Poetry: Meter, Structure, & Grammar

In speech, emphasis given a particular sound, called prosodic systems in linguistics. There are three basic accentual methods: stress, tone, and length. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
In the quantitative meters of Classical poetry, a metrical foot of two short syllables followed by one long (˘ ˘ –, e.g. dĕĭtās), or, in verse-systems based on accent, two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed (x x /, e.g. interrupt). MORE

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A term that derives from the Lat. verb caedere, "to cut off," and refers to the place in a line of verse where the metrical flow is temporarily "cut off." When this "cut" occurs at the beginning of a line, it is called an "initial caesura"; when it occurs in the middle of a line, it is called a "medial caesura"; and when it occurs at the end of a line, it is called a "terminal caesura.

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
In Cl. prosody, a metrical foot consisting of one long syllable followed by two short ones. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The chief meter in most cl. and mod. prosody. Iambic meter is based on the iamb, a metrical foot consisting of a short or unstressed syllable followed by a long or stressed syllable. In Lat. poetry, the iamb was comprised of this short and long syllable pair; in Gr. it was a metron consisting of this plus a preceding anceps and long syllable

From The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature
From the Greek word meaning `measure'. In poetry, metre is the measure of the rhythm of a line of verse, when the line is rhythmically systematic, ie can be divided into units of `metrical feet'. MORE

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
in prosody, a line to be scanned in five feet (see versification). The third line of Thomas Nashe's "Spring" is in pentameter: "Cold doth / not sting, / the pret / ty birds / do sing." MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The act of discovery or interp. of the meter (q.v.) of a poem as realized in one of its lines; also the graphic transcription thereof, usually by symbols, numbers, or letters either above the line or alone. S. is a notation system for meter in metrical poetry just as sheet music notates music or writing notates speech. MORE

From The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature
In ancient Greek and Latin poetry, a unit of verse measure composed of two long syllables (´ ´); in English verse, two accented syllables. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A term used for both metrical units and whole meters having the rhythm “marked—unmarked” in series. In the modern accentual meters, a trochee is a foot (q.v.) comprising a stressed syllable followed by a unstressed. MORE

From The Bloomsbury Dictionary of English Literature
A pair of rhymed lines of verse of equal length. The commonest form is the so-called heroic couplet of 10 syllables and five stresses in each line. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A pair of metrical lines, a couplet (q.v.), heterometric in Cl. poetry but usually isometric in modern. In Cl. poetry the most common type is the elegiac d. (q.v.), consisting of a dactylic hexameter followed by a dactylic “pentameter” and often used for epigram. MORE

Short, witty, and pithy saying or short poem. The poem form was common among writers of ancient Rome, including Catullus and Martial. The epigram has been used by English poets Ben Jonson, John Donne, and Alexander Pope, Irish writers Jonathan Swift and W B Yeats, and US writer Ogden Nash. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A stanza of 8 lines. Os. appear as isolable stanzas, such as particularly the It. ottava rima (rhyming abababcc) and the Fr. ballade (ababbcbc—qq.v.). MORE

From Dictionary of Italian Literature
Its origins date back to thirteenth-century Sicily and fourteenth-century Florence. In its Sicilian form, the eight lines were rhymed alternately (abababab). MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A stanza of 4 lines, normally rhymed. The q. is, with its many variations, the most common stanza form in European poetry, and very probably in the world. It is for the establishment, in the 3rd c. a.d., of the q. as the meter of the hymn (q.v.). MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The minor division or last 6 lines of a sonnet (q.v.), preceded by an octave (q.v.). Sometimes the octave states a proposition or situation and the s. a conclusion, but no fast rules for content can be formulated. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
A verse unit of 3 lines, usually rhymed, most often employed as a stanzaic form. It was first developed systematically in Italian poetry (tertian). MORE

From Dictionary of Italian Literature
A verse form usually composed of tercets of hendecasyllabic verse in rima incatenata (aba bcb cdc ded…xyx yzy z), in which the first line rhymes with the third, the second with the first of the following tercet, and so forth. MORE

From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Verse in which the first letters of each line read downwards to form a word. If the middle letters do likewise, it is a triple acrostic.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
In poetry and prose, the use, within a line or phrase, of words beginning with the same sound, as in Two tired toads trotting to Tewkesbury. It was a common device in Old English literature, and its use survives in many traditional phrases, such as dead as a doornail and pretty as a picture. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or lines. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
In prosody the technical term for one form of elision, namely omission of a word-initial syllable, esp. a vowel, e.g. ’gainst for against, mid for amid, ’neath for beneath. Often the following consonant then clusters with the succeeding word, e.g. ’tis for it is, ’twere for it were. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
In prosody the technical term for one form of elision, namely loss of a word-final syllable or vowel, e.g. eve or even for evening. Often the apocopated word then fuses with the one following, e.g. “th’Empyrean” for “the Empyrean,” “th’army,” etc., thereby avoiding hiatus (q.v.). MORE

From Dictionary of Shakespeare
The repetition of vowel sounds within a sequence of words (but not the rhyming sounds repeated at the end of lines of verse). MORE

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
he tidiest definition of this trope dates back, it has been argued, to the Stoic grammarians: catachresis is the use of a borrowed word for something that does not have a name of its own. We speak thus of the "legs" of a table or the "foot" of a bed.

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
In addition to its general meaning of harmony (agreement), c. has been used interchangeably in prosody with a wide variety of terms intended to designate certain phonic echoes. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Non-alignment of (end of) metrical frame and syntactic period at line-end: the overflow into the following poetic line of a syntactic phrase (with its intonational contour) begun in the preceding line without a major juncture or pause. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The quality of having pleasant, easily pronounced, or smooth-flowing sounds, free from harshness; the pleasing effect of such sounds; the opposite of cacophony. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The transmutation of ideas into images, is the product of the formative power of human cognition and is realized in all the ways in which verbal, mental, perceptual, optical, and graphic images interact. MORE

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
In verse, a rhyme in which the consonant sounds are similar but not the vowel sounds. MORE

From The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The Eng. cover-term for a variety of rhyming structures which have to do not with rhyming words solely at line end but line-internally. MORE

From Encyclopedia of Postmodernism
Metonymy, or literally, “change of name,” is a metaphoric substitution of the name of a thing for some attribute of it; as a rhetorical trope, the change of effect for cause, cause for effect, proper name for one of its qualities, or one of the qualities of a thing for its proper name. MORE

From Encyclopedia of Postmodernism
Generally, mimesis is the art of imitation; in rhetoric and poetics, it usually refers to the modes of discourse which have the imitation of nature, including human nature, as their central aim. MORE

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Figure of speech that copies natural sounds. For example, the word ‘cuckoo’ imitates the sound that the cuckoo makes. MORE

From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
A portmanteau is a type of leather travelling bag for clothes which opens out flat into two parts. A ‘portmanteau word’ is thus a word made up of two others, and expressive of a combination denoted by those parts. MORE

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Study of the elements of language, especially metre, that contribute to rhythmic and acoustic effects in poetry. MORE

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Figure of speech that uses either the part to represent the whole (‘There were some new faces at the meeting’, rather than new people), or the whole to stand for the part (‘The West Indies beat England at cricket’, using the country to stand for the national teams in question). MORE