Alliteration the repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together Ex But the sea the sea in darkness calls Allusion a reference to someone or something that is known from history literature religion politics sports science or some other br ID: 795355
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Slide1
Poetic Devices
Slide2Poetic devices
Alliteration – the repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together
Ex: “But the sea, the sea in darkness calls.”
Allusion – a reference to someone or something that is known from history, literature, religion, politics, sports, science, or some other branch of culture.
Ex: T. S. Eliot drew on his knowledge of the Bible when he alluded to the raising of Lazarus from the dead in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” The title of Sandra Cisneros’s essay “Straw into Gold” is an allusion to the folk tale about Rumpelstiltskin.
Slide3Poetic devices
Ambiguity – a technique by which a writer deliberately suggests two or more different, and sometimes conflicting, meanings in a work.
Robert Frost’s poems tend to have multiple meanings.
Anapest – a metrical foot that has two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable.
Ex: coexist (~ ~ /)
Assonance – the repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds, especially in words close together.
Ex: The t
i
de rises, the t
i
de falls, / The tw
i
l
i
ght darkens, the curlew calls
Slide4Poetic devices
Atmosphere – the mood or feeling created in a piece of writing.
Ex: melancholy, peaceful, festive, menacing.
Ballad – a song or poem that tells a story.
The typical ballad tells a tragic story in the form of a monologue or dialogue. Ballads usually have a simple, steady rhythm, a simple rhyme pattern, and a refrain, all of which make them easy to memorize.
Blank verse – poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Used by Shakespeare, Milton, Robert Frost.
Slide5Poetic devices
Caesura
– a pause or break within a line of poetry. Some pauses are indicated by punctuation; others are suggested by phrasing or meaning. In the lines below, the caesuras are marked by double vertical lines. These pauses are indicated by punctuation.
Ex:
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, / Arrives the snow, II and, II driving o’er the fields, / Seems nowhere to alight: II the whited air / Hides hills and woods . . .
Cliché – a word or phrase, often a figure of speech, that has become lifeless because of overuse.
Ex: green with envy, quiet as a mouse, pretty as a picture
Slide6Poetic devices
Conceit – an elaborate metaphor or other figure of speech that compares two things that are startlingly different
Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot are known for their conceits.
Consonance – the repetition of the same or similar final consonant sounds on accented syllables or in important words.
Ex: ticktock, singsong
Couplet – two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry.
If ever wife was happy in a man, / Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
Slide7Poetic devices
Dactyl – a metrical foot of three syllables in which the first syllable is stressed and the next two are unstressed.
Ex: “tendency” (/ ~ ~) is a dactyl
Dramatic monologue – a poem in which a character speaks to one or more listeners whose responses are not known. The reactions of the listener must be inferred by the reader. From the speaker’s words the reader learns about the setting, the situation, the identity of the other characters, and the personality of the speaker.
Elegy – a poem of mourning, usually about someone who has died. Most elegies are written to mark a particular person’s death.
Slide8Poetic devices
End-stopped line – a line that is a grammatical unit and ends with punctuation
Enjambment – the running on from the end of one line of verse into the next, without a punctuated pause.
Slide9Poetic devices
Epic – a long narrative poem, written in heightened language, which recounts the deeds of a heroic character who embodies the values of a particular society. Epics include
Beowulf
,
Paradise Lost
, and some see Walt Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass
as an American epic in which the hero is the questing poet.
Epithet – a descriptive word or phrase that is frequently used to characterize a person or a thing.
Ex: “the father of our country” for George Washington, “the Big Apple” for New York City, “patient Penelope,” “wily Odysseus,” and
earthshaker
” for
Poesidon
.
Slide10Poetic devices
Foot – a metrical unit of poetry. A foot always contains at least one stressed syllable and usually one or more unstressed syllables.
Free verse –poetry that does not conform to regular meter or rhyme scheme. Poets who write in free verse uses the natural rhythms of spoken language.
Haiku – a short, unrhymed poem developed in Japan in the fifteenth century. A haiku consists of three unrhymed lines and a total of seventeen syllables. The first and third lines of a traditional haiku have five syllables each, and the middle line has seven syllables. Haiku often convey feelings through a descriptive snapshot of a natural object or scene.
Slide11Poetic devices
Heroic couplet – two consecutive rhyming lines of poetry in iambic pentameter.
Hyperbole – a figure of speech that uses an incredible exaggeration or overstatement for effect.
Ex: I could eat a horse.
Iamb – a metrical foot in poetry that has an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, as in the word “protect.” The iamb (~ /) is a common foot in poetry written in English.
Slide12Poetic devices
Iambic pentameter – a line of poetry that contains five iambic feet. The iambic pentameter line is most common in English and American poetry. Shakespeare and John Milton used iambic pentameter in their major works. So did such American poets as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, and Wallace Stevens.
Ex: In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes
Idiom – an expression particular to a certain language that means something different from the literal definitions of its parts.
Ex: Falling in love, I lost my head.
Slide13Poetic devices
Imagery
– the use of language to evoke a picture or concrete idea of a person, a thing, a place, or an experience. Although most images appeal to the sense of sight, they may appeal to the sense of taste, smell, hearing, and touch as well.
Ex: And so, all the night-
tide
, I lie down by the
side
/ Of my darling – my darling – my life and my bride. . . .
Internal
rhyme
– rhyme that occurs within a line of poetry or within consecutive lines.
Inversion – the reversal of the normal word order in a sentence or phrase. Not the usual subject-verb-complement.
In silent night when rest I took
Slide14Poetic devices
Metaphor – a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things without the use of such specific words of comparison as
like, as, than, or resembles
.
Ex: Fame is a bee
Meter – a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in poetry.
Metonymy
– a figure of speech in which a person, place, or thing is referred to by something closely associated with it. Referring to a king or queen as “the crown” is an example of metonymy, as is calling a car “wheels.”
Slide15Poetic devices
Mood – the overall emotion created by a work of literature.
Ex: bittersweet, playful, scary.
Octave – an eight-line poem, or the first eight lines of a Petrarchan/Italian sonnet. In a Petrarchan/Italian sonnet the octave states the subject of the sonnet or poses a problem or question.
Ode – a lyric poem, usually long, on a serious subject and written in dignified language.
Slide16Poetic devices
Onomatopoeia – the use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning.
Ex: buzz, snap – crackle – pop, sizzle, hiss
Oxymoron – a figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory terms in a brief phrase.
Sweet sorrow, deafening silence, and living death.
Paradox – a statement that appears self-contradictory but reveals a kind of truth.
Ex: “Much Madness is divinest Sense”
Pastoral – a type of poem that depicts country life in idyllic, idealized terms.
Some might consider Robert Frost to be a pastoral poet.
Slide17Poetic devices
Personification – a figure of speech in which an object or animal is given human feelings, thoughts, or attitudes.
Ex: In “Mirror” Sylvia Plath personifies a mirror by giving it human thoughts and characteristics.
Pun – a play on words based on the multiple meanings of a single word or on words that sound alike but mean different things.
Ex: a singer explaining her claim that she was locked out of an audition because she couldn’t find the right key.
Quatrain – a poem consisting of four lines, or four lines of a poem that can be considered as a unit.
Slide18Poetic devices
Refrain – a word, phrase, line, or group of lines that is repeated, for effect, several times in a poem.
Ex: the word “Nevermore” in
The Raven
Rhyme – the repetition of vowel sounds in accented syllables and all succeeding syllables. There is internal rhyme (rhyming words in the same line in a poem) and end rhyme (at the ends of lines). Also rhyme schemes.
Ex: listen/glisten, chime/sublimes
Slide19Poetic devices
Rhythm – the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in language. Rhythm occurs naturally in all forms of spoken and written English. The most obvious kind of rhythm is produced by meter.
Scanning – the analysis of a poem to determine its meter. When you scan a poem, you describe the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line.
Sestet – six lines of poetry, especially the last six lines of a
Petrarchan
/Italian sonnet. In the
Petrarchan
/Italian sonnet the sestet offers a comment on the subject or problem presented in the first eight lines, or the octave, of the poem.
Slide20Poetic devices
Simile – a figure of speech that makes an explicit comparison between two unlike things, using a word such as like, as, than, or resembles.
Helen, thy beauty is to me / Like those
Nicéan
barks of yore.
Slant rhyme – a rhyming sound that is not exact.
Ex: follow/fellow, mystery/mastery
Soliloquy – a long speech made by a character in a play while no other characters are on stage. A soliloquy is different from a monologue in that the speaker appears to be thinking aloud, not addressing a listener.
Slide21Poetic devices
Sonnet – a fourteen-line poem, usually written in iambic pentameter, that has one of two basic structures.
The Petrarchan sonnet, also called the Italian sonnet, is named after 14
th
century Italian poet Petrarch. Its first lines, called the octave, ask a question or pose a problem. These six lines have a rhyme scheme of
abba
,
abba
. The last six lines, called the sestet, respond to the question or problem. These lines have a rhyme scheme of
cde
,
cde
.
The English/Elizabethan/Shakespearean sonnet has three four-line units or quatrains, and it concludes with a couplet. The most common rhyme scheme for the Shakespearean sonnet is
abab
,
cdce
,
efef
,
gg
.
Slide22Poetic devices
Speaker – the voice that addresses the reader in a poem.
May be the poet or a persona, a character whose voice and concerns do not necessarily reflect those of the poet.
Spondee – a metrical foot consisting of two syllables, both of which are stressed.
Ex: “true blue” “nineteen”
Stanza – a group of consecutive lines that forms a structural unit in a poem. (Think of it as the “paragraph” of poetry).
Symbol – a person, place, thing, or event that has meaning in itself and that also stands for something more than itself.
Ex: dove for peace
Slide23Poetic devices
Synecdoche – a figure of speech in which a part represents the whole.
The capital city of a nation is often spoken of as though it were the government – Washington.
Synesthesia – the juxtaposition of one sensory image with another image that appeals to an unrelated sense.
Sound conveyed in terms of taste as in “sweet laughter”
“golden touch”
Slide24Poetic devices
Tone – the attitude a writer takes toward the subject of a work, the characters in it, or the audience. Based on diction and style. Can be described in a single word: ironic, playful, solemn, critical, reverent, irreverent, philosophical, cynical, etc.
Tragedy – in general, a story in which a heroic character either dies or comes to some other unhappy end.
Trochee – a metrical foot made up of an accented syllable followed by an unaccented syllable, as in the word “taxi.”
Villanelle – a nineteen-line poem consisting of five
tercets
(three-line stanzas) with the rhyme scheme
abaa
.