literature terms #4: sonic and rhythmic devices, structure

Literature Terms #4: Sonic and Rhythmic Devices, Structure

AP Literature Mrs. Demangos

from Perrine’s Literature Structure, Sound & Sense, 10th ed., Discovering Literature, and Sparkcharts

Lit.Terms 4: what is poetry?

• Poetry is a literary form characterized by a strong sense of rhythm and meter and an emphasis on the interaction between sound and sense.

• The study of the elements of poetry is called prosody.


• “Poetry is as universal as language and almost as ancient. The most primitive peoples have used it, and the most civilized have cultivated it.”

Lit.Terms 4: What makes poetry so appealing?

• Simple enjoyment• It is regarded as giving value to the fully

realized life—something central to existence.• Something that, without which, we are

spiritually impoverished


• “Poetry might be defined as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language.”

• It “exists to communicate significant experience—significant because it is concentrated and organized.”


• “Poetry makes a greater use of the “music” of language than does language that is not poetry.

• The poet, unlike the person who uses language to convey only information, chooses words for sound as well as for meaning, and uses the sound as a means of reinforcing meaning.”

Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices

• “Poets may repeat any unit of sound from the smallest to the largest. They may repeat individual vowel and consonant sounds, whole syllables, words, phrases, lines or groups of lines.”(alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme)


• The repetition of sound serves several purposes:

1. It is pleasing to the ear2. It emphasizes the words in which the

repetition occurs3. It gives structure to the poem


Alliteration:• Repetition at close intervals of the initial

consonant sounds of accented syllables or important words:

“descending dew drops” “luscious lemons”“preach…approve”“Inebriate of Air-am I”


• Alliteration: Is based on the sounds of letters, rather than the spelling of words:

“keen” and “car” alliterate; but “car” and “cite” do not

• Used sparingly, it can intensify ideas by emphasizing key words.


The EagleHe clasps the crag with crooked hands;Close to the sun in lonely lands,Ringed with the azure world, he stands.The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;He watches from his mountain walls,And like a thunderbolt he falls.

-Alfred, Lord Tennyson


• Suicide’s Note

The calm,Cool face of the riverAsked me for a kiss.

-Langston Hughes


Assonance:• The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sequence

of nearby words that do not end the same“hat…ran…amber” “asleep under a tree”“mad as a hatter” “each evening”“time out of mind”“free and easy”“slapdash”


• Alfred, Lord Tennyson creates assonance with the “o” sound in this line from

“The Lotos-Eaters”

“All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone.”


• Similar endings result in rhyme:“asleep in the deep”

• Assonance is a strong means of emphasizing important words in a line.


Consonance• Repetition of consonant sound in any position• A common type of near rhyme that consists of

identical consonant sounds preceded by different vowel sounds“home…same” “worth…breath”


• In Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.”


Euphony:• “good sound”• Refers to language that is smooth and

musically pleasant to the ear• “Many consider “cellar door” one of the most

euphonious phrases in English.”


Cacophony: harsh sounds• The clash of discordant sounds within a

sentence or phrase. • A familiar feature of tongue twisters but can

also be used to poetic effect. • It is language that is discordant and difficult to

pronounce.


Cacophony:“Player Piano”

“never my numb plunker fumbles.”-John Updike


Onomatopoeia• The use of a word that resembles the sound it

denotes.• Words like buzz, rattle, bang, and sizzle all

reflect onomatopoeia

Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter

• Rhythm and Meter:• “Our love of rhythm is rooted more deeply in

us than our love of musical repetition. It is related to the beat of our hearts, the pulse of our blood, the intake and outflow of air from our lungs.”


• “Everything that we do naturally and gracefully we do rhythmically. There is rhythm in the way we walk, the way we swim, the way we ride a horse, the way we swing a baseball bat.”


• While all discourse has some recurrent pattern, poetry usually contains distinct metric patterns—even free verse often has more rhythm than prose.


• In every word of more than one syllable, one or more syllables are accented, or stressed.

• Meter is the pattern of stressed ( ) and unstressed () syllables.


• We say: today tomorrow yesterday


• Scansion: • The analysis of meter and rhyme. When we

scan a poem, we determine its metric pattern.• Some students may enjoy analyzing meter if it

is approached as a light exercise and stressed that it is an art, not a science.


• Foot:• A foot is a unit of meter. Most feet contain

only one stressed syllable and one or two unstressed syllables.

• Meaning is usually carried in the stressed syllables.


• Metric feet make up lines of poetry.• Lines of poetry make up stanzas.• Stanzas make up cantos.

The four major poetic feet:

Iamb Trochee

Dactyl Anapest

The four rarer poetic feet:

Spondee Pyrrhic

Amphibrach Amphimacer

(the amphibrach and amphimacer are often omitted when scanning poetry.)


• Other rhythmic considerations include:• Anacursis: the extra unaccented syllable at the

beginning of a line.• Catalexis: the unaccented syllable at the end

of a line.• Enjambment: a run-on line, continuing into

the next line without a pause.


Iamb The Iambic foot. By far the most

common foot in the English language.

It is the sound of the human heart.


• Imagine Martin Luther King Jr. standing in front of the Washington Monument shouting to the crowd,

“I am!”


• Here is a line of Iambic pentameter:

“Whose woods these are I think I know…”

Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter “Whose woods these are I think I know…”


• Trochee The trochaic foot.

• The trochee is the opposite of the iamb.

• Imagine a tough guy pulling on his grey fedora hat as he says

“TRO chee”


• Here is a line of trochaic meter:

• “Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble.”


“Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn

and cauldron bubble.”


• Anapest The anapestic foot.

• The anapest is the galloping foot. Imagine a horse galloping along; hear the sounds of its hooves beating out…


• a-na-PEST, a-na-PEST, a-na-PEST, a-na-PEST


• Or…think of that girl, Anna, in your class who is such a pest. Point at her (or him) on the word “pest” in a-na-PEST! Anapest


• Here is a line of anapestic trimeter:

• “I will go to the lake in the woods…”


“ I will go to the lake in the woods…”

literature terms #4: sonic and rhythmic devices, structure

Documents

structure literature

sonic devicesalliteration

sonic devicesalfred

sonic devicesassonance

sonic devicespoets

sonic devicesconsonance

elements of poetry

sonic devicesthe eaglehe