| A | B |
|---|
| allegory | an extended narrative in prose or verse in which characters, events, and settings represent abstract qualities and in which the writer intends a second meaning to be read beneath the surface story; the underlying meaning may be moral, religious, political, social, or satiric |
| aubade | a poem written about the morning (usually a love song); Robert Browning’s “Parting at Morning” |
| ballad | narrative poem which is, or originally was, meant to be sung; dramatic, condensed and impersonal |
| ballade | three stanzas of eight lines each and a half stanza of four lines (see Envoy); meter is usually iambic or anapestic tetrameter; there is also a refrain in a ballade |
| ballade rhyme scheme | stanza 1: a b a b b c b c; stanza 2: a b a b b c b c; stanza 3: a b a b b c b c; envoy: bcbc |
| blues | form of folk or popular poetry; graphic imagery and themes drawn from a wide range of group and personal experiences distinguish blues lyrics; can also exist as instrumental and vocal music, as a psychological state, as a lifestyle and as a philosophical stance |
| burlesque | a work designed to ridicule attitudes, styles, or subject matter by either handling an elevated subject in a trivial manner or a low subject with mock dignity; may be written for the sheer fun of it; usually, however, it is a form of satire |
| canto | major section of a long poem |
| chorus | among the ancient Greeks the chorus was a group of people, wearing masks, who sang or chanted verse while performing dancelike maneuvers at religious festivals; also served as commentators on the characters and events who expressed traditional moral, religious and social attitudes |
| concrete poetry | refers to the placement of words on the page so that a picture is formed containing the image of the poem itself |
| confessional poetry | a type of narrative and lyric verse which deals with the facts and intimate mental and physical experiences of the poet's own life; the speaker often describes his confused chaotic state, which becomes a metaphor for the state of the world around him; Sylvia Plath |
| devotional poetry | express religious sentiments and explore the spiritual lives of their authors; George Herbert known for his devotional poems, many of which express crises of religious faith |
| didactic poetry | try to persuade the reader of a particular argument or teach a moral truth, rather than examining complexities in that argument or idea, eg. Franklin’s, “Early to bed early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” |
| dirge | lyrical poem or song of lament for the death of a particular person; similar to an elegy but it is less formal and is supposed to be sung |
| dramatic monologue | poem in which a story is related by a single person (not the poet) speaking to one or more persons; we know of the listener's presence and what they say and do only from clues in the discourse of the speaker |
| elegy | formal, meditative poem or lament for the dead |
| envoy | a concluding stanza that is shorter than the preceding ones |
| epic | long narrative poem on a serious subject or action involving heroic characters; told in a formal and elevated style |
| epigram | a short pithy poem or saying of two or four lines containing a neatly expressed thought that often ends with a surprising or witty turn of thoughts; often, but not always comic or satirical |
| free verse | poetry that does not follow a prescribed form but is characterized by the irregularity in the length of lines and the lack of a regular metrical pattern and rhyme |
| Haiku | poem of seventeen syllables arranged in three lines; first and third lines contain five syllables; the second line seven (5 7 5); frequently expresses delicate emotion or presents an image (frequently one of a natural object or scene) |
| heroic couplet | lines of iambic pentameter which rhyme in pairs: aa bb cc dd etc |
| humorous poems | use wordplay or satire to amuse the reader; limericks fall into this category, as does the poetry of Ogden Nash |
| interior monologue | monologue in which the speaker seems to be thinking thoughts rather than speaking to someone; a stream of consciousness which undertakes to present to the reader, the course of consciousness precisely as it occurs in a character's mind |
| light verse | term applied to a great variety of poems that use an ordinary speaking voice and a relaxed manner to treat their subjects gaily, or playfully, or with a good - natured satire |
| lyric | any fairly short poem in which a speaker expresses intense personal emotion, a state of mind or a process of perception, thought and feeling rather than describing a narrative or dramatic situation |
| mock epic | poem that imitates the elaborate form and ceremonious style of the epic genre, but applies it to a commonplace or trivial subject matter; Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" |
| monologue | lengthy speech made by a single person |
| motif | theme, character, device, reference or verbal pattern which recurs in works of literature |
| narrative | story, whether in prose or verse, involving events, characters, and what the characters say and do |
| occasional poems | poem written in commemoration of a specific occasion such as a birthday, marriage, a death, a military engagement or victory, the dedication of a public building or the opening performance of a play |
| ode | a long lyric poem that is serious in subject and treatment, elevated in style, and elaborate in its stanzaic structure |
| oral formulaic poetry | poetry that is composed and transmitted by singers or reciters - includes both narrative forms (epic and ballad) and lyric forms |
| palinode | refers to a poem or poetic passage in which the writer recants a statement made in a previous poem |
| panegyric | poetry that praises something (opposite of satire) |
| parody | a type of high burlesque which imitates or exaggerates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work, or the distinctive style of a particular author; a device of satire |
| pastoral | poetry that describes the simple life of country folk, usually shepherds who live a timeless, painless life in a world that is full of beauty, music and love; other terms used synonymously with pastoral are: ECLOGUE, BUCOLIC, or IDYLLIC |
| poetic drama | drama in which the dialogue is written in the form of poetry |
| refrain | a line, or part of a line, or group of lines, which is repeated in the course of a poem, sometimes with slight changes, usually at the end of each stanza |
| renga | Japanese linked poetry; a typical renga sequence comprised 100 stanzas composed by about three poets at a single sitting of about three hours |
| rhyme royal (or rime royal) | seven line, iambic pentameter stanza with the rhyme scheme: a b a b b c c |
| satire | literary art of diminishing or derogating a subject by making it ridiculous and evoking toward to attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn or indignation; eg. Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" |
| sestina | a poem which consists of six six-line stanzas and a final three line stanza (called an envoy), all unrhymed; the final word in each line of the first stanza becomes the final word in other stanzas |
| soliloquy | an extended speech in which a character, alone on stage, expresses his thoughts; may reveal the private emotions, motives and state of mind of the speaker |
| sonnet | a lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme |
| terza rima | composed of tercets that are interlinked |
| villanelle | poem that consists of five tercets and a quatrain, all on two rhymes; opening line is repeated at the ends of tercets two and four; the final line of the first tercet concludes the third and fifth stanza; two refrain lines are repeated at the end of the quatrain |
