AP Poetic Terms List Part 3

• Pentameter


  A line containing five feet
• Persona


  Literally, a persona is a mask . In literature, a persona is a speaker created by a writer to tell a story or to speak in a poem
• Personification


  A figure of speech in which human attributes are given to an animal, an object, or concept
• Phonetic Intensive


  A word whose sound to some degree suggests its meaning
• Polysyndeton


  The deliberate use of many conjunctions
• Pun


  A play on words that is humorous
• Pun - Antanaclasis

  A repetition of a word in two different senses
• Pun - Paronomasia

  The use of words alike in sound but different in meaning
• Quatrain


  A four-line stanza
• Rhetorical Question


  A question asked for effect not in expectation of a reply
• Run-On Line


  A line, which has no natural speech pause at its end, allowing the sense to flow uninterruptedly into the succeeding line
• Sestet


  A six-line stanza
• Simile


  A comparison between two unlike things using the linking words "like" or "as"
• Sonnet


  A fixed form of fourteen lines with a rhyme scheme (usually iambic pentameter); often conforming to or approximating one of two main types
• Sonnet - Shakespearean (English)


  A sonnet rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. Usually a correspondence between the units marked off by the rhymes and the development of the thought.
• Sonnet - Petrarchan (Italian)


  It is divided between eight lines called the octave, using two rhymes arranged abba abba, and six lines called the sestet, using any arrangement of either two or three rhymes: cdcdcd & cdecde are common patterns. Usually a division of thought between octave and sestet
• Stanza


  A group of lines whose metrical pattern is repeated throughout a poem
• Synecdoche


  A figure of speech where a part represents the whole
• Syntax


  A set of rules in language; how words are put together to create meaning
• Tercet


  A three-line stanza
• Tone


  The writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward the subject, the audience, or himself/herself; emotional meaning of a work
• Trochee


  A foot in a line of poetry of two syllables – stressed/unstressed
• Understatement


  A figure of speech used to intentionally make a situation seem less important than it is
• Verse


  A line or stanza of poetry
• Villanelle


  A highly specialized French poem with 19 lines, divided into 5 tercets and 1 quatrain; two rhymes or repeated lines dominate; aba aba aba aba aba abaa