Glossary of Literary Terms
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scansion: The analysis of a line of poetry (by "scanning") to determine its pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, which usually are divided into metrical feet. See foot.
sestina: Six six-line stanzas and a final three-line stanza in a complex form that repeats words, not lines (as in the villanelle) or rhymes. The final word in each line of the first stanza becomes the final word in other stanzas (in a set pattern: ABCDEF, FAEBDC, CFDABE, ECBFAD, DEACFB, BDFECA); the lines in the concluding stanza, or envoy, usually end ECA and each line contains one of the remaining three end words. Invented in the twelfth century by the troubadours, the form has again come into use in the twentieth century (e.g., by Marilyn Hacker); the repetitions often convey a sense of circling around a subject.
setting: The time and place of the action in a poem.Shakespearean sonnet: See English sonnet.
simile: A direct, explicit comparison of one thing to another that usually draws the connection with the words "like" or "as." Compare metaphor.
situation: The context of the action in a poem; that is, what is happening when the poem begins.
sonnet: A form, usually only a single stanza, that offers several related possibilities for its rhyme scheme; however, it is always fourteen lines long and usually written in iambic pentameter. See English sonnet, Italian sonnet, and Spenserian sonnet.
speaker: The person, not necessarily the author, who is the voice of a poem. See persona.
Spenserian sonnet: Three four-line stanzas (interwoven by overlapping rhyme) and a couplet; this sonnet is rhymed abab bcbc cdcd ee. For example, see Edmund Spenser, "Sonnet 71" (1595; "One day I wrote her name upon the strand").
Spenserian stanza: Eight lines of iambic pentameter and a ninth line of iambic hexameter, called an alexandrine, rhymed ababbcbbc. The name of the stanza comes from Edmund Spenser´s use of it in "The Faerie Queene" (1596); see also John Keats, "The Eve of St. Agnes" (1820).
spondee: A stressed syllable followed by another syllable of approximately equal stress, as in "hot dog" (see foot).
sprung rhythm: Gerard Manley Hopkins´ blending of accentual meter with the more familiar feet of accentual-syllable meter. In his system, each foot begins with a stress; the line is measured by the number of stresses, which fall with normal word stress (and need not be separated by unstressed syllables).
stanzas: Groups of lines, usually in some predetermined pattern of meter and rhyme, that are set off from one another by a space.
subject: The general or specific area of concern of a poem; also called its topic.
syllabic verse: A form in which the poet establishes a precise number of syllables to a line, without regard to their stress, and repeats them in subsequent stanzas. For example, see Marianne Moore, "Poetry" (1921).
symbol: A word or image that stands for something else in a vivid but indeterminate way: it suggests more than what it actually says. For example, see Li-Young Lee, "Persimmons" (1986).
symbolic poem: A poem in which the use of symbols is so pervasive and internally consistent that the larger referential world is distanced, if not forgotten. For example, see Adrienne Rich, "Diving into the Wreck" (1973).
synesthesia: Figurative expression of the perception of one sense in terms of another. For example, see William Blake, "London" (1794): "And the hapless Soldier´s sigh / Runs in blood down Palace walls."
