13/2 Analyse de textes littéraires: Poetry Vocabulary Test

1. “The use of words that seem to imitate the sounds they refer to (whack, fizz, crackle, hiss)”.____________

2. “The repetition of the same sounds—usually initial consonants of words or of stressed syllables—in any
sequence of neighbouring words: 'Landscape-lover, lord of language' (Tennyson)”_____________________

3. “The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in the stressed syllables (and sometimes in the
following unstressed syllables) of neighbouring words.” ________________

4. “The pattern in which the rhymed line-endings are arranged in a poem or stanza ”.___________________

5. “An elaborately formal lyric poem lamenting the death of a friend or public figure, or reflecting seriously on
a solemn subject” ___________________

6. “A long narrative poem celebrating the great deeds of one or more legendary heroes, in a grand
ceremonious style.” _________________

7. “Exaggeration for the sake of emphasis in a figure of speech that is not meant literally. An everyday
example is the complaint: 'I've been waiting here for ages.'” _________________

8. “A group of verse lines forming a section of a poem and sharing the same structure as all or some of the
other sections of the same poem, in terms of the lengths of its lines, its metre, and usually its rhyme
scheme”. __________________

9. “A lyric poem comprising 14 rhyming lines of equal length. Of Italian invention.” __________________

10. “A pair of rhyming verse lines, usually of the same length” _______________

11. “A pause in a line of verse, often coinciding with a break between clauses or sentences. It is usually
placed in the middle of the line, but may appear near the beginning or towards the end.” ________________

12. “The most traditional kind of metrical verse in English: a line with five metrical feet, each consisting of
one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable.”_______________________

13. a) “The most important and widespread figure of speech, in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to
by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea, or action, so as to suggest some common
quality shared by the two. E.g.: ‘he is a pig’”. _________________
b) “An explicit comparison between two different things, actions, or feelings, using the words 'as' or 'like', as
in Wordsworth's line: “I wandered lonely as a cloud”. _________________

14. “A figure of speech by which animals, abstract ideas, or inanimate things are referred to as if they were
human”. _________________

15. “A line, group of lines, or part of a line repeated at regular or irregular intervals in a poem, usually at the
end of each stanza. It may recur in exactly the same form, or may have slight variations.”______________

16. “A rhetorical figure of repetition in which the same word or phrase is repeated in (and usually at the
beginning of) successive lines, clauses, or sentences.” _________________

17. a) “A verse stanza of four lines, rhymed or (less often) unrhymed.” __________________
b) “A unit of three verse lines, usually rhyming either with each other or with neighbouring lines”. _________

18. “A kind of poetry that does not conform to any regular metre: the length of its lines is irregular, as is its
use of rhyme—if any”. _____________________

19. “Unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter” ___________________

20. “A kind of rhyme in which the spellings of paired words appear to match but without true correspondence
in pronunciation: for example, ‘dive/give’, ‘said/maid’”. ___________________

– Definitions taken or adapted from Chris Baldick, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms
– Onomatopoeia
– Alliteration
– Assonance
– Rhyme scheme
– Elegy
– Epic
– Hyperbole
– Stanza
– Sonnet
– Couplet
– Caesura
– Iambic pentameter
– Metaphor
– Simile
– Personification
– Refrain
– Anaphora
– Quatrain
– Tercet
– Free verse
– Blank verse
– Eye-rhyme