poetry literary terms and techniques
Terms
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- Understatement
- To represent as less than is the case.
- Alliteration
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Repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close together.
e.g. Who copped the copper clapper? - Diction
- Writer's or speaker's choice of words
- Rhythm or Music
- the recurrence of a beat is called the rythym or musin of a poem; it is altered by shifts in meter, in diction, in pauses.
- Sound Patterns
- Poetry, like music, is the arrangement of sounds, but with words.
- blank Verse
- Poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.
- Poetry
- Type of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery to appeal to the reader's emotions and imagination.
- Symbolism
- Person, place, thing, or event that stands both for something beyond itself.
- Hyperbole
- Figure of speech that uses exaggertion to express strong emotion or create a comic effect.
- Narrative Poem
- Tells a story (usually written in blank verse or free verse) concerns a series of events and usually has elements of a short stroy.
- Connotation
- All the meanings, associations, or emotions that a word suggests
- Accent
- The emphasis in any word or syllable.
- Apostrophe
- The addressing of a usually absent person or a usually personified thing rhetorically
- Onomatopoeia
- Use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning. e.g. Hiss, hoot, meow,murmur
- Foot
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The basic unit of measurement in a line of poetry; generally consisting of 2 or 3 syllables, one of which is accented.
- Consonance
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Repetition of consonants at the end of stressed syllables.
e.g. Wilting lilies lollygag in July. - Allusion
- Reference to a statement, a person, a place, or an event from literature, history, religion, myth, politics, sports, science, or the arts.
- Sonnet
- A lyric poem with a traditional form of 14 iambic pentameter lines.
- Dactylic
- One stressed syllable followed by 2 unstressed syllables.(dumm de de)
- Lyric Poem
- Short poem which expresses intense personal feeling.
- Metrical Line
-
consists of one or more feet and is named for the number of feet in a line.
Monometer-1 foot
Dimeter-2 feet
Trimeter-3 feet
Tetrameter-4 feet
Pentameter-5 feet
Hexameter-6 feet
Heptameter-7 feet
Octameter-8 feet
- Assonance
-
Repetition of similar vowel sounds followed by different consonant sounds in words that are close together.
e.g. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary. - Simile
- Comparing two unlike things using like or as.
- Free Verse
- has no meter or regular rhythm scheme
- Ambiguity
- Capable of being understood in two or more possible senses or ways.
- Trochaic
- One stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable.(dumm de)
- Figurative language
- The opposite of literal language. Calls on the reader to use his imagination to complete the author's meaning
- Pun
- Play on the multiple meanings of a word or on two words that sound alike but have different meanings.
- Iambic
- One unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.(de dumm)
- Denotation
- Literal meaning
- Anapestic
-
2 unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable.(de de dumm)
- Personification
- Giving inanimate objects human characteristics.
- Metaphor
- Comparing two unlike things w/o using like or as