ENG201Y: poetic terminology

You should be familiar with these terms, either from class or (more likely) from the assigned readings in Adams and Abrams. A few of the terms appear only in NPEPP. You may be asked to define these terms at some point in your academic lives, but in your ENG201Y incarnations you are much more likely to be asked to comment on the poetic effect of the concept denoted by the term in the context of a poem which we have studied. Don’t forget the online glossary of poetic terms: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/terminology.html

 

accentual meter

accentual-syllabic meter

affricative consonants (Adams 34)

("ch", "dg", "j")

alliteration

alternating rhyme (abab)

ambiguity

anaphora

antithesis

apostrophe ("Thou ... bride...")

archaism

aspirate (/h/)

assonance

assonant rhyme

aubade (NPEPP)

auditory imagery

binary meter

(e.g., iamb/trochee)

blank verse

blason (NPEPP)

broken rhyme (Adams 202)

caesura

catalogue

closed couplets

coinage or neologism

conceit

connotation (NPEPP)

consonance

consonant rhyme

consonants (Adams 34 classifies)

couplet

couplet or opposed quatrain (aabb)

denotation

dental consonants

elegiac (heroic) quatrain

elegy (Abrams, NPEPP)

ellipsis

end-stopped

English sonnet (Abrams)

enjambment

envelope quatrain (abba)

epic (Abrams, NPEPP)

epic question

epithet

epistrophe

extra-syllable ending (feminine rhyme)

feminine (extra-syllable) ending/rhyme

foot

forced rhyme (Abrams)

fricative (f,v)

glide (y, w)

gustatory imagery (Abrams)

guttural consonants (k, g)

heptasyllabic

heroic couplets

heroic quatrain (abab) (Abrams)

heterometric (NPEPP)

hyperbole

iamb(ic)

identical rhyme

imperfect rhyme

implicit metaphor (Abrams)

internal rhyme

inversion

irony

Italian sonnet (Abrams)

kinesthetic imagery

liquid consonants (l, r)

masculine (one-syllable) ending/rhyme

metaphor

metonymy

meter

monosyllable

nasal (n,m,ng)

octave

octosyllabics

ode (Abrams, NPEPP)

olfactory imagery

one-syllable ending

onomatopoiea

opposed couplet: see couplet

ottava rima

oxymoron

paradox

parallelism

past participle

(e.g., "bent", "spent")

pentameter

perfect rhyme

personification

Petrarchan/Italian sonnet (Abrams)

ploce

plosive consonants (Adams 34)

(e.g., /p/, /d/)

polyptoton

polysemy ("diversity of meaning")

polysyllabic

present participle

(e.g., "is running")

pun

pyrrhic

quatrain

rhetorical question

rhyme

rhythm

satire (Abrams, NPEPP)

sestet

Shakespearean/English sonnet

sibillant (s,z))

simile

sonnet

speaker (=persona)

spondee/spondaic

stanza

stanzaic verse

stichic

stops (=plosives)

submerged metaphor (Adams)

substitution

symbol

synecdoche

synesthesia (Abrams, NPEPP)

tactile imagery

tenor (Abrams)

tetrameter

thematic structures

temporal

logical

associative

random/paratactic

thermal imagery

trochee/trochaic

vehicle (Abrams)

verse paragraph

villanelle (NPEPP)

voiced consonant

(e.g., /b/, /d/, /g/)

voiceless consonant

(e.g., /p/, /t/, /k/)

vowel

white space