Glossary Of Poetry Terms
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Glossary Of Poetry Terms
This is a glossary of poetry. This is a glossary of poetry terms. Basic composition * Accent ** Vedic accent * Cadence: the patterning of rhythm in poetry, or natural speech, without a distinct meter. * Line: a unit into which a poem is divided. ** Line break: the termination of the line of a poem and the beginning of a new line. * Metre (or meter): the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Metres are influenced by syllables and their 'weight'. * Metrical foot (aka poetic foot): the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry. ** Arsis and thesis In music and prosody, arsis (; plural arses, ) and thesis (; plural theses, ) are respectively the stronger and weaker parts of a musical measure or poetic foot. However, because of contradictions in the original definitions, writers use these ... * Prosody (poetry), Prosody: the principles of metrical structure in poetry. * Syllable weight and s ...
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Accent (poetry)
In English poetry, accent refers to the stressed syllable of a polysyllabic word, or a monosyllabic word that receives stress because it belongs to an "open class" of words (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) or because of "contrastive" or "rhetorical" stress. In basic analysis of a poem by scansion, accents can be represented by a short vertical line (') preceding the syllable, while the divisions between feet are shown by a slash (/).St. Edward's University: Accessed December 28, 2007. There is generally one accent in each foot, for example: :Be-'hold / her, 'sin-/gle 'in / the 'field :Yon 'sol-/i-'tar-/y 'high-/land 'lass! :'Reap-ing / and 'sing-/ing 'by / her-'self; :'Stop here /or 'gent-/ly 'pass. See also * Stress (linguistics) In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties as ...
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Verse–chorus Form
Verse–chorus form is a musical form going back to the 1840s, in such songs as "Oh! Susanna", "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze", and many others. It became passé in the early 1900s, with advent of the AABA (with verse) form in the Tin Pan Alley days. It became commonly used in blues and rock and roll in the 1950s, and predominant in rock music since the 1960s. In contrast to 32-bar form, which is focused on the refrain (contrasted and prepared by the B section), in verse–chorus form the chorus is highlighted (prepared and contrasted with the verse). The chorus often sharply contrasts the verse melodically, rhythmically, and harmonically, and assumes a higher level of dynamics and activity, often with added instrumentation. This is referred to as a "breakout chorus". See: arrangement. Contrasting verse–chorus form Songs that use different music for the verse and chorus are in contrasting verse–chorus form. Examples include: * "That'll Be the Day" by Buddy Ho ...
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Hemistich
A hemistich (; via Latin from Greek , from "half" and "verse") is a half-line of verse, followed and preceded by a caesura, that makes up a single overall prosodic or verse unit. In Latin and Greek poetry, the hemistich is generally confined to drama. In Greek tragedy, characters exchanging clipped dialogue to suggest rapidity and drama would speak in hemistichs (in ''hemistichomythia''). The Roman poet Virgil employed hemistichs in the ''Aeneid'' to indicate great duress in his characters, where they were incapable of forming complete lines due to emotional or physical pain. In neo-classicism, the hemistich was frowned upon (e.g. by John Dryden), but Germanic poetry employed the hemistich as a basic component of verse. In Old English and Old Norse poetry, each line of alliterative verse was divided into an "a-verse" and "b-verse" hemistich with a strong caesura between. In ''Beowulf,'' there are only five basic types of hemistich, with some used only as initial hemistichs ...
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Epigraph (literature)
In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document, monograph or section thereof. The epigraph may serve as a preface to the work; as a summary; as a counter-example; or as a link from the work to a wider literary canon, with the purpose of either inviting comparison or enlisting a conventional context. A book may have an overall epigraphy that is part of the front matter, or one for each chapter. Examples * As the epigraph to '' The Sum of All Fears'', Tom Clancy quotes Winston Churchill in the context of thermonuclear war:Why, you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together – what do you get? The sum of their fears. * The long quotation from Dante's ''Inferno'' that prefaces T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is part of a speech by one of the damned in Dante's Hell. * The epigraph to E. L. Doctorow's ''Ragtime'' quotes Scott Joplin' ...
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Enjambment
In poetry, enjambment ( or ; from the French ''enjamber'') is incomplete syntax at the end of a line; the meaning 'runs over' or 'steps over' from one poetic line to the next, without punctuation. Lines without enjambment are end-stopped. The origin of the word is credited to the French word ''enjamber'', which means 'to straddle or encroach'. In reading, the delay of meaning creates a tension that is released when the word or phrase that completes the syntax is encountered (called the rejet); the tension arises from the "mixed message" produced both by the pause of the line-end, and the suggestion to continue provided by the incomplete meaning.Preminger 359 In spite of the apparent contradiction between rhyme, which heightens closure, and enjambment, which delays it, the technique is compatible with rhymed verse. Even in couplets, the closed or heroic couplet was a late development; older is the open couplet, where rhyme and enjambed lines co-exist. Enjambment has a long histo ...
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End-stopping
An end-stopped line is a feature in poetry in which the syntactic unit (phrase, clause, or sentence) corresponds in length to the line. Its opposite is enjambment, where the sentence runs on into the next line. According to A. C. Bradley, "a line may be called 'end-stopped' when the sense, as well as the metre, would naturally make one pause at its close; 'run-on' when the mere sense would lead one to pass to the next line without any pause An example of end-stopping can be found in the following extract from ''The Burning Babe'' by Robert Southwell (jesuit), Robert Southwell; the end of each line corresponds to the end of a clause. As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow, Surprised I was with sudden heat, which made my heart to glow; And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear. The following extract from ''The Winter's Tale'' by Shakespeare is heavily enjambed. I am not prone to weeping, ...
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End Rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds (usually, the exact same phonemes) in the final stressed syllables and any following syllables of two or more words. Most often, this kind of perfect rhyming is consciously used for a musical or aesthetic effect in the final position of lines within poems or songs. More broadly, a rhyme may also variously refer to other types of similar sounds near the ends of two or more words. Furthermore, the word ''rhyme'' has come to be sometimes used as a shorthand term for any brief poem, such as a nursery rhyme or Balliol rhyme. Etymology The word derives from Old French ''rime'' or ''ryme'', which might be derived from Old Frankish ''rīm'', a Germanic term meaning "series, sequence" attested in Old English (Old English ''rīm'' meaning "enumeration, series, numeral") and Old High German ''rīm'', ultimately cognate to Old Irish ''rím'', Greek ' ''arithmos'' "number". Alternatively, the Old French words may derive from Latin ''rhythmus'', fro ...
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Narrative Poem
Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often using the voices of both a narrator and characters; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. Narrative poems do not need rhyme. The poems that make up this genre may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be complex. It is normally dramatic, with various characters. Narrative poems include all epic poetry, and the various types of "lay", most ballads, and some idylls, as well as many poems not falling into a distinct type. Some narrative poetry takes the form of a novel in verse. An example of this is ''The Ring and the Book'' by Robert Browning. In terms of narrative poetry, romance is a narrative poem that tells a story of chivalry. Examples include the ''Romance of the Rose'' or Tennyson's '' Idylls of the King''. Although those examples use medieval and Arthurian materials, romances may also tell stories from classical mythology. Sometimes, these short narratives are collected into inte ...
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Canto
The canto () is a principal form of division in medieval and modern long poetry. Etymology and equivalent terms The word ''canto'' is derived from the Italian word for "song" or "singing", which comes from the Latin ''cantus'', "song", from the infinitive verb ''canere'', "to sing"."Canto"
''The Merriam-Webster Dictionary''. Retrieved 27 September 2015.
In , , and poetry, the term ''
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Caesura
image:Music-caesura.svg, 300px, An example of a caesura in modern western music notation A caesura (, . caesuras or caesurae; Latin for "cutting"), also written cæsura and cesura, is a Metre (poetry), metrical pause or break in a Verse (poetry), verse where one phrase ends and another phrase begins. It may be expressed by a comma (,), a Check mark, tick (✓), or two lines, either slashed (//) or upright (, , ). In time value, this break may vary between the slightest perception of silence all the way up to a full Pausa, pause. Poetry In classical Greek and Latin poetry a caesura is the juncture where one word ends and the following word begins within a foot. In contrast, a word juncture at the end of a foot (prosody), foot is called a Diaeresis (prosody), diaeresis. Some caesurae are expected and represent a point of articulation between two phrases or clauses. All other caesurae are only potentially places of articulation. The opposite of an obligatory caesura is a bridge wher ...
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Anceps
In languages with quantitative poetic metres, such as Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, and classical Persian, an anceps (plural ''ancipitia'' or ''(syllabae) ancipites'') is a position in a metrical pattern which can be filled by either a long or a short syllable. In general, ''anceps'' syllables in words, such as the first syllable of the Greek words (the Greek god of war) or "bitter", which can be treated by poets as either long or short, can be distinguished from ''anceps'' elements or positions in a metrical pattern, which are positions where either a long syllable or a short syllable can be used. Another distinction can be made between the ordinary ''anceps'' positions at the beginning or middle of a line of verse and the phenomenon of ''brevis in longo'', which is when a short syllable at the end of a line counts as long because of the pause which follows. The word ''anceps'' comes from the Latin ''anceps, ancipitis'', meaning "two-headed, uncertain, unfixed". The ...
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Verse Paragraph
Verse paragraphs are stanzas with no regular number of lines or groups of lines that make up units of sense. They are usually separated by blank lines. It stands for a group of lines in a poem that form a rhetorical unit similar to that of a prose paragraph. Milton's ''Paradise Lost'' and Wordsworth's ''The Prelude'' consist of verse paragraphs. Verse paragraphs are frequently used in blank verse and in free verse Free verse is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French '' vers libre'' form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern. It thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. Defi .... Stanzaic form {{Poetry-stub ...
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