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C
Cacophony
Language that is discordant and difficult to pronounce, such as this line
from John Updike’s "Player Piano": "never my numb plunker fumbles."
Cacophony ("bad sound") may be unintentional in the writer’s sense of
music, or it may be used consciously for deliberate dramatic effect. See
also euphony.
Cadence
The progressive rhythmical pattern in lines of verse; also, the natural
tone or modulation of the voice determined by the alternation of
accented or unaccented syllables.
Caesura
A natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of
the line. There is a caesura right after the question mark in the first line
of this sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "How do I love thee? Let
me count the ways."
Calligram
A calligram is a poem that is designed to form a shape or an object
related to the poem topic. For example, a poem about tears could be
formatted to look like a teardrop.
Canon
Those works generally considered by scholars, critics, and teachers to
be the most important to read and study, which collectively constitute
the "masterpieces" of literature. Since the 1960s, the traditional English
and American literary canon, consisting mostly of works by white male
writers, has been rapidly expanding to include many female writers and
writers of varying ethnic backgrounds.
Canto
Subdivision of an Italian epic or long narrative poem, such as Dante's
Divina Commedia, first employed in English by Edmund Spenser in The
Faerie Queene, popularized by Byron in "Don Juan," and restored to
epic dignity by Ezra Pound in his Pisan Cantos.
Canzone (Canzona)
The canzona is a short lyric poem of French origin. It gained popularity
in the Middle Ages in Italy. The subject of this type of poetry is often
love, nature, or feminine beauty. It consists of stanzas of equal length
and closes with a shorter stanza, which is called an envoi. The stanzas
vary from seven to twenty lines.
Carmina Figurata/Figuratum
See Pattern Poetry
Carol
A hymn or poem often sung, as at Christmas, by a group, with an
individual taking the changing stanzas and the group taking the burden
or refrain. Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's assistant, printed the first
collection of carols in 1521. An example is "I Saw Three Ships."
Caroline
Literature of the reign of Charles I (1625-42), especially the by the
Calvalier poets, who numbered Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, and
John Suckling, among others.
Carpe Diem
A Latin expression that means "seize the day." Carpe diem poems urge
the reader (or the person to whom they are addressed) to live for
today and enjoy the pleasures of the moment. A famous carpe diem
poem by Robert Herrick begins "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may . . ."
Catachresis
An eccentric metaphor.
Catalectic
A type of verse termed by George Puttenham in 1589 "maimed"
because it is missing a syllable in the last foot. An acatalectic verse is
complete. A hypercatalectic line has an extra syllable.
Catalogue Verse
Poems with lists that perform an encyclopedic purpose, lending high
seriousness to a topic. Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter"
gently parodies this convention.
Cataphora
The use of a grammatical substitute (like a pronoun) which has The
same reference as The next word or phrase.
Catharsis
Meaning "purgation," catharsis describes the release of the emotions of
pity and fear by the audience at the end of a tragedy. In his Poetics,
Aristotle discusses the importance of catharsis. The audience faces the
misfortunes of the protagonist, which elicit pity and compassion.
Simultaneously, the audience also confronts the failure of the
protagonist, thus receiving a frightening reminder of human limitations
and frailties. Ultimately, however, both these negative emotions are
purged, because the tragic protagonist’s suffering is an affirmation of
human values rather than a despairing denial of them. See also tragedy.
Caudate Sonnet
Codas or tails are added to the 14-line poem. An example is John
Milton's "On the New Forces of Conscience under the Long Parliament."
Celtic Revival
Irish poets such as George Russell (AE), James Joyce, John M. Synge,
and W. B. Yeats who drew on Celtic myth to recreate a national
literature.
Cento
Poetry made up of lines borrowed from a combination of established
authors, usually resulting in a change in meaning and a humorous
effect.
Chain Rhyme
Also called interlocking rhyme, a rhyme scheme in which a rhyme in a
line of one stanza is used as a link to a rhyme in the next stanza, as in
the aba bcb cdc, etc. of terza rima or the aaab cccb
Chain Verse
Similar to chain rhyme, but links words, phrases, or lines (instead of
rhyme) by repeating them in succeeding stanzas, as in the pantoum,
but there are many variations.
Chanson De Geste
An epic poem of the 11th to the 14th century, written in Old French,
which details the exploits of a historical or legendary figure, especially
Charlemagne.
Chant Royal
The chant royal is a poetic form that originated in 14th century France;
it was introduced to England five centuries later. It consists of five
eleven-line stanzas with a rhyme scheme a-b-a-b-c-c-d-d-e-d-e and a
five-line envoi rhyming d-d-e-d-e or a seven-line envoi c-c-d-d-e-d-e.
Chapbook
A small book or pamphlet containing ballads, poems, popular tales or
tracts, etc.
Chastushka
The chastukas are a type of traditional Russian poetry. They are written
as a single quatrain in trochaic tetrameter with an abab or abcb rhyme
scheme. They are amusing, satirical, or ironic and cover topics ranging
from bawdy jokes to propaganda. They parallel the limerick, and are
usually accompanied by music. The musical refrain between chastukas
gives the audience time to laugh without missing the next one. Poets
are resourceful and clever when performing them in front of an
audience where the contestants mocked each other in competitions
similar to today’s hip-hop improvisational battles.
Chaucerian Stanza
See Rhyme Royal
Chiasmus
An inverted parallelism; the reversal of the order of corresponding
words or phrases (with or without exact repetition) in successive
clauses, which are usually parallel in syntax.
Choka
Japanese form with alternating lines of five and seven syllables, ending
with a couplet of seven-syllable lines.
Choliamb
See scazon.
Choree
A trochee.
Choriamb
Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of long, short, short, and long
syllables / ' ~ ~ ' /; also an iambic alexandrine line with a spondee or
trochee instead of an iambus in the sixth foot. For example,
Swinburne's "Choriambics."
Choric Ode
See Pindaric Verse
Cinquain (Quintain)
The cinquain is a five-line stanzaic form that varies in rhyme and line
length. It is usually written in the ababb rhyme scheme. The form
became more specialized in the hands of American poet Adelaide
Crapsey. With a nod to the Japanese poetry styles, she wrote cinquains
as short, unrhymed five-line poems as two, four, six, eight, and two
syllables per line, respectively.
Circumlocution
Speaking around a point rather than getting to it, such as S. T.
Coleridge's "twice five miles of fertile ground" in "Kubla Khan." Also
known as periphrasis.
Classicism
The principles and ideals of beauty that are characteristic of Greek and
Roman art, architecture, and literature. Examples of classicism in poetry
can be found in the works of John Dryden and Alexander Pope, which
are characterized by their formality, simplicity, and emotional restraint.
Clerihew
The clerihew is a biographical and whimsical verse consisting of two
couplets and a specific rhyming scheme, usually aabb. The poem names
a well-known person /character who is introduced within the first line.
The lines are irregular in length.
Cliché
A cliché is a phrase that is so overused that it has lost its meaning.
Close Rhyme
A rhyme of two contiguous or close words, such as in the idiomatic
expressions, "true blue" or "fair and square."
Closed Couplet
See couplet.
Closed Form
Poetic form subject to a fixed structure and pattern
Closure
The effect of finality, balance, and completeness which leaves The
reader with a sense of fulfilled expectations. Though The term is
sometimes employed to describe The effects of individual repetitive
elements, such as Rhyme, metrical patterns, parallelism, refrains, and
stanzas, its most significant application is in reference to The
concluding portion of The entire poem.
Cockney School of Poetry
A mocking name for London romantic poets such as John Keats and
Leigh Hunt (from a scathing review in Blackwood's Magazine in October
1817).
Colloquial
Refers to a type of informal diction that reflects casual, conversational
language and often includes slang expressions.
Common Measure
A quatrain that rhymes abab and alternates four-stress and three-
stress iambic lines (each pair equivalent to a single line of 14 syllables),
the metre of the hymn and the ballad. An example is "Sir Patrick
Spence." Short or half measure consists of a six-stress, 12-syllable line
split into two three-stress, trimeter lines. Long measure has eight-
stress lines of 16 syllables that are divided into two four-stress lines.
An example is T. S. Eliot's "Whispers of Immortality."
Companion Poem
A poem that is associated with another, which it complements.
Complaint
A lament or satiric attack on social evils, such as Chaucer's "Complaint
to his Purse," the opening of the Wakefield Master's "Second
Shepherd's Play," or Shakespeare's "A Lover's Complaint." Not to be
confused with a poet's grumbling about weather or writing, such as
Ezra Pound's "Ancient Music" or Chaucer's "The lyf so short, the craft
so longe to lerne."
Conceit
A fanciful poetic image or metaphor that likens one thing to something
else that is seemingly very different. An example of a conceit can be
found in Shakespeare's sonnet "Shall I compare thee to a summer's
day?" and in Emily Dickinson's poem "There is no frigate like a book."
Conceit (Italian)
A complicated intellectual metaphor. Petrarchan conceits drew on
conventional sensory imagery popularized by the Italian poet Petrarch
(1304-74). Metaphysical conceits were characterized by esoteric,
abstract associations and surprising effects. John Donne and other so-
called metaphysical poets used conceits in ways that fused the sensory
and the abstract. Examples are John Donne's use of the compass in
"The Ecstasy" and of alchemy in "A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day."
Concrete Poetry
Verse that emphasizes non-linguistic elements in its meaning, such as
typeface that gives a visual image of the topic (eye, optic, or visual =
poetry), an arrangement of words or syllables that signals the poem
must be said rather than read (ear poetry), and the division of the
poem by different speakers, showing that it is intended for performance
(action poetry). An examples include George Herbert's "Easter Wings"
(eye poetry), Louis Zukofsky's "Julia's Will" (ear poetry), and the whole
of W. H. Auden's For the Time Being, but especially his hilariously
miserable Herod (action poetry).
Confessional Poetry
Vividly sensational self-revelatory verse, a literary movement led by
American poets from Allen Ginsberg and Robert Lowell to Sylvia Plath,
Anne Sexton, and John Berryman.
Connotation
Those words, things, or ideas with which a word often keeps company
but which it does not actually denote. A word's semantic field consists
largely of its lexical associations, that is, its more or less frequent
collocations.
Consonance
Sometimes just a resemblance in sound between two words, or an
initial or head rhyme like alliteration, but also refined to mean shared
consonants, whether in sequence ("bud" and "bad") or reversed ("bud"
and "dab").
Content
The substance of a poem; the impressions, facts and ideas it contains--
the "what-is-being-said."
Content words
Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and most adverbs, words that carry the
content of a sentence; these are also called lexical or open-class words.
They contrast with function (or grammatical, or closed-class) words,
such as articles, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and
pronouns, which can be found in almost any utterance, no matter what
it is about.
Controlling Metaphor
A symbolic story, where the whole poem may be a metaphor for
something else.
Convention
A common way of doing something, such as a poetic form, or a
common topic like the "carpe diem" or "ubi sunt" themes, or making
lists (see catalogue verse), or a regularly-used figure of speech.
Corona
A sonnet sequence where the last line in one sonnet becomes the first
line of the next sonnet, and the final line in the sequence repeats the
first line of the first sonnet. An example is the seven sonnets that open
John Donne's holy sonnets.
Counting-out Rhymes
Verse memory aids for children learning how to count, such as "One,
two, buckle my shoe, / Three, four, open the door."
Couplet
A pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length, termed
"closed" when they form a bounded grammatical unit like a sentence,
and termed "heroic" in 17th- and 18th-century verse when serious in
subject, five-foot iambic in form, and holding a complete thought.
Crambo
A game in which one player gives a word or line of verse to be matched
in rhyme by the other players.
Cretic
Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of long, short, and long
syllables.
Criticaster
An inferior or petty critic.
Cross Rhyme
A rhyme scheme of abab, also called alternate rhyme. The term derives
from long-line verse such as hexameter in which two lines have caesural
words rhymed together and end words rhymed together, as in
Swinburne's.
Cultural Criticism
An approach to literature that focuses on the historical as well as social,
political, and economic contexts of a work. Popular culture—mass
produced and consumed cultural artifacts ranging from advertising to
popular fiction to television to rock music—is given equal emphasis as
"high culture." Cultural critics use widely eclectic strategies such as new
historicism, psychology, gender studies, and deconstructionism to
analyze not only literary texts but everything from radio talk shows,
comic strips, calendar art, commercials, to travel guides and baseball
cards.
Curtal Sonnet
A short sonnet devised by Gerard Manley Hopkins that maintains the
proportions of the Italian form (6:4.5 to 8:6), substituting two six-
stress tercets for two quatrains in the octave (rhyming abc abc), and
four-and-a-half lines for the sestet (rhyming dcbdc), also six-stress
except for the final three-stress line. Examples are his poems "Peace"
and "Pied Beauty."
Cycle
The aggregate of accumulated literature, plays or musical works
treating the same theme. In poetry, the term is typically applied to epic
or narrative poems about a mythical or heroic event or character.
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