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    Abecedarian

    An abecedarian is an alphabetic acrostic. Rather than spelling out the
    title, each line begins with a word beginning with the next successive
    line in the alphabet. For example, if the first line begins with "A" then
    the second line would begin with a word starting with the letter "B."

    Abstract Language

    Words that represent ideas, intangibles, and concepts such as 'beauty'
    and 'truth.'

    Abstract Poetry

    Poetry that aims to use its sounds, textures, rhythms, and rhymes to
    convey an emotion, instead of relying on the meanings of words.

    Academic Verse

    Poetry that adheres to the accepted standards and requirements of
    some kind of  'school.' Poetry approved, officially, or unofficially, by a
    literary establishment.

    Acatalectic

    A verse having the metrically complete number of syllables in the final
    foot.

    Accent

    A stressed syllable or ictus. These alternate with unstressed syllables or
    slacks to produce a theoretical metrical pattern termed the rhythm that
    often, but not always, matches how the line would be sounded in
    conversation. Prominence can be achieved by pitch (tone), loudness or
    impact (stress), or length. An increase in pitch usually creates stress.
    George Puttenham in 1589 says: "To that which was highest lift vp and
    most eleuate or shrillest in the eare, they gaue the name of the sharpe
    accent, to the lowest and most base because it seemed to fall downe
    rather than to rise vp, they gaue the name of the heauy accent, and
    that other which seemed in part to lift vp and in part to fall downe, they
    called the circumflex, or compast accent: and if new termes were not
    odious, we might very properly call him the (windabout) for so is the
    Greek word."

    Accentual Meter

    A rhythmic pattern based on a recurring number of accents or stresses
    in each line of a poem or section of a poem.

    Accentual Verse

    Lines whose rhythm arises from its stressed syllables rather than from
    the number of its syllables, or from the length of time devoted to their
    sounding. Old English poems such as Beowulf and Caedmon's Hymn are
    accentual. They fall clearly into two halves, each with two stresses.

    Accentual-Syllabic Verse

    Lines whose rhythm arises by the number and alternation of its
    stressed and unstressed syllables, organized into feet. Most English
    poems from the Renaissance to the late eighteenth century are thought
    to be written according to this metrical system.

    Acephalexis

    Initial truncation (the dropping of the first, unstressed syllable at the
    beginning of a line of iambic or anapestic verse).

    Acephalous

    A line of verse without its expected initial syllable.

    Acrostic

    A word, phrase, or passage spelled out vertically by the first letters of a
    group of lines in sequence. Sir John Davies' Hymnes of Astraea
    dedicates 26 acrostic poems to Elizabeth I. Edgar Allan Poe's "Enigma"
    provides another example.

    Action Poetry

    Verse written for performance by several voices.

    Adonic

    A Classical Greek and Latin metre, a dimeter with a dactyl and a
    spondee / ~ ' ' / ' ' / such as are found at the close of sapphics.

    Adynaton

    A type of hyperbole in which the exaggeration is magnified so greatly
    that it refers to an impossibility, as "I'd walk a million miles for one of
    your smiles."

    Aesthetic Movement

    A literary belief that art is its own justification and purpose, advocated
    in England by Walter Pater and practiced by Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon
    Charles Swinburne, Oscar Wilde, and others.

    Afflatus

    A creative inspiration, as that of a poet; a divine imparting of
    knowledge, thus it is often called divine afflatus.

    Aisling

    The aisling (pronounced ashling) was developed in Ireland after the 17th
    century. Unlike some of the other poetic forms listed, this poem does
    not have a rhyme scheme. It is identified by the content. The aisling is
    characterized by the poet reciting the tale of having a vision of Ireland in
    the form of a woman. She can be old or young, beautiful or haggard.
    This woman is referred to in the poems as an speirbhean (sky-woman).
    She mourns the state of the Irish people and predicts a change of
    fortune. This form is one that grew in popularity due to its political
    power. It is believed that this form was inspired by the French reverdie.

    Alcaic verse

    A Greek lyrical meter, said to be invented by Alcaeus, a lyric poet from
    about 600 B.C. Written in tetrameter, the greater Alcaic consists of a
    spondee or iamb followed by an iamb plus a long syllable and two
    dactyls. The lesser Alcaic, also in tetrameter, consists of two dactylic
    feet followed by two iambic feet.

    Alcaics   

    A four-line Classical stanza named after Alcaeus, a Greek poet, with a
    predominantly dactylic metre, imitated by Alfred lord Tennyson's poem,
    "Milton."

    Alexandrine    

    A metrical line of six feet or twelve syllables (in English), originally from
    French heroic verse. Randle Cotgrave in his 1611 French-English
    dictionary explains: "Alexandrin. A verse of 12, or 13 sillables." In his
    "Essay on Criticism," Alexander Pope says, "A needless Alexandrine
    ends the song / That like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along"
    (359). Examples include Michael Drayton's "Polyolbion," Robert Bridges'
    "Testament of Beauty," and the last line of each stanza in Thomas
    Hardy's "The Convergence of the Twain."

    Allegory

    Henry Cockeram, in his English dictionary (1623), explains this as "A
    sentence that must be understood otherwise than the literal
    interpretation shewes" but does not distinguish among allegory, irony,
    metaphor, and symbol. Medieval scholars developed Biblical exegesis to
    allow for at least three types of allegory. Moral allegory interpreted a
    story as a conflict between good and evil. The other two were types of
    historical allegory: anagogy foreshadowed the life of Christ (as
    Abraham's planned sacrifice of Isaac prefigured Christ the Son's self-
    sacrifice on the cross), and eschatology foreshadowed the end of the
    world (as Noah's flood looks forward to the Last Judgment and the four
    last things, heaven, hell, death, and judgment). John Dryden allegorizes
    secular history in "Absalom and Achitophel." Allegory reveals itself in
    poems such as Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene when personifications
    interact on a landscape populated by objectifications.

    Alliteration

    The repetition of the same consonant sounds in a sequence of words,
    usually at the beginning of a word or stressed syllable: "descending dew
    drops"; "luscious lemons." Alliteration is based on the sounds of letters,
    rather than the spelling of words; for example, "keen" and "car"
    alliterate, but "car" and "cite" do not. Used sparingly, alliteration can
    intensify ideas by emphasizing key words, but when used too self-
    consciously, it can be distracting, even ridiculous, rather than effective.
    See also assonance, consonance.

    Allusion

    A brief reference to a person, place, thing, event, or idea in history or
    literature. Allusions conjure up biblical authority, scenes from
    Shakespeare’s plays, historic figures, wars, great love stories, and
    anything else that might enrich an author’s work. Allusions imply
    reading and cultural experiences shared by the writer and reader,
    functioning as a kind of shorthand whereby the recalling of something
    outside the work supplies an emotional or intellectual context, such as a
    poem about current racial struggles calling up the memory of Abraham
    Lincoln.

    Ambiguity

    A statement with two or more meanings that may seem to exclude one
    another in the context. Grammatical ambiguity (amphibologia) occurs
    where a word has two or more possible word classes. For example, in
    "BILL POSTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED," the words "BILL POSTERS"
    could be either adjective and common noun or a proper name. Lexical
    ambiguity arises where one word has multiple senses (polysemous
    terms) or when two different words have the same sound (homonyms).
    Thus "present" is polysemous because it means both `current time' and
    `gift,' and "which" and "witch" are homonyms.

    Amphibrach

    Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of short, long, and short
    syllables / ~ ' ~ / (cf. the English word "romantic"). An example is
    Matthew Prior's "Jinny the Just." .

    Amphigouri

    A verse composition, while apparently coherent, contains no sense or
    meaning.

    Amphimacer  

    A Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of long, short, and long
    syllables / ' ~ ' / (cf. the English word "forty-five"). An example is Alfred
    lord Tennyson's "The Oak." See under foot below.

    Amphisbaenic Rhyme

    A reversed rhyme, such as "trot" and "tort."

    Amplification  

    Rhetorical figures of speech that repeat and vary the expression of a
    thought.

    Anachronism

    Someone or something belonging to another time period than the one
    in which it is described as being.

    Anaclasis    

    The substitution of different measures to break up the rhythm.

    Anacoluthon

    An interruption in a sentence, sometimes indicated by a pause, that is
    afterwards restarted in a syntactically different way. See also
    aposiopesis.

    Anacreontic Verse

    Imitations of the 6th-century B.C. Greek poet Anacreon, who wrote
    about love and wine. Thomas Moore translated Anacreon's odes in 1800.
    Abraham Cowley adapted them in his Anacreontics.

    Anacrucis  

    One or two unstressed syllables at the beginning of a line that are
    unnecessary to the metre.

    Anadiplosis   

    A repetition of the last word in a line or segment at the start of the
    next line or segment.

    Anagram

    A word spelled out by rearranging the letters of another word. When
    both lexical forms appear in the same poem, especially in proximity, a
    reader may reasonably suspect that the anagram is a figure of speech.
    If only one form occurs, the encoding of an association is harder to
    prove. For example, "the teacher gapes at the mounds of exam pages
    lying before her."

    Analepsis   

    A flashback.

    Analogue  

    Usually a semantic or narrative feature in one work said to resemble
    something in another work, without necessarily implying that a cause-
    and-effect relationship exists (as would be the case with source and
    influence). For example, Beowulf's battle with the Dragon is analogous
    with the fight between the Red Cross Knight and the Dragon in Book I
    of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.

    Analogy  

    An agreement or similarity in some particulars between things otherwise
    different; sleep and death, for example, are analogous in that they both
    share a lack of animation and a recumbent posture.

    Anapest

    A metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables followed by an
    accented one. Examples include the words "undermine" and "overcome."
    See Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib."

    Anapestic (anapest)  

    A metrical foot containing three syllables--the first two are unstressed,
    while the last is stressed

    Anaphora    

    An anaphora is the repetition of a word or a phrase as the beginning of
    successive clauses. For example, Winston Churchill is quoted as saying
    "we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds...."
    The phrase "we shall fight" is an example of an anaphora.

    Anastrophe

    A type of hyperbaton involving the inversion of the natural or usual
    syntactical order of a pair of words for rhetorical or poetic effect.

    Antagonist

    The character, force, or collection of forces in fiction or drama that
    opposes the protagonist and gives rise to the conflict of the story; an
    opponent of the protagonist, such as Claudius in Shakespeare’s play
    Hamlet. See also character, conflict.

    Antanaclasis

    A figure of speech in which the same word is repeated in a different
    sense within a clause or line.

    Antepenultima  

    The second last word of a line, or the second last syllable of a word.

    Anthology

    A collection of selected literary, artistic, or musical works or parts of
    works.

    Anthropomorphism

    A figure of speech where the poet characterizes an abstract thing or
    object as if it were a person. See also personification.

    Antibacchic  

    Classical Greek and Latin foot consisting of long, long, and short
    syllables / ' ' ~ / . An English example is the word "Goddamit."

    Anticlimax

    The intentional use of elevated language to describe the trivial or
    commonplace, or a sudden transition from a significant thought to a
    trivial one in order to achieve a humorous or satiric effect.

    Antihero  

    A protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional attributes
    of a hero. He or she may be bewildered, ineffectual, deluded, or merely
    pathetic. Often what antiheroes learn, if they learn anything at all, is
    that the world isolates them in an existence devoid of God and absolute
    values. Yossarian from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is an example of an
    antihero. See also character.

    Antiphon

    A sacred poem with responses or alternative parts.

    Antiphrasis   

    The ironic or humorous use of words in a sense not in accord with their
    literal meaning, as in "a giant of three feet four inches."

    Antispast  

    Greek and Latin metrical foot consisting of short, long, long, and short
    syllables (i.e., an iambus and a trochee) / ~ ' ' ~ / . A possible English
    example is "unblackguarded."

    Antisthecon   

    A rhyme created by distorting a word, such as "Samoa" for "some more
    of" in the limerick "An old maid in the land of Aloha."

    Antistrophe     

    (1) a reply to the strophe, and the second stanza in a Pindaric ode; or
    (2) the repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of successive
    lines or clauses.

    Antithesis      

    A figure of speech in which words and phrases with opposite meanings
    are balanced against each other. An example of antithesis is "To err is
    human, to forgive, divine." (Alexander Pope)

    Antonomasia    

    Using an epithet or a title in place of a proper name.

    Antonym   

    An antonym is a word that has the opposite meaning of another word.
    For example, the antonym of smooth is rough.

    Antonymy   

    Semantic contrasts.

    Aphaeresis or Apheresis    

    A type of elision in which a letter or syllable is omitted at the beginning
    of a word, as 'twas for it was.

    Aphesis       

    The omission of the initial syllable of a word. See also Apocope.

    Aphorism    

    One writer's citation of another, known author's truism or pithy remark.

    Apocopated Rhyme    

    An imperfect rhyme between the final syllable of a word and the
    penultimate syllable of another word.

    Apocope

    The omission of the last syllable of a word. See also Aphesis.

    Apologue  

    An allegorical narrative, usually intended to convey a moral or a useful
    truth.

    Aporia

    Explained by Samuel Johnson, in his great dictionary (1755), as "a
    figure in rhetorick, by which the speaker shews, that he doubts where
    to begin for the multitude of matter, or what to say in some strange
    and ambiguous thing; and doth, as it were, argue the case with himself."

    Aposiopesis

    An interruption of an expresion without a subsequent restarting. See
    also anacoluthon.

    Apostrophe     

    Words that are spoken to a person who is absent or imaginary, or to
    an object or abstract idea. The poem God's World by Edna St. Vincent
    Millay begins with an apostrophe: "O World, I cannot hold thee close
    enough!/Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!/Thy mists that roll and rise!"

    Arcadia

    A region or scene characterized by idyllic quiet and simplicity, often
    chosen as a setting for pastoral poetry.

    Archaism    

    Using obsolete or archaic words when current alternatives are available.

    Archetype   

    A term used to describe universal symbols that evoke deep and
    sometimes unconscious responses in a reader. In literature, characters,
    images, and themes that symbolically embody universal meanings and
    basic human experiences, regardless of when or where they live, are
    considered archetypes. Common literary archetypes include stories of
    quests, initiations, scapegoats, descents to the underworld, and
    ascents to heaven. See also mythological criticism.

    Arsis    

    The accented or longer part of a poetic foot; the point where an ictus is
    put.

    Asclepiad     

    A Classical metrical line made up of a spondee, two or three choriambs,
    and one iamb or spondee, i.e., / ' ' / ' ~ ~ ' / ' ~ ~ ' / ~ ' / (named after
    the Greek poet Asclepiades, ca. 290 B.C.). Examples of accentual
    asclepiads in English include Sir Philip Sidney's "O sweet woods, the
    delight of solitariness" from Arcadia, and W. H. Auden's "In Due
    Season."

    Assonance

    The repetition of internal vowel sounds in nearby words that do not end
    the same, for example, "asleep under a tree," or "each evening." Similar
    endings result in rhyme, as in "asleep in the deep." Assonance is a
    strong means of emphasizing important words in a line. See also
    alliteration, consonance.

    Asyndeton   

    Lists of words, phrases, or expressions without conjunctions such as
    `and' and `or' to link them. George Herbert uses this figure of speech
    in "Prayer (1)."

    Atmosphere  

    The mood or pervasive feeling insinuated by a literary work.

    Aubade (Provençal)  

    A medieval love poem welcoming or lamenting the arrival of the dawn.
    An example is John Donne's "The Sun Rising."

    Augustan  

    English literature at the beginning of the 18th century by poets such as
    Addison, Pope, and Swift, who emulated Ovid, Horace, or Virgil, the
    great Latin poets of the reign of the emperor Augustus (27 B.C. - 14 A.
    D.).

    Aureate Language   

    Polysyllabic Latinate poetic diction employed especially by the Scottish
    Chaucerians. See poetic diction.

    Avant Garde      

    The innovating artists or writers who promote the use of new or
    experimental concepts or techniques.
 
 
   
     
   
     
   
     
   
     
   
     
   
     
   
     
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