains where the first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated as alternating closing lines of the subsequent tercets, until the final quatrain repeats them both again. Usually written in iambic pentameter

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