文学术语

文学术语

Literary Terms:

Alliteration: repetition of the same sound or sounds at the beginning of two or more words that are next to or close to each other.

Iambic pentameter: poetic meters of five iambs or feet. Iambic means the stress is on the second syllable.

Heroic couplet: a pair of rhyming iambic pentameter lines.

Blank verse: unrhymed poetic lines in iambic pentameters.

Sonnet: a lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. Italian or Petrarchan sonnet is composed of an octave and a sestet (rhyming abbaabba cdecde). Shakespearean sonnet consists of three quatrains and a couplet (rhyming abab cdcd efef gg).

Assonance: repetition of related vowel sounds

Ode: a long lyric poem that is serious in subject and treatment, elevated in style and elaborate in its stanzaic structure.

Spenserian stanza: a nine-line stanza of eight lines in iambic pentameter plus

an iambic hexameter. The rhyme scheme is abab bcbc c.

Romance: a tale in verse, embodying the life and adventures of knights.

Ballad: a narrative poem that tells a story.

Ballad meter: a quatrain in alternate four- and three-stress lines; usually only the second and fourth lines rhyme.

Allegory: a story or description in which the characters and events symbolize some deeper underlying meaning, and serve to spread moral teaching.

Epic: a long narrative poem that records the adventures of a hero in a nation’s history.