Literary Terms And Perchance The RUB

* Eye rhyme occurs when words look alike but don't sound alike--e.g., bear-ear.

In English, generally the two basic kinds of sonnets are the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean or Elizabethan sonnet.

In English poetry, the most common meters are these: * Iambic: a foot consisting of an unaccented and accented syllable.

In English, generally the two basic kinds of sonnets are the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean or Elizabethan sonnet.

* Denotation: the literal meaning of a word; there are no emotions, values, or images associated with denotative meaning.

Sometimes the term means the mask or alter-ego of the author; it is often used for first person works and lyric poems, to distinguish the writer of the work from the character in the work.

The Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains (four lines each) and a concluding couplet (two lines).

Meter: a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables which are organized into patterns, called feet.

Scientific and mathematical language carries few, if any emotional or connotative meanings.

Sometimes irony is classified into types: in situational irony, expectations aroused by a situation are reversed; in cosmic irony or the irony of fate, misfortune is the result of fate, chance, or God; in dramatic irony. the audience knows more than the characters in the play, so that words and action have additional meaning for the audience; Socractic irony is named after Socrates' teaching method, whereby he assumes ignorance and openness to opposing points of view which turn out to...

Meter: a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables which are organized into patterns, called feet.

A line is named for the number of feet it contains: monometer: one foot, dimeter: two feet, trimeter: three feet, tetrameter: four feet, pentameter: five feet, hexameter: six feet, heptameter: seven feet.

Internal rhyme occurs in the middle of a line, as in these lines from Coleridge, "In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud" or "Whiles all the night through fog-smoke white" ("The Ancient Mariner").

A line is named for the number of feet it contains: monometer: one foot, dimeter: two feet, trimeter: three feet, tetrameter: four feet, pentameter: five feet, hexameter: six feet, heptameter: seven feet.

* Anapestic: a foot consisting of two unaccented syllables and an accented syllable.

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

The Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines).

Two characteristics of the ballad are incremental repetition and the ballad stanza.

* Denotation: the literal meaning of a word; there are no emotions, values, or images associated with denotative meaning.

In English poetry, the most common meters are these: * Iambic: a foot consisting of an unaccented and accented syllable.

Apostrophes are generally capitalized. o Onomatopoeia: a word whose sounds seem to duplicate the sounds they describe--hiss, buzz, bang, murmur, meow, growl. o Oxymoron: a statement with two parts which seem contradictory; examples: sad joy, a wise fool, the sound of silence, or Hamlet's saying, "I must be cruel only to be kind" * Elevated language or elevated style: formal, dignitifed language; it often uses more elaborate figures of speech.

A moralistic person might be shocked by any sexual scene and condemn a book or movie as dirty; a sentimentalist is automatically moved by any love story, regardless of the quality of the writing or the acting; someone requiring excitement may enjoy any violent story or movie, regardless of how mindless, unmotivated or brutal the violence is.

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

A narrator may be trustworthy or untrustworthy, involved or uninvolved.

Notice the difference in style of the opening paragraphs of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

See rhyme.

Theme: (1) the abstract concept explored in a literary work; (2) frequently recurring ideas, such as enjoy-life while-you-can; (3) repetition of a meaningful element in a work, such as references to sight, vision, and blindness in Oedipus Rex. Sometimes the theme is also called the motif.

* Literary convention: a practice or device which is accepted as a necessary, useful, or given feature of a genre, e.g., the proscenium stage (the "picture-frame" stage of most theaters), a soliloquy, the epithet or boast in the epic (which those of you who took Core Studies 1 will be familiar with).

Meter: a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables which are organized into patterns, called feet.

* Stock character: character types of a genre, e.g., the heroine disguised as a man in Elizabethan drama, the confidant, the hardboiled detective, the tightlipped sheriff, the girl next door, the evil hunters in a Tarzan movie, ethnic or racial stereotypes, the cruel stepmother and Prince Charming in fairy tales.

Irony: the discrepancy between what is said and what is meant, what is said and what is done, what is expected or intended and what happens, what is meant or said and what others understand.

Though it is sometimes used only for a brief poem about feeling (like the sonnet).it is more often applied to a poem expressing the complex evolution of thoughts and feeling, such as the elegy, the dramatic monologue, and the ode.

Meter: a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables which are organized into patterns, called feet.

Modern English poetry is metrical, i.e., it relies on accented and unaccented syllables.

Figurative language is also called figures of speech.

* Literary convention: a practice or device which is accepted as a necessary, useful, or given feature of a genre, e.g., the proscenium stage (the "picture-frame" stage of most theaters), a soliloquy, the epithet or boast in the epic (which those of you who took Core Studies 1 will be familiar with).

Shakespeare frequently uses unrhymed iambic pentameter in his plays; the technical name for this line is blank verse.

In English, generally the two basic kinds of sonnets are the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean or Elizabethan sonnet.

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

Ballad: a relatively short narrative poem, written to be sung, with a simple and dramatic action.

Apostrophes are generally capitalized. o Onomatopoeia: a word whose sounds seem to duplicate the sounds they describe--hiss, buzz, bang, murmur, meow, growl. o Oxymoron: a statement with two parts which seem contradictory; examples: sad joy, a wise fool, the sound of silence, or Hamlet's saying, "I must be cruel only to be kind" * Elevated language or elevated style: formal, dignitifed language; it often uses more elaborate figures of speech.

* Spondee: a foot consisting of two accented syllables, as in the word heartbreak.

* A persona is a fictional character.

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

It occurs in everyday speech in such prhases as "tittle-tattle," "bag and baggage," "bed and board," "primrose path," and "through thick and thin" and in sayings like "look before you leap."

Emily Dickinson frequently uses partial rhymes.

Sometimes irony is classified into types: in situational irony, expectations aroused by a situation are reversed; in cosmic irony or the irony of fate, misfortune is the result of fate, chance, or God; in dramatic irony. the audience knows more than the characters in the play, so that words and action have additional meaning for the audience; Socractic irony is named after Socrates' teaching method, whereby he assumes ignorance and openness to opposing points of view which turn out to...

The antihero, a recent type, lacks or seems to lack heroic traits.

The ballad stanza is four lines; commonly, the first and third lines contain four feet or accents, the second and fourth lines contain three feet.

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

For example, when we read a comic book, we accept that a light bulb appearing above the head of a comic book character means the character suddently got an idea.

* Connotation: the emotions, values, or images associated with a word.

* Dactylic: a foot consisting of an accented syllable and two unaccented syllables, as in these words: swimingly, mannikin, openly.

Sometimes the term means the mask or alter-ego of the author; it is often used for first person works and lyric poems, to distinguish the writer of the work from the character in the work.

In direct presentation, a character is described by the author, the narrator or the other characters.

Many of Hamlet's statements to the King, to Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, and to other characters are deliberately ambiguous, to hide his real purpose from them.

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds, please-niece-ski-tree.

The most common metrical lines in English are tetrameter (four feet) and pentameter (five feet).

Apostrophes are generally capitalized. o Onomatopoeia: a word whose sounds seem to duplicate the sounds they describe--hiss, buzz, bang, murmur, meow, growl. o Oxymoron: a statement with two parts which seem contradictory; examples: sad joy, a wise fool, the sound of silence, or Hamlet's saying, "I must be cruel only to be kind" * Elevated language or elevated style: formal, dignitifed language; it often uses more elaborate figures of speech.

* Dactylic: a foot consisting of an accented syllable and two unaccented syllables, as in these words: swimingly, mannikin, openly.

The most common figures of speech are these: o A simile: a comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as", e.g., "my love is like a red, red rose" (Robert Burns). o A metaphor: a comparison of two dissimilar things which does not use "like" or "as," e.g., "my love is a red, red rose" (Lilia Melani). o Personification: treating abstractions or inanimate objects as human, that is, giving them human attributes, powers, or feelings, e.g., "nature wept" or "the wind whispered many truth...

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

Themes in Hamlet include the nature of filial duty and the dilemma of the idealist in a non-ideal situation.

* Pyrrhic: a foot consisting of two unaccented syllables, generally used to vary the rhythm.

There are many different kinds and theories of tragedy, starting with the Greeks and Aristole's definition in The Poetics, "the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself...with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions."

There are many different kinds and theories of tragedy, starting with the Greeks and Aristole's definition in The Poetics, "the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself...with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions."

Notice the difference in style of the opening paragraphs of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

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* The most obvious point of view is probably first person or "I." * The omniscient narrator knows everything, may reveal the motivations, thoughts and feelings of the characters, and gives the reader information.

* Stock character: character types of a genre, e.g., the heroine disguised as a man in Elizabethan drama, the confidant, the hardboiled detective, the tightlipped sheriff, the girl next door, the evil hunters in a Tarzan movie, ethnic or racial stereotypes, the cruel stepmother and Prince Charming in fairy tales.

A moralistic person might be shocked by any sexual scene and condemn a book or movie as dirty; a sentimentalist is automatically moved by any love story, regardless of the quality of the writing or the acting; someone requiring excitement may enjoy any violent story or movie, regardless of how mindless, unmotivated or brutal the violence is.

Click here for a fuller discussion of genres.

The Romantic poets were attracted to this form, as Longfellow with "The Wreck of the Hesperus," Coleridge with the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (which is longer and more elaborate than the folk balad) and Keats with "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (which more closely resembles the folk ballad).

It occurs in everyday speech in such prhases as "tittle-tattle," "bag and baggage," "bed and board," "primrose path," and "through thick and thin" and in sayings like "look before you leap."

It can also be used to reveal a self-important or a pretentious character, for humor and/or for satire.

Paradox: a statement whose two parts seem contradictory yet make sense with more thought.

* Trochaic: a foot consisting of an accented and unaccented syllable.

The Italian/Petrarchan sonnet is named after Petrarch, an Italian Renaissance poet.

Longfellow's Hiawatha uses this meter, which can quickly become singsong (the accented syllable is italicized): "By the shores of GitcheGumee By the shining Big-Sea-water."

For instance, most of us would know the difference between a mechanic's being as reliable as George Washington or as reliable as Benedict Arnold.

* Literary convention: a practice or device which is accepted as a necessary, useful, or given feature of a genre, e.g., the proscenium stage (the "picture-frame" stage of most theaters), a soliloquy, the epithet or boast in the epic (which those of you who took Core Studies 1 will be familiar with).

* The protagonist is the main character, who is not necessarily a hero or a heroine.

Writers like Faulkner, the Bronte sisters, or Faulkner pull the reader into their work; the reader identifies closely with the characters and is fully involved with the happenings.

Emotional distance, or the lack of it, can be seen with children watching a TV program or a movie; it becomes real for them.

Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds, please-niece-ski-tree.

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

Depending on the circumstances, ambiguity can be negative, leading to confusion or even disaster (the ambiguous wording of a general's note led to the deadly charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War).

Click here for an illustration of these points of view in the story of Sleeping Beauty.

Ballad: a relatively short narrative poem, written to be sung, with a simple and dramatic action.

Consonance repeats consonants, but not the vowels, as in horror-hearer.

The most common figures of speech are these: o A simile: a comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as", e.g., "my love is like a red, red rose" (Robert Burns). o A metaphor: a comparison of two dissimilar things which does not use "like" or "as," e.g., "my love is a red, red rose" (Lilia Melani). o Personification: treating abstractions or inanimate objects as human, that is, giving them human attributes, powers, or feelings, e.g., "nature wept" or "the wind whispered man...

Groups of stories may be set in a larger structure or frame, like The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, or The Arabian Tales.

Figurative language changes the literal meaning, to make a meaning fresh or clearer, to express complexity, to capture a physical or sensory effect, or to extend meaning.

Similarly, fiction, drama, and poetry involve the reader emotionally to different degrees.

Some literary critics call the reptition of any sounds alliteration.

Ambiguity: (1) a statement which has two or more possible meanings; (2) a statement whose meaning is unclear.

* Characters may be classified as round (three-dimensional, fully developed) or as flat (having only a few traits or only enough traits to fulfill their function in the work); as developing (dynamic) characters or as static characters.

The folk ballad is usually anonymous and the presentation impersonal.

Writers like Faulkner, the Bronte sisters, or Faulkner pull the reader into their work; the reader identifies closely with the characters and is fully involved with the happenings.

The most common figures of speech are these: o A simile: a comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as", e.g., "my love is like a red, red rose" (Robert Burns). o A metaphor: a comparison of two dissimilar things which does not use "like" or "as," e.g., "my love is a red, red rose" (Lilia Melani). o Personification: treating abstractions or inanimate objects as human, that is, giving them human attributes, powers, or feelings, e.g., "nature wept" or "the wind whispered man...

The Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains (four lines each) and a concluding couplet (two lines).

Ambiguity: (1) a statement which has two or more possible meanings; (2) a statement whose meaning is unclear.

* Characters may be classified as round (three-dimensional, fully developed) or as flat (having only a few traits or only enough traits to fulfill their function in the work); as developing (dynamic) characters or as static characters.

A Farewell to Arms You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.

Depending on the circumstances, ambiguity can be negative, leading to confusion or even disaster (the ambiguous wording of a general's note led to the deadly charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War).

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

Irony is often confused with sarcasm and satire: * Sarcasm is one kind of irony; it is praise which is really an insult; sarcasm generally invovles malice, the desire to put someone down, e.g.,

* A foil is a secondary character who contrasts with a major character; in Hamlet, Laertes and Fortinbras, whose fathers have been killed, are foils for Hamlet.

For example, when we read a comic book, we accept that a light bulb appearing above the head of a comic book character means the character suddently got an idea.

Sometimes irony is classified into types: in situational irony, expectations aroused by a situation are reversed; in cosmic irony or the irony of fate, misfortune is the result of fate, chance, or God; in dramatic irony. the audience knows more than the characters in the play, so that words and action have additional meaning for the audience; Socractic irony is named after Socrates' teaching method, whereby he assumes ignorance and openness to opposing points of view which turn out to...

* Denotation: the literal meaning of a word; there are no emotions, values, or images associated with denotative meaning.

The Romantic poets were attracted to this form, as Longfellow with "The Wreck of the Hesperus," Coleridge with the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (which is longer and more elaborate than the folk balad) and Keats with "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (which more closely resembles the folk ballad).

Of course connotative meanings do not necessarily reflect reality; for instance, if someone said, "His mother is not very motherly," you would immediately understand the difference between motherly (connotation) and mother (denotation).

A moralistic person might be shocked by any sexual scene and condemn a book or movie as dirty; a sentimentalist is automatically moved by any love story, regardless of the quality of the writing or the acting; someone requiring excitement may enjoy any violent story or movie, regardless of how mindless, unmotivated or brutal the violence is.

Similarly, fiction, drama, and poetry involve the reader emotionally to different degrees.

Sometimes the term means the mask or alter-ego of the author; it is often used for first person works and lyric poems, to distinguish the writer of the work from the character in the work.

In indirect presentation, a character's traits are revealed by action and speech.

On the other hand, writers often use it to achieve special effects, for instance, to reflect the complexity of an issue or to indicate the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of determining truth.

* Spondee: a foot consisting of two accented syllables, as in the word heartbreak.

* Characters may be classified as round (three-dimensional, fully developed) or as flat (having only a few traits or only enough traits to fulfill their function in the work); as developing (dynamic) characters or as static characters.

Hemingway, on the other hand, maintains a greatr distance from the reader.

It occurs in everyday speech in such prhases as "tittle-tattle," "bag and baggage," "bed and board," "primrose path," and "through thick and thin" and in sayings like "look before you leap."

Apostrophes are generally capitalized. o Onomatopoeia: a word whose sounds seem to duplicate the sounds they describe--hiss, buzz, bang, murmur, meow, growl. o Oxymoron: a statement with two parts which seem contradictory; examples: sad joy, a wise fool, the sound of silence, or Hamlet's saying, "I must be cruel only to be kind" * Elevated language or elevated style: formal, dignitifed language; it often uses more elaborate figures of speech.

* Stock situation: frequently recurring sequence of action in a genre, e.g., rags-to-riches, boy-meets-girl, the eternal triangle, the innocent proves himself or herself.

* Stock character: character types of a genre, e.g., the heroine disguised as a man in Elizabethan drama, the confidant, the hardboiled detective, the tightlipped sheriff, the girl next door, the evil hunters in a Tarzan movie, ethnic or racial stereotypes, the cruel stepmother and Prince Charming in fairy tales.

A narrator may be trustworthy or untrustworthy, involved or uninvolved.

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

Two characteristics of the ballad are incremental repetition and the ballad stanza.

Notice the difference in style of the opening paragraphs of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

In English poetry, the most common meters are these: * Iambic: a foot consisting of an unaccented and accented syllable.

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

Elevated language is used to give dignity to a hero (note the speechs of heros like Achilles or Agamemnon in the Iliad), to express the superiority of God and religious matters generally (as in prayers or in the King James version of the Bible), to indicate the importance of certain events (the ritual language of the traditional marriage ceremony), etc.

The ballad stanza is four lines; commonly, the first and third lines contain four feet or accents, the second and fourth lines contain three feet.

The most common figures of speech are these: o A simile: a comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as", e.g., "my love is like a red, red rose" (Robert Burns). o A metaphor: a comparison of two dissimilar things which does not use "like" or "as," e.g., "my love is a red, red rose" (Lilia Melani). o Personification: treating abstractions or inanimate objects as human, that is, giving them human attributes, powers, or feelings, e.g., "nature wept" or "the wind whispered many truth...

Language can be classified in a number of ways.

* Characters may be classified as round (three-dimensional, fully developed) or as flat (having only a few traits or only enough traits to fulfill their function in the work); as developing (dynamic) characters or as static characters.

Theme: (1) the abstract concept explored in a literary work; (2) frequently recurring ideas, such as enjoy-life while-you-can; (3) repetition of a meaningful element in a work, such as references to sight, vision, and blindness in Oedipus Rex. Sometimes the theme is also called the motif.

Irony is often confused with sarcasm and satire: * Sarcasm is one kind of irony; it is praise which is really an insult; sarcasm generally invovles malice, the desire to put someone down, e.g.,

Incremental repetition repeats one or more lines with small but significant variations that advance the action.

It occurs in everyday speech in such prhases as "tittle-tattle," "bag and baggage," "bed and board," "primrose path," and "through thick and thin" and in sayings like "look before you leap."

Figurative language changes the literal meaning, to make a meaning fresh or clearer, to express complexity, to capture a physical or sensory effect, or to extend meaning.

On the other hand, writers often use it to achieve special effects, for instance, to reflect the complexity of an issue or to indicate the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of determining truth.

Consonance repeats consonants, but not the vowels, as in horror-hearer.

A moralistic person might be shocked by any sexual scene and condemn a book or movie as dirty; a sentimentalist is automatically moved by any love story, regardless of the quality of the writing or the acting; someone requiring excitement may enjoy any violent story or movie, regardless of how mindless, unmotivated or brutal the violence is.

Longfellow's Hiawatha uses this meter, which can quickly become singsong (the accented syllable is italicized): "By the shores of GitcheGumee By the shining Big-Sea-water."

The most obvious example of aesthetic distance (also referred to simply as distance) occurs with paintings.

Genre: a literary species or form, e.g., tragedy, epic, comedy, novel, essay, biography, lyric poem.

Some literary critics call the reptition of any sounds alliteration.

Theme: (1) the abstract concept explored in a literary work; (2) frequently recurring ideas, such as enjoy-life while-you-can; (3) repetition of a meaningful element in a work, such as references to sight, vision, and blindness in Oedipus Rex. Sometimes the theme is also called the motif.

For most people, the word mother calls up very strong positive feelings and associations--loving, self-sacrificing, always there for you, understanding; the denotative meaning, on the other hand, is simply "a female animal who has borne one or more chldren."

Apostrophes are generally capitalized. o Onomatopoeia: a word whose sounds seem to duplicate the sounds they describe--hiss, buzz, bang, murmur, meow, growl. o Oxymoron: a statement with two parts which seem contradictory; examples: sad joy, a wise fool, the sound of silence, or Hamlet's saying, "I must be cruel only to be kind" * Elevated language or elevated style: formal, dignitifed language; it often uses more elaborate figures of speech.

Ambiguity: (1) a statement which has two or more possible meanings; (2) a statement whose meaning is unclear.

Theme: (1) the abstract concept explored in a literary work; (2) frequently recurring ideas, such as enjoy-life while-you-can; (3) repetition of a meaningful element in a work, such as references to sight, vision, and blindness in Oedipus Rex. Sometimes the theme is also called the motif.

* A foil is a secondary character who contrasts with a major character; in Hamlet, Laertes and Fortinbras, whose fathers have been killed, are foils for Hamlet.

Shakespeare frequently uses unrhymed iambic pentameter in his plays; the technical name for this line is blank verse.

These lines from Shelley's Cloud are anapestic: "Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb I arise and unbuild it again."

The most common figures of speech are these: o A simile: a comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as", e.g., "my love is like a red, red rose" (Robert Burns). o A metaphor: a comparison of two dissimilar things which does not use "like" or "as," e.g., "my love is a red, red rose" (Lilia Melani). o Personification: treating abstractions or inanimate objects as human, that is, giving them human attributes, powers, or feelings, e.g., "nature wept" or "the wind whispered man...

* Denotation: the literal meaning of a word; there are no emotions, values, or images associated with denotative meaning.

* The most obvious point of view is probably first person or "I." * The omniscient narrator knows everything, may reveal the motivations, thoughts and feelings of the characters, and gives the reader information.

Depending on the circumstances, ambiguity can be negative, leading to confusion or even disaster (the ambiguous wording of a general's note led to the deadly charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War).

Aesthetic distance: degree of emotional involvement in a work of art.

It occurs in everyday speech in such prhases as "tittle-tattle," "bag and baggage," "bed and board," "primrose path," and "through thick and thin" and in sayings like "look before you leap."

* Stock character: character types of a genre, e.g., the heroine disguised as a man in Elizabethan drama, the confidant, the hardboiled detective, the tightlipped sheriff, the girl next door, the evil hunters in a Tarzan movie, ethnic or racial stereotypes, the cruel stepmother and Prince Charming in fairy tales.

Theme: (1) the abstract concept explored in a literary work; (2) frequently recurring ideas, such as enjoy-life while-you-can; (3) repetition of a meaningful element in a work, such as references to sight, vision, and blindness in Oedipus Rex. Sometimes the theme is also called the motif.

The Romantic poets used the ode to explore both personal or general problems; they often started with a meditation on something in nature, as did Keats in "Ode to a Nightingale" or Shelley in"Ode to the West Wind."

The Romantic poets were attracted to this form, as Longfellow with "The Wreck of the Hesperus," Coleridge with the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (which is longer and more elaborate than the folk balad) and Keats with "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (which more closely resembles the folk ballad).

A common use for alliteration is emphasis.

Aesthetic distance: degree of emotional involvement in a work of art.

A common use for alliteration is emphasis.

The reader has to interpret them and uncover their meaning.

Theme: (1) the abstract concept explored in a literary work; (2) frequently recurring ideas, such as enjoy-life while-you-can; (3) repetition of a meaningful element in a work, such as references to sight, vision, and blindness in Oedipus Rex. Sometimes the theme is also called the motif.

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

Characterization: the way an author presents characters.

Sometimes irony is classified into types: in situational irony, expectations aroused by a situation are reversed; in cosmic irony or the irony of fate, misfortune is the result of fate, chance, or God; in dramatic irony. the audience knows more than the characters in the play, so that words and action have additional meaning for the audience; Socractic irony is named after Socrates' teaching method, whereby he assumes ignorance and openness to opposing points of view which turn out to...

Ballad: a relatively short narrative poem, written to be sung, with a simple and dramatic action.

Notice the difference in style of the opening paragraphs of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

Or in ordinary conversation, we might use a paradox, "Deep down he's really very shallow."

For instance, most of us would know the difference between a mechanic's being as reliable as George Washington or as reliable as Benedict Arnold.

A moralistic person might be shocked by any sexual scene and condemn a book or movie as dirty; a sentimentalist is automatically moved by any love story, regardless of the quality of the writing or the acting; someone requiring excitement may enjoy any violent story or movie, regardless of how mindless, unmotivated or brutal the violence is.

For example, when we read a comic book, we accept that a light bulb appearing above the head of a comic book character means the character suddently got an idea.

Other paintings require us to stand close to see the whole; their design and any figures become less clear as we move back from the painting.

There are many kinds of end rhyme: * True rhyme is what most people think of as rhyme; the sounds are nearly identical--notion, motion, potion, for example.

* A persona is a fictional character.

* Abstract language refers to things that are intangilble, that is, which are perceived not through the senses but by the mind, such as truth, God, education, vice, transportation, poetry, war, love.

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

The title of the country song "Heaven's Just a Sin Away" is deliberately ambiguous; at a religious level, it means that committing a sin keeps us out of heaven, but at a physical level, it means that committing a sin (sex) will bring heaven (pleasure).

* Literary convention: a practice or device which is accepted as a necessary, useful, or given feature of a genre, e.g., the proscenium stage (the "picture-frame" stage of most theaters), a soliloquy, the epithet or boast in the epic (which those of you who took Core Studies 1 will be familiar with).

Keats starts his ode with a real nightingale, but quickly it becomes a symbol, standing for a life of pure, unmixed joy; then before the end of the poem it becomes only a bird again.

The most common figures of speech are these: o A simile: a comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as", e.g., "my love is like a red, red rose" (Robert Burns). o A metaphor: a comparison of two dissimilar things which does not use "like" or "as," e.g., "my love is a red, red rose" (Lilia Melani). o Personification: treating abstractions or inanimate objects as human, that is, giving them human attributes, powers, or feelings, e.g., "nature wept" or "the wind whispered man...

Obvious examples are flags, which symbolize a nation; the cross is a symbol for Christianity; Uncle Sam a symbol for the United States.

The Romantic poets were attracted to this form, as Longfellow with "The Wreck of the Hesperus," Coleridge with the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (which is longer and more elaborate than the folk balad) and Keats with "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (which more closely resembles the folk ballad).

Ballads often open abruptly, present brief descriptions, and use concise dialogue.

Satirists frequently use irony.

* Stock situation: frequently recurring sequence of action in a genre, e.g., rags-to-riches, boy-meets-girl, the eternal triangle, the innocent proves himself or herself.

Emily Dickinson frequently uses partial rhymes.

The Romantic poets were attracted to this form, as Longfellow with "The Wreck of the Hesperus," Coleridge with the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (which is longer and more elaborate than the folk balad) and Keats with "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (which more closely resembles the folk ballad).

Notice the difference in style of the opening paragraphs of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

The antagonist is the opponent; the antagonist may be society, nature, a person, or an aspect of the protagonist.

A moralistic person might be shocked by any sexual scene and condemn a book or movie as dirty; a sentimentalist is automatically moved by any love story, regardless of the quality of the writing or the acting; someone requiring excitement may enjoy any violent story or movie, regardless of how mindless, unmotivated or brutal the violence is.

Concrete language identifies things perceived through the senses (touch, smell, sight, hearing, and taste), such as soft, stench, red, loud, or bitter.

Writers like Faulkner, the Bronte sisters, or Faulkner pull the reader into their work; the reader identifies closely with the characters and is fully involved with the happenings.

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

Modern English poetry is metrical, i.e., it relies on accented and unaccented syllables.

Though it is sometimes used only for a brief poem about feeling (like the sonnet).it is more often applied to a poem expressing the complex evolution of thoughts and feeling, such as the elegy, the dramatic monologue, and the ode.

Though it is sometimes used only for a brief poem about feeling (like the sonnet).it is more often applied to a poem expressing the complex evolution of thoughts and feeling, such as the elegy, the dramatic monologue, and the ode.

* Stock character: character types of a genre, e.g., the heroine disguised as a man in Elizabethan drama, the confidant, the hardboiled detective, the tightlipped sheriff, the girl next door, the evil hunters in a Tarzan movie, ethnic or racial stereotypes, the cruel stepmother and Prince Charming in fairy tales.

Obvious examples are flags, which symbolize a nation; the cross is a symbol for Christianity; Uncle Sam a symbol for the United States.

Writers like Faulkner, the Bronte sisters, or Faulkner pull the reader into their work; the reader identifies closely with the characters and is fully involved with the happenings.

Listen for the accents in this line from Marlowe, "Come live with me and be my love."

Themes in Hamlet include the nature of filial duty and the dilemma of the idealist in a non-ideal situation.

It can also be used to reveal a self-important or a pretentious character, for humor and/or for satire.

Notice the difference in style of the opening paragraphs of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

Irony: the discrepancy between what is said and what is meant, what is said and what is done, what is expected or intended and what happens, what is meant or said and what others understand.

Similarly, fiction, drama, and poetry involve the reader emotionally to different degrees.

Ambiguity: (1) a statement which has two or more possible meanings; (2) a statement whose meaning is unclear.

The Italian/Petrarchan sonnet is named after Petrarch, an Italian Renaissance poet.

The most obvious example of aesthetic distance (also referred to simply as distance) occurs with paintings.

* With a limited omniscient narrator, the material is presented from the point of view of a character, in third person.

The Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains (four lines each) and a concluding couplet (two lines).

Meter: a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables which are organized into patterns, called feet.

Paradox: a statement whose two parts seem contradictory yet make sense with more thought.

Theme: (1) the abstract concept explored in a literary work; (2) frequently recurring ideas, such as enjoy-life while-you-can; (3) repetition of a meaningful element in a work, such as references to sight, vision, and blindness in Oedipus Rex. Sometimes the theme is also called the motif.

* Stock situation: frequently recurring sequence of action in a genre, e.g., rags-to-riches, boy-meets-girl, the eternal triangle, the innocent proves himself or herself.

* Stock response: a habitual or automatic response based on the reader's beliefs or feelings, rather than on the work itself.

Some paintings require us to stand back to see the design of the whole painting; standing close, we see the technique of the painting, say the brush strokes, but not the whole.

* The protagonist is the main character, who is not necessarily a hero or a heroine.

* A persona is a fictional character.

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

* Literary convention: a practice or device which is accepted as a necessary, useful, or given feature of a genre, e.g., the proscenium stage (the "picture-frame" stage of most theaters), a soliloquy, the epithet or boast in the epic (which those of you who took Core Studies 1 will be familiar with).

Writers like Faulkner, the Bronte sisters, or Faulkner pull the reader into their work; the reader identifies closely with the characters and is fully involved with the happenings.

The ode often praises people, the arts of music and poetry, natural scenes, or abstract concepts.

Click here for a fuller discussion of genres.

Ambiguity: (1) a statement which has two or more possible meanings; (2) a statement whose meaning is unclear.

Ballad: a relatively short narrative poem, written to be sung, with a simple and dramatic action.

Elevated language is used to give dignity to a hero (note the speechs of heros like Achilles or Agamemnon in the Iliad), to express the superiority of God and religious matters generally (as in prayers or in the King James version of the Bible), to indicate the importance of certain events (the ritual language of the traditional marriage ceremony), etc.

The Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines).

* Literary convention: a practice or device which is accepted as a necessary, useful, or given feature of a genre, e.g., the proscenium stage (the "picture-frame" stage of most theaters), a soliloquy, the epithet or boast in the epic (which those of you who took Core Studies 1 will be familiar with).

* Weak rhyme, also called slant, oblique, approximate, or half rhyme, refers to words with similar but not identical sounds, e.g., notion-nation, bear-bore, ear-are.

There are many kinds of end rhyme: * True rhyme is what most people think of as rhyme; the sounds are nearly identical--notion, motion, potion, for example.

* Weak rhyme, also called slant, oblique, approximate, or half rhyme, refers to words with similar but not identical sounds, e.g., notion-nation, bear-bore, ear-are.

The emotion is or seems personal In classical Greece, the lyric was a poem written to be sung, accompanied by a lyre.

On the other hand, writers often use it to achieve special effects, for instance, to reflect the complexity of an issue or to indicate the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of determining truth.

Elevated language is used to give dignity to a hero (note the speechs of heros like Achilles or Agamemnon in the Iliad), to express the superiority of God and religious matters generally (as in prayers or in the King James version of the Bible), to indicate the importance of certain events (the ritual language of the traditional marriage ceremony), etc.

Irony is often confused with sarcasm and satire: * Sarcasm is one kind of irony; it is praise which is really an insult; sarcasm generally invovles malice, the desire to put someone down, e.g.,

Emotional distance, or the lack of it, can be seen with children watching a TV program or a movie; it becomes real for them.

Notice the difference in style of the opening paragraphs of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

A Farewell to Arms You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.

Meter: a rhythm of accented and unaccented syllables which are organized into patterns, called feet.

The most common figures of speech are these: o A simile: a comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as", e.g., "my love is like a red, red rose" (Robert Burns). o A metaphor: a comparison of two dissimilar things which does not use "like" or "as," e.g., "my love is a red, red rose" (Lilia Melani). o Personification: treating abstractions or inanimate objects as human, that is, giving them human attributes, powers, or feelings, e.g., "nature wept" or "the wind whispered man...

Elevated language is used to give dignity to a hero (note the speechs of heros like Achilles or Agamemnon in the Iliad), to express the superiority of God and religious matters generally (as in prayers or in the King James version of the Bible), to indicate the importance of certain events (the ritual language of the traditional marriage ceremony), etc.

Themes in Hamlet include the nature of filial duty and the dilemma of the idealist in a non-ideal situation.

* The protagonist is the main character, who is not necessarily a hero or a heroine.

Tone may be playful, formal, intimate, angry, serious, ironic, outraged, baffled, tender, serene, depressed, etc.

In this course, I will not be asking you to identify meters and metrical lines, but I would like you to have some awareness of their existence.

The folk ballad is usually anonymous and the presentation impersonal.

An allusion: a brief reference to a person, event, place, or phrase.

* Stock response: a habitual or automatic response based on the reader's beliefs or feelings, rather than on the work itself.

The most common figures of speech are these: o A simile: a comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as", e.g., "my love is like a red, red rose" (Robert Burns). o A metaphor: a comparison of two dissimilar things which does not use "like" or "as," e.g., "my love is a red, red rose" (Lilia Melani). o Personification: treating abstractions or inanimate objects as human, that is, giving them human attributes, powers, or feelings, e.g., "nature wept" or "the wind whispered man...

However, there are specialized terms for other sound-repetitions.

* Stock character: character types of a genre, e.g., the heroine disguised as a man in Elizabethan drama, the confidant, the hardboiled detective, the tightlipped sheriff, the girl next door, the evil hunters in a Tarzan movie, ethnic or racial stereotypes, the cruel stepmother and Prince Charming in fairy tales.

Apostrophes are generally capitalized. o Onomatopoeia: a word whose sounds seem to duplicate the sounds they describe--hiss, buzz, bang, murmur, meow, growl. o Oxymoron: a statement with two parts which seem contradictory; examples: sad joy, a wise fool, the sound of silence, or Hamlet's saying, "I must be cruel only to be kind" * Elevated language or elevated style: formal, dignitifed language; it often uses more elaborate figures of speech.

The most obvious example of aesthetic distance (also referred to simply as distance) occurs with paintings.

Sometimes the term means the mask or alter-ego of the author; it is often used for first person works and lyric poems, to distinguish the writer of the work from the character in the work.

Consonance repeats consonants, but not the vowels, as in horror-hearer.

The most common figures of speech are these: o A simile: a comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as", e.g., "my love is like a red, red rose" (Robert Burns). o A metaphor: a comparison of two dissimilar things which does not use "like" or "as," e.g., "my love is a red, red rose" (Lilia Melani). o Personification: treating abstractions or inanimate objects as human, that is, giving them human attributes, powers, or feelings, e.g., "nature wept" or "the wind whispered many truth...

The Romantic poets were attracted to this form, as Longfellow with "The Wreck of the Hesperus," Coleridge with the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (which is longer and more elaborate than the folk balad) and Keats with "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (which more closely resembles the folk ballad).

Alliteration: the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word, such as the repetition of b sounds in Keats's "beaded bubbles winking at the brim" ("Ode to a Nightingale") or Coleridge's "Five miles meandering in a mazy motion ("Kubla Khan").

Sometimes irony is classified into types: in situational irony, expectations aroused by a situation are reversed; in cosmic irony or the irony of fate, misfortune is the result of fate, chance, or God; in dramatic irony. the audience knows more than the characters in the play, so that words and action have additional meaning for the audience; Socractic irony is named after Socrates' teaching method, whereby he assumes ignorance and openness to opposing points of view which turn out to...

Keats starts his ode with a real nightingale, but quickly it becomes a symbol, standing for a life of pure, unmixed joy; then before the end of the poem it becomes only a bird again.

The three witches' speech in Macbeth uses it: "Double, double, toil and trouble."

Depending on the circumstances, ambiguity can be negative, leading to confusion or even disaster (the ambiguous wording of a general's note led to the deadly charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War).

Structure: framework of a work of literature; the organization or over-all design of a work.

A moralistic person might be shocked by any sexual scene and condemn a book or movie as dirty; a sentimentalist is automatically moved by any love story, regardless of the quality of the writing or the acting; someone requiring excitement may enjoy any violent story or movie, regardless of how mindless, unmotivated or brutal the violence is.

It occurs in everyday speech in such prhases as "tittle-tattle," "bag and baggage," "bed and board," "primrose path," and "through thick and thin" and in sayings like "look before you leap."

Fiction: prose narrative based on imagination, usually the novel or the short story.

* Denotation: the literal meaning of a word; there are no emotions, values, or images associated with denotative meaning.

The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.

The most obvious example of aesthetic distance (also referred to simply as distance) occurs with paintings.

For instance, most of us would know the difference between a mechanic's being as reliable as George Washington or as reliable as Benedict Arnold.

The folk ballad is usually anonymous and the presentation impersonal.

Aesthetic distance: degree of emotional involvement in a work of art.

Tragedy: broadly defined, a literary and particularly a dramatic presentation of serious actions in which the chief character has a disastrous fate.

* Stock character: character types of a genre, e.g., the heroine disguised as a man in Elizabethan drama, the confidant, the hardboiled detective, the tightlipped sheriff, the girl next door, the evil hunters in a Tarzan movie, ethnic or racial stereotypes, the cruel stepmother and Prince Charming in fairy tales.

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A narrator may be trustworthy or untrustworthy, involved or uninvolved.

* Stock character: character types of a genre, e.g., the heroine disguised as a man in Elizabethan drama, the confidant, the hardboiled detective, the tightlipped sheriff, the girl next door, the evil hunters in a Tarzan movie, ethnic or racial stereotypes, the cruel stepmother and Prince Charming in fairy tales.

Tone may be playful, formal, intimate, angry, serious, ironic, outraged, baffled, tender, serene, depressed, etc.

Skillful poets rarely use one meter throughout a poem but use these meters in combinations; however, a poem generally has one dominant meter.

Depending on the circumstances, ambiguity can be negative, leading to confusion or even disaster (the ambiguous wording of a general's note led to the deadly charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War).