Poetic Elements

1. Poetic Elements Poetry Unit

2. Learning Targets for Literature Key Ideas and Details Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text. Craft and Structure Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language evokes a sense of time and place; how it sets a formal or informal tone). Integration of Knowledge and Ideas Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment

3. Refrain • A line or set of lines at the end of a stanza or section of a longer poem or song--these lines repeat at regular intervals in other stanzas or sections of the same work. Sometimes the repetition involves minor changes in wording. • What is the repeated stanza in a song called? https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

4. Tone • The means of creating a relationship or conveying an attitude or mood. • It is the overall attitude of a work. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

5. Imagery • A common term of variable meaning, imagery includes the "mental pictures" that readers experience with a passage of literature. • It signifies all the sensory perceptions referred to in a poem, whether by literal description, allusion, simile, or metaphor. • Imagery is not limited to visual imagery; it also includes auditory (sound), tactile (touch), thermal (heat and cold), olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), and kinesthetic sensation (movement). https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

6. Diction • The choice of a particular word as opposed to others. A writer could call a rock formation by many words--a stone, a boulder, an outcropping, a pile of rocks, a cairn, a mound, or even an "anomalous geological feature." • The analytical reader then faces tough questions. Why that particular choice of words? What is the effect of that diction? • The word choice a writer makes determines the reader's reaction to the object of description, and contributes to the author's style and tone. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

7. Hyperbole • The trope of exaggeration or overstatement https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

8. Allusion • A casual reference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature, often without explicit identification. • Allusions can originate in mythology, biblical references, historical events, legends, geography, or earlier literary works. • Authors often use allusion to establish a tone, create an implied association, contrast two objects or people, make an unusual juxtaposition of references, or bring the reader into a world of experience outside the limitations of the story itself. • Authors assume that the readers will recognize the original sources and relate their meaning to the new context. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

9. Connotation • The extra tinge or taint of meaning each word carries beyond the minimal, strict definition found in a dictionary. • For instance, the terms civil war, revolution and rebellion have the same denotation; they all refer to an attempt at social or political change, but they carry different emotive responses. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

10. Extended Metaphor • The term extended metaphor refers to a comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a series of sentences in a paragraph or lines in a poem. It is often comprised of more than one sentence and sometimes consists of a full paragraph.

11. Symbol • A word, place, character, or object that means something beyond what it is on a literal level. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

12. Onomatopoeia • The use of sounds that are similar to the noise they represent for a rhetorical or artistic effect. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

13. Alliteration • Repeating a consonant sound in close proximity to others, or beginning several words with the same vowel sound. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

14. Rhyme • Amatching similarity of sounds in two or more words, especially when their accented vowels and all succeeding consonants are identical. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

15. Theme • A central idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire literary work. The theme can take the form of a brief and meaningful insight or a comprehensive vision of life. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

16. Anaphora • The intentional repetition of beginning clauses in order to create an artistic effect. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

17. Assonance • Repeating identical or similar vowels (especially in stressed syllables) in nearby words. • Assonance in final vowels of lines can often lead to half-rhyme. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html

18. Consonance • A special type of alliteration in which there is a repeated pattern of consonant sounds. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_D.html