Technical terms

We have used the majority of the following critical terms in our poetry discussion. You will need to know the definitions of these (the definitions attached are very simplistic!), so that you can spot techniques BUT remember that the most important is to give your view on HOW and WHY these techniques have been used how the technique leads you to the overall meaning of the poem. WRITE AN EXAMPLE OR TWO FOR THESE TECHNIQUES. 1. Analogy between* He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree. 2. Allusion to - reference to Its not as if Im holding out for frankincense or myrhh allusions of Christ/ religion (Give) 3. Alliteration repeated initial letters Lone and Level Sands (Ozymandias) spat on my scalp (Medusa) 4. Assonance repeated vowel sounds (links to internal rhyme) town clown the clown punk 5. Litany of - list the peacocks and the cockatoos, the nightingales, the strutting pink flamingos (LGS) 6. Onomatopoeia e.g. crash, smash, bang 7. Ambiguity multiple possible meanings just change. coins, actual change? (give) 8. Antithesis - opposite 9. Archaic old-fashioned 10. Assonance- repeated vowel sounds 11. Ballad traditional form of verse, used to express voice and circumstances of everyday man 12. Bathos - anticlimax 13. Blank verse iambic pentameter + rhyme (My Last Duchess) 14. Caesura break in line, often through punctuation I was their queen. I sat enthralled before them (LGS) 15. Clich over-used, stereotype phrase / idea 16. Colloquial chatty Daft Mush (Clown Punk) 17. Connotation implied meaning / association with word 18. Consonance repeated consonant sound within words bigbeg 19. Couplet rhyming pair of lines 20. Diction type of language used 21. Enjambement run-on lines Hi yih, do not let her Go. (The River God)

22. Elegy commemorating death He would have liked to say good-bye, Shake hands with many friends, In Highgate now his finger-bones Stick through his finger-ends. 23. Euphemism nice word for something bad Then all smiles stopped together (My Last Duchess) 24. Hyperbole - exaggeration 25. Lyric poem focused on emotion 26. Metaphor Taming a sea horse, thought a rarity (My Last Duchess) 27. narrative 28. motif 29. oxymoron tie discreetly loud (On a Portrait of a deaf Man) 30. paradox Look at me now both a plea and a threat(Medusa) 31. pathos Filthy Snakes pathos of Medusas self image 32. periphrasis (long-winded method of expressing something) 33. personification heart that feeds (ozymandias) 34. plot 35. prose 36. protagonist main character/ persona 37. pun play on words 38. refrain 39. rhyme 40. rhyme scheme 41. rhythm 42. satire 43. simile like a basket of washing up Clown Punk 44. sonnet Ozymandias 45. stanza 46. style 47. symbol 48. syntax 49. tone 50. theme