Transcript Musical Devices In Poetry

Musical Devices
In Poetry
? What makes poetry musical?
What makes poetry musical?
Rhyme
Alliteration
Consonance
Assonance
Onomatopoeia
Refrain
Rhyme
The Repetition of
accented vowel sounds
and all succeeding
sounds that appear close
together
Rhyme Example
Come with the rain, O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;
Make the settled snowbank steam
-From To the Thawing Wind
By Robert Frost
3 Types of Rhyme
• End Rhyme
• Internal Rhyme
• Approximate Rhyme (also called slant)
End Rhyme
• The most common form of rhyme
• Places the rhyming sound at the end of a line
of poetry
• The following lines of poetry by Langston
Hughes are a good example:
O, God of dust and rainbows, help us see
That without dust the rainbow would not be
Internal Rhyme
• Repeats sounds within lines of poetry
• The following line from Edgar Allan Poe’s The
Raven is a good example:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak
and weary
Approximate Rhyme
• Very popular with more modern poets
• The final rhyming sounds are close, but not
exactly the same
• Approximate rhyme is illustrated in these lines
by Emily Dickinson
All of evening softly lit
As an astral hall
“Father,” I observed to Heaven,
“You are punctual
Rhyme Scheme
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyme
between lines of a poem or song. It is usually
referred to by using letters to indicate which
lines rhyme. In other words, it is the pattern of
end rhymes or lines. A rhyme scheme gives
the scheme of the rhyme; a regular pattern of
rhyming words in a poem (the end words).
Rhyme Scheme Example
– Bid me to weep, and I will weep
– While I have eyes to see;
– And having none, and yet I will keep
– A heart to weep for thee.
A
B
A
B
Refrain
• One or more words, phrases, or lines that are
repeated regularly in a poem, usually at the
end of a stanza.
• In a song, we often call it the chorus.
Literary
Elements
Plot
• Also called storyline. the plan, scheme,
or main story of a literary or dramatic work,
as a play, novel, or short story.
Alliteration
• The repetition of consonant sounds in a group
of words close together
• Alliteration comes at the beginning of words
An easy way to remember alliteration:
Alliteration uses all the letters, except the
vowels.
Alliteration Example
This example comes from Ted Hughes’s poem, The
Lake:
Snuffles at my feet for what I might drop or kick up
Sucks and slobbers the stones, snorts through its lips
Consonance
• . It is the repetition of consonant sounds
located other than at the beginnings of words
• Again, The Lake offers a good example:
Snuffles at my feet for what I might drop or kick up
Sucks and slobbers the stones, snorts through its lips
Assonance
• The repetition of vowel sounds close together
What’s the difference?
How are rhyme and assonance different?
What’s the difference?
• Rhyme is the repetition of accented vowel
sounds AND the sounds that follow them
• Assonance is simply the repetition of vowel
sounds
Assonance
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Bells provides a good
example:
From the molten golden notes
Onomatopoeia
The use of a word whose sound imitates or
reinforces its meaning. In other words, it seeks
to imitate the sound for which it stands.
Examples in everyday language are words like
whoosh, tick-tock, zoom, and purr.
Popcorn is also onomatopoeia because its name
imitates its action.
Refrain Example
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
More
Poetic Devices/Figurative
Language
Tone
• feelings or meanings conveyed in the poem
Not so much what is being said but how it is
said
Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the Cupboard
To give the poor Dog a bone
When she came there
The Cupboard was bare
And so the poor Dog had none.
Stanza
A grouping of two or more lines of a poem in
terms of length, metrical form, or rhyme
scheme.
• Provides order and an expectation of closure
Simile
A comparison between two unlike things using
like or as.
“My love is like a red rose.”
Metaphor
A comparison between two unlike things
without using like or as. Something is
something else.
The doctor inspected the rash with
a vulture's eye.
Personification
Giving human qualities or characteristics to
animals or inanimate objects.
My shoes are killing me.
Hyperbole
Overstatement or exaggeration
I will just die if I do
not go to the party.
Symbol
On object or idea that stands
for something else.
Common symbols for love are
roses and hearts.
A dove is a symbol for peace.
Imagery
Words that appeal to the senses.
Creates vivid mental pictures
(sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound).
Speaker
The voice in the poem (not always the poet).
Provides focus.
Oxymoron
A seeming contradiction in two
words put together.
Jumbo shrimp
Irony
The use of words to convey the opposite of their
literal meaning; a statement or situation
where the meaning is contradicted by the
appearance or presentation of the idea.
• Verbal irony
• Situational irony
• Dramatic
Verbal Irony
A person says or writes one thing and means another,
or uses words to convey a meaning that is the
opposite of the literal meaning.
When a mother walks into a room and sees that her
children, instead of doing their homework, are
playing video games, she gives them a stern look and
says "Once you're done with your very important
work there, let's take some time out for recreation in
the form of some chemistry problems."
Situational Irony
Involves an incongruity between what is expected or
intended and what actually occurs.
Sometimes called irony of events.
Focuses on the surprising and inevitable fragility of the
human condition, in which the consequences of
actions are often the opposite of what was expected.
Situational Irony Example
"The Wizard of Oz," Dorothy undertakes a long
journey in order to find the means to get
home, only to discover that she has been able
to return home all along.
Dramatic Irony
An effect produced by a narrative in which the
audience knows more about present or future
circumstances than a character in the story.
Dramatic irony makes a story interesting and
keeps the reader engrossed till the end.
Dramatic Irony Example
Romeo and Juliet are secretly married but her parents insist that
she should marry Paris. And when Juliet is grieving for Romeo,
the others think that she is mourning her cousin Tybalt's
death. The climax scene is loaded with dramatic irony. Juliet
becomes unconscious after drinking the sleeping potion given
by Friar Lawrence. Romeo thinks that Juliet is dead, not
knowing that she is merely unconscious. He consumes poison
and kills himself. Meanwhile Juliet wakes up from slumber
and asks Friar Lawrence where Romeo is. To which Lawrence
replies he is unaware of Romeo's whereabouts when actually
the audience knows that he was present when Romeo kills
himself.
Situational vs. Dramatic Irony
The key difference between situational irony and dramatic irony
is the role of the audience. In dramatic irony, the tension is
created by the difference between what the audience knows
and what the character knows. In situational irony, the
knowledge of the audience develops along with the character.
Situational irony develops not from the contrast between
their levels of knowledge (dramatic irony), but from the
contrast between the assumptions both made to begin with
and the situation that emerges.
Cliche
• Expressions that are used so frequently they
become part of the lexicon.
• Can also appear as idioms and proverbs.
• Fad words that usually have a short life, but
can become standard American English.
Brown-noser
He aced his exam
Idiom
A set expression of two or more words that
means something other than the literal
meanings of its individual words.
Idioms can be literal and figurative.
Figurative and literal Idioms
Example: Kicked the bucket
Literal= He kicked the bucket with his foot
Figurative meaning =He died
Diction
• choice of words especially with regard
to correctness, clearness, or effectiveness
• vocal expression : ENUNCIATION
• pronunciation and enunciation of words in
singing