Ovid Poetry Terminology
Terms
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- allegory
-
a prolonged metaphor
i.e. a type of imagery involving the extended use of a person or object to represent some concept outside the literal narrative of a text. - alliteration
- deliberate repetition of sounds, especially the initial consonant sounds, in successive words
- anaphora
- repetition of words or phrases for emphasis
- anastrophe
- the reversal of normal word order, as with a preposition following its object, often with the effect of emphasizing the words placed earlier.
- apostrophe
- address to some person or thing not present, usually for emotional effect.
- assonance
- repetition of vowel or syllable sounds in successive words.
- asyndeton
- omission of conjunctions where one or more would ordinarily be expected in a series of words or phrases.
- caesura
- a pause between words occurring within a metrical foot.
- chiasmus
- arrangement of words or phrases in an oppositional, ABBA order
- diaeresis
- a pause between words coinciding with the end of a metrical foot, less common than caesura
- diastole
- lengthening of an ordinary short vowel, usually when it occurs under the ictus and before a caesura.
- ellipsis
- omission of one or more words necessary to the sense of a sentence but easily understood from the context
- enjambment
- delay of the final word or phrase of a sentence (or clause) to the beginning of the following verse.
- Golden Line
- a form of interlocked word order in which a verb is positioned in the middle, with adjectives preceeding and nouns following in symmetrical arrangement.
- Hendiadys
- use of two nouns connected by a conjunction, often instead of one modified noun expressing a single complex idea.
- ictus
- the verse accent, or beat, occurring on the first syllable of each foot in the dactylic hexameter and the elegiac couplet.
- interlocked word order
- arrancement of related pairs of words in an alternating ABAB pattern, often to emphasize a close connection between two thoughts
- irony
- the use of language witha meaning opposite that suggested by the context
- litotes
- a form of deliberate understatement, generally with with a softening effect
- metaphor
- an implied comparison, using one word for another that it suggests
- metonymy
- a type of imagery in which one word, generally a noun, is employed to suggest another with which it is closely related. ("taedae quoque iure coissent..."
- onomatopoeia
- use of words whose sounds suggest their meaning or the general meaning of their immediate context.
- oxymoron
- the juxtoposition of two opposing ideas, usually to underscore an incongruity.
- personification
- a type of imagery by which human traits are attributed to non-human things.
- polysyndeton
- use of a greater number of conjunctions than usual or necessary, often to emphasize the elements in a series
- prolepsis
- attribution of some characteristic to a person or thing before it is logically appropriate
- simile
- an explicit comparison (often introduced by ut, velut, qualis, or similis) between one person or thing and another, the latter generally something more familiar to the reader
- synecdoche
- a type of metonymy in whicha part is named in place of an entire object, or a material for a thing made of that material, etc.
- systole
- shortening of a vowel which was ordinarily long, sometimes reflecting an archaic pronunciation, and not ordinarily occuring when the vowel was under the ictus
- tmesis
- separation of a compound word into its constituent parts, generally for metrical convenience
- transferred epithet
- application of an adjective to one noun when it properly applies to another, often involving personification and focusing special attention on the modified noun
- tricolon crescens
- a climactic series of three (or more) examples or illustrations, each more fully developed than the preceding
- word-picture
- a type of imagery in which the words of a phrase are arranged in an order that visually suggests the image being described
- zeugma
- use of a single word with a pair of others (e.g. a verb with two objects, an adjective with two nouns), when it logically applied to only one of them or applied to them both, but ing two quite different ways.