Lit Poetry Vocab
Terms
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- argument-
- a prose summary of what happens in a poem, used to often be provided by poets, now poets seldom provide them
- paraphrase-
- first step poet readers take to interpret the poem, put into prose exactly what the poem says, line by line, in words that are different but as equivalent as possible
- statement-
- the main idea that a poem evokes, but it does not describe in full the meaning of the poem; poems make statements about a subject and define the degree and kind of their interest in it
- subject/topic-
- its general or specific area of concern, usually something categorical such as death, war, suffering, love, rejection, or the simple life
- themes-
- the statement a poem makes about its subject; summarizing a paraphrase in one or two sentences often provokes the theme
- motif-
- a recurrent device, formula, situation which deliberately connects the poem with common patterns of previous thoughts
- explication (exegesis)-
- explains how all the elements in an individual poem or passage work; in explication, a critic analyses the various competent parts in order to interpret the poem’s statement; a step beyond paraphrase in attempting to uncover the meaning
- message and moral-
- once used to summarize the poem’s meaning, now usually considered outmoded and misleading because they tend to oversimplify and confuse statement with meaning
- hidden meaning-
- objectionable to many implies that a poem is a puzzle or that the artist is deliberately obscuring his/her point
- meaning-
- the poem’s combination of motifs, themes, and statements about a subject or series of subjects and the emotions that it artfully evokes toward them by means of poetic devices and strategies; never the precise equivalent of the poem itself
- Poetic devices/strategies-
- means by which poems generate an effect
- rhetoric-
- sum of the persuasive devices used to affect readers
- comparison/contrast-
- may clarify the identity and properties of a person, place, or thing, but persuasive values may also be built in, depending on the objects of comparison
- allusion-
- reference to something outside the poem, which has built in emotional associations
- hyperbole (exaggeration)-
- extravagant exageration
- Meiosis
- (understatement)- brings reader to be defensive of thing being underrated
- litotes-
- affirms something by denying the opposite
- periphrasis (circumlocution)-
- deliberate avoidance of the obvious; writing around the subject
- synecdoche-
- using part of something to signify the whole
- metonymy-
- naming something associated with what is being talked about rather than the thing itself
- hyperbaton-
- rearrangement of sentence elements for special effects
- prolepsis-
- the foreshadowing of a future event as if it were already influencing the present
- foreshadowing-
- present an indication or a suggestion of something before it occurs
- didactic-
- poems that advocate a particular ideology, argue for a specific cause, or try to teach us
- mimetic (imaginative)-
- concerned to present whether to persuade
- propaganda-
- writing for which the aim is to arouse readers towards immediate action
- character-
- the individual that a poet chooses to speak through
- speaker, persona
- a created fictional character
- pose (posture, mask)-
- an author’s strategy of making a point effectively and persuasively by speaking in a his own voice except that it is more innocent, earnest and pure
- setting-
- place or time where the poem is set
- irony-
- saying one thing and meaning another, any matter of being oblique rather than straightforward and often involves exaggeration or understatement
- structural irony-
- the whole poem has irony
- verbal irony-
- using ironic words and phrases
- sarcasm-
- irony that is stark, simple, snide, exactly inverted
- dramatic irony-
- speaker is unaware of something about himself that the reader is not
- Socratic irony-
- speaker poses as an innocent and ignorant person who then provokes a revelation through his apparently naïve assumptions or questions
- tone-
- the way words of a poem are (or should be) spoken when one reads it aloud; meaning is adjusted based on how poem is read
- voice-
- describes the prevailing sense of the author’s presence
- mood-
- interrelation between voice and tone
- atmosphere-
- thing that pervades the poem and gives the reader a sense of what to expect
- connotation-
- feelings and associations suggested by a word
- imagery-
- mental pictures suggested by the verbal descriptions in a poem, visual descriptions in the poem itself, the figurative language (metaphors, similes, analogies) in the poem
- synthetic imagery-
- imagery which mingles different sense impressions
- visual/sense impressions-
- presumed effect on the reader of both description and imagery
- images-
- imagery is the collective term for a group of individual images
- image cluster-
- a group of similar images concentrated in a short passage
- controlling image-
- when a single image seems to dominate a passage or even a whole poem making other images subservient to it
- image pattern-
- when one or more images recur in a passage or poem
- simile-
- direct comparison of two things, may extend throughout the poem
- analogy- a simile that is elaborated throughout the poem
- a simile that is elaborated throughout the poem
- metaphor-
- pretends that one thing is something else, making an implicit comparison between two things
- conceit-
- when a metaphor compares two things that are radically unalike, but are developed into a striking parallel
- tenor-
- primary object of attention
- vehicle-
- clarifies the object
- extended/controlling metaphors-
- metaphors that dominate or organize a poem
- mixed metaphor-
- terms from one metaphor are incorporated into another one, usually by mistake
- dead metaphor-
- one that has passed into such common usage that we forget its origins
- jargon-
- when language becomes unnecessarily specialized and self-consciously unavailable to an outsider
- cant-
- when such language is used mindlessly
- argot-
- when jargon is slangy and lives a short life of fashion among a select in group
- cliché-
- any expression or idea which has become commonplace, trite
- personification (prosopopeia)-
- giving inanimate objects human characteristics
- symbol-
- something which stands for something else
- symbolic poem-
- a poem that persuasively uses symbols as a major strategy and when the poem is more committed to the things which the symbols represent than to everyday reality and uses symbolism
- allegory-
- the action of the poem consistently and systematically describes another order of things beyond the obvious one; may operate on several levels
- private symbols-
- a poets set of specialized and personal symbols
- myth-
- symbols that are shared universally in a culture
- myth criticism-
- an attempt to discover archetypes
- archetypes-
- patterns of experience and action which are similar in different nations and cultures