Some Definitions

1. Some Definitions ENG 406 February 8, 2006

2. Closet Drama • a play • usually in verse • intended for (or more effective in) reading rather than acting

3. Ottava Rima • eight lines • iambic pentameter • rhyming abababcc • couplet provides pithy summary, reversal, or surprise

4. Sonnet • 14 lines • iambic pentameter • various rhyme schemes • a break, usually at the end of line 8, showing change

5. Apostrophe • The direct address of one who is absent, often who could not be present logically

6. Elegy • Formal in tone and structure (but after the Greeks, no specific meter required) • Usually concerns the death of a specific person (18th century and after) • Elizabethans used the form for love complaints also • Embodies the sense of mourning

7. Ballad • Made of 4 lines, alternating tetrameter and trimester • Rhyming abcb or less often abab • Usually iambic

8. Horatian Ode • One stanza type that may be varied within its pattern • Quatrian: four lines that rhyme abab • Sestet: six lines with a variation on cdecde

9. Dramatic Monologue • Single speaker previously known to the reader • Implied specific listener • Provides insight into speaker’s character

10. Anapestic A triplet rhythm characterized by two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed

11. Pathetic Fallacy The attribution of human feelings onto an inanimate object

12. Spondee a metrical foot using two stressed syllables

13. Sprung Rhythm Rhythm based on the number of stressed syllables without regard for the number of unstressed syllables Stressed syllables lead each metrical foot coined by Gerard Manley Hopkins to emulate speech