Common poetic forms and literary terms

Common poetic forms and literary terms

Alexandrine: A 12 syllable poetic line

Alliteration: the repetition of consonants at the beginning of words e.g. ‘the lazy languid line’. When consonant sounds are repeated within words it is called consonance e.g. ‘some mammals are clammy’

Assonance: the internal rhyming of vowel sounds e.g. ‘on a proud round cloud in white high night’ (ee cummings)

Ballad: A poetic form mostly written in four line stanzas (quatrains) of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter (four pairs of unstressed-stressed syllables) and iambic trimeter (three pairs). Usually, only the second and fourth lines are rhymed (abcb), although there is considerable variation in the form.

Examples of ballads:  The Ballad of Moll Magee, WB Yeats, Ballad of the Breadman, by Charles Causley

Blank verse: A type of poetry with a regular meter (generally iambic pentameter) but no rhyme.

Cliché: a saying, expression or idea that has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning; a stereotype.

Dramatic irony: a rhetorical device where the author causes a character to behave in a way that is contrary to the truth, or that the audience is aware is wrong.

Free verse or vers libre: A form of poetry without any regular patterns, rhymes or meters. Its form is its irregularity.

Heroic couplet:Commonly used for narrative poetry, heroic couplets are rhymed iambic pentameter pairs of lines.

Hyperbole: exaggeration

Metaphor: an analogy between two words or ideas where one stands for the other e.g. ‘his smile was the sun’ – not to be confused with the simile.

Personification – ascribing human characteristics to inanimate objects or forms

Simile – a kind of metaphor which uses the words as or like – e.g. ‘he fights like a lion’

Sonnet: A poetic form. Fourteen lines long. Can be rhymed in a number of ways, but the most common are Shakespearean andPetrarchan.  Shakespearean sonnets are rhymed in three groups of four lines rhymed alternately, followed by a couplet – i.e. abab cdcd efef gg. The closing rhyming couplet often sums up the sonnet. Petrarchan sonnets are divided into a group of eight lines, called the octave and a group of six lines called the sestet. The octave is usually rhymed abba abba, and the sestet cde cde. Usually there is a ‘turn’ or ‘volta’ - a change of direction or mood between the octave and the sestet. Traditionally, the octave put forward a proposition and the sestet offered a solution.