Literary Lingo
This device is used to give human attributes to abstract concepts or non-human objects.
What is personification?
This fourteen line poem often poses a question or problem, turning to resolution around line 9 or 13.
What is a sonnet?
A medieval hierarchy that established the idea that kings and queens have a divine right to rule.
What is the great chain of being?
This poet composed a poem using Heroic couplets to applaud Wilberforce's efforts to abolish slavery.
Who is Anna Letitia Barbauld?
This literary era is known for broad skepticism and moral relativism -- a widely accepted "you do you" attitude.
What is postmodernism?
Two or more of the same vowel sound are placed beside one another or close to each other to establish emotion in the phrasing.
What is assonance?
Traditionally used to tell tales of heroism, this song-like structure has quatrains that often follow an ABAB rhyme scheme.
What is a ballad?
This Renaissance intellectual movement focused on the beauty, worth, and morality of mankind, often separate or distanced from religious values.
What is humanism?
Also known as the Bard of Avon, this poet penned more than 154 sonnets, many discussing love and immortality.
Who is William Shakespeare
Poets in this era rejected industrialization and urbanization, escaping to rural, picturesque locations to write.
What is Romanticism?
A direct comparison that uses the words "like" or "as" to add concreteness or visualization to an abstract concept.
What is a simile?
Written in iambic pentameter, these rhyming lines were mastered by poets like Wheatley and Pope.
What are heroic couplets?
This modernist philosophy paints a rather pessimistic perspective, believing that nothing has meaning and rejecting religious and moral principles.
What is nihilism?
This poet addressed the social oppression women experienced through graphic images that would horrify her audience.
Who is Charlotte Smith?
A time of renewed interest in education and art, poets in this era believed in absolute truth and idealized love.
What is the Renaissance?
The comparison of two unlike objects, concepts, or actions in which characteristics of the first word/phrase figuratively transfers to the second word/phrase
What is a metaphor?
This poetic form was often used in epics, didn’t rhyme but used iambic pentameter.
What is blank verse?
This social theory favours personal rights over collectivism.
What is individualism?
This English poet not only penned many beloved Renaissance sonnets, but he also wrote many influential sermons.
Who was John Donne?
Characterized by a wide-spread interest in ancient writers, this era was known for poetry that functioned more like essays
What is neoclassicism?
This term refers to the use of specific phrases from an existing work in a new way to extend meaning to a text.
What is intertextuality?
An ancient form that modernists experimented with, this three line structure has concrete imagery.
What is haiku?
A belief that became socially acceptable in the Victorian era which rejected the existence of deities.
What is atheism?
This Victorian poet wrote a sonnet, one of my favourite poems, to show that God is present and continuously working to renew creation.
Who is Gerard Manley Hopkins?
What is rationalism?