The Norton Introduction to Literature

Shorter Fourteenth Edition

Poetry: Understanding the Text

Copyright © 2021 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Poetry: Formal Aspects of a Poem

Poem Aspects

Internal Features External Features

plot, characters, theme,

settings, style, diction, tone,
form
speaker, situation, figurative
language, imagery, sound

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Internal Aspects of a Poem
1. Speaker
2. Language:
a. Word Choice b. Precision and Ambiguity
c. Denotation & Connotation d. Word Order & Placement
3. Figurative Language
• Examples: metaphor, simile, personification, apostrophe, metonymy, synecdoche, allusion, irony,
and hyperbole.
4. Symbol

5. Sounds of Poetry
1. Rhyme 2. Other sound devices: onomatopoeia, alliteration, etc.

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Sounds of Poetry
Poets create a special effect or establish a tone by choosing words for their:
• meanings (precision, ambiguity, connotation, etc.)
• sounds (rhyme and other sound devices)

❖ Historically, poetry began as an oral phenomenon.

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Sounds of Poetry
Rhymed Verse: Generally identified by a
regular meter and an end rhyme.
Sounds of Poetry ❖ Middles Ages until the 20th -century.

Blank Verse: Generally identified by a

Rhymed Unrhymed regular meter but no end rhyme.
Verse Verse
❖ 16th-century until the 20th-century.

Blank Free Free Verse: Usually defined as having no

Verse Verse fixed meter and no end rhyme.
❖ 20th-century to the present.
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1. Sound: Rhyme
Rhyme is the repetition or correspondence of the final sounds of words
Rhyme is the most familiar sound device poets use. Not all poems use rhyme.
Rhyme is more a function of sound rather than spelling.

1. "dreary" and "weary"

Types of Rhyme 2. "door" and "more"
Examples
3. "rhyme" and "time"
• End rhyme 4. "swells" and "bells"
• Internal rhyme
• Eye rhyme
• Off, half, near, or slant rhyme

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1. A. Sound: End Rhyme
End rhyme occurs when the last words in two or more lines of a poem
rhyme with each other, it is the most common type.

Example
The world is charged with the grandeur of God
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed." Why do men then now not reck his rod?

- “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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1.B. Sound: Internal Rhyme
Internal rhyme occurs when a word within a line of poetry rhymes
with another word in the same or adjacent lines, as in “The
Dews drew quivering and chill” (Emily Dickinson).

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,

It perched for vespers nine;
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white moonshine.

- “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (by S. T. Coleridge)

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1.C. Sound: Half Rhyme
Off, half, near, or slant rhyme is rhyme that is slightly “off” or only
approximate, usually because words’ final consonant sounds
correspond, but not the vowels that proceed them.

1. “phases” and “houses”

Examples 2. “home and “same”
3. ”worth" and ”breath"

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1. D. Sound: Eye Rhyme
Rhyme is predominantly a function of sound rather than spelling; thus, words
that end with the same vowel sounds rhyme, for instance, day, prey, bouquet,
weigh, and words with the same consonant ending rhyme, for instance vain,
feign, rein, lane. Words do not have to be spelled the same way or look alike to
rhyme. In fact, words may look alike but not rhyme at all.
Eye rhyme or sight rhyme involves words that don’t rhyme but look like they
do because of their similar spelling (“cough” and “bough”).

1. “cough” and “bough”

Examples
2. ”brow" and ”blow"

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2. A. Sound: Other sound devices
alliteration: the repetition of initial consonant sounds through
a sequence of words—for example.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

- “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe

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2. B. Sound: Other sound devices

onomatopoeia: when a word captures or approximates the

sound of what it describes.
Examples:
o buzz
o splash
o squish
o murmur
o boom
o roar

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3. Sound: Rhythm, Foot & Meter
Rhythm is the variation of stressed and unstressed elements in the flow of speech.

stressed = accented
unstressed = unaccented

Rhythm is also found in poetry and is expressed in meter, which comes from a Greek
word meaning “measure”. What we measure in English poetry is the patterns of
stressed syllables that occur when we read the line.
meter is a component of
rhythm.

Meter is the repeated patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables within a line(s)
that create the “musical” quality of a poem.

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3. A. Sound: Foot
A foot is the basic unit we use for measuring poetry.
A foot consists of various fixed patterns of 1-3 stressed and unstressed syllables.
Much of English poetry is written in lines that include a chosen number and pattern
of feet.
Metrical Feet

pattern of feet number of feet

combinations of
stressed + various number
unstressed of feet
syllables

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Poetry: Formal Aspects of a Poem

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Poetry: Formal Aspects of a Poem

Poem Aspects

Internal Features External Features

plot, characters, theme,

settings, style, diction, tone,
form
speaker, situation, figurative
language, imagery, sound

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External Aspects of a Poem
Form is the arrangement of a poem on a page:
1. the stanza
2. stanza names based on number of lines
3. traditional stanza forms: terza rima, Spenserian, ballad stanza
4. traditional verse forms: couplet, blank verse, free verse
5. fixed forms: sonnet
External form is significant because it
• is an appropriate garb or guise for the internal action and meaning of the poem.
• serves to guide the poet and the reader.
• helps readers feel and appreciate repetitions, connections, changes in the language and
the meaning of the poem.

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1. Form: Stanzas
Most poems of more than a few lines are divided into stanzas: a section of
poem/a group of lines marked by extra line spacing before and after, that often
has a single pattern of meter and/or rhyme.
The break between stanzas gives a poem its physical appearance. Stanza
breaks also point to:
• changes in the pattern of rhyme or sound
• turns of thought
• changes of action, scene or image
• other shifts in structure or direction

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 “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth (1807)
I wandered lonely as a cloud The waves beside them danced; but they
That floats on high o'er vales and hills, Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: Speaker stares,
lonely
When all at once I saw a crowd, A poet could not but be gay, unaware of
speaker sees
A host, of golden daffodils; In such a jocund company: positive effects
flowers
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, I gazed—and gazed—but little thought of encountering
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. What wealth the show to me had brought: daffodils.
Continuous as the stars that shine
For oft, when on my couch I lie
And twinkle on the milky way,
In vacant or in pensive mood,
speaker notes They stretched in never-ending line
They flash upon that inward eye Daffodils come
how the Along the margin of a bay:
Which is the bliss of solitude; back to the
flowers seem Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
And then my heart with pleasure fills, speaker's
to go on And dances with the daffodils. imaginative
without memory & fills
ending him with joy

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Literary Genres, Subgenres and Kinds

LITERATURE

FICTION NONFICTION
Fictional Prose Nonfictional Prose

POETRY DRAMA

reflects upon
death or loss
praising or glorifying an
Pastoral poems idealize rural life and the event or an individual.
countryside.

Based upon their

subject.

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Literary Genres, Subgenres and Kinds

LITERATURE

FICTION NONFICTION
Fictional Prose Nonfictional Prose

POETRY DRAMA

Sonnet Epics Haiku Limerick Villanelle

Based upon their

form.

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5. Fixed Forms or Form-Based Subgenres
Some kinds or subgenres of poetry depend on the use of particular formal
pattern.

sonnet: is a fixed verse form that consists of fourteen lines, usually written in
iambic pentameter and printed as if it were a single stanza.

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 5. A. Fixed Form: Sonnet Types
The Italian sonnet or the Petrarchan sonnet is divided into
two parts: an octave and a sestet, often with either
an abbaabba cdecde or abbacddc defdef rhyme scheme.
The Shakespearean sonnet, or English sonnet, is divided into
three quatrains and a couplet. and often has the rhyme
scheme abab cdcd efef gg.

4 lines quatrain

octave 8 lines
quatrain
4 lines

• volta (turn)
4 lines quatrain

sestet 6 lines
• volta (turn)
2 lines couplet
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 5. A. Fixed Form: Sonnet Types
"How Do I Love Thee?" by E.B. Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
octave For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
sestet I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” by Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, quatrain
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
quatrain
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, quatrain
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this,8 and this gives life to thee. couplet
.
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 5. A. Fixed Form: Sonnet Types
Modern Translation
Should I compare you to a summer's day?
You are lovelier and more mild.
In May rough winds shake the delicate flower buds,
And the duration of summer is always too short.
Sometimes the Sun, the eye of heaven, is too hot,
And his golden face is often dimmed;
And beauty falls away from beautiful people,
Stripped by chance or nature's changing course.
But your eternal summer will not fade,
Nor will you lose possession of the beauty you own,
Nor will death be able to boast that you wander in his shade,
When you live in eternal lines, set apart from time.
As long as men breathe or have eyes to see,
As long as this sonnet lives, it will give life to you.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” by Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, quatrain
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
quatrain
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, quatrain
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
couplet
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
.
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Conclusion
This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for Poetry: Understanding the Text.
For more resources, please visit https://digital.wwnorton.com/lit14.

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