Glossary of Literary Terms

Useful terms for analysing poetry

Allusion  Making a conscious reference to another work through direct quotation or obvious borrowing

Anapaest  Two short/unstressed syllables followed by a long unstressed syllable, allowing a rolling and often, complex rhythm

Anaphora  Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of a line or sentence. For example, from Emily Dickinson's 'Wild Nights':

...

Done with the Compass -

Done with the Chart!

Antithesis The juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, usually in a balanced way

Apostrophe  Something or someone absent or dead is addressed as if it were alive and present and able to reply; for example, in 'Western Wind' (Anonymous 15th century lyric)

Western wind, when will thou blow

The small rain down can rain?

Assonance  The repetition of similar or identical vowel sounds in words which follow one another


Caesura  An audible pause that breaks up a line of verse, usually indicated by punctuation marks

Dactyl  Long/stressed syllable followed by two short/unstressed syllables, creating a waltz like rhythm

Diegesis  When the writer tells or recounts a narrative for the reader

Dichotomy  Division into two opposed groups or parts, to create a contrast, such as in Blake's 'Garden of Love' where 'I turn'd to the Garden of Love that so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it filled with graves'

Elegy  a poem of serious reflection, frequently a lament for the dead, often written in elegiac couplets; e.g. 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' by Thomas Gray:

1The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

2The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,

3The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

4And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Elevated language Language used to heighten the significance of an event - for example, in 'Antony and Cleopatra', cleopatra makes classical references to mercury and Jove to elevate the importance of Antony and his suffering; "had I great Juno's power,/the strong-winged Mercury should fetch thee up..."; her pain at his death is also expressed through the grandeur of an apostrophe.

Enjambment  A line of poetry which is not end-stopped, that is to say, in which the sentence continues into the next line without any pause or punctuation mark. For example, in Matthew Arnold's 'On Dover Beach', there is enjambment between the first and second stanza:

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Euphemism  A word or expression used in place of something that might be embarrassing or unpleasant

Extended metaphor A comparison between two differing things where the ideas linking them are explored over several lines

Free verse  Avoiding regular patterns of rhythm and rhyme, sounding more like natural speech

Foot  The basic unit in a description of the rhythm of a poem and can consist of many words and/or syllables

Iamb  Short/ unstressed syllable followed by a long/stressed syllable

Iambic pentameter  A line made up of five pairs of short/long, or unstressed/stressed, syllables

Internal rhyme  Using rhyme inside lines rather than at the end

Juxtaposition  Putting two ideas side by side, often to create contrast. For example, John Donne (1572-1631) juxtaposes the idea of the decay of the flesh with the eternity of love:

"Only our love hath no decay; 

This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,"

Metre  The basic rhythmic structure of a verse

Mimesis  When the writer shows the reader or enacts what is happening, rather than telling

Oxymoron  A phrase combining two terms that seem to be opposite

Pararhyme also known as partial or imperfect rhyme describes a near rhyme in which the consonants in two words are the same, but the vowels are different. It is distinguished from half rhyme in that all the consonants should match rather than just the final ones.

Pathetic fallacy  The attribution of human feelings and emotions to inanimate objects/ forces; particularly natural ones like the weather

Rhetorical question  The use of interrogative to draw the reader into an argument or explore an aspect of thought

Satire  Writing that contains an element of criticism in the form of irony, parody or exaggeration, sometimes using humour for effect - typical of Jane Austen's style

Sonnet  a poem of 14 lines with 10 syllables per line (iambic pentameters), using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes. Established by Petrarch in Italy as a major form of love poetry.

Shakespearean sonnet: three quatrains and a couplet: abab cdcd efef gg

Sophistry  a form of reasoning used to persuade someone of your point of view using false or artificial arguments, often used as a derogatory term now; e.g. in the June 2011 examination, David L in J. M. Coetzee's 'Disgrace' uses sophistry to seduce a young student, claiming: "a woman's beauty does not belong to her alone".

Symbolism  Stressing the priority of suggestion and evocation over direct description and explicit analogy

Sense impression  Imagery using sight, touch, taste, sound or smell to convey atmosphere

Syntactic Parallelism  Repetition of sentence structure or word order to achieve a particular effect

Trochee Long/stressed syllable followed by a short/unstressed syllable, creating a strong rhythm

For Reference, a very helpful book is Martin Gray's 'A Dictionary of Literary Terms' (York Handbooks, 1992)