Poetry Terms

Unit II: Poetry Terms

Lyric - a short poem, often songlike, with the emphasis not on narrative but on the speaker's emotion or reverie. Whereas a narrative is set in the past, telling what happened, a lyric is set in the present, catching a speaker in a moment of expression. (A lyric can, of course, glance forward or backward.)
1. elegy - a lyric poem that is melancholy or mournfully contemplative; sometimes laments a death.
2. ode (hymn) - a lyric poem that is long, elaborate, and on a lofty theme such as immortality or a hero's victory.

Dramatic monologue - single character speaking at a critical moment, usually addressed to some other character who remains silent. ("My Last Duchess").

Didactic poetry - written to state a message or teach a body of knowledge; not currently popular.

Narrative poem - a poem whose main purpose is to tell a story.

Satiric poem - a kind of comic poetry that conveys a message.

Diction - choice of words and/or grammatical constructions (i.e., formal, colloquial, jargon, slang, etc.)

Colloquial - everyday speech; particular to an area or group of people.

Tone - the attitude of the author, evident from the diction, use of symbolism, irony, and figures of speech. (Tone can be described as playful, sad, happy, humorous, etc.).

Figures of Speech - non-logical language; not to be taken literally.

1. simile - items from different classes are compared by a connective such as "like," "as," or "than" or by a verb such as "appears" or "seems." If the objects compared are from the same class, e.g., "New York is like Chicago," no simile is present. An appropriate simile: "She is like the rose."
2. metaphor - items from different classes are implicitly compared, WITHOUT a connective such as "like" or "as." ("She is the rose, the glory of the day.")
a. metonymy - something is named that replaces something closely related to it. (In the following passage, James Shirley names certain objects ["Scepter and crown," "scythe and spade"], using them to replace social classes [powerful people and poor people] to which they are related:
Scepter and crown must tumble down
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
b. synecdoche - the whole is replace by the part, or the part by the whole. ("He has a new set of WHEELS." "Give me a HAND.")
3. personification - giving human qualities to abstractions or inanimate objects such as love, beauty, etc. ("The cat, disappointed, wondered where I'd been all day." ; "When love calls, wild hearts fly.")
4. apostrophe - an address to a person or thing not literally listening. ("O Santa, bring me that Porsche I've always wanted...." "O lovely rose, your perfume fills the air.")

Irony - without using figures of speech, speakers may use this device, saying things that are not to be taken literally, forming a contrast.
1. verbal irony - contrast between what is said and what is meant.
a. sarcasm - heavy, mocking verbal irony. Almost never found in literature.
b. understatement - saying less than what is meant. (to Bill Clinton: "I suppose you have a FEW things on y our mind....")
c. hyperbole (overstatement) - exaggeration. ("He died a thousand deaths.")
2. dramatic irony - contrast between what is intended and what is accomplished.

Paradox - an apparent contradiction. ("He who would save his life must lose it" or "The child is father of the man.")

Connotation - suggested or associated meaning. (skeleton = death)

Denotation - dictionary definition. (skeleton = bony structure)

Imagery - sensory content of poems; appeals to the five senses.

Symbol - an image loaded with significance beyond literal definition; suggestive rather than definitive.
1. natural symbols - symbols recognized as standing for something in particular even by people from different cultures. (Rain usually stands for fertility or the renewal of life; a forest--mental darkness or chaos; a mountain--stability, etc.).
2. conventional symbols - symbols which people have agreed to accept as standing for something other than themselves (a poem about the cross would probably be about Christianity; similarly, the rose has long been a symbol for love).

Rhythm - stresses at regular intervals.

Prosody - the study of the principles of verse structure, including meter, rhyme, and other sound effects, and stanzaic patterns.
Hovering stress - the stress is equally distributed over two adjacent syllables.

Meter - a pattern of stressed (accented) sounds in English poetry (meter from the Greek word for "measure").

Foot - the basic unit of measurement in a line of poetry. On rare occasions, it is a single stressed syllable, but generally a foot consists of two or three syllables, one of which is stressed. (Stress is indicated by ; lack of stress by ). The repetition of feet, then, produces a pattern of stresses throughout the poem.
1. iam (iambic) - one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable. The iam is the most common pattern in English poetry.
2. trochee (trochaic) - one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable.
3. anapest (anapestic) - two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable.
4. dactyl (dactylic) - one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
5. spondee (spondaic) - two stressed syllables; most often used as a substitute for an iamb or trochee.

Metrical line - line consists of one or more feet and is named for the number of feet in it.
1. monometer - one foot
2. dimeter - two feet
3. trimeter - three feet
4. tetrameter - four feet
5. pentameter - five feet
6. hexameter - six feet
7. heptameter - seven feet
8. octameter - eight feet

Scansion - scanning a line of poetry for the kind and number of feet in it.

Rhyme - repetition of identical or similar sounds.
1. perfect (exact) rhyme - differing consonant sounds are followed by identical stressed vowel sounds, and the following sounds, if any, are identical (foe/toe, meet/fleet, buffer/rougher).
2. half-rhyme (off-rhyme) - only the final consonant sounds of the words are identical; the stressed vowel sounds as well as the initial consonant sounds, if any, differ (soul/oil, mirth/forth, trolley/bully.
3. eye-rhyme - the sounds do not in fact rhyme, but the words look as though they would rhyme (cough/bough).
4. masculine rhyme - the final syllables are stressed and, after their differing initial consonant sounds, are identical in sound (stark/mark, support/retort).
5. feminine rhyme (double rhyme) - stressed rhyming syllables are followed by identical unstressed syllables (revival/arrival, flatter/batter).
6. end rhyme (terminal rhyme) - the rhyming words occur at the ends of the lines.
7. internal rhyme - rhyme occurs within lines. ("Each narrow cell in which we dwell.")
8. alliteration - sometimes defined as the repetition of initial sounds ("All the awful auguries," or "Bring me my bow of burning gold"), and sometimes as the prominent repetition of a consonant ("after life's fitful fever").
9. assonance - the repetition, in words of proximity, of identical vowel sounds preceded and followed by differing consonant sounds. (Whereas tide and hide are rhymes, tide and mine are assonantal.)
10. consonance - the repetition of identical consonant sounds and differing vowel sounds in words in proximity (fail/feel, rough/roof, pitter/patter). Sometimes consonance is more loosely defined as the repetition of a consonant (fail/peel).

Onomatopoeia - the use of words that imitate sounds, such as hiss or buzz.

Stanza - a rhythmical unit in which lines of poetry are commonly arranged (from an Italian word meaning "room" or "stopping-place").

Verse - can be either a stanza or a single line of poetry.
(Note: in discussing stanzas, rhymes are indicated by identical letters. Thus, abab indicates that the first and third lines rhyme with each other, while the second and fourth lines are linked by a different rhyme.)
1. couplet - a stanza of two lines, usually, but not necessarily, with end-rhymes.
a. heroic couplet - a rhyming couplet of iambic pentameter, often "closed," that is, containing a complete thought, with a fairly heavy pause at the end of the first line and a still heavier one at the end of the second.
2. triplet (or tercet) - a three-line stanza, usually with one rhyme.
3. quatrain - a four-line stanza, rhymed or unrhymed.
a. heroic (elegiac) quatrain - iambic pentameter, rhyming abab.
4. sonnet - a closed, fixed form. A fourteen-line poem, predominantly in iambic pentameter.
a. Italian (Petrarchan) sonnet - named for the Italian poet Francesco Petrarch (1304-74), has two divisions: the first eight lines (rhyming abba abba) are the octave, the last six (rhyming cd cd cd, or a variant) are the sestet.
b. English (Shakespearean) sonnet - usually arranged into three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg.
5. villanelle - a closed, fixed French form; 5 tercets and a quatrain.

Blank verse - English poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.

Free verse (vers libre) - rhythmical lines varying in length, adhering to no fixed metrical pattern, and usually unrhymed. Seems formless but is not. Form or pattern often largely based on repetition and parallel grammatical structure.

Prose poem - a short work that looks like prose but is highly rhythmical or rich in images, or both.

Closed form - some regular pattern is evident.
1. fixed form - closed form which adheres to certain strict rules (such as the sonnet, villanelle, etc.)

Open form - no identifiable patterns of rhyme, rhythm, meter.

Literary Device:Repetition i.e. anaphora and others

Repetition (rhetorical device)
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For other uses, see Repetition (disambiguation).

In poetry, literature and rhetoric, there are several kinds of repetition where words or certain phrases are repeated for a stronger emphasis by the author. Rhetorical devices should not be confused with syntactical devices, as they are very different writing techniques.

* Repetition is just the simple repetition of a word, within a sentence or a poetical line, with no particular placement of the words. This is such a common literary device that it is almost never even noted as a figure of speech.

“ Today, as never before, the fates of men are so intimately linked

to one another that a disaster for one is a disaster for everybody.
(Natalia Ginzburg, The Little Virtues, 1962)
”

* Epizeuxis or palilogia is the repetition of a single word, with no other words in between. This is from the Greek words, "Fastening Together"[1]

"Words, words, words." (Hamlet)

* Conduplicatio is the repetition of a word in various places throughout a paragraph.

"And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences ... and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world." (George W. Bush)

* Anadiplosis is the repetition of the last word of a preceding clause. The word is used at the end of a sentence and then used again at the beginning of the next sentence.[2]

"This, it seemed to him, was the end, the end of a world as he had known it..." (James Oliver Curwood)

* Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of every clause. Comes from the Greek phrase, "Carrying up or Back".[3]

"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender." (Winston Churchill)

* Epistrophe is the repetition of a word or phrase at the end of every clause.

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny compared to what lies within us." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

* Mesodiplosis is the repetition of a word or phrase at the middle of every clause.

"We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed..." (Second Epistle to the Corinthians)

* Diaphora is the repetition of a name, first to signify the person or persons it describes, then to signify its meaning.

"For your gods are not gods but man-made idols." (The Passion of Ss. Sergius and Bacchus)

Female Stereotypes

A stock character is a dramatic character representing a type in a conventional manner and recurring in many works[1]. The following are such fictional female archetypes and stereotypes. A distinctive example of each is provided.

Stereotype Example
Assassin Nikita
Aunt Aunt Agatha
Avenger The Bride
Barmaid Carla Tortelli
Bimbo Kelly Bundy
Bitch Alexis Colby
Blue stocking Mary Bennet[2]
Bond girl Pussy Galore
Bride Buttercup
Bunny boiler Evelyn Draper
Catgirl Catwoman
Childhood sweetheart Winnie Cooper
Cinderella Cinderella
Clown[3] Columbina
Companion Sarah-Jane Smith
Cook Mrs. Bridges
Courtesan Inara Serra
Damsel in Distress Rapunzel
Dancer Vicky Page
Dark Lady[3]
Daughter Becky Conner
Diva
Dominatrix Isabella Valentine
Dumb blonde Sugar Kane
Fairy Tinkerbell
Fairy godmother Fairy Godmother
Feminist Helen Morgendorffer
Femme Fatale[4] The Vampire (Theda Bara)
Fishwife Roseanne Conner
Gamine Mathilda
Geisha
Girl next door Mary Jane Watson
Girlfriend
Girls with guns[5] Trinity
Goddess Ororo Munroe
Gold digger Becky Sharp
Gossip Gretchen Wieners
Goth Nemi
Governess Jane Eyre
Grandmother
Groupie
Guardian angel
Halfbreed Harlot[3]
Harridan
Heroine Buffy Summers
Hooker with a heart of gold Elsie Tanner
Housekeeper Mrs. Hudson
Housewife Marge Simpson
Ingénue Christine Daae
It Girl
Jewish-American Princess
Jewish Mother[6] Beatrice Bellman
Lady Lady Bracknell
Latin Lover[3]
Land girl
Lesbian Ellen
Love interest Lois Lane
Madam
Madonna
Magical girl Sailor Moon
Maid Rose Buck
Matron Matron
Mermaid The Little Mermaid
Mistress Crystal Allen
Model
Mother
Mother-in-law Endora
Mouse
Movie star Ginger Grant
Musician
Nag
Nanny Mary Poppins
Nerd girl Willow Rosenberg
Newly-wed Betty Spencer
Nun
Nurse
Nymphette Lolita
Orphan Little Orphan Annie
Pantomime dame Widow Twanky
Peasant
Personal assistant
Pilot
Princess Princess Peach
Prostitute Fanny Hill
Protective Mother[7]
Queen Daenerys Targaryen
Saint
School diva Cordelia Chase
Schoolgirl Kagome Higurashi
Schoolmarm Clara Clayton
Scientist Susan Calvin
Scold
Secretary Miss Moneypenny
Servant
Shrew Katherine
Singer
Sister
Slut
Soothsayer
Spinster
Spoiled brat Veruca Salt
Stewardess
Stripper
Suffragette
Switchboard operator
Teenager Meg Griffin
Three Fates
Tomboy George Kirrin
Trophy wife
Typist
Ugly duckling
Urchin Eliza Doolittle
Valley Girl
Virgin
Waitress
Weird Sisters
Wicked stepmother
Widow[8]
Witch Wicked Witch of the West

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_stock_characters

Debating Guidelines

Debating Guidelines
Debating is about developing your communication skills. It is about assembling and organising effective arguments, persuading and entertaining an audience, and using your voice and gestures to convince an adjudicator that your arguments outweigh your oppositions. Debating is not about personal abuse, irrational attacks or purely emotional appeals.

The Definition

1)Clarifies the topic. The definition should take the topic as a whole, defining individual words only if they have a key role. Out of the definition should come a clear understanding of the issues that will be fought over in the debate. It forms the basis of the team's argument.

2)Define words or phrases by their common usage. Dictionaries may be useful for finding a common meaning or a pithy explanation of a word, but they are not an absolute authority. If a dictionary is necessary the Concise Oxford is often recommended, but squabbles over whose dictionary has the higher status have no place in good debating.

A definition must be reasonable:

1)It must be debatable (i.e. have two sides to it).

2)It must not be a bizarre distortion of the moot. (This is not to say that an affirmative may not choose an unusual interpretation of the moot, but they must be prepared to justify it).

If the definition does not conform to either of these two requirements, the negative has the right to challenge it. Be very careful about challenging the definition-only do so if you are absolutely certain that the affirmative's definition is unfair. It is better to be brave and dump your prepared case in favour of tackling the affirmative on their own terms than to issue an unjustified definitional challenge. By the same token, affirmative teams should try to ensure that their definition is fair.

The negative team must accept or reject the definition. If a negative team accepts the definition, they only need to say so-it is not necessary to restate it. If they challenge it, their justification for doing so must be clearly stated, and an alternative put forward. If the definition is accepted that definition must stand. The negative must adjust their case to that definition, and the adjudicator's views on its reasonableness become irrelevant.
Argument
Argument is not assertion

Argument is the process of explaining why a point of view should be accepted. It concerns the logic and the evidence supporting a particular conclusion.
Use evidence (i.e. examples, facts, statistics, quotations of expert/public opinion etc.) to back up each point you make in your argument. Show how each piece of evidence is relevant and how it advances your argument. Make a point, give the reason for that point, and supply evidence to back it up.

What adjudicators look for in a good argument:

1)Relevance

2)Organisation

3)Consistency and internal logic-i.e. don't contradict yourself or your team mates

4)Clarity (remember, debating is about persuading your audience and adjudicator that you're right-so make sure they can understand what you're saying!)

5)Effective use of evidence

Rebuttal
Rebuttal is vital. An argument, however weak, stands until it is rebutted, and may still stand if it is badly rebutted. Adjudicators cannot regard an argument as knocked down until the opposition has rebutted it effectively. If a team makes an error in fact or logic, the adjudicator cannot penalise them unless the other team points out the error, or if the error is so blatant a reasonable member of the audience would discredit the argument.

As with argument, assertion does not equal rebuttal. Just as teams must show how and why their own arguments are valid, so they must show how and why the opposition's arguments are invalid.

1)An argument may be wrong in fact or logic-if so, say how and why

2)An argument may contradict their team line, or something else a speaker on that team has said

3)An argument may be true but irrelevant-watch out for red herrings.

Organisation of rebuttal
It is not necessary to rebut every single point and fact raised by the opposition. Single out their main arguments and attack those first. Savage their team case and show how it falls down-and show why yours is better! You should rebut by both destroying the opposition's arguments and by establishing a case that directly opposes theirs.

Requirements of the Speakers
The six speakers each have different roles to play and adjudicators should take account of how well a speaker fulfils his/her obligations.

Teamwork is very important. It can be seen in the development and support of the team line by all speakers in a team, and in a team case that does not contain contradictions or redundancies.

The first speakers establish the fundamentals of their team's cases.

First Affirmative
Defines the topic, presents the basic team line and team split. She or he should set out the basis of the team's case, and should ensure that no important points of definition are left out. He or she may spend some time on the definition and on establishing the team case and showing how it is going to develop. But it is important to leave time to present some substantive arguments.

First Negative
1)Accepts or rejects the definition. (See definition section above).

2)Outlines her/his team line and team split,

3)Rebuts lst affirmative, delivers a part of the negative's substantive case.

As a negative it is important to both attack the opposition's argument and put forward an alternative.

After the first speakers have spoken the direction of each case should be apparent.

Second speakers - deal with the bulk of the substantive argument.

Second Affirmative
1)Some rebuttal of the lst negative's major arguments.

2)Shore up and develop own team's case, and be prepared to defend the definition if necessary. If it is attacked, it is vital for the second affirmative to win back the initiative. However most of the 2nd affirmative's time should be spent dealing with new material and the bulk of the affirmative's case,

Second Negative
1)Some rebuttal of the first two affirmative speakers.

2)Develops substantive negative line.

3)Depending on the circumstances, a second negative speaker should adjust the amount of time spent on each of the above according to which seems more important.

Most of the teams' substantive argument should have emerged by the time the second speakers have spoken.

Third speakers
The role of the third speakers is simply this: Attack! Most of a third speaker's time must be spent rebutting the preceding speakers. Generally at least three quarters of a third speech should be rebuttal.

The third speakers must also introduce an additional aspect of the team case and show development of the team line. However, they should not introduce major new arguments.

Summaries
A summary is a review of both your own and the opposition's case. It represents a chance for the teams to show their arguments in the best light and to summarise the flaws in the opposition's case. The aim is to emphasise the major points made by your own team and to show how these contributed to a logical progression of argument in support of your team line. At the same time the flaws in the opposition's argument must be outlined. This can be done case by case, or by taking a more global approach to the arguments. Both are effective if well done, so find the summary style that suits you best.

New material should not be introduced, except in direct rebuttal. The arguments used in the summaries must remain within the parameters established during the debate.

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Literature ACP

Year 11 and 12 English A1 students,

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Post Irony and Allegory Essays here

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Post your essays here.

Mr. C