英美诗歌文学术语(全英).pdf

1、Selected English and American Poems Literary Terms for Discussing Poetry Alliteration:The repetition of initial sounds or prominent consonant sounds.Examples:“All the awful auguries;”“pensive poets;”“after lifes fitful fever;”“I slip,I slide,I gloom,I glance”(from Tennysons“The Brook”)Apostrophe:An

2、addressing to an absent or imagined person or to a thing as if it were present and could listen.Example:“Milton!Thou shouldst be living at this hour/England hath need of thee:she is a fen/Of stagnant waters:”(from William Wordsworth,“London,1802”)Assonance:The repetition,in words of close proximity,

3、of same or similar vowel sounds,especially in stressed syllables,preceded and followed by differing consonant sounds.Examples:“deep green sea;”“light/bride;”“tide/mine”(note that tide and hide are rhymes).Ballad:A short narrative poem,especially one that is sung or recited,composed of quatrains,with

4、 8,6,8,6 syllables,with the second and fourth lines rhyming.A ballad often contains a refrain(i.e.a repeated phrase,line,or group of lines).Examples:“Jackaroe;”“The Long Black Veil”Blank verse:Unrhymed iambic pentameter.Examples:Shakespeares plays Carpe diem poetry:Poems,whose theme is“to seize the

5、day,”that is concerned with the shortness of life and the need to act in or enjoy the present.Examples:Herricks“To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”;Marvells To His Coy Mistress Consonance:The counterpart of assonance;the repetition of identical consonant sounds in words whose main vowels differ.Als

6、o called half rhyme or slant rhyme.Examples:shadow/meadow;pressed/passed;trolley/bully;fail/peel.Couplet:A stanza of two lines,usually,but not necessarily,with end-rhymes(i.e.the rhyming words occur at the ends of the lines).Couplets end the pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet.Diction:The choice of vo

7、cabulary and of grammatical constructions.In poetry,it can be formal or highproper,elevated,elaborate,and often polysyllabic language;neutral or middlecorrect language characterized by directness and simplicity;or informal or lowrelaxed,conversational and familiar language.Example:there is a differe

8、nce in diction between“One never knows”and“You never can tell.”Double rhyme or trochaic rhyme:Rhyming words of two syllables in which the first syllable is accented.Example:flower/shower Dramatic monologue:A poetic form,derived from the theater,in which the poet chooses a moment or a crisis,in which

9、 his characters are made to talk about their lives and their minds and hearts to one or more other characters whose presence is strongly felt.In some dramatic monologues,especially those by Robert Browning,the speaker may reveal his personality in unexpected and unflattering ways.Examples:Robert Bro

10、wnings“My Last Duchess;”T.S.Eliots“The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock;”Tennysons“Ulysses”Elegy:A lyric poem expressing sadness,usually a lament for the dead.Example:Thomas Grays“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”Enjambment:The continuation of the grammatical construction and logical sense of a l

11、ine on to the next line or lines for the purpose of special effect.Also called run-on lines.Example:“The Count your masters known munificence/Is ample warrant that no just pretense/Of mine for 1dowry will be disallowed.”(from Browning,“My Last Duchess”)Epic:A long narrative poem,dignified in theme a

12、nd elevated in style,that usually records how a hero,through experiences of great adventure,accomplishes important deeds.Examples:Homers“Odyssey;”Miltons“Paradise Lost”Eye rhyme:Words that look as if they should rhyme because they are spelled identically but pronounced differently.Examples:heath/dea

13、th;watch/catch,bear/fear,dough/cough End rhyme:Identical sounds at the ends of lines of poetry.Also called“terminal rhyme.”Example:“Tyger!Tyger!burning bright/In the forests of the night”(from William Blake,“The Tyger”).Feminine rhyme(double rhyme):Stressed rhyming syllables are followed by identica

14、l unstressed syllables.Examples:fatter/batter;tenderly/slenderly;revival/arrival Foot:A basic metrical unit,consisting of two or three syllables,with a specified arrangement of the stressed syllable or syllables.The repetition of feet can produce a pattern of stresses throughout the poem.The numbers

15、 of feet are given here:monometer(one foot);dimeter(two feet);trimeter(three feet);tetrameter(four feet);pentameter(five feet);hexameter(six feet);heptameter or septenary(seven feet);Octameter(eight feet).Free verse:Poetry in lines of irregular length,usually unrhymed and often largely based on repe

16、tition and parallel grammatical structure.Examples:Walt Whitmans“O Captain!My Captain!”;Gwendolyn Brooks“The Bean Eaters”Heroic couplet:Two successive rhyming lines of iambic pentameter,often“closed,”i.e.containing a complete thought.It is called heroic because in England,especially in the 18th cent

17、ury,it was much used for heroic(epic)poems.Examples:“Be not the first by whom the new are tried,/Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”(frorm Alexander Pope,“An Essay on Criticism”)Iambic pentameter:The most natural and common kind of metrical pattern in English.Example:“The curfew tolls the knell

18、of parting day,/The lowing herd wind slowly oer the lea,/The plowman homeward plods his weary way,/And leaves the world to darkness and to me”(from Thomas Gray,“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”).Image:An Image is language that appeals to the senses,such as sight(visual),sounds(auditory),tastes

19、(gustatory),smells(olfactory),and sensations of touch(tactile).Imagery refers to images throughout a work or throughout the works of a writer or group of writers.Images frequently do more than offer only sensory impressions.They also convey emotions and moods.Examples:“the gray sea and the long blac

20、k land”(visual);“and quench its speed i the slushy sand”(auditory);“sea-scented beach”(olfactory);Ezra Pounds“In a Station of the Metro”(visual and tactile)Lyric poem:A short poem,often songlike,with the emphasis not on narrative but on the speakers emotion or reverie.Example:Christopher Marlowes“Th

21、e Passionate Shepherd to His Love”Masculine rhyme:Rhyme of one-syllable words such as lies/cries or,if more than one syllable,words in which the final syllables are stressed and,after their differing initial consonant sounds,are identical in sound.Examples:stark/mark;support/retort;behold/foretold M

22、etaphor:A kind of figurative language equating two literally incompatible things with each other,without a connective such as like or a verb such as appears or resembles.Examples:“Oh,my love is a red,red rose”(the speakers love is equated with a rose);“a piercing cry”(a cry is compared to a spear or

23、 other sharp instrument)Metaphysical conceit:An elaborate and extended metaphor or simile that links two apparently unrelated fields or subjects in an unusual and surprising conjunction of ideas.The term is commonly applied to the metaphorical language of a number of early 17th century poets,2partic

24、ularly John Donne.Examples:Donnes“A Valediction:Forbidding Mourning;”Marvells“To His Coy Mistress”Meter:A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.The most common kinds of metrical feet in English poetry are the five listed below:Iamb(iambic):An unstressed stressed foot.The most common rhythm in

25、 English verse.Examples:alone;away;“My heart is like a singing bird”Trochee(trochaic):A stressed unstressed foot.Examples:happy;garden,“Tyger!Tyger!Burning bright;”He was/louder/than the/preacher Anapest(anapestic):An unstressed unstressed stressed foot.Also called“galloping meter.”Examples:“As I ca

26、me/to the edge/of the wood;”“There are man/-y who say/that a dog/has his day”Dactyl(dactylic):A stressed unstressed unstressed foot.Examples:underwear;constantly;Take her up/tenderly;Sing it all/merrily Spondee(spondaic):A stressed stressed foot.Examples:True-blue;smart lad;sweet rose;dead set;“(Tha

27、t the)night come”Ode:A long,stately poem in stanzas of varied length,meter,and form;Usually a serious poem on an exalted subject.Example:Shelleys“Ode to the West Wind”Onomatopoeia:A blending of consonant and vowel sounds designed to imitate or suggest the sound of the activity being described.Exampl

28、es:hiss;buzz;murmur;whirr Oxymoron:A self-contradictory combination of words or smaller verbal units.Also can be seen as a compact paradox.Examples:bittersweet;a pleasing pain;hurry slowly.An exaggerated employment of oxymoron can be seen in Romeos speech early in Romeo and Juliet:Why,then,O brawlin

29、g love!O loving hate!O anything,of nothing first create!O heavy lightness!serious vanity!Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!Feather of lead,bright smoke,cold fire,sick health!Still-waking sleep,that is not what it is!Paradox:A rhetorical figure embodying a seeming contradiction that is nonetheles

30、s true with a logic structure.Examples:“More haste,less speed;”“less is more;”“The child is father of the man”Pentameter:A line of verse containing five feet.Personification:Attributing human characteristics to nonhuman things or abstractions.Prosody:The principles of versification,particularly as t

31、hey refer to rhyme,meter,rhythm,and stanza.Quatrain:A four-line stanza or poetic unit.In an English or Shakespearean sonnet,a group of four lines united by rhyme.Rhyme:The repetition of identical or similar concluding syllables in different words,most often at the ends of lines.Unlike rhythm,rhyme i

32、s not basic to poetry;but it is pleasant,suggests order,and may be related to meaning implying a relationship.Examples:lie/high;June/moon;stay/play;tender/slender;throne/alone;love/dove Rhyme scheme:The pattern of rhyme,usually indicated by assigning a letter of the alphabet to 3each rhyme at the en

33、d of a line of poetry.Example:The rhyme scheme of Shakespearean sonnet often is abab cdcd efef gg.Scan(scansion):The process of marking the kind and number of feet in poetic lines to establish the prevailing metrical pattern.Example:The scansion of the line“The summer thunder,like a wooden bell”tells readers that it is iambic pentameter.Shakespearean sonnet:A fourteen-line poem written in iambic p