ALLEGORY
The word allegory comes from two Greek words: allos meaning “other” and agoreuein meaning “to speak.”
An allegory is a story whose characters, things and happenings have another meaning. Allegories are written to explain ideas about good and evil, or about moral or religious principles. What makes a piece of writing an allegory is that the characters actually become what they stand for, and can have names like Ms Love, Mr. Peace or Mrs. Evil.
Famous allegories are Dante’s Divine Comedy, Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Aesop’s fables and parts of the bible are allegories.
A good method of beginning to write an allegory is to make the story a dream, as Bunyan did. Dreams are allegories because in dreams one thing often means something else even though we might not understand or believe it.
Allegory is much like metaphor- one person or thing is another and not just like another (which would a simile). An allegory could be called an extended metaphor- extended for sometimes 300 pages or more!
Structures and forms in literature are always a result of the people think. People often think of something that simultaneously reminds them of other things. Allegories are reflection of this phenomenon.
BALLAD
The ballad originated as a folksong that tells an exciting story. Many of the ballads tell stories about fatal relationships: between two lovers, between family members, between clans or between people and supernatural beings. Ballads are a way of communicating the strong feelings provoked by dramatic human events. Traditional ballads were written in four line stanza. Whether oral or written, the best ballads have precise and startling “images” that sometimes arise and take the reader directly into the story.
BLANK VERSE
Blank verse took its name from the fact that poets and their audiences once expected every line of poetry to end with a rhyme word. When English poets in the late sixteenth century began to write in a ten-syllable line influenced by unrhymed Italian poets, a “blank” (unrhymed) word was used to conclude each line. This new poetry, which also usually had five major stresses or accents in each line, slowly became known as the verse- the poetry that didn’t have lines that ended in rhyme.
CANTOS
Cantos are the divisions or shorter sections of longer poetic works. We can think of them as being the poetic equivalents of the chapters of a novel. Originally, when poetry was sung- the word canto comes from a Latin word that means “song”- the division into cantos would give the singer a chance to rest before proceeding to the next canto. But more importantly the dividing of the work into cantos becomes a practical way for the poet to examine one particular aspect or variation of the larger theme or plot of his or her poem.
COUPLET
The couplet is a couple or pair, of lines of poetry, usually rhymed. The word couplet comes from the French, and in
In the iambic pentameter couplet, first used by Geoffrey Chaucer, each line has ten syllables, alternating unaccented and accented.
John Kennedy’s inaugural address:
Ask not what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your country.
ECLOGUE
The word eclogue comes from the ancient Greek, meaning “select pieces.” Eclogues are poems written in the form of a monologue or dialogue in which the speaker tells us what he or she feels about a particular theme, why he feels that way, and why he believes others ought to feel the same. Usually the writing is smooth and flowing, the setting pastoral.
The first writer of eclogue is thought to be Theocritus, a Greek poet writing around 300 B.C.
EPIC
Epic(from the Greek epos, a speech, a story or song literally means to speak or to tell a tale. The epic is very long narrative (story) poem that tells the adventure of a hero.
Epics serve the purpose of enabling their audiences to understand the past and control their own destiny through the inspiration of the poem’s noble ideas. The epic poem is meant to enhance the reader’s sense of good and evil. Epics most often focus on the heroism of one person who exists as a symbol of strength, virtue, and courage in the face of conflict.
The traditional epic is divided into a series of books or cantos. Many of the epics of the past were written in the poetic meter called dactylic (from the Greek dactylos, meaning the three joints of finger) hexameter. This means that each line contains six metrical feet of three beats each the first a long syllable and the second and third short syllables.
An epic must be able to tell a tale in poetry about heroism that can be retained in the reader’s memory, or retell stories that everyone already knows, such as myths or historical events.
EPIGRAM
An epigram (from the Greek epigramma, to write upon) is a short, witty poem or saying that is easy to remember and is written to be remembered. E.g. Experience is the name everyone gives to his or her mistakes.” In the past, epigrams were often inscriptions carved on monuments, tombstones and statues.
Epigrams have no particular form except their brevity and their way of getting right to the point. Epigrams are similar to what we might say to each other in witty conversation about the events of the day, with the difference that the epigram is written on paper or cut in stone to last forever.
EPITAPH
An epitaph (from Greek, meaning “upon a tomb”) is an inscription on a tomb, or writing suitable for that purpose.
The epitaph can be in prose or poetry, it can be any rhythmical pattern or none rhymed or unrhymed. It should not be confused with the elegy, which, although often similar to the epitaph in subject and tone, is quite a bit longer.
EPITHALAMIUM
The epithalamium is also called epithalamion and comes from a Greek word meaning “upon the bridal chamber.” The epithalamium is a poem that celebrates a marriage.
The Greek poet Sappho, who lived around 600 B.C., is credited with having made the epithalamium a distinct literary form.
FOOT
Say the word “create” aloud. Notice that you say it “cre-ATE” (not CRE-ate). The first syllable is unaccented, the second accented. An unaccented syllable, followed by an accented one, is an example of one kind of poetic “foot” (the one called the “iamb”). So, the word create is iambic. As you will see below, there are other kinds of poetic feet (or “measures”).
Now say aloud this line: “I walked across the world to kiss your hand.” Notice that this line is composed of iambic feet, five of them: “I walked / across / the world / to kiss / your hand.” When a line of poetry has a regular rhythmic pattern as this one does, we say it is in a particular meter. The meter of this example is called iambic pentameter. This means that there are five feet of iambic meter ( - / ) in every line. (the hyphen stands for an unaccented syllable and the slash stands for an accented one.)
Iamb: one unaccented syllable followed by one accented long syllable: - / . Oddly enough this was originally used in Greek poetry (and called the iambos, from the verb iambiazo- “to assail in iambics” or “to lampoon”)
e.g.
- / - / - / / - - / -
To be or not to be, that is the question
This line is “irregular”” in that it contains eleven syllables. Also the fourth and the fifth feet are not iambic.
Dactyl (“DACK- till”): one accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables: / - -
In Greek, daktulos meant “finger”, and looking at your finger will remind you of its structure: a finger is made up of one long bone and two shorter bones. Here is a famous example from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, Evangeline:
/ - - / - - / - - / - - / - - / -
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks.
Anapest : two unaccented syllables followed by one accented syllable, the opposite of the dactyl: - - /
e.g.
- - / - - / - - / - - /
By a hole in the woods sat a green little boy
FREE VERSE
Free verse is just that- lines of poetry that are written without rules: no regular beat and no rhyme. E.g. Whitman, Kenneth Koch, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plat, Hilda Doolittle.
LINE
The punctuation in between the line is called caesura. E.g.
An old man, stout of heart, and strong of limb – there are two caesurae.
METAPHOR
The word metaphor is a combination of two ancient Greek words: meta( “beyond, across, over”) and phoreo(“to carry, bring bear). Kinds of metaphor:
X is like Y
My love is like a red rose
X is Y
My love is a red rose
X of Y
Girl of rose. Superman is called as the “Man of Steel”
XY
Girl-rose or rose-girl
It is called kenning. In the metaphor, recognition takes place: this girl is a rose.
ODE
The ode form has undergone so many modifications that it nearly defies definitions. The word ode comes from the Greek word aeidein(“to sing”), and an ode is a song, a lyric poem, most often one that addresses a thing or person not present.
The Greek poet PINDAR (522-442B.C.) is credited with inventing the ode.
Another type of ode was written by the Roman poet Horace (65-8 B.C.). His odes were calmer, more philosophical more personal, sometimes briefer. Like Pindaric odes, they followed particular stanzaic and metrical patterns.
TERZA RIMA
Terza rima is a tumbling, interlocking rhyming scheme which was invented by the thirteenth-century Italian poet Dante for the creation of his long poem, THE DIVINE COMEDY.
Terza rime( an Italian phrase meaning “third phrase”) consists of a series of three-line stanzas(tercets) with the rhyme scheme aba, bcb, cdc, ded and so on. At the end of the poem an extra line is added to complete the structure: yzy z.
