| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
O
Objectification
A figure of speech where the poet treats an abstract thing or object as
if it were a place. Edmund Spenser's House of Holiness in the first book
of the Faerie Queene is an example.
Objective Correlative
T. S. Eliot used this phrase to describe "a set of objects, a situation, a
chain of events which shall be the formula of that Particular emotion"
that the poet feels and hopes to evoke in the reader ("Hamlet and His
Problems", 1919).
Objectivism
A type of 20th century poetry in which objects are selected and
portrayed for their own particular value, rather than their symbolic
quality or the intellectual concept of the author.
Occasional Poem
A poem written to describe or comment on a particular event or
occasion. Examples are Andrew Marvell's "Horatian Ode" and Alfred lord
Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade."
Occupatio
A figure of rhetoric where a writer explains that he or she will not have
time or space to say something but then goes on to say that thing
anyway, possibly at length.
Octameter
A verse containing eight feet. Algernon Charles Swinburne's "March: an
Ode," Robert Browning's "A Toccata of Galuppi's," and Edgar Allan
Poe's "The Raven" are among the few examples of an English poem
written in octometers.
Octave
An eight-line stanza or poem, of which there are several types:
ababbcbc: Chaucer's stanzaic form in The Monk's Tale abbacddc, or
abbaabba: the brace octave (for example, W. B. Yeats' "Two Songs
from a Play" abababcc: see Ottava rima abaaabab: see Triolet
Octosyllabic
Having eight syllables.
Ode
A lyric poem that is serious and thoughtful in tone and has a very
precise, formal structure. John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a
famous example of this type of poem.
Odeon or Odeum
A small roofed theater in ancient antiquity devoted to the presentation
of musical and poetic works to the public in competition for prizes.
Off Rhyme
A near rhyme, such as 'down/noon', 'seat/fate'
Onomatopoeia
A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds. Examples
of onomatopoeic words are buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clop, cock-a-
doodle-do, pop, splat, thump, and tick-tock. Another example of
onomatopoeia is found in this line from Tennyson's Come Down, O
Maid: "The moan of doves in immemorial elms,/And murmuring of
innumerable bees." The repeated "m/n" sounds reinforce the idea of
"murmuring" by imitating the hum of insects on a warm summer day.
Open Couplet
A couplet of the Romantic period with run-on lines, in which the
thought was carried beyond the rhyming lines of the couplet. Ottava
Rima - Originally Italian, a stanza of eight lines of heroic verse, rhyming
abababcc.
Open Form
Poetic form free from regularity and consistency in elements such as
rhyme, line length, and metrical form.
Organic Form
Refers to works whose formal characteristics are not rigidly
predetermined but follow the movement of thought or emotion being
expressed. Such works are said to grow like living organisms, following
their own individual patterns rather than external fixed rules that
govern, for example, the form of a sonnet.
Ottava Rima
An Italian stanza of eight 11-syllable lines, with the rhyme scheme
abababcc, introduced by Sir Thomas Wyatt and by W. B. Yeats in
"Among School Children" and "Sailing to Byzantium," and adapted by
Lord Byron as ten-syllable lines in his Don Juan and Beppo.
Overstatement
See Hyperbole.
Oxymoron
An expression impossible in fact but not necessarily self-contradictory,
such as John Milton's description of Hell as "darkness visible" in Book I
of Paradise Lost.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
