week11

A.  Poetry

Lyric An emotional writing focusing on thought and emotion - can consist of a song-like quality. Subdivisions include elegy, ode and sonnet. Lyric poetry does not attempt to tell a story. Popular lyric poems include the works of Sappho, "Go, lovely Rose" by Edmund Waller and the many sonnets of William Shakespeare.

Narrative A poem which tells a story. Includes the subdivision epic, a long story which tells of the heroic ideals of a particular society, and ballad, which generally tell of an event of interest such as a crime. Ballads were originally intended to be sung while dancing. Popular narrative works are "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Divine Comedy" by Dante, "Hiawatha" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Rape of Lucrece" by Shakespeare and "The Rape of Lock" by Alexander Pope.

Dramatic Any drama written in verse which is meant to be spoken, usually to tell a story or portray a situation. The majority of dramatic poetry is written in blank verse. Other forms of dramatic poetry include, but are not limited to, dramatic monologues, rhyme verse and closet drama. Important dramatic works include those by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe.

B.  Figurative language

language that contains or uses figures of speech

Simile A simile uses the words “like” or “as” to compare one object or idea with another to suggest they are alike. Example: busy as a bee

Metaphor The metaphor states a fact or draws a verbal picture by the use of comparison. A simile would say you are like something; a metaphor is more positive - it says you are something. Example: You are what you eat.

Personification A figure of speech in which human characteristics are given to an animal or an object. Example: My teddy bear gave me a hug.

Alliteration The repetition of the same initial letter, sound, or group of sounds in a series of words. Alliteration includes tongue twisters. Example: She sells seashells by the seashore.

Onomatopoeia The use of a word to describe or imitate a natural sound or the sound made by an object or an action. Example: snap crackle pop

Hyperbole An exaggeration that is so dramatic that no one would believe the statement is true. Tall tales are hyperboles. Example: He was so hungry, he ate that whole cornfield for lunch, stalks and all.

C.  Figure of speech

A figure of speech is a word or phrase that has a meaning other than the literal meaning. It can be a metaphor or simile that's designed to further explain a concept. Or it can be the repetition of alliteration or exaggeration of hyperbole to give further emphasis or effect. There are many different types of figures of speech in the English language. We will give you examples of some of the most commonly used types here.

D. Vocabulary

Couplet

Couplets generally appear in poetry, and quite frequently they rhyme and have the same meter. The two lines often belong together, and share some sort of similar idea. Couplets are easy to come by for the poetry lover, because he or she is familiar with the use and placement of literary devices. For those who are not as involved with literature, breaking the word down helps to uncover the meaning.

Blank Verse

Blank verse is a literary device defined as un-rhyming verse written in iambic pentameter. In poetry and prose, it has a consistent meterwith 10 syllables in each line (pentameter); where, unstressed syllables are followed by stressed ones and five of which are stressed but do not rhyme. It is also known as un-rhymed iambic pentameter.

Iambic pentameter

Iambic pentameter is a commonly used type of metrical line in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm that the words establish in that line, which is measured in small groups of syllables called "feet". The word "iambic" refers to the type of foot that is used, known as the iamb, which in English is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The word "pentameter" indicates that a line has five of these "feet". Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry; it is used in many of the major English poetic forms, including blank verse, the heroic couplet, and some of the traditional rhymed stanza forms. William Shakespeare used iambic pentameter in his plays and sonnets.

Iamb (poetry)

Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a short syllable followed by a long syllable (as in "delay"). This terminology was adopted in the description of accentual-syllabic verse in English, where it refers to a foot comprising an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (as in a-bove).

Elegy

In English literature, an elegy is a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead. The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy notes: For all of its pervasiveness, however, the ‘elegy’ remains remarkably ill-defined: sometimes used as a catch-all to denominate texts of a somber or pessimistic tone, sometimes as a marker for textual monumentalizing, and sometimes strictly as a sign of a lament for the dead.

Hyacinthus

Hyacinthus is a small genus of bulbous, fragrant flowering plants in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Scilloideae. These are commonly called hyacinths. The genus is native to the eastern Mediterranean.

Primavera(Botticelli)

La Primavera è un dipinto a tempera su tavola di Sandro Botticelli, databile al 1482circa. Realizzata per la villa medicea di Castello, l'opera d'arte è conservata nella Galleria degli Uffizi a Firenze. Si tratta del capolavoro dell'artista, nonché di una delle opere più famose del Rinascimento italiano. Vanto della Galleria, si accostava anticamente con l'altrettanto celebre Nascita di Venere, con cui condivide la provenienza storica, il formato e alcuni riferimenti filosofici. Il suo straordinario fascino che tuttora esercita sul pubblico è legato anche all'aura di mistero che circonda l'opera, il cui significato più profondo non è ancora stato completamente svelato.

Cupid and Psyche

Cupid and Psyche is a story originally from Metamorphoses (also called The Golden Ass), written in the 2nd Century AD by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (or Platonicus). It concerns the overcoming of obstacles to the love between Psyche and Cupid or Amor, and their ultimate union in a sacred marriage. Although the only extended narrative from antiquity is that of Apuleius, Eros and Psyche appear in Greek art as early as the 4th century BC. The story's Neoplatonic elements and allusions to mystery religions accommodate multiple interpretations, and it has been analyzed as an allegory and in light of folktale, Märchen or fairy tale, and myth.

E. Poem

Ulysses

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

It little profits that an idle king,  By this still hearth, among these barren crags,  Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole  Unequal laws unto a savage race,  That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.  I cannot rest from travel: I will drink  Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d  Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those  That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when  Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades  Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;  For always roaming with a hungry heart  Much have I seen and known; cities of men  And manners, climates, councils, governments,  Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;  And drunk delight of battle with my peers,  Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.  I am a part of all that I have met;  Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’  Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades  For ever and forever when I move.  How dull it is to pause, to make an end,  To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!  As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life  Were all too little, and of one to me  Little remains: but every hour is saved  From that eternal silence, something more,  A bringer of new things; and vile it were  For some three suns to store and hoard myself,  And this gray spirit yearning in desire  To follow knowledge like a sinking star,  Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.     This is my son, mine own Telemachus,  To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—  Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil  This labour, by slow prudence to make mild  A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees  Subdue them to the useful and the good.  Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere  Of common duties, decent not to fail  In offices of tenderness, and pay  Meet adoration to my household gods,  When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.     There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:  There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,  Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—  That ever with a frolic welcome took  The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed  Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;  Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;  Death closes all: but something ere the end,  Some work of noble note, may yet be done,  Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.  The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:  The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep  Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,  ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.  Push off, and sitting well in order smite  The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds  To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths  Of all the western stars, until I die.  It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:  It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,  And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.  Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’  We are not now that strength which in old days  Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;  One equal temper of heroic hearts,  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

To Helen

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicéan barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy-Land!