英美诗歌文学术语(全英)

Selected English and American Poems

Literary Terms for Discussing Poetry

Alliteration: The repetition of initial sounds or prominent consonant sounds. Examples: “A ll the a wful a uguries;” “p ensive p oets;” “a f ter li f e’s f itful f ever;” “I s lip, I s lide, I g loom, I g lance” (from Tennyson’s “The Brook”)

Apostrophe: An addressing to an absent or imagined person or to a thing as if it were present and could listen. Example: “Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour / England hath need of thee: she is a fen / Of stagnant waters:” (from William Wordsworth, “London, 1802”)

Assonance: The repetition, in words of close proximity, of same or similar vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables, preceded and followed by differing consonant sounds. Examples: “deep green sea;” “light / bride;” “tide / mine” (note that tide and hide are rhymes).

Ballad: A short narrative poem, especially one that is sung or recited, composed of quatrains, with 8, 6, 8, 6 syllables, with the second and fourth lines rhyming. A ballad often contains a refrain (i.e.

a repeated phrase, line, or group of lines). Examples: “Jackaroe;” “The Long Black Veil”

Blank verse: Unrhymed iambic pentameter. Examples: Shakespeare's plays

Carpe diem poetry: Poems, whose theme is “to seize the day,” that is concerned with the shortness of life and the need to act in or enjoy the present. Examples: Herrick’s “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time”; Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"

Consonance: The counterpart of assonance; the repetition of identical consonant sounds in words whose main vowels differ. Also called half rhyme or slant rhyme. Examples: shadow / meadow; pressed / passed; trolley / bully; fail / peel.

Couplet: A stanza of two lines, usually, but not necessarily, with end-rhymes (i.e. the rhyming words occur at the ends of the lines). Couplets end the pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet. Diction: The choice of vocabulary and of grammatical constructions. In poetry, it can be formal or high—proper, elevated, elaborate, and often polysyllabic language; neutral or middle—correct language characterized by directness and simplicity; or informal or low—relaxed, conversational and familiar language. Example: there is a difference in diction between “One never knows” and “You never can tell.”

Double rhyme or trochaic rhyme: Rhyming words of two syllables in which the first syllable is accented. Example: flower / shower

Dramatic monologue: A poetic form, derived from the theater, in which the poet chooses a moment or a crisis, in which his characters are made to talk about their lives and their minds and hearts to one or more other characters whose presence is strongly felt. In some dramatic monologues, especially those by Robert Browning, the speaker may reveal his personality in unexpected and unflattering ways. Examples: Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess;” T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock;” Tennyson’s “Ulysses”

Elegy: A lyric poem expressing sadness, usually a lament for the dead. Example: Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

Enjambment: The continuation of the grammatical construction and logical sense of a line on to the next line or lines for the purpose of special effect. Also called run-on lines. Example: “The Count your master’s known munificence / Is ample warrant that no just pretense / Of mine for