Terms from Highschool

Question 1

Allegory

Answer 1

characters/depictions convey hidden symbolic message. Ex: the Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser (represents virtues of truth, friendship, justice)

Question 2

Alliteration

Answer 2

repetition of beginning sounds

Question 3

Allusion

Answer 3

implied reference to literary/historical sources. Ex: The Waste Land by Eliot refers to Shakespeare, Dante, Ovid

Question 4

Anagram

Answer 4

transposing letters to form a new word or phrase

Question 5

Anaphora

Answer 5

repetition of words or phrases at beginning of lines

Question 6

Apostrophe

Answer 6

passage addressed to person or thing that is absent

Question 7

Assonance

Answer 7

close repetition of the same vowel sounds

Question 8

Blank verse

Answer 8

does not employ a rhyme scheme, is different from free verse as it has meter (has regular pattern of stressed/unstressed syllables in a line)

Question 9

Caesura

Answer 9

break in the flow in a line of poetry

Question 10

Catharsis

Answer 10

term used by Aristotle; the process of releasing and thereby providing relief from strong or repressed emotions

Question 11

Consonance

Answer 11

words share the same stressed consonant sound but vowels differ. Ex: brick, clock. Double consonance = black/block.

Question 12

Dialect verse

Answer 12

verses use national/regional dialects. Ex: Robert Burns’ “Ode to a Mouse”

Question 13

Didactic verse

Answer 13

verse that instructs or educates. Ex: Essay on Man by Pope, “thirty days hath September…”

Question 14

Euphony

Answer 14

use of pleasing sounds in poetry

Question 15

Free verse

Answer 15

verse without meter or rhyme patterns. Walt Whitman was a pioneer of this.

Question 16

Genre

Answer 16

literary style

Question 17

Juvenilia

Answer 17

a poet’s early or immature work

Question 18

Kenning

Answer 18

compound metaphor. Ex: bone frame

Question 19

Imagery

Answer 19

creation of images using words (similes/metaphors)

Question 20

Internal rhyme

Answer 20

word in the middle of line of poetry rhymes with word at end of line. Ex: “The Raven”.

Question 21

Litotes

Answer 21

ironic understatement that affirms something by denying its opposite

Question 22

Metonymy

Answer 22

object described is substituted for something closely related to it. Ex: crown replaces monarchy

Question 23

Octave

Answer 23

stanza of eight lines

Question 24

Onomatopoeia

Answer 24

words imitate a sound

Question 25

Oxymoron

Answer 25

figure of speech containing contradictory expression

Question 26

Parallelism

Answer 26

phrases placed side by side, which show repetition of structure.

Question 27

Pathos

Answer 27

evokes pity or sadness in reader. Carried too far it becomes Bathos (descent from sublime to ridiculous)

Question 28

Pastoral

Answer 28

poem about idyllic rural life

Question 29

Personification

Answer 29

inanimate objects are given human characteristics

Question 30

Stanza

Answer 30

one or more lines that make up the basic units of poetry, separated from each other by spacing