Poetry and Poetic Form
110 flashcards by MentisLibrary
Scan a line, name a rhyme scheme, and tell a villanelle from a sestina. Meter, fixed forms from the sonnet to the ghazal, sound devices, and the movements that broke the rules.
- Meter
- The regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse.
- Foot
- The basic unit of meter, a small group of syllables with a fixed stress pattern.
- Iamb
- A metrical foot of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.
- Trochee
- A metrical foot of one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable.
- Anapest
- A metrical foot of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable.
- Dactyl
- A metrical foot of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
- Spondee
- A metrical foot of two stressed syllables.
- Pyrrhic
- A metrical foot of two unstressed syllables.
- Iambic pentameter
- A line of five iambic feet, ten syllables with stress on the even positions.
- Tetrameter
- A line of four metrical feet.
- Trimeter
- A line of three metrical feet.
- Hexameter
- A line of six metrical feet.
- Alexandrine
- A twelve syllable line, the standard line of French classical verse; in English, an iambic hexameter.
- Scansion
- The process of marking a line's stressed and unstressed syllables to identify its meter.
- Substitution, in meter
- Replacing the expected foot with a different one for emphasis or variety.
- Catalexis
- The omission of one or more unstressed syllables at the end of a line.
- Caesura
- A distinct pause within a line of verse, often marked by punctuation.
- Enjambment
- Running a sentence or phrase past the end of a line without pause into the next.
- End stopped line
- A line whose grammatical unit finishes at the line break, usually with punctuation.
- Stanza
- A grouped set of lines separated from other groups by a space, the poetic equivalent of a paragraph.
- Couplet
- Two consecutive lines, usually rhymed and of the same length.
- Heroic couplet
- A pair of rhymed lines in iambic pentameter.
- Tercet
- A stanza or group of three lines.
- Quatrain
- A stanza of four lines.
- Sestet
- A stanza or section of six lines, especially the closing six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet.
- Octave
- A stanza or section of eight lines, especially the opening eight of a Petrarchan sonnet.
- Terza rima
- A chain of tercets rhyming ABA BCB CDC and so on, with each stanza's middle rhyme seeding the next.
- Ottava rima
- An eight line stanza rhyming ABABABCC.
- Rhyme royal
- A seven line stanza in iambic pentameter rhyming ABABBCC.
- Spenserian stanza
- A nine line stanza rhyming ABABBCBCC, with eight pentameter lines closed by an alexandrine.