Poetry Terms Flashcards

Poetry and Literature Terms

• Speaker: The voice in a poem that conveys the message; may be the poet or a fictional persona.

• Tone: Represents the writer's attitude toward the subject matter.

• Irony: Involves a discrepancy between reality and what is expected.

• Diction: Refers to the choice of words made by the writer, encompassing both vocabulary and syntax.

• Imagery: Utilizes descriptive language to create vivid sensory experiences.

• Allusion: An indirect reference to a well-known person, place, event, or literary work.

• Apostrophe: A figure of speech addressing an object, abstract quality, or an absent/imaginary person directly.

• Metaphor: An implied comparison between unlike entities without using comparison words.

• Kenning: A metaphorical compound word or phrase used in place of a noun.

• Conceit: An elaborate and surprising figure of speech connecting two seemingly unrelated ideas.

• Petrarchan Conceit: An extended metaphor in love poetry, often depicting feelings of a despairing lover towards an idolized yet unresponsive mistress.

• Metaphysical Conceit: A complex and ingenious metaphor used by 17th-century metaphysical poets.

• Metonymy: A figure of speech where something is referred to by an associated term, e.g., using "the crown" to refer to a king or queen.

• Personification: Attributes human qualities to non-human entities; criticized by John Ruskin as "pathetic fallacy."

• Simile: A direct comparison between unlike things using "like" or "as."

• Symbol: A person, place, or object that signifies a deeper meaning beyond its literal sense.

• Synecdoche: A figure of speech where a part represents the whole, e.g., "our daily bread" meaning food.

• Synesthesia: Describes one sense using terms of another, e.g., color described as “loud yellow.”

• Alliteration: The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words.

• Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds in stressed syllables that do not end with the same consonant.

• Consonance: The recurrence of similar consonant sounds in close proximity within a word.

• Onomatopoeia: Words that phonetically imitate their meanings.

• Rhyme: The matching sounds of vowels and succeeding sounds in words, contributing to poetic rhythm. Types include:

• End Rhyme: Rhyme occurring at the end of lines.

• Masculine Rhyme: A single stressed syllable rhyme at the line's end.

• Feminine Rhyme: A rhyme involving two or three syllables at the line's end.

• Internal Rhyme: Rhyming of words within one line.

• Slant Rhyme: A near but not exact rhyme between words.

• Metrical Foot: The basic rhythmic unit in poetry, consisting of two or three syllables.

• Iamb: A metrical foot of unstressed followed by stressed syllables.

• Trochee: A metrical foot of stressed followed by unstressed syllables.

• Anapest: A metrical foot of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable.