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Poetry Glossary Flashcards

1
Q

What is an aubade?

A

A poem or song welcoming or lamenting the coming of dawn.

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2
Q

What is a ballad?

A

A popular narrative song passed down orally. Usually follows form of rhymed (abcb) quatrains alternating four-stress and three-stress lines. Emphasis on a central dramatic event.

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3
Q

What is a doggerel?

A

Bad verse traditionally characterised by clichés, clumsiness and irregular meter.

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4
Q

What is a dramatic monologue?

A

A poem in which an imagined speaker addresses a silent reader, usually not the reader.

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5
Q

What is a pastoral poem?

A

A poem that idealizes a rural setting.

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6
Q

What is an eclogue?

A

A brief, dramatic pastoral poem, set in an idyllic rural place but discussing urban, legal, political or social issues.

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7
Q

What is an elegy?

A

Often a melancholy poem that laments it’s subject’s death but ends in consolation.

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8
Q

What is an epistle?

A

A letter in verse, usually addressed to a person close to the writer. Its themes may be moral and philosophical, or intimate and sentimental

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9
Q

What is an epitaph?

A

A short poem intended for (or imagined as) an inscription on a tombstone and often serving as a briefelegy.

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10
Q

What is an epithalamion?

A

Alyric poem in praise of Hymen (the Greek god of marriage), an epithalamion often blesses a wedding and in modern times is often read at the wedding ceremony or reception.

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11
Q

What’s free verse?

A

Nonmetrical, nonrhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech. A regular pattern of sound or rhythm may emerge in free-verse lines, but the poet does not adhere to a metrical plan in their composition.

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12
Q

What is georgic?

A

A poem or book dealing with agriculture or rural topics, which commonly glorifies outdoor labor and simple country life. Often takes the form of a didactic or instructive poem intended to give instructions related to a skill or art.

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13
Q

What is a hymn?

A

A poem praising God or the divine, often sung.

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14
Q

What is light verse?

A

Whimsical poems taking forms such aslimericks, nonsense poems, anddouble dactyls.

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15
Q

What is a limerick?

A

A fixedlight-verseform of five generallyanapesticlines rhyming AABBA.

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16
Q

What is a mock epic?

A

A poem that plays with the conventions of theepicto comment on a topic satirically.

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17
Q

What is an octave?

A

An eight-line stanza or poem.

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18
Q

What is an ode?

A

A formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea.

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19
Q

What’s a quatrain?

A

A four-line stanza.

20
Q

What’s a refrain?

A

A phrase or line repeated at intervals within a poem, especially at the end of a stanza.

21
Q

What’s a sestet?

A

A six-line stanza. A sestet refers only to the final portion of a sonnet, otherwise the six-line stanza is known as a sexain.

22
Q

What is a sonnet?

A

A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme. Traditionally reflects upon a single sentiment, with a clarification or “turn” of thought in its concluding lines.

23
Q

What is a petrachan sonnet?

A

Divides a sonnet’s 14 lines into two sections: an eight-line stanza (octave) rhyming ABBAABBA, and a six-line stanza (sestet) rhyming CDCDCD or CDEEDE.

24
Q

What is anthropormorphism?

A

A form ofpersonificationin which human qualities are attributed to anything inhuman, usually a god, animal, object, or concept.

25
Q

What is an antithesis?

A

Contrasting or combining two terms, phrases, or clauses with opposite meanings.

26
Q

What is an apostrophe?

A

An address to a dead or absent person, or personification as if he or she were present.

27
Q

What is assonance?

A

The repetition of vowel sounds without repeating consonants; sometimes called vowel rhyme.

28
Q

What is a blazon?

A

Catalogues the physical attributes of a subject, usually female.Compares parts of the female body to jewels, celestial bodies, natural phenomenon, and other beautiful or rare objects.

29
Q

What is a conceit?

A

An often unconventional, logically complex, or surprisingmetaphorwhose delights are more intellectual than sensual.

30
Q

What is an elipsis?

A

In poetry, the omission of words whose absence does not impede the reader’s ability to understand the expression.For example, “I will away” rather than “I will go away”.

31
Q

What is an enjambment?

A

The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation.

32
Q

What is a hyperbole?

A

Afigure of speech composed of a striking exaggeration. For example, see lines “she scorched you with her radiance” or”He was more wronged than Job.”Hyperbole usually carries the force of strong emotion.

33
Q

What is imagery?

A

Elements of a poem that invoke any of the five senses to create a set of mental images.

34
Q

What is an invication?

A

An address to a deity or muse that often takes the form of a request for help in composing the poem at hand.

35
Q

What is irony?

A

Implies a distance between what is said and what is meant.

36
Q

What is an liotes?

A

A deliberate understatement for effect; the opposite ofhyperbole.

37
Q

What is a motif?

A

A central or recurring image or action in a literary work that is shared by other works.Unlike themes, which are messages, statements, or ideas, motifs are details whose repetition adds to the work’s larger meaning.

38
Q

What is onomatopoeia?

A

Afigure of speechin which the sound of a word imitates its sense (for example, “choo-choo,” “hiss,” or “buzz”).

39
Q

What is an oxymoron?

A

Afigure of speechthat brings together contradictory words for effect, such as “jumbo shrimp” and “deafening silence.”

40
Q

What is a palindrome?

A

A word, phrase, or sentence that reads the same backward and forward.

41
Q

What is a pun?

A

Wordplay that uses homonyms (two different words that are spelled identically) to deliver two or more meanings at the same time.

42
Q

What is a soliloquy?

A

A soliloquy is a monologue in which a character in a play expresses thoughts and feelings while being alone on stage.

43
Q

What is a tautology?

A

A statement redundant in itself, such as “free gift” or “The stars, O astral bodies!” Also, a statement that is necessarily true—a circular argument—such as “she is alive because she is living.”

44
Q

What is a volta?

A

In a sonnet, the volta is the turn of thought or argument.

45
Q

What is a cadence?

A

The patterning of rhythm in natural speech, or in poetry without a distinct meter (i.e. free verse).

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