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N
Naga-uta
Japanese form of indeterminate length that alternates lines of five and
seven syllables and ends with an additional seven-syllable line.
Nagoge or Anagogy
The spiritual or mystical interpretation of a word or passage beyond the
literal, allegorical or moral sense.
Narrative
Telling a story. Ballads, epics, and lays are different kinds of narrative
poems.
Near Rhyme
Also called approximate rhyme, slant rhyme, off rhyme, imperfect
rhyme or half rhyme, a rhyme in which the sounds are similar, but not
exact, as in home and come or close and lose. Most near rhymes are
types of consonance.
Negative Capability
John Keats, in a letter of October 27, 1818, suggested that a poet,
possessing the power to eliminate his own personality, can take on the
qualities of something else and write most effectively about it.
Neoclassicism
A "new classicism," as in the writings of early 18th-century writers like
Addison and Pope who imitated classical Greek and Latin authors.
Neologism
A newly-coined word, like Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky."
New Criticism
An approach to literature made popular between the 1940s and the
1960s that evolved out of formalist criticism. New Critics suggest that
detailed analysis of the language of a literary text can uncover
important layers of meaning in that work. New Criticism consciously
downplays the historical influences, authorial intentions, and social
contexts that surround texts in order to focus on explication—
extremely close textual analysis. Critics such as John Crowe Ransom, I.
A. Richards, and Robert Penn Warren are commonly associated with
New Criticism.
Nonce Word
From the expression, for the nonce, a word coined or used for a special
circumstance or occasion only.
Nonet
The nonet has nine lines. The first line has nine syllables, the second
eight and so forth until the last line closes with one syllable. The
subject can be anything the poet wishes and there is no mandatory
rhyme scheme.
Nonsense Poetry
Poetry which is absurd, foolish or preposterous, usually written in a
catchy meter with strong rhymes. It often contains neologisms or
portmanteau words.
Nonsense Verse
Lines that read like word-salad, where individually the terms may be
recognizable but in their order and grammatical relations make no
sense, or where common words accompany neologisms in expressions
intended to mystify and amuse. Examples are Noam Chomsky's (prose)
"Colourless green ideas sleep furiously" and Lewis Carroll's "All mimsy
were the borogoves" from his "Jabberwocky."
Normative Rhyme
The duplication, at the ends of two or more lines of a given poem, for
SOME of the sounds in the last stressed syllable of those lines, plus
duplication of ALL the sounds in any weakly stressed syllables that
might follow the stressed syllable. The vowel of the stressed syllable,
and any consonant sound that might follow it, must be the same in
both rhyming words. But the consonant sound that precedes the vowel
of the stressed syllable should be DIFFERENT on each rhyming word.
Eg 'so/go', 'round/abound', 'lotion/motion', but NOT 'relate/late'.
Numen
A spiritual source or influence, often identified with a natural object,
phenomenon or place.
Nursery Rhyme
A short poem for children written in rhyming verse and handed down in
folklore.
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