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Sonnets & Poetry (21)
English (Shakespearean) Sonnet, Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet, Iambic Pentameter, Meter, Iamb, Rhyme Scheme, Volta, Alliteration, Assonance, Consonance, Stanza, Octet, Sestet, Quatrain, Couplet, Enjambment, End rhyme, Full rhyme, Near/Off/Half/Slant Rhyme, Sonnet Sequence/Sonnet Cycle/Corona/Crown of Sonnets, Blank Verse
Other Types of Poems (5)
free verse, villanelle, sestina, terza rima, ballads
Other Poetic Techniques (3)
anaphora, epistrophe, inversion
Figurative Language (16)
figurative language, simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, personification, apostrophe, conceit, hyperbole, pun, double entendre, rhetorical question (=erotema), oxymoron, paradox, synesthesia, denotation, connotation
Irony (4)
irony, verbal irony, situational irony, dramatic irony
Narration (5)
Narration, first person narration, third person limited narration, third person omniscient narration, stream of consciousness
Writing Style (9)
Style, Voice, Diction, Syntax, Tone, Mood, Dialect, Colloquialism, Vernacular
Character (13)
Characterization, Direct Characterization, Indirect Characterization, Dynamic Character, Static Character, Round Character, Flat Character, foil, protagonist, antagonist, hero, antihero
Plot & Events (10)
Plot, exposition, inciting action, rising action, climax, denouement (resolution), flashback, foreshadowing, Internal conflict, external conflict,
Other Literary Terms from First Semester (4)
motif, symbol, epigraph, epiphany
(Ninety Terms Total)
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definition: iambic pentameter is a common meter in poetry consisting of an unrhymed line with five feet or accents, each foot containing an unaccented syllable and an accented syllable
Example:
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thy self thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee
English (Shakespearean) Sonnet: A fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter with a carefully patterened rhyme scheme. An English or Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains and a couplet with the rhyme pattern of abab cdcd efef gg.
Example: When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Enjambment
Definition: the continuation of the sense of a phrase beyond the end of a line of verse. It is also known as run-on poetry.
Example: From T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried…
Full Rhyme/Perfect Rhyme
Definition: When the later part of a word of phrase is identical sounding to another.
Look up into the sky
Boy it is mighty high
Definition: a meter is the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that make up a line of poetry. Meter gives rhythm and regularity to poetry.
Example:
Shall I compare thee to a summers day
consonance: The repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants but with a change in the intervening vowel.
Example: Live-love
Lean-alone
Pitter-patter
Melanie T.
Octet: A stanza consisting of eight lines that is also known as an octave.
Example:
Valentine
Remember a funny night
my family made a circle by and by
like standing on the shore a heart a visceral
thing. This moment my hearts clear.
Well plant (my heart) a tree here.
My heart my heart my heart.
Is glad.
-Tony Tost
Quatrains- four line stanzas with rhyme and meter patterns
Children
A child choses not to be born,
They are a gift from God above,
the thing that makes them most forlorn,
Is living without parents' love.
Definition- Blank Verse-
unrhymed verse, especially the unrhymed iambic pentameter most frequently used in English dramatic, epic, and reflective verse.
Ex: Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun
The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables, with changes in the intervening consonants.
Example: The angry animals aggregated about an airport anxiously
Iamb- A meterical foot of 2 syllables , one short unstressed and one long stressed.
Example- Come live/with me/and be/my love
Mary-Beth
VOLTA: The place at which a distinct turn of thought occurs. The term is most commonly used for the characteristic transition point in a sonnet, as between the octave and sestet of a Petrarchan sonnet.
EXAMPLE (found in the third quatrain: [Mr. Cook's note] line 8 contains the last of the metaphors for love-as-unchanging & line 9 begins a metaphorical contrast between love, which does not end, and the beauty of youth, which does end):
Sonnet #116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a)
Admit impediments. Love is not love (b)
Which alters when it alteration finds, (a)
Or bends with the remover to remove. (b)
O no, it is an ever fixed mark (c)
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d)
It is the star to every wand'ring barque, (c)
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. (d)
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e)
Within his bending sickle's compass come; (f)
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e)
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. (f)
If this be error and upon me proved, (g)
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)
I believe John Ryan has defined and provided an example for ASSONANCE.
Alliteration
Definition- the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words
Example- Alliteration is simply a succession of similar sounds
Couplet:
A couplet is a pair of lines of verse. It consists of two lines that usually rhyme and have the same meter.
Example:
True wit is nature to advantage distressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.
-- Eve King
Note that the couplet is written in two lines, has the same meter (stressed/unstressed)and the sense of the poem, as well as the sound, rhyme.
epistrophe
the repetition of a word or expression at the end of sucessive phrases, clauses, sentences or verses especially for rhetorical or poetic effect.
example:"government of the people, by the people, for the people"
Free Verse
Definition: Free verse is just what it says it is - poetry that is written without proper rules about form, rhyme, rhythm, meter, etc.
An example of free verse would be Walt Whitman's poetry.
Synesthesia
Definition: Taking one type of sensory input (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) and comingling it with another separate sense in an impossible way. In the resulting figure of speech, we end up talking about how a color sounds, or how a smell looks.
Example: "The scent of the rose rang like a bell through the garden." or "I caressed the darkness with cool fingers."
verbal irony
A figure of speech. The speaker intends to be understood as meaning something that contrasts with the literal or unusual meaning of what he says. There are two kinds of verbal irony: sarcasm and overstatement.
example of sarcasm: Dad is finally out of patience with picking up after his son, who can't seem to be trained to put his dirty clothes in the hamper instead of letting them drop wherever he happens to be when he takes them off. "Would Milord please let me know when it pleases him to have his humble servant pick up after him?"
example of overstatement:Someone tells us of an occasion on which he told an off-color joke about a grandmother and then realized to his surprise that his own grandmother, a prim and proper lady, happened to be standing right behind him. "I literally died," he says.
Simile is the comparison of two unlike things using like or as.
Example- He eats like a pig. Vines like golden prisons.
Narration is assimilating information and retelling it.
Internal Conflict - an argument or decision-making process within one character's mind.
Example- "Should I swallow my pride and go visit my son, or should I wait until he comes to me with an apology?" An internal conflict has a motive and its resolution is important to the development of the plot.
Ballad - “any light, simple song, one of sentimental or romantic character, having two or more stanzas all sung to the same melody.” (Dictionary.com) This form of poetry is often derived from a piece of folklore.
Example: The poem (converted to song) “Greensleeves” is an example of an English Ballad, since it deals with a romance built in folklore, with a strong, repetitive melody.
Denotation - the direct meaning(s) of a word or expression, as distinguished from the ideas or meanings associated with it or suggested by it.
Example: Rain is the denotation of water falling – since it clarifies a specific. Also, poodle would be the denotation of a certain breed of dog.
Foil - to prevent the success of something/someone – usually frustrating and/or defeating
Example: Scooby Doo would be Old Man Johnson’s foil, since Scooby Doo prevents Old Man Johnson from scaring the citizens of Coolsville. (Old Man Johnson is prevented from success).
Hyperbole: A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect.
Ex. I would rather spoon out my eyes than stop using hyperboles.
Vernacular: Expressed or written in the native language of a place, as literary works.
Ex. Dood, quit actin' queh.
Tone: A literary technique that encompasses the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience in a literary work.
Ex. Playful Tone: It was a wacky day in the fun house.
Antihero
Definition: A protagonist who is a non-hero or the antithesis of a traditional hero. While the traditional hero may be dashing, strong, brave, resourceful, or handsome, the antihero may be incompetent, unlucky, clumsy, dumb, ugly, or clownish.
Examples would be Don Quixote, who is senile, or the girlish knight Sir Thopas from "Sir Thopas."
Personification- A figure of speech in which inanimate objects or abstractions are endowed with human qualities or are represented as possessing human form.
example:Flowers danced about the lawn
The flowers are personified, by being given the ability to dance.
Third person omniscient: A method of storytelling in which the narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of all of the characters in the story, as opposed to third person limited, which adheres closely to one character's perspective.
example: Of Mice and Men uses an third person omniscient narrator. The narrator has access to both Lenny and George's thoughts.
Motif- A recurrent thematic element in an artistic or literary work. A dominant theme or central idea.
example: Nature was a motif in the novel Wide Sargasso Sea.
Anaphora- repetition of a word or words at the beginning of two or more successive verses, clauses, or sentences.
Example- This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
The word "this" is being repeated at the begining of the sentences.
Connotation- The emotional implications and associations that a word may carry, as distinguished from its denotative meanings.
Example- "Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts." Oliver Wendell Holmes
The denotation of "home" is a place where one lives and his suggests it to be something more complex.
Flat Character- Flat characters are minor characters in a work of fiction who do not tend to undergo substantial emotional change or growth. Flat characters are also referred to as "two-dimensional characters."
Example- Grendel in Beowulf he was just depicted as evil and really nothing else.
Literary Terms
Pun: The use of words those are alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning, a play on words.
Example: “A little more than kin, and less than kind”
Both kin and kind both have similar meanings but kind also has another meaning which is to be nice.
Direct characterization: Tells the audience what the personality of the character is.
Example: “The patient boy and the quiet girl were both well mannered and did not disobey their mother.”
This sentence describes the two characters as patient and well mannered.
Diction: Choice of words.
Example: Yesterday it was warm outside.
Vs.
Yesterday afternoon the sun was shining vibrantly causing it to be warm outside.
The first sentence is simple compared to the second sentence which is more complicated and wordy.
Double Entendre:
A word or expression capable of two interpretations with one usually risqué.
Example:Therefore I lie with her and she with me.
Indirect Characterization:
A method of characterization in which an author tells what a character looks like, does, and says and how other characters react to him or her.
Example: Betsy is the most generous person that I know. Each week, she goes to East Hastings and volunteers at the soup kitchen. She works there for three hours, serving meals to hungry people.
Syntax:The grammatical arrangement of words in sentences.
Example:In the following example, normal syntax (subject, verb, object order) is inverted:
"Whose woods these are I think I know."
Apostrophe: The direct address of an absent or imaginary person or of a personified abstraction, especially as a digression in the course of a speech or composition.
EXAMPLE: …and the orphanage’s caretaker, Mrs. Kensington, who unfortunately met the sickle of death at the hands of her garbage disposal which had been arguably the most misbehaved utility in the home, watched over this historic building from 1968 to 2002.
The bit about the naughty garbage disposal is a digression that is not present or related to the subject of the speech: the orphanage.
Dialect: A variety of a language that is distinguished from other varieties of the same language by features of phonology, grammar, and vocabulary and by its use by a group of speakers who are set off from others geographically or socially.
EXAMPLE: Hey Dere! C'meer once - you gots to read dis a couple-two-tree words on how ta talk like yer from Scansin, hey. Hit's a humdinger! Sit down witch'er brat an' brewski in yer blaze-orange and, cripes sake, in the spirit of Bart and Vince, take a gander, yahhey?
This language is definitely English, but is a variety of the English known as Wisconsin speak. This is how Wisconsins’ speak.
Symbol: Something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible.
EXAMPLE: The android scoured the sector, which was recently liquidated by nuclear fallout, and found amongst a pile of twisted steel a scorched toothbrush. If the android was capable of expressing emotions or producing tears, it certainly would have become struck with a deep sense of sadness.
In this short paragraph, the toothbrush amongst the rubble represents that life once thrived here and the land that the android stands upon might possibly have been a beautiful society.
inciting action
An action or situation that causes conflict for the hero. The hero must resolve this conflict by taking action.
example: In "Jane Eyre" she must take action after discovering that Rochester is married. She chooses to run away from Thornfield after feeling betrayed by Rochester's lies.
Synechdoche
A synecdoche is a figure of speech in which the one of the following (or its reverse) is expressed:
A part stands for a whole
An individual stands for a class
A material stands for a thing
Example:
"all hands on deck." (Hands are representing people)
Stream of Consciousness
A literary technique that aims to provide a textual equivalent to the stream of a character’s conscious. Essentially, it is used to describe the unbroken flow of thought and awareness of the waking mind. These often seem hazy and vague.
Example: "Ulysses" by James Joyce is written in stream of consciousness
Epiphany
A sudden revelation of an underlying truth about a person or a situation.
Example:
James Joyce used eiphanies in each of his short stories in Dubliners as his protagonists came to sudden recognitions that changed their view of themselves or their social condition and often sparking a reversal or change of heart.
Conceit- an unusual and sometimes elaborated comparison between two dissimilar things
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
In this poem a person is compared to summer, but the individual described is apparently superior to summer.
Colloquialism- using familiar or informal conversation, slang. Used in literature only when quoting a character.
Appear often in As I Lay Dying
These are funny:
gimme = give me
outta or outa = out of
G'day = Good day (a greeting in Austrailia)
ratbag = rascal, rogue, unpleasant person
y’all = you informal
seconds = second helping of something at a meal
Mood-a prevailing emotional tone or general attitude, or reminiscent of
Ex. The mood of the music was almost funereal.
Metonymy- A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated: for example, "crown" for "royalty". Metonymy is also the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it: for example, describing someone's clothing in order to characterize the individual.
Example: The pen is mightier than the sword.
Pen and sword represent publishing and military force, respectively.
Dramatic irony- A plot device in which the audience's or reader's knowledge of events or individuals surpasses that of the characters.
Example- In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet decides not the kill Claudius while he is praying because he believes the king is seeking forgiveness for his sins and will therefore be sent to heaven. The audience is aware that Claudius is not truly confessing because he can’t bring himself to do so.
Epigraph- An epigraph is a quotation at the beginning of a piece of literature or a chapter. The epigraph introduces or refers to the larger themes of the piece.
Example- In Invisible Man, the epigraph consists of a quote from T.S. Eliot’s Family Reunion and a quote from Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno.
FIRST PERSON NARRATIVE
is a literary technique in which the story is narrated by one character, who explicitly refers to him or herself in the first person, that is, using words and phrases involving "I" and "we".
IRONY
2. Literature.
a. a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated.
b. (esp. in contemporary writing) a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., esp. as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion.
EXPOSITION
3. writing or speech primarily intended to convey information or to explain; a detailed statement or explanation; explanatory treatise: The students prepared expositions on familiar essay topics.
EXAMPLES:
1. The novel Invisible Man is narrated by the main character and uses language such as “I” and “we” including the narrator in the story.
2. In Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” he writes about eating babies as a ironic stab at public population “solutions.”
3. In the plot mountain the exposition is the first part (before the rising action) it explains the characters and setting.
Sestina:
A poem of thirty-nine lines and written in iambic pentameter. Its six-line stanza repeat in an intricate and prescribed order the final word in each of the first six lines. After the sixth stanza, there is a three-line stanza, which uses the six repeating words, two per line.
Example:
Speakin' in general, I'ave tried 'em all
The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world.
Speakin' in general, I'ave found them good
For such as cannot use one bed too long,
But must get 'ence, the same as I'ave done,
An' go observin' matters till they die.
What do it matter where or 'ow we die,
So long as we've our 'ealth to watch it all --
The different ways that different things are done,
An' men an' women lovin' in this world;
Takin' our chances as they come along,
An' when they ain't, pretendin' they are good?
In cash or credit -- no, it aren't no good;
You've to 'ave the 'abit or you'd die,
Unless you lived your life but one day long,
Nor didn't prophesy nor fret at all,
But drew your tucker some'ow from the world,
An' never bothered what you might ha' done.
But, Gawd, what things are they I'aven't done?
I've turned my 'and to most, an' turned it good,
In various situations round the world
For 'im that doth not work must surely die;
But that's no reason man should labour all
'Is life on one same shift -- life's none so long.
Therefore, from job to job I've moved along.
Pay couldn't 'old me when my time was done,
For something in my 'ead upset it all,
Till I'ad dropped whatever 'twas for good,
An', out at sea, be'eld the dock-lights die,
An' met my mate -- the wind that tramps the world!
It's like a book, I think, this bloomin, world,
Which you can read and care for just so long,
But presently you feel that you will die
Unless you get the page you're readi'n' done,
An' turn another -- likely not so good;
But what you're after is to turn'em all.
Gawd bless this world! Whatever she'oth done --
Excep' When awful long -- I've found it good.
So write, before I die, "'E liked it all!"
Static Character:
A character who does not undergo significant change. Whether round or flat, their personalities remain essentially stable throughout the entire work.
Example:
Supporting characters and major characters other than the protagonist.
Paradox:
A paradox can be an apparently true statement or group of statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies logic or intuition.
Example:
A man builds a time machine. He goes into the future and steals something. He then returns, produces his "invention" to the world, claiming it as his own. Eventually, a copy of the device ends up being the item the man originally steals.
Slant/Half/Off/Near Rhyme: Occurs when two or more words share consonance on their final consonants, but have differing vowel sounds.
Examples:
tear - war
prince - trance
It is also referred to as eye rhyme when the words appear that they should rhyme.
Examples:
rain - again
glove - move
VOLTA: The place at which a distinct turn of thought occurs. The term is most commonly used for the characteristic transition point in a sonnet, as between the octave and sestet of a Petrarchan sonnet.
EXAMPLE (found in the third quatrain):
Sonnet #116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a)
Admit impediments. Love is not love (b)
Which alters when it alteration finds, (a)
Or bends with the remover to remove. (b)
O no, it is an ever fixed mark (c)
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d)
It is the star to every wand'ring barque, (c)
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. (d)
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e)
Within his bending sickle's compass come; (f)
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e)
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. (f)
If this be error and upon me proved, (g)
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)
Terza rima- an Italian form of iambic verse consisting of eleven-syllable lines arranged in tercets, the middle line of each tercet rhyming with the first and last lines of the following tercet.
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, a
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead b
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing a
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red. b
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, c
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed . . . b
rhetorical question- a question asked only for effect that does not require an answer
Is the Pope Catholic?
Round character
a character in fiction whose personality, background, motives, and other features are fully delineated by the author.
Jesus
metaphor: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase takes one kind of object or idea and uses them in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them.
example: My house is a prison.
third-person limited narration: focussing a third-person narration through the eyes of a single character.
example: He went to a party and she opened the door. Her hair! Only a goddess could have hair so fine.
external conflict: a character struggles with some outside force or being.
example: A man fighting another's beliefs.
STYLE: those components or features of a literary composition that have to do with the form of expression rather than the content of the thought expressed. Style in fiction refers to the language conventions used to construct the story. A fiction writer can manipulate diction, sentence structure, phrasing, dialogue, and other aspects of language to create style.
EX: Faulkner and Joyce wrote in a style known as "stream of consciousness".
VOICE: The distinctive style or manner of expression of an author or of a character in a book.
EX: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was written in the voice of Stephen Dedalus.
CHARACTERIZATION: The process of conveying information about characters in fiction or conversation. Characters are usually presented through their actions, dialect, and thoughts, as well as by description. Characterization can regard a variety of aspects of a character.
EX: Many readers find Joyce's characterization of Stephen confusing, as he has many differing aspects of his character.
villanelle
A 19-line poem of fixed form consisting of five tercets and a final quatrain on two rhymes, with the first and third lines of the first tercet repeated alternately as a refrain closing the succeeding stanzas and joined as the final couplet of the quatrain.
Example:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Oxymoron definition+ example:
A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined, as in a deafening silence and a mournful optimist.
Dynamic Character definition:
in literature or drama, a character who undergoes a permanent change in outlook or character during the story; also called [developing character]
Example: Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol
foil
character who serves as a contrast to another character
In terms of their willingness to take action both Laertes and Fortinbras are explicit foils for Hamlet.
A number of Stephen's classmates become foils in the final chapter of A Portrait.
antihero
in many modern works the antihero is morally flawed (or simply fails). One might say there are farcical antiheroes (like Don Quixote and Bernard Marx in Brave New World) and tragic antiheroes like Victor Frankenstein in Frankenstein, Winston Smith in 1984, Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart, etc. (Depending upon our understanding of Joyce's tone, Stephen is either a hero and antihero in A Portrait.)
Foreshadowing- the act of providing vague advance indications; representing beforehand
EXAMPLE: In the beginning chapters of Lord of the Flies, William Golding foreshadows action that will come in the eleventh and twelfth chapters. Golding shows the weakness of Piggy and the strength of Ralph and Jack. Ralph represents structure and order as opposed to the much more chaotic scenes.
Climax-A series of statements or ideas in an ascending order of rhetorical force or intensity.
The shepherds’ swain shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning
If these delights thy mind may move
Then live with me and be my love,
Inversion- reversal of the usual or natural order of words; anastrophe.
Or to better explain Invert the word order by placing a prepositional phrase or other expression (at no time, suddenly into, little, seldom, never, etc.
Example of an inversion
At no time did I say you couldn't come.
Hardly had I arrived when he started complaining.
Little did I understand what was happening.
Seldom have I felt so alone.
Figurative Language: expresses a thought in such a way that we see it more clearly, as in a metaphor, a simile, and an analogy. It uses imagery to describe in more depth. These are some common types and their examples:
Simile- “It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear”
Metaphor- “What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East and Juliet is the sun ”
Analogy- America is like a melting pot in that many different people and cultures are joined in it to make a whole that is stronger and better than the sum of its parts.
Allusion- “Superman’s vulnerability to Kryptonite is his Achilles’ heel.”
Other types of figurative language are: metonymy, synecdoche, personification, apostrophe, conceit, hyperbole, pun, double entendre, rhetorical question, oxymoron, paradox, synesthesia, denotation, connotation.
Situational Irony: A discrepancy between expected and actual results of a situation- a juxtaposition that is unjust, inside out, or ridiculous by its nature. This can be positive or negative, and has a twist of humor.
Ex.
The firemen in Gloucester last week left their lunch on the stove in their rush to answer a call to put out a house fire. They returned to find that their stove safety shutoff had malfunctioned and their kitchen was on fire.
Denouement: The final resolution of a narrative series of events, or the place in a piece of literature at which this resolution occurs. Denouement occurs after the climax, and gives us a conclusion.
Ex.
In Jane Eyre, Jane learns that Mr. Rochester’s wife has died, that he is alone and crippled and needs her, and she has been put in a situation to be his equal (via her inheritance) as well as his love.
Ex.
In Cinderella, the prince discovers that she is the owner of the shoe, liberates her from her servitude, and they live happily ever after.
Molly:
ITALIAN SONNET
The Italian (or Petrarchan) Sonnet consists of an octave with an abbaabba rhyme scheme followed by a sestet with a cdcdcd rhyme scheme (or a variation on that scheme). At the beginning of the sestet (line nine) the change in rhyme scheme signifies a change in subject matter. This change or "turn" is called the volta.
Octave, sestet, rhyme scheme, and volta are defined elsewhere among these comments.
Example "London, 1802" by William Wordsworth
~~~~~~~
Jessica:
STANZA
A stanza is a set of lines in a poem. The lines are set apart from other sets of lines by space.
Example:
from a WCW poem...
so much depends *******stanza 1
upon
a red wheel *******stanza 2
barrow
glazed with rain *******stanza 3
water
beside the white *******stanza 4
chickens
Ballad
{A note on the definition of ballad} Another important feature of a ballad is that it tells a story.
Bob Dylan's "Ballad in Plain D" tells the story of a break-up, where as most contemporary songs that are called ballads but aren't true ballads merely refer to the feeling of the break-up without telling the story.
Another ballad is "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is another famous 20th century ballad. It tells the story of a shipwreck.
All I have to say is that John Ryan talks about vowels and consonants, but he can't even pronounce them.
That is just the way you percept John to speak.
i seriously just read this entire list. am i alone? good luck everyone!
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