Glossary of Literary Terms

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accentual meter: Lines of verse organized by number of stresses rather than by feet or number of syllables. This was the form of poetry written in Old English (which combined stress with alliteration). For a modern example, see Richard Wilbur, "Junk" (1961). Accentual meter is the basis of sprung rhythm.

accentual-stress meter: Lines of verse based on the metrical foot. This is the most common form of English poetry.

alcaics: a four-line stanza of considerable metrical complexity, named after the ancient Greek poet Alcaeus.

alliteration: The repetition of sounds in nearby words, most often involving the initial consonants of words (and sometimes the internal consonants in stressed syllables).

allusion: An indirect reference to a text, myth, event, or person outside the poem itself (compare echo). Although it is woven into the context of the poem, it carries its own history of meaning: for example, see the reference to Hamlet in T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1917).

ambiguity: The ability to mean more than one thing.

analogy: Resemblance in certain respects between things that are otherwise unlike; also, the use of such likeness to predict other similarities.

anapest: Two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one, as in "unabridged" (see foot).

anaphora: Repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines. For example, see Anne Bradstreet, "To My Dear and Loving Husband" (1678).

assonance: The repetition of vowel sounds in a line or series of lines. Assonance often affects pace (by working against short and long vowel patterns) and seems to underscore the words included in the pattern. For example, see the beginning of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan" (1816).

aubade: A lyric about the dawn (e.g., see John Donne, "The Sun Rising" [1633]).