EN1101E

POETRY NOTES


SONNETS

Basic meter is Iambic Pentameter

SHAKESPEAREAN

- 14 lines with rhyming couplet
- abab/cdcd/efef/gg
- Brevity of Life/Immortality, Transience of Beauty/Pure Love
as the solution to mortality, Trappings of Desire/Sexual/Love
as sickness is a motif

ITALIAN/PETRARCHAN

- Octave (8) / Sestet (6) structure: flexible rhyme scheme for
sestet
- abbaabba/cdecde
- no rhyming couplet
- analyse the volta


CHECKLIST

o The interplay of themes. Expressed through use of literary
devices. Changes in mood, tone, attitudes, contrasts,
diction.

o What are the two juxtaposed ideas? What happens at volta?

o Follows or breaks convention: How? To what effect?
e.g. Past vs Present, Disintegration, Change, Defiance
e.g. Strange rhyme scheme use of eye rhymes
move/love, come/home.




COMMON LITERARY TERMS


o Alliteration
o Assonance ( repeated vowel sounds near each other.
Usually stressed. food/droop, child/silence, andrew/ascott)
o Onomatopoeia
o Anachronistic
o Anaphora (repetition of word or phrase),
o Anthropomorphic (attributing human form to animal and
inanimate objects, an exercise in empathy)
o Personification
o Archaism
o Caricature
o Cathartic.
o Blazon (catalogue of a womans physical features)
o End-stopped lines (ends with punctuation for more
emphasis)
o Enjambment (continuation to next line but without
punctuation)
o Metaphors, Extended Metaphors, Similes , Tone, Mood,
Atmosphere
o Metonymy (substitution of Crown for Monarchy, Pen is
mightier than the Sword)

o Pun
o Oxymoron (often used in Petrarchan sonnets to express
pangs of love via contradictory states burn and freeze like
ice)
o Hyperbole
o Double Entendre
o Imagery (Textile, Auditory, Olfactory Natural, War-like,
Sensual, Mechanical, Celestial)
o Pastoral (imaginary and romanticized idea of rural life)
o Long vowels (stretched vowels in a word)
o Diphthongs (two vowel sounds in one syllable sea,
slides)
o Consonance (repeated consonant sounds at ending of
words)

Example: boats into the past
Example: cool soul
Pattern Name
/ Iamb/Iambic invite
/ Trochee/Trochaic deadline
/ Anapest/Anapestic to the beach
/ Dactyl/Dactylic frequently
// Spondee/Spondaic true blue

monometer: one foot dimeter: two feet
trimeter: three feet tetrameter: four feet
pentameter: five feet hexameter: six feet
heptameter: seven feet octameter: eight feet

o Comparing changes (Graceful vs. Bumbling, Anapest is
lighter than the Iambic)
o Aspirated consonants (bright, glittering)
o Allusion
o Ambiguity
o Euphemism (An understatement, used to lessen the effect
of a statement; substituting something innocuous for
something that might be offensive or hurtful.)
o Hyperbole
o Irony.