Terms：

Alliteration: the repetition of a particular sound in the prominent lifts (or stressed syllables) of a series of words or phrases

Romance：It is a literary genre popular in the Middle Ages, dealing, in verse or prose, with legendary, supernatural, or amorous subjects and characters.

Ballad: the narrative species of folk songs, which originate, and are communicated orally, among illiterate or only partly literate people.

Heroic Couplet: a couplet of rhyming iambic pentameters often forming a distinct rhetorical as well as metrical unit.

Allegory：a story in verse or prose with double meaning : a primary or surface meaning , and a secondary or undersurface meaning.

Foot: The basic metrical or rhythmical unit within a line of poetry. A foot of poetry generally consists of an accented syllable and one or more unaccented syllables arranged in a variety of patterns. The four standard feet distinguished in English poetry are:

Iamb (iambic): an unaccented syllable followed by an accented one;

Trochee(trochaic): an accented syllable followed by an unaccented one;

Anapest (anapestic): two unaccented syllables followed by an accented one;

Dactyl (dactylic): an accented syllable followed by two unaccented ones;

A metric line is named according to the number of feet composing it:

Monometre —a metrical line containing one foot;

Dimetre —a metrical line containing two feet;

Trimetre —a metrical line containing threefeet;

Tetrameter —a metrical line containing four feet;

Pentametre —a metrical line containing five feet;

Hexametre —a metrical line containing six feet;

Heptameter —a metrical line containing Seven feet;

Octametre —a metrical line containing eight feet.

Rhyme: The repetition at regular intervals in a line or lines of poetry of similar or identical sounds based on a correspondence between the vowels and succeeding consonants or accented syllables.

Meter: regularized rhythm; an arrangement of language in which the accents occur at apparently equal intervals in time. (the organization of stressed and unstressed syllables in one line of a poem.)

Rhythm and meter: Rhythm is the general term given to the measured repetition or accent or beat in units of poetry or prose. In English poetry, rhythm is generally established by manipulating both the pattern of accent and the number of syllables in a given line. Meter refers to the predominant rhythmic pattern with any given line (or lines) of poetry.

Stanza: a group of lines forming a structural unit or division of a poem. Stanzas may be strictly formal units established and patterned (with) possible variation by the similarity of the number and length of their lines, by their meter and rhyme scheme or as logical units, determined by their thought or content.

Lyric: a poem, usually a short one, that expresses a speaker’s personal thoughts or feelings.

Epic: a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation.

Sonnet:

The sonnet is A lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic-pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. It includes two distinct types: the Italian or Patrarchan and the English or Shakespearean.

The Italian sonnet consists of two parts: the first eight lines constitute octave, which is composed of two quatrains; the last six lines from the sestet. The rhyme scheme of the Italian sonnet is abba abba cde cde, or the sestet may rhyme cdc dcd. The octave usually proposes a question, develops a narrative, or delineates an idea. The accompanying sestet will answer the question, comment on the story, or countermand the idea. The thought-division is often signaled by an enjambment in line 9.

The English or Shakespearean sonnet also consists of 14 iambic pentameter lines, divided into 3 quatrains followed by a couplet. The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. In the Shakespearean sonnet each quatrain deals with a different aspect of the subject and the couplet either summarizes the theme or makes a final, sometimes contradictory, comment.

Edmund Spenser’s original sonnet rhyme scheme has been passed down also, although it has not been commonly used by anyone but Spenser. Spenser followed the English thought-division of the three quatrains and a couplet. However, he altered the rhyme scheme to abab bcbc cd ee, thus linking the quatrains, and called Spenserian sonnet.

Spenserian stanza: a nine-line stanza consisting of eight lines of iambic pentameter and a concluding line of iambic hexameter(Alexandrine), rhyming ABABBCBCC ---- named after English poet Edmund Spenser.

Alexandrine: an iambic line of six feet, which is the French heroic verse, and in English is used, for example, as the last line of the Spenserian stanza or as a variant in a poem of heroic couplets, rarely in a whole work. The name is derived from the fact that certain 12th and 13th century French poems on Alexander the Great were written in this metre.

Blank Verse: Also called unrhymed poetry typically in iambic pentameter. Blank verse Has been called the most “natural” verse form for dramatic works, since it supposedly is the verse form most close to natural rhythms of English speech, and it has been the dominant verse form of English drama and narrative poetry since the mid-sixteenth century. In 1540, from Italy, blank verse was brought into English literature by the poet Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Christopher Marlowe used blank verse for dramatic use; and English playwright William Shakespeare transformed blank verse into a supple instrument, uniquely capable of conveying speech rhythms and emotional overtones.

(In short, blank verse refers to the poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter.)

Miracle Plays

Miracle play or mystery play is a form of medieval drama that came from dramatization of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. It developed from the 10th to the 16th century, reaching its height in the 15th century. The simple lyric character of the early texts was enlarged by the addition of dialogue and dramatic action. Eventually the performance was moved to the churchyard and the marketplace.

A morality play is a play enforcing a moral truth or lesson by means of the speech and action of characters which are personified abstractions – figures representing vices and virtues, qualities of the human mind, or abstract conceptions in general.

The interlude, which grew out of the morality, was intended, as its name implies, to be used more as a filler than as the main part of an entertainment. As its best it was short, witty, simple in plot, suited for the diversion of guests at a banquet, or for the relaxation of the audience between the divisions of a serious play. It was essentially an indoors performance, and generally of an aristocratic nature.

Byronic Heroes: They are men with fiery passions and unbending will and express the ideal of freedom. These heroes rise against for personal freedom and some individual ends.

Rhetorical question: A question to which no response or reply is expected, because only one answer is possible.

Neoclassicism: the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the “classical” art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome.

Ode: a long lyric poem, serious and dignified in subject, tone and style, sometimes with an elaborate stanzaic structure, often written to commemorate or celebrate an event or individual.

Stream of Consciousness: a narrative device used in literature “to depict the multitudinous （众多的，形形色色的）thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind”.

Point of view: the perspective of the narrative voice; the pronoun used in narration.

Aestheticism: an art movement supporting the emphasis of aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, music and other arts.

Romanticism：an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1840.

Metaphysical Poets: a term coined by the poet and critic John Dryden to describe a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century, whose work was characterized by the inventive use of conceits, and by speculation about topics such as love or religion.

Metaphysical Poetry: a kind of realistic , often ironic and witty, verse combining intellectual ingenuity and psychological insight written partly in reaction to the conventions of Elizabethan love poetry by such seventeenth-century poets as John Donne ,George Herbert , Richard Crashaw, Thomas Traherne, and Andrew Marvell. One of its hallmarks is the metaphysical conceit, a particularly arresting and ingenious type of metaphor.

Conceit: Usually refers to a startling ingenuous, perhaps even far-fetched metaphor establishing an analogy or comparison between two apparently incongruous things.

Carpe diem: A Latin phrase meaning “seize the day”, generally applied to lyric poems that urge the celebration of the fleeting present. E.g., Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”.

Oedipus Complex：A term used by Freud in his theory of psychosexual stages of development to

describe a boy's feelings of desire for his mother and jealously and anger

towards his father

Sentimentalism: the practice of being sentimental, or the tendency to be governed by feelings instead of reason

Dramatic Monologue: a piece of spoken verse that offers great insight into the feelings of the speaker

Enlightenment: a cultural movement of intellectuals in the 18th century, first in Europe and later in the American colonies. Its purposes was to reform society using reason (rather than tradition, faith and revelation) and advance knowledge through science.

Realism: the general attempt to depict subjects as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment（装饰，润色） or interpretation.

Naturalism: the viewpoint that laws of nature (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the universe or, if it does, it does not affect the natural universe.

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