1. 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

3. 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.

4. Lit.Terms 4: what is poetry?
“Poetry is as universal as language and almost as ancient. The most primitive peoples have used it, and the most civilized have cultivated it.”

5. 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

6. Lit.Terms 4: what is poetry?
“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.”

7. Lit.Terms 4: what is poetry?
“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.”

8. 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)

9. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
The repetition of sound serves several purposes:
It is pleasing to the ear
It emphasizes the words in which the repetition occurs
It gives structure to the poem

10. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
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”

11. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
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.

12. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
The Eagle
He 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

14. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
Suicide’s Note
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
-Langston Hughes

15. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
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”

16. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
“All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson creates assonance with the “o” sound in this line from
“The Lotos-Eaters”

17. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
Similar endings result in rhyme:
“asleep in the deep”
Assonance is a strong means of emphasizing important words in a line.

18. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
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”

19. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth:
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

20. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
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.”

21. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
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.

23. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
Cacophony:
“Player Piano”
“never my numb plunker fumbles.”
-John Updike

24. Lit.Terms 4: Sonic Devices
Onomatopoeia
The use of a word that resembles the sound it denotes.
Words like buzz, rattle, bang, and sizzle all reflect onomatopoeia

25. 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.”

26. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
“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.”

27. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
While all discourse has some recurrent pattern, poetry usually contains distinct metric patterns—even free verse often has more rhythm than prose.

28. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
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.

29. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
We say:
       
today tomorrow yesterday

30. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
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.

31. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
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.

32. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
Metric feet make up lines of poetry.
Lines of poetry make up stanzas.
Stanzas make up cantos.

33. The four major poetic feet:
Iamb Trochee
   
Dactyl Anapest
     

34. The four rarer poetic feet:
Spondee Pyrrhic
   
Amphibrach Amphimacer
     
(the amphibrach and amphimacer are often omitted when scanning poetry.)

35. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
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.

36. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
Iamb The Iambic
  foot.
By far the most common foot in the English language.
It is the sound of the human heart.

37. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
Imagine Martin Luther King Jr. standing in front of the Washington Monument shouting to the crowd,
“I am!”

38. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
Here is a line of Iambic pentameter:
“Whose woods these are I think I know…”

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

40. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
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”

41. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
Here is a line of trochaic meter:
“Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

42. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
         
“Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn
    
and cauldron bubble.”

43. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
Anapest The anapestic foot.
  
The anapest is the galloping foot. Imagine a horse galloping along; hear the sounds of its hooves beating out…

44. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
a-na-PEST, a-na-PEST, a-na-PEST, a-na-PEST

45. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
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
  

46. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
Here is a line of anapestic trimeter:
“I will go to the lake in the woods…”

47. Lit.Terms 4: rhythm & meter
        
“ I will go to the lake in the woods…”