English Literature 1

Poetry
2020-2021

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Basic Terminology
 Verse (noun):
o a synonym for poetry
o a formal synonym for a line in a poem
o a synonym for a group of lines in a poem

 A stanza: a group of verse lines forming a section of a poem and sharing the same
structure as all or some of the other sections of the same poem, in terms of the
lengths of its lines, its metre, and usually its rhyme scheme:
o Two lines: couplet
o Three lines: tercet
o Four lines: quatrain
o Two tercets: sestet
o Two quatrains: octave

 Stichic: poems that have no stanzaic structure  composed as a continuous

sequence of lines of the same length and metre (e.g. poems in blank verse)

 Quasi-stanzaic: poems consisting of loose groupings of lines

Typography and Layout

 Typography: arrangement of words on a page, use of gaps or empty spaces

 Layout: the way the poem looks on the page

Register
 Register = variety of a language that is appropriate to a particular subject or occasion

 Formal, elevated vs. colloquial, conversational

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Figures of Speech

 ANAPHORA: rhetorical figure of repetition in which the same word/ phrase is

repeated in (and usually at the beginning of) successive lines, clauses, or sentences
o So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

 EPIPHORA /EPISTROPHE: rhetorical figure of repetition in which the same word

or group of words is repeated at the end of successive clauses or lines
o If you had known the virtue of the ring,
Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,
Or your own honour to contain the ring,
You would not then have parted with the ring.

 EPANALEPSIS: rhetorical figure of repetition in which the same word or group of

words is repeated at the beginning and the end of a clause or line
o Bold was the challenge and he himself was bold

 ANADIPLOSIS: a rhetorical figure of repetition in which the end of the

preceding clause or line is repeated at the beginning of the next
o At six o'clock we were waiting for coffee,
waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb . . .
that was going to be served from a certain
balcony --like kings of old, or like a miracle.

 PARALLELISM: arrangement of similarly constructed clauses/sentences/verse

lines in a pairing or other sequence suggesting some correspondence between them
 effect: balanced arrangement through repetition of the same syntactic forms
o You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

 CHIASMUS: figure of speech by which the order of the terms in the first of two
parallel clauses is reversed in the second. This may involve a repetition of the same
words or just a reversed parallel between two corresponding pairs of ideas
o He saved others; himself he cannot save.

 SIMILE: an explicit comparison between two different things, actions, or feelings,

using the words ‘as’ or ‘like’
o My love is like a red, red rose

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 METAPHOR: an implicit comparison; the transfer of meaning on the basis of a
similarity
o Tenor: the subject of the comparison
o Vehicle: what the tenor is compared to
o Ground: the similarity between tenor and vehicle, a quality (usually
abstract) which they share
 “He spoke daggers”
 Vehicle: “daggers”
 Tenor: harsh speech
 Ground: sharpness

 METONYMY: figure of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name
of something else closely associated with it (e.g. the bottle for alcoholic drink, the
press for journalism, Mozart for Mozart's music)  well‐known metonymic saying:
the pen is mightier than the sword (writing is more powerful than warfare)
o Kashmir shrinks into my mailbox
My home a neat four by six inches.
I always loved neatness. Now I hold
The half-inch Himalayas in my hand.

 SYNECDOCHE: a kind of metonymy, in which the name of a part is substituted for

that of a whole (‘pars pro toto’, e.g. hand for worker), or vice versa (‘totum pro
parte’)
o 2 painfully hoarse voices
still managing to bellow like
cows in an abattoir;

 PERSONIFICATION: figure of speech by which animals, abstract ideas, or

inanimate things are referred to as if they were human.
o They arranged themselves at the window
And counted the steps of the sun.  about sunflowers

 APOSTROPHE: rhetorical figure in which the speaker addresses a dead or

absent person, or an abstraction or inanimate object.
o O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being

 PLEONASM: use of unnecessary additional words; or a phrase in which such

needless repetition occurs (e.g.: a round circle, a huge giant, repeat again)

 TAUTOLOGY: unnecessary repetition of same ideas in different words or

phrases (A huge, tall, big man)

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 ANTITHESIS: any disposition of words that serves to emphasize a contrast
or opposition of ideas, usually by the balancing of connected clauses with
parallel grammatical constructions. Two types of antitheses are paradox and
oxymoron
o We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

 PARADOX: an apparently absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition,

or a strongly counter-intuitive one, an analysis of which may nevertheless prove to be
well-founded or true
o One must be cruel to be kind; No news is good news

 OXYMORON: figure of speech that combines two usually contradictory terms in

a compressed paradox, as in the word bittersweet or the phrase living death
o The Normal Monster
sings in the Green Sahara

 LITOTES: figure of speech by which an affirmation is made indirectly by denying its

opposite, usually with an effect of understatement
o No mean feat
o Not averse to a drink.

 HYPERBOLE: exaggeration for the sake of emphasis in a figure of speech not

meant literally (e.g. ‘I've been waiting here for ages.’)
o A hundred years should go to praise / Thine eyes

 IRONY: a subtly humorous perception of inconsistency, in which an apparently

straightforward statement or event is undermined by its context so as to give it a very
different significance
o Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

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Rhythm and Metre

 Rhythm: recurrence of stresses and pauses in the language

 Metre (American English: meter): regular rhythm, characteristic of traditional poetry

Poetry may be composed according to one of four principal metrical systems:

1. In quantitative metre: pattern is a sequence of long and short syllables counted in

groups known as feet
2. In syllabic metre: pattern comprises a fixed number of syllables in the line
3. In accentual metre: pattern is a regular number of stressed syllables in the line or
group of lines, regardless of the number of unstressed syllables
4. In accentual‐syllabic metre: pattern consists of a regular number of stressed syllables
appropriately arranged within a fixed total number of syllables in the line (with
permissible variations including feminine endings), both stressed and unstressed
syllables being counted

The metrical structure of a line of verse

Determine the metre of a line of verse  identifying the smallest metrical unit in that line: the
foot = certain fixed combination of stressed and/or unstressed syllables

Different types of feet are distinguished on the basis of

 The number of syllables they contain (two or three)
 The order of stressed & unstressed syllables

The metrical structure of a line of verse is determined on the basis of:

 The type of foot that predominates
 Rising feet
 Iamb (iambic): u / (unstressed + stressed)
 The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
 Anapaest (-ic): u u /
 The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold
 Falling feet
 Trochee (trochaic): / u
 Double, double, toil and trouble
 Dactyl (-ic): / u u
 Take her up tenderly
 Other (mostly used in metrical substitutions)
 Spondee (spondaic): / /
 Pyrrhic (pyrrhic): u u

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 The number of feet per line
 Monometer:
 Thus I / Passe by, / And die
 Dimeter:
 Take her up tenderly
Lift her with care
 Trimeter:
 The only news I know
 Tetrameter:
 Behold the hippopotamus!
 Pentameter:
 My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
 Hexameter:
 And, as I live, you will see my hexameters hopping before you
 Heptameter:
 ‘Tis but as ivy-leaves around the ruin’d turret wreathe,
All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath

Metrical variation
Metrical Substitution
= a way of varying poetic metre by taking a single foot of the predominant metre and
replacing it with a foot of a different metre  can occur anywhere in a line of verse, and
any type of foot can be used

Catalexis
= the process of dropping unstressed syllables at the end of a line is called  to avoid
monotony in the metrical structure of lines
Only involves adding or dropping unstressed syllables  if a stressed syllable is added or
dropped, the metre of the line changes

Caesura
= a pause in a line of verse, which occurs where the natural speech rhythm would also leave
a pause  often marked by punctuation and used to achieve variation in the metrical
patterning of the poem

Run-on lines or enjambment (as opposed to end-stopped lines)

= the continuation of a sentence beyond the line-ending  a sentence or clause is left
grammatically unfinished at the end of a line (unfinished, not necessarily with regard to
punctuation, but with regard to the parts of speech that are needed to complete the
sentence/clause)

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Tension between poetic metre and natural speech rhythm
 Smooth verse: relating to natural speech
 Rough verse: no natural speech; interruption of metre
 Free verse: poetry that does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme

Sound Effects
Rhyme
Rhymes are distinguished according to:
 Their position in the line:
 End-rhyme: homophony of the words at the end of two lines
 Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night
 Internal rhyme: rhyme between two words, at least one of which is not situated at the
end of the line
 And a clatter and a chatter from within [...]
 The exactness with which phonemes are repeated:
 Full/perfect rhyme (exact consonance of phonemes in the rhyming syllables)
 Identical rhyme, in which the same words are repeated (rose-tree/rose-tree), is an
example of full/perfect rhyme.
 Departures from full/perfect rhyme are:
 Eye rhyme: spellings of the rhyming elements match, but the sounds do not
(great/meat)
 Half‐rhyme or ‘slant rhyme’: vowel sounds do not match (love/have)
 Historical rhyme: words that no longer rhyme used to have the same
pronunciation (prove/love)
 The number of syllables that are repeated:
 Masculine or monosyllabic rhyme (last syllable is stressed): love / dove
 Feminine or disyllabic rhyme (penultimate syllable is stressed): ditty/pity
 Triple rhyme: declivity / festivity

Some standard rhyme schemes are:

o Rhyming couples aa bb cc
o Alternate rhyme/cross rhyme abab cdcd
o Embracing rhyme/envelope rhyme abba cddc
o Chain rhyme/interlocking rhyme aba bcb cdc
o Tail rhyme aab ccb

Quatrains are often labelled according to their rhyme scheme:

o Open quatrain abcb
o Interlaced quatrain abab
o Two-couplet quatrain aabb
o Closed quatrain abba

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Other Sound Effects

 Consonance: repetition of identical or similar consonants in neighbouring words

whose vowel sounds are different  2 types: alliteration and pararhyme
o Coming home, hot foot

 Assonance CVC: repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in the stressed

syllables (sometimes in the following unstressed syllables) of neighbouring words
o light – wide – sign
o stony – holy

 Alliteration (head rhyme; initial rhyme) CVC or VC: repetition of the same sounds
in stressed syllables—often of initial consonant (clusters) of words—in any sequence
of words in close proximity
o know – nail psyche – soul
o long – unlovely
o boiling bloody breast

 Reverse rhyme CVC: repetition of the initial sound of stressed syllables (i.e. their
vowel/diphthong and anything that precedes)
o My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled.

 Pararhyme CVC: repetition of the sound of both the initial and the terminal
consonant (cluster) in stressed syllables
o send – sound

 Onomatopoeia: use of words that seem to imitate the sounds they refer to (whack,
fizz, crackle, hiss); or any combination of words in which the sound gives the
impression of echoing the sense
o Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons

Poetic Forms
Blank Verse
= consists of unrhymed iambic pentameters  enabled poets to write poetry that more closely
resembled “natural,” unforced speech

Heroic Couplet
= rhymed couplets in iambic pentameter, commonly used in epic and narrative poems 
takes the form of self-contained moralizing or satirizing epigrams, in which both the syntax
and the sense come to a conclusion at the end of the second line

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Ballad
o Shape, structure, & rhetoric are all defined by its roots in the oral tradition
o Form = simple, direct – almost always a short narrative – + subtly left open for the next
user, so that details, names, and events can be added on if necessary
o Subject matter is tabloid: death, murder, suicide, disgrace, mystery. It is lurid, musical,
communal. It leaps from event to event
o Signature trait: the way that vernacular dialogue breaks into the narrative, turning it into a
living, vivid theatre of the speech of its particular moment
o Traditionally consists of quatrains in which the first and third lines have four stresses,
while the second and fourth have three stresses
o Rhyme scheme = abcb or abab.

Sonnet
o Standard subject-matter of early sonnets = torments of sexual love
o 17th c. John Donne: extended scope to religion + Milton extended it to politics

Italian/Petrarchan:
o Abba abba cdc dcd
o Abba abba cde cde
o Octave (2 quatrains)  VOLTA  sestet (2 tercets)
Spenceraian:
o Abab bcbc cdcd ee
o 1st quatrain  2nd quatrain  3rd quatrain  VOLTA  couplet
English/Elizabethan
o Abab cdcd efef gg
o 1st quatrain  2nd quatrain  VOLTA  3rd quatrain  VOLTA 
(epigrammatic) couplet

 Different stanza-structures in the Italian & English versions reflect the different ways in
which the sonnet can develop an ‘argument’
 Petrarchan sonnet: octet often takes form of a proposition & response  resolved in the sestet
o Some notable conventions of the Petrarchan sonnet are:
 The Petrarchan conceit: an exaggerated comparison or striking oxymoron of
the kind found in sonnets written under Petrarch’s influence
 The blazon: catalogue of lady’s physical beauties: coral lips, pearly teeth…
 English sonnet: more free association of images or ideas, which come to a conclusion in the
powerful closing couplet

Free Verse
o Does not conform to any regular metre: length of lines is irregular, as is its use of rhyme
—if any.
o More flexible cadences or rhythmic groupings, sometimes supported by anaphora and
other devices of repetition

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