Prosody
1. What is the primary difference between poetry and verse?
Ans: Poetry emphasizes expressive language, emotion, and imagination, whereas verse specifically refers to the rhythmic and metrical structures within poetry.
2. What is a syllable?
Ans: A syllable is a unit of sound in a word, usually made up of a vowel sound alone or accompanied by consonants.
3. What is an accent in poetry?
Ans: In poetry, an accent refers to the emphasis or stress placed on a syllable within a word or line of verse.
4. Define rhythm in poetry.
Ans: Rhythm in poetry refers to the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line, establishing a flow and movement throughout the poem.
5. What is meter in poetry?
Ans: Meter is the rhythmic structure of a verse line, determined by the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.
6. What is an iambic meter?
Ans: Iambic meter features lines with alternating unstressed and stressed syllables, creating a "da-DUM" pattern.
7. Define trochaic meter.
Ans: Trochaic meter consists of lines with alternating stressed and unstressed syllables, following the "DA-dum" pattern.
8. What is a spondee in poetry?
Ans: A spondee is a metrical foot made up of two consecutive stressed syllables, such as in the phrase "dead end."
9. Define dactylic
Ans: Dactylic meter consists of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables, exemplified by the pattern "DA-da-dum."
10. What is amphibrachic meter?
Ans: Amphibrachic meter consists of a stressed syllable flanked by two unstressed syllables, following the pattern "da-DUM-da."
11. Define pauses in poetry.
Ans: Pauses in poetry are breaks within a line or verse, indicated by punctuation or the natural rhythms of speech.
12. Define a sestina.
Ans: A sestina is a structured poetic form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, followed by a three-line envoi, featuring a specific pattern of repeated words.
13. What is the Spenserian stanza?
Ans: The Spenserian stanza is a nine-line stanza with the rhyme scheme ABABBCBCC, famously employed by Edmund Spenser in "The Faerie Queene."
14. What is free verse?
Ans: Free verse is a type of poetry that lacks a fixed meter or rhyme scheme, providing greater flexibility in expression.
15. What is anaphora?
Ans: Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the start of consecutive lines or clauses.
16. Explain chiasmus.
Ans: Chiasmus is a rhetorical device in which words or concepts are repeated in reverse order in successive phrases.
17. What is a metaphor?
Ans: A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares one thing to another, emphasizing their similarities.
18. Define personification.
Ans: Personification is a literary device that assigns human traits to non-human entities or abstract ideas.
19. What is a pun?
Ans: A pun is a play on words that uses similar sounds or multiple meanings for humorous or rhetorical effect.
20. Define synecdoche.
Ans: Synecdoche is a figure of speech where a part signifies the whole, or vice versa, where the whole represents a part.
