A Romantic Metaphor

 The Correspondent Breeze:

A Romantic Metaphor

WHITING in 1834, Henry Taylor noted that Wordsworth's assaults on eighteenth-century diction had succeeded in making poetry, in some attributes, more ordinary spoken. But Taylor also remarked that in effect a new poetic diction had covertly replaced the old. If Romantic poets no longer refer to the nightingale by the Greek name, Philomel, some of them refer to it by the Persian name, Bulbul; Taylor cites one reader who said 'he had learnt, for the first time, from Lord Byron's poetry, that two bulls make a nightingale.' Worse still are the stock terms dispersed through poetry 'with a sort of feeling senselessness,' such as 'wild,' "bright,' lonely," and 'dream," and particularly the variant forms of the word "breathing'; "to breathe,' Taylor says, has become "a verb poetical which [means] anything but respiration.’’

To this cautious observation, I would add that "breathing" is only one aspect of a more general ingredient in Romantic poetry. This is air-in- motion, whether it occurs as breeze or breath, wind or respiration— whether the air is compelled into motion by natural powers or by the action of the human lungs. That the poetry of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron should be so completely refreshed is itself notable; but the startling aspect is how often, in the major poems, the wind is not only a property of the landscape, but also a vehicle for revolutionary changes in the poet's mind. The increasing wind, usually associated with the outer transition from winter to spring, is associated with a complex subjective process: the return to a sense of community after isolation, the revival of life and emotional strength after apathy and a deathlike inactivity, and an explosion of productive strength following an era of imaginative sterility.

Coleridge's Dejection: An Ode, written in 1802, furnishes the firstest inclusive illustration of this symbolic equation. The poetic reflection is set in April, which turns out, as in Eliot's Waste Land, to be the crudest month because, in breeding Me out of the dead laud, it bitterly revives emotional life in the spectator, miring recollection and ambition. And as the poem opens, a desultory breeze makes itself audible on a wind-harp—an instrument whose incredible modulations sound through most of the writings with which we are apprehensive.

Jarnes Bowyer, Coleridge's schoolmaster and pre-Wordsworthian reformer of poetic diction, had energetically proscribed the conventional lyre as an emblem for poetizing. 'Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! But by the procedure already noted—we might call it Taylor's principle—the lyre of Apollo was often supplanted in Romantic poetry by the Aeolian lyre, whose music is provoked not by art, human or divine, but by an impetus of nature. Poetic man, in a statement by Shelley which had close paradigm in Coleridge and Wordsworth, is an instrument subject to impressions Tike the shifts of an ever-changing wind over an Aeolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing symphony. “The wind-harp has become a constant Romantic analogue of the poetic mind, the figurative mediator between outer motion and inner sentiment. It is possible to infer that, without this plaything of the eighteenth century, the Romantic poets would have lacked a conceptual model for the way the mind and imagination respond to the wind, so that some of their most characteristic passages might have been, in a literal sense, unthinkable.

In Coleridge's Dejection the moaning wind-harp predicts a storm which the lyric speaker in his indifference awaits in the expectation that, as in the past, it may send ‘my soul abroad' and send out the

stifled, drowsy, impassioned grief,

Which Buds no natural outlet, no relief ....

The speaker reviews the sufferings that have made him take shelter in "abstruse research," and have demolished his inner joy and any possibility of emotional commerce with the outer scene. Worst of all is the attendant paralysis of his poetic power, the "shaping spirit of Imagination.' But even as the speaker indexes the situations of his death in life, the outer wind braces to a storm of driving rain and constrains the wind-harp into loud and violent music. In implied parallel with the wind-harp, the poet also responds to the storm with mounting vitality—what he calls 'the passion and the life, whose fountains are within, once more break out—until, in a lull of the wind, the poem rounds on itself and ends where it commenced, with a gentle both of nature and of mind. But the poet has moved from the calm of apathy to one of stability after passion. By the agency of the wind storm it describes, the poem turns out to contradict its own premises: the poet's spirit arouses to severe life even as he bemoans his inner death, accomplishes release in the discomfort at being cut off from all outlet, and indicates the power of vision in the strategy of commemorating its failure.

That the poem was grounded in experience is apparent from Coleridge’s many letters confirming to his pleasure in wind and storms, which he watched ‘with a total impression worshipping the power and “eternal Link” Of Energy,” and through which he had walked, “stricken . . . with Barrenness in a “deeper gloom than I am willing to remember,” seeking The inspiration for finalizing Christabel,* In one passage, written some nine months after he had accomplished Dejection, we discover a symbolic wind Again involving the renewal of feeling and imagination, and leading to the sense of the one life within us and abroad:

In modest solemnness, I never find myself alone within the embracement of rocks and hills, a traveller up an alpine road, but my spirit courses, drives, and eddies, like a Leaf in Autumn: a wild activity, of thoughts,imagination, feelings, and impulses of motion, rises up from within me—a sort of bottom-wind, that blows to no point of the compass, and comes from I know not whence, but agitates the whole of me. . . . Life seems to me then a universal spirit, that neither has, nor can have, an opposite. . . . where is there room for death?

Furthermore with Coleridge's friend, Wordsworth: "Winter winds,' Dorothy wrote, 'are his delight—his mind I think is often more fertile in this season than any other.' ° Of this phenomenon Wordsworth himself gave remarkable testimony in the autobiographical Prelude, From the beginning of this work, in fact, the recurrent wind serves unobtrusively as a leitmotif, representing the chief theme of continuity and interchange between outer motions and the interior Me and powers, and providing the poem with a principle of organization beyond chronology.

Earlier poets had inaugurated their epics by conjuring for inspiration a Muse, Apollo, or the Holy Spirit, Wordsworth's opening lines, which have an identical function, are:

Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze

That blows from the green fields and from the clouds

And from the sky ....

Acquitted at last from the city and the tyrannical weight of the past, the poet says 'I breathe again"; but so, we find, is nature breathing, in a passage where the wind becomes both the impetus and outer correspondent to a spring-like renewal of the spirit after a wintry season, and also to a revival of poetic enthusiasm which Wordsworth, going beyond Coleridge, equates with the inspiration of the Prophets when touched by the Holy Spirit. There is even a glancing metaphoric parallel between the resulting poetic creation and the prototypal innovation by divine utterance—For 'Nature's self," as Wordsworth said later, 'is the breath of God' (Prelude, 1805 ed., V, 222.)

For I, methought, while the sweet breath of Heaven

Was blowing on my body, felt within

A corresponding mild creative breeze,

A vital breeze which travell'd gently on

O'er things which it had made, and is become

A tempest, a redundant energy

. Vexing its own creation. Tis a power

That does not come unrecogniz'd, a stonn

Which, breaking up a long-continued frost

Brings with it vernal promises . . .

The holy life of music and of verse ....

To the open fields I told

A prophecy; poetic numbers came

Spontaneously, arid cloth'd in priestly robe

My spirit, thus singled out, as it might seem,

For holy services. . . .

And a bit farther on comes the remaining element of the Romantic

complex, the analogy between poetic mind and Aeolian harp:

It was a splendid evening; and my soul

Did once again make trial of the strength

Restored to her afresh; nor did she want

Eolian visitations; but the harp

Was soon defrauded, . . . (1805 ed., I, 1-105)

 

The Structure of Romantic Nature Imagery

 

The Structure of Romantic Nature Imagery

LEARNERS of romantic personality poetry have had a great deal to tell us about the philosophic elements of this poetry: the particular mixture of Deistic theology, Newtonian physics, and pantheistic naturalism which saturates the Wordsworthian landscape in the duration of ‘Tintern Abbey, The theism which sounds in the “Eolian Harp’ of Coleridge, the confrontation between French atheism and Platonic idealism which even in “Pro- Methegs Unbound’ Shelley was not able to settle. We have been in-Strutted in some of the more barely scientific coloring of the poetry—the Images originated from geology, astronomy, and magnetism, and the Coruscate green enigma which the electricians participated to such phenomena as Shelley’s Spirit of Earth. We have contemplated also the “sensibility” of romantic readers, distinct, according to one influential Interpretation, from that of neoclassic readers. What was fascinating to the Age of Pope, ‘Puffs, Powders, Patches, Bibles, Billet-doux” (even about These the age might be loath to admit its excitement), was not, we are tom, what was so manifestly exciting to the age of Wordsworth. ‘High mountains are a feeling, but the hum of cities torture.’ Lastly, recent critical history has reinvited interest to the romantic theory of intuition, and particularly to the edition of that concept which Coleridge originated from the German metaphysicians, the view of poetic imagination as the esemplastic capacity which reshapes our primary understanding of the world into symbolic routes to the theological.

We have, in brief, a subject— simply contemplated, the essence of birds and trees and streams— a metaphysics of an animating doctrine, a unique sensibility, and a concept of poetic imagination—the significance of the last a question of debate. Romantic poetry itself has previously endured some detriment among advanced critics. One delightful question, however, seems still to want conversation; that is, whether romantic poetry (or more especially romantic nature poetry) shows any creative pattern which may be assessed a special similarity of the subject, the philosophy, the sensibility, and the theory—and hence possibly an ex- planation of the last. Something like an answer to such a question is what I would describe.

For the objective of providing an antithetic point of deviation, I quote here a part of one of the best known and most toughly adequate of all metaphysical images:

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two.

Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if th' other do.

It will be appropriate if we comment that this resemblance, rather exaggerated as some might think, is yet unmistakable to interpretation because quite overtly asserted, but again is not, by being asserted, specifically distinguished or restricted in its poetic integrity. The kind of resemblance and the kind of dis- parity that ordinarily attain between a drawing compass and a pair of dividing lovers are things to be attentively deemed in reading this image. And the discrepancy between living lovers and tough metal is not least crucial to the tone of accuracy, constraint, and belief which is the victory of the poem to communicate. Though the resemblance is cast in the shape of the statement, its mood is actually a kind of sub imperative. In the next age, the uncertainty of such a drastic distinction was relaxed, yet the overtness and crispness of statement persisted, and a satire of its own sort.

“Tis with our judgments as our watches, none

Go just alike, yet each belias his own.”

We may take this as typical, I speculate, of the metaphoric structure in which Pope attains quintessence and which withstands a few years later in the couplets of Samuel Johnson or the more strong Churchill. The difference between our decisions and our watches, if noted at all, may be a pleasant epistemological joke for a person who questions the existence of a judgment that is taken out as a watch and consulted by another Judgment.

But the 'sensibility," as we realize, had begun to change even in the era of Pope. Examples of a new sensibility, and of a different structure, having something to do with Miltonic verse and a "phaysico-theological nomenclature, are to be found in Thomson's Seasons. Both a new sensibility and a new structure occur in the hamlets' brown and dim-dis-covered spires of Collins’s early instance of the full romantic fantasy. In various poets of the mid-century, in the Warton’s, in Grainger, or Cunningham, one may think, or rather see expressed a new sensibility, but at the identical time, one may bemoan an absence of poetic quality—that is, of a poetic structure sufficient to embody or objectify the new perception. It is as if these forerunners of another epoch had felt but had not felt strong enough to work upon the subjects of their feelings a pattern of meaning which would utter for itself—and which would hence endure as a poetic monument. As a central exhibit I shall take two sonnets, that of William Lisle Bowles "To the River Itchin' (1789 ) and for the discrepancy that of Coleridge To the River Otter' (1796)—written in the confessed fabrication of Bowles. Coleridge owed his first poetic enthusiasm to Bowles (the "father" of English romantic poetry) and continued to express unlimited admiration for him as late as 1796. That is, they shared the same sensibility—as for that matter did Wordsworth and Southey, who too were deeply affected by the sonnets of Bowles. As a schoolboy Coleridge read eagerly in Bowies' second edition of 1789 (among other sonnets not much superior):

Itchin, when I behold thy banks! again,

Thy crumbling margin, and thy silver breast.,

On which the self-same tints still seem to rest,

Why feels my heart the shiv'rieg sense of pain?

Is it—that many a summer's day has past

Since, in life's morn, I carol'd on thy side?

Is it—that oft, since then, my heart has sigh'd,

As Youth, and Hope's delusive gleams, lew fast?

Is it—that those, who circled on thy shore,

Companions of my youth, now meet no more?

Whate'er the cause, upon thy banks I bend

Sorrowing, yet feel such solace at my heart,

As at the meeting of some long-lost friend,

Here is a demonstrative manner which once appealed to the sensibility of its author and of his more sophisticated contemporaries, but which has with the lapse of time gone flat. The orator was happy as a boy by the banks of the river, Age has brought disillusion and the dispersal of his friends. So a return to the river, in recollecting him of the past, brings both sorrow and solace. The truths are asserted in four rhetorical questions and a concluding statement. There is also something about how the river looks and how its looks might participate to his feelings—in the metaphoric recommendation of the 'crumbling’ border and in the approximately illusory hues on the texture of the surge which surprisingly have out-lasted the "delusive gleams' of his owe hopes. Yet the total impression is one of simple association (by contiguity in time) simply asserted what might be described in the theory of Hume or Hartley or what Hazlitt talks about in his essay "On the Love of the Country." 'It is because natural objects have been correlated with the sports of our childhood, with our feelings in solitude . . . that we love them as we do ourselves."

Coleridge himself in his 'Lines Written at Elbingerode in 1799" was to speak of a 'spot with which the heart correlates Holy memories of child or friend." His excitement for Hartley in this duration is well known. But later, in the Biogmphia Literaria and in the third of his essays on 'Genial Criticism,' he was to renounce explicitly the Hartleyan and mechanistic way of shifting back responsibilities of meaning. And already, in 1796, Coleridge as poet was interested with the more problematic ontological grounds of association (the several levels of resemblance, of correspondence and analogy), where cognitive activity exceeds mere "associative response"—where it is in fact the unifying activity known both to later eighteenth century associationists and to romantic poets as "imagination." The 'sweet and indissoluble union between the intellectual and the material world' of which Coleridge speaks in the introduction to his leaflet anthology of sonnets in 1796 must be applied by us in one sense to the sonnets of Bowles, but in another to the best romantic poetry and even to Coleridge's representation of Bowles. There is an important difference between the kinds of unity. In a letter to Sotheby of 1802 Coleridge was to say more emphatically: "The poet's heart and intellect should be combined, intimately combined and unified with the great appearances of nature, and not merely held in solution and loose mixture with them.'8 In the same paragraph he says of Bowies' later poetry: "Bowles has indeed the sensibUtty of a poet, but he has not the passion of a great poet... he has no native passion because he is not a thinker."

 

John Donne: a love poet

 John Donne: a love poet

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Donne was the first English poet to challenge and break the supremacy of Petrarchan tradition. Though at times he adopts the Petrarchan devices, his imagery and rhythm, texture and colour of his love poetry is different. There are three distinct strains of his love poetry – Cynical, Platonic and Conjugal love.

Giving an allusion to Donne’s originality as the poet of love, Grierson makes the following observation:

“His genius temperament and learning gave a certain quality to his love poems … which arrest our attention immediately. His love poems, for instance, do have a power which is at once realistic and distracting.”

Donne’s greatness as a love-poet arises from the fact that this poetry covers a wider range of emotions than that of any previous poet. His poetry is not bookish but is rooted in his personal experiences. Is love experience were wide and varied and so is the emotional range of his love-poetry. He had love affairs with a number of women. Some of them were lasting and permanent, others were only of short duration.

Donne is quite original in presenting love situations and moods.

The “experience of love” must produce a “sense of connection” in both the lovers. This “sense of connection” must be based on equal urge and longing on both sides.

“The room of love” must be shared equally by the two partners.

Donne magnifies the ideal of “Sense of connection” into the physical fulfillment of love.

"My face in thine eyes thine in mime appears"

This aspect of love helps him in the virtual analysis of the experience of love. Donne was a shrewd observer who had firsthand knowledge of “love and related affairs. That is why in almost all his poems, he has deep insight.

His love as expressed in his poetry was based not on conventions but on his own experiences. He experienced all phase of love – platonic, sensuous, serene, cynical, conjugal, illicit, lusty, picturesque, and sensual. He could also be grotesque blending thought with passion.

Another peculiar quality of Donne’s love lyrics is its “metaphysical strain”. His poems are sensuous and fantastic. Donne’s metaphysical strain made his reader confuse his sincerity.

Donne’s genius temperament and learning gave to his love poems power and fascination. There is a depth and ring of feeling unknown to most Elizabethan poets. Donne’s poetry is startlingly unconventional even when he dallies, half ironically, with the hyperboles of Petrarch.

Donne is realistic not idealistic. He knows the weakness of Flesh, the pleasure of sex, the joy of secret meeting. However, he tries to establish a relationship between the body and the soul. Donne is a very realistic poet.

Grierson distinguished three distinct strains in it. First, there is the cynical strain. Secondly, there is the strain f conjugal love to be noticed in poems like “valediction: forbidding mourning”. Thirdly, there is platonic strain. The platonic strain is to b found in poems like “Twicknam Garden”, “The Funeral”, “The Blossoms”, and “The Primroses”. These poems were probably addressed to the high-born lady friends. Towards them, he adopts the helpless pose of flirtations and in high platonic vein boasts that:

Different of sex no more we know
Than our Guardian Anglles doe

In between the cynical realistic strain and the highest spiritual strain, there are a number of poems that show an endless variety of moods and tones. Thus, thee are poems in which the tone is harsh, others which are coarse and brutal, still others in which he holds out a making threat to his faithless mistress and still others in which he is in a reflective mood. More often than not, a number of strains and moods are mixed up in the same poem. This makes Donne a love poet singularly, original, unconventional, and realistic.

Whatever may be the tone or mood of a particular poem, it is always an expression of some personal experience and is, therefore, presented with remarkable force, sincerity and seriousness. Each poem deals with a love situation which is intellectually analyzed with the skill of an experienced lawyer.

Hence the difficult nature of his poetry and the charge of obscurity have been brought against him. The difficulty of the readers is further increased by the extreme condensation and destiny of Donne’s poetry.

The fantastic nature of metaphysical conceits and poetry would become clear even we examine a few examples. In “Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” true lovers now parted are likened to the legs of a compass. The image is elaborated at length. The lovers are spiritually one, just as the head of the compass is one even when the legs are apart. One leg remains fixed and the other moves around it. The lover cannot forget the beloved even when separated from her. The two loves meet in the end just as the two legs of the compass are together again, as soon as circle has been drawn.

At other times, he uses equally extravagated hyperboles. For example, he mistakes his beloved to an angel, for to imagine her less than an angel would be profanity.

In Donne’s poetry, there is always an “intellectual analysis” of emotion. Like a clever lawyer, Donne gives arguments after arguments in support of his points of view. Thus in “Valediction: Forbidden Mourning” he proves that true lovers need not mourn at the time of parting. In “Canonization” he establishes that lovers are saints of love and in “The Blossome” he argues against the Petrarchan love tradition. In all this Donne is a realistic love poet.

Sources: http://www.cssforum.com.pk/css-optional-subjects/group-v/english-literature/278-john-donne-love-poet.html

 

John Donne a metaphysical poet

 John Donne a metaphysical poet

 

Dryden once remarked:

“Donne affects metaphysics not only in his satires but in amorous verses, too, where nature only should reign.”

Though Donne was influenced by the sixteenth and the seventeenth century poets, yet he did not tread on the beaten track. His concept of poetry was unconventional. In his poetry, the intellect takes the form, primarily, of wit by which heterogeneous ideas are yoked together by violence. The seventeenth century poets labeled his poetry as ‘strong line poetry’, mainly, on account of his concise expression and his deliberate toughness. In his life, he was never called a metaphysical poet. After his death, his poetry was re-evaluated and some other important features were found in it, which won the name of a metaphysical poet for Donne.

Grierson’s defines metaphysical poetry as:

“Poetry inspired by a philosophical concept of the universe and the role assigned to human spirit in the great drama of existence”.

This definition is based on the metaphysical poetry of Dante, Goethe and Yeats. So “metaphysical” is applicable to poetry who is highly philosophical or which touches philosophy.

Combination of passion and thought characterizes his work. His use of conceit is often witty and sometimes fantastic. His hyperboles are outrageous and his paradoxes astonishing. He mixes fact and fancy in a manner which astounds us. He fills his poems with learned and often obscure illusions besides, some of his poems are metaphysical in literal sense, they are philosophical and reflective, and they deal with concerns of the spirit or soul.

Conceit is an ingredient which gives a special character to Donne’s metaphysical poetry. Some of his conceits are far-fetched, bewildering and intriguing. He welds diverse passions into something harmonious.

“When thou weep’st, unkindly kinde,
My lifes blood doth decay.”

 

“When a teare falls, that thou falst which it bore,”

“Here lies a she-sun and a he-moon there”

“All women shall adore us, and some men.”

His approach is based on logical reasoning and arguments. He provides intellectual parallels to his emotional experiences. His modus operandi was “to move from the contemplation of fact to a deduction from it and, thence, to a conclusion”. He contemplates fidelity in a woman but, in reality, draws it impossible of find a faithful woman.

“No where
Lives a woman true, and faire.”

He does not employ emotionally exciting rhythm. His poetry goes on lower ebb. Even his love poems do not excite emotions in us. Even in a “Song” while separating, he is logical that he is not parting for weariness of his beloved.

“But since that I
Must dye at last, ’tis best,
To use my selfe in jest
Thus by fain’d deaths to dye;”

His speculations and doctrines are beyond common human experience. His ideas are beyond the understanding of a layman and are a blend of intellect and emotions making his approach dialectical and scholastic. He asks his beloved in “The Message” to keep his eyes and heart because they might have learnt certain ills from her, but then, he asks her to give them back so that he may laugh at her and see her dying when some other proves as false to her as she has proved to the poet.

Donne was a self-conscious artist, therefore, had a desire to show off his learning. In his love poetry, he gives illustrations from the remote past. In his divine poems, he gives biblical references like the Crucification.

“Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?”

“Get with child a mandrake roote.”

“But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall.”

Metaphysical poetry is highly concentrated and so is Donne’s poetry. In “The Good Morrow”, he says

“For love, all love of other sights controules.”

“For, not in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt’ring bright, can love inhere.”

“Hee that hath all can have no more.”

His poetry is full of arguments, persuasion, shock and surprise. Instead of conventional romantic words, he used scientific and mathematical words to introduce roughness in his poetry, e.g. he used the words ‘stife twin compasses’, ‘cosmographers’, ‘trepidation of the spheres’ etc.

His style is highly fantastic, curt and he uses rough words. He rejects the conventional style, which was romantic, soft and diffused.

Paradoxical statements are also found in his poems. In “The Indifferent” Donne describes constancy in men as vice and ask them:

“Will no other vice content you?”

In “The Legacy” the lover becomes his own ‘executor and legacy’. In “Love’s Growth” the poet’s love seems to have increased in spring, but now it cannot increase because it was already infinite, and yet it has increased:

“No winter shall abate the sring’s increase.”

He deals with the problem of body and soul in “The Anniversarie” of the individual and the universe in “The Sunne Rising” and of deprivation and actuality in “A Noctrunall”. In his divine poems he talks about the Crucification, ransom, sects / schism, religion, etc.

Donne is a coterie poet. He rejects the Patrarchan tradition of poetry, adopted by the Elizabethans. The Elizabethan poetry was the product off emotions. He rejected platonic idealism, elaborate description and ornamentation. He was precise and concentrated in poetry while the Elizabethan are copious and plentiful in words.

Seventeenth century had four major prerequisites; colloquial in diction, personal in tone, logical in structure and undecorative and untraditional imagination, which were also present in Donne.

To conclude, he is more a seventeenth century poet than a metaphysical poet. There are some features in his poetry which differentiate him e.g., he is a monarch of with and more colloquial than any other seventeenth century poet. If other seventeenth century poet brings together emotions and intellect, he defines emotional experience with intellectual parallels etc. Still, he writes in the tradition of the seventeenth century poets.

Sources: http://www.cssforum.com.pk/css-optional-subjects/group-v/english-literature/226-john-donne-metaphysical-poet.html

 

METER AND FEET IN ENGLISH POETRY

 METER AND FEET IN ENGLISH POETRY

English poetry employs five basic rhythms of varying stressed (/) and unstressed (x) syllables. The most common meters are:

(Stressed syllables are marked in blue and unstressed are in red font color rather than the traditional "/" and "x.")

Iambic

A foot that starts with an unaccented and ends with an accented (stressed) syllable. It is the most common meter in the English language and naturally falls into everyday conversation. An example is "To be or not to be" from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Trochaic

The opposite of an iambic meter. It begins with an accented then followed by an unaccented syllable. An example is the line "Doule, doule, toil and trouble." from Shakespeare's Macbeth.

Anapestic

A foot has two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable. Example: "I arise and unbuild it again" from Shelley's Cloud.

Dactylic

A foot including an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables. Example: openly.

Spondee

A foot consisting of two accented syllables. Example: heartbreak.

Pyrrhic

A foot including two unaccented syllables is generally used to vary the rhythm.


Each pair of unstressed and stressed syllables makes up a unit called a foot.

The meters with two-syllable feet are

• IAMBIC (x /) : That time of year thou mayst in me behold
• TROCHAIC (/ x): Tell me not in mournful numbers
• SPONDAIC (/ /): Break, break, break / On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

Meters with three-syllable feet are

• ANAPESTIC (x x /): And the sound of a voice that is still
• DACTYLIC (/ x x): This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlock (a trochee replaces the final dactyl)

Each line of a poem contains a certain number of feet of iambs, trochees, spondees, dactyls or anapests.

1. A line containing 1 foot is called a “Monometer”
2. A line containing 2 feet is called a “Diameter”
3. A line containing 3 feet is called a “Trimeter”
4. A line containing 4 feet is called a “Tetrameter”
5. A line containing 5 feet is called a “Pentameter”
6. A line containing 6 feet is called a “Hexameter”
7. A line containing 7 feet is called a “Heptameter”
8. A line containing 8 feet is called a “Octameter”

Here are some serious examples of the various meters.

Iambic pentameter (5 iambs, 10 syllables)

• Thattime| of year | thou mayst | in me | behold

Trochaic tetrameter (4 trochees, 8 syllables)

• Tell me | not in | mournful | numbers

Anapestic trimeter (3 anapests, 9 syllables)

• And the sound | of a voice | that is still

Dactylic hexameter (6 dactyls, 17 syllables; a trochee replaces the last dactyl)

• This is the | forest pri | meval, the | murmuring | pine and the | hemlocks

 Sources: http://www.cssforum.com.pk/css-optional-subjects/group-v/english-literature/26404-critical-appreciation.html

Meter and Rhythm

 Meter and Rhythm

Meter - the number of feet (i.e. usually equals the number of stressed syllables, but not always) per line, as in monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, and octameter

Iambic foot - unstressed followed by a

stressed syllable

Trochaic foot - stressed followed by an unstressed

Anapestic foot - 2 unstressed followed by a stressed

Dactylic foot - stressed followed by 2 unstressed

Spondaic foot - 2 stressed

Verse - number of feet in each line (dimeter-2, trimeter-3, tetrameter-4, pentameter-5, etc.)

Iambic pentameter - contains 5 iambic feet (an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable)

Alexandrine - 6 iambic feet

Sprung rhythm - a poetic rhythm designed to approximate the natural rhythm of speech, developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins. In it, a foot may be composed of one to four syllables; because stressed syllables often occur one after another (rather than in alteration with unstressed syllables) the rhythm is said to be "sprung."

Verse and Stanza Forms

Blank verse -- unrhymed iambic pentameter

Rhyme royal -- 7 lines, iambic pentameter, ababbcc (Chaucerian)

Ballad stanza -- a quatrain in which the odd-numbered lines use iambic tetrameter and the even-numbered lines us iambic trimeter. The rhyme scheme is abcb.

Free verse - does not have a fixed metrical foot or a fixed number of feet in its lines

Heroic couplet - rhymed iambic pentameter closed couplets (ending with a terminal mark of punctuation-period, semicolon, question mark, etc.) used in heroic tragedies--principal form of the neoclassical style in early 17th Century

Terza rima - aba, bcb, cdc, ded....rhyme scheme. Used in Divine Comedy.

Ballad stanza - quatrains alternating tetrameter (4 ft.) and trimeter (3 ft.) rhyming abcb

Rhyme royal - 7 line iambic pentameter stanza consisting of a quatrain dovetailed into two couplets (ababbcc), as in Chaucer's "Trolius and Criseide"

Ottava rima - 8 lines rhyming abababcc, closing with a witty couplet, as in Wyatt

Spenserian stanza - 9 lines rhyming ababbcbcc; 1st 8 are pentameter, last is an alexandrine, as in Keat's "Eve of St. Agnes", or Shelley's "Adonais"

Petrarchan sonnet - 14 lines, explores the contrary states of feeling a lover experiences over an unattainable lady, (i.e. fire of love vs. ice of chastity)

English sonnet - 14 lines consisting of 3 quatrains and a couplet (Shakespeare and Surrey), with rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg, iambic pentameter

Spenserian sonnet - abab bcbc cdcd ee rhyme scheme, iambic pentameter

Verse paragraphs - divisions of sense where stanzaic divisions do not exist (as in Milton's Paradise Lost)

Types / Genres of Poetry

Ode -- a lyric or song-like poem that is dignified, serious, and elaborate in stanzaic structure

Elegy -- a sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet's meditations on death or another solemn theme

Pastoral -- a conventional, artificial form that often expresses a city poety's nostalgic view of the peace and simplicity of rural life, but behing it lies the sentiments and issues of the poet's society

Pastoral elegy -- an elegy in which the author and the one he mourns are presented as shepherds. Conventions often found in the pastoral elegy are: (1) invoking the muses (2) making reference to classical mythology (3) having nature itself mourn the death (4) charging the dead man’s guardians with negligence (5) presenting a procession of mourners (6) raising questions about divine justice and condemning the corruption of contemporary times (7) including passages in which flowers are brought to deck the coffin or hearse, and (8) issuing a closing consolation

Epic -- literary form that must at least meet these criteria: (1) long narrative poem (2) on a great and serious subject (3) related in an elevate style and (4) centered on a heroic figure on whose actions hang the fate of a tribe, nation, or race

Dramatic monologue -- a poem written in the form of a speech of an individual character; it reveals the character's psychology, history, and motivation in a subtle way, perfected by Robert Browning

Epithalamium - a lyric ode in honor of a bride and groom

Other Terms Used in Poetry

Enjambment - one line flows into the next without an end stop

Invocation -- calling on a Muse or God for inspiration, usually occurs at the beginning of the poem (Milton, Paradise Lost)

Assonance - relatively close juxtaposition of similar vowel sounds: "For 'tis to that high title I aspire"

Alliteration - repetition of initial consonant sounds: "careful, curious cats"

Masculine rhyme - rhyme is last syllable (found--rebound)

Feminine rhyme - rhyme is followed by an unaccented syllable (founding--bounding)

Catalog -- a list in poetry

Carpe diem -- seize the day; generally, a genre of poetry encouraging sex while one is still young and beautiful

Sources: http://www.cssforum.com.pk/css-optional-subjects/group-v/english-literature/291-poetry-terminology.html

Literary Terms (2nd Part)

 Literary Terms

Diction

An author's choice of words. Since words have specific meanings, and since one's choice of words can affect feelings, a writer's choice of words can have great impact in a literary work. The writer, therefore, must choose his words carefully. Discussing his novel "A Farewell to Arms" during an interview, Ernest Hemingway stated that he had to rewrite the ending thirty-nine times. When asked what the most difficult thing about finishing the novel was, Hemingway answered, "Getting the words right."

Didactic Literature

Literature designed explicitly to instruct as in these lines from Jacque Prevert's "To Paint the Portrait of a Bird."

Paint first a cage
with an open door
paint then
something pretty
something simple
something handsome
something useful
for the bird

Dramatic Monologue

In literature, the occurrence of a single speaker saying something to a silent audience. Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess" is an example wherein the duke, speaking to a non-responding representative of the family of a prospective new duchess, reveals not only the reasons for his disapproval of the behavior of his former duchess, but aspects of his own personality as well.

Elegy

A lyric poem lamenting death. These lines from Joachim Du Bellay's "Elegy on His Cat" are an example:
I have not lost my rings, my purse,
My gold, my gems-my loss is worse,
One that the stoutest heart must move.
My pet, my joy, my little love,
My tiny kitten, my Belaud,
I lost, alas, three days ago.


Epic

In literature generally, a major work deals with an important theme. "Gone with the Wind," a film set in the antebellum (pre-Civil War) and Civil War South, is considered an epic motion picture. In poetry, a long work dealing with the actions of gods and heroes. John Milton's "Paradise Lost" is a book length epic poem consisting of twelve subdivisions called books. Homer's "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" are epic poems, the former concerning the Greek invasion of Troy; the latter dealing with the Greek victory over the Trojans and the ten-year journey of Odysseus to reach his island home.

epigraph

A brief quotation which appears at the beginning of a literary work. The following is the epigraph from T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Quoted from Dante Allighieri's epic poem "The Inferno," the speaker, Guido di Montefeltrano, believing Dante to be another soul condemned to Hell, replies thus to a question:

If I believed my answer were being given
to someone who could ever return to the world,
this flame (his voice is represented by a moving flame) would shake no more.
But since no one has ever returned
alive from this depth, if what I hear is true,
I will answer you without fear of infamy.

The epigraph here reveals one of the themes of the poem, Prufrock urgent desire not to be revealed.

Epithet

In literature, a word of phrase preceding or following a name which serves to describe the character. Consider the following from Book 1 of Homer's "The Iliad:"
Zeus-loved Achilles, you bid me explain
The wrath of far-smiting Apollo

Connotation and Denotation

The denotation of a word is its dictionary definition. The word wall, therefore, denotes an upright structure which encloses something or serves as a boundary. The connotation of a word is its emotional content. In this sense, the word wall can also mean an attitude or actions which prevent becoming emotionally close to a person. In Robert Frosts "Mending Wall," two neighbors walk a property line each on his own side of a wall of loose stones. As they walk, they pick up and replace stones that have fallen. Frost thinks it's unnecessary to replace the stones since they have no cows to damage each other's property. The neighbor only says, "Good fences make good neighbors." The wall, in this case, is both a boundary (denotation) and a barrier that prevents Frost and his neighbor from getting to know each other, a force prohibiting involvement (connotation).

Consonance

The repetition of consonant sounds with differing vowel sounds in words near each other in a line or lines of poetry. Consider the following example from Theodore Roethke's "Night Journey:"

We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.

The repetition of the r sound in rush, rain, and rattles, occurring so close to each other in these two lines, would be considered consonance. Since a poem is generally much shorter than a short story or novel, the poet must be economical in his/her use of words and devices. Nothing can be wasted; nothing in a well-crafted poem is there by accident. Therefore, since devices such as consonance and alliteration, rhyme and meter have been used by the poet for effect, the reader must stop and consider what effect the inclusion of these devices has on the poem.

Couplet

A stanza of two lines, usually rhyming. The following by Andrew Marvell is an example of a rhymed couplet:

Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.

Dactyl

is a foot in poetic meter. In quantitative verse, such as Greek or Latin, a dactyl is a long syllable followed by two short syllables, as determined by syllable weight. In accentual verse, such as English, it is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables—the opposite is the anapest (two unstressed followed by a stressed syllable).

Denouement

Pronounced Dee-noo-ma, the denouement is that part of a drama which follows the climax and leads to the resolution.

Dialogue

In drama, a conversation between characters. One interesting type of dialogue, stichomythia, occurs when the dialogue takes the form of a verbal duel between characters, as in the following between Hamlet and his mother, Gertrude. (William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" - Act 3, scene 4)

QUEEN: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
HAMLET: Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN: Come, Come, you answer with an idle tongue.
HAMLET: Go, Go, You question with a wicked tongue

Conclusion

Also called the Resolution" the conclusion is the point in a drama to which the entire play has been leading. It is the logical outcome of everything that has come before it. The conclusion stems from the nature of the characters. Therefore, the decision of Dr. Stockman to remain in the town at the conclusion of "An Enemy of the People" is consistent with his conviction that he is right and has been right all along.

Concrete Poetry

A poem that visually resembles something found in the physical world. A poem about a wormy apple written so that the words form the shape of an apple.

Conflict

In the plot of a drama, conflict occurs when the protagonist is opposed by some person or force in the play. In Henry Ibsen's drama "An Enemy of the People" Dr. Thomas Stockmann's life is complicated by his finding that the public baths, a major source of income for the community, are polluted. In trying to close the baths, the doctor comes into conflict with those who profit from them, significantly, his own brother, the mayor of the town.
Another example occurs in the film "Star Wars." Having learned that Princess Lea is being held prisoner by the evil Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker sets out to rescue her. In doing so, he becomes involved in the conflict between the empire and the rebels which Lea spoke of in her holograph message in the drama's exposition. Since Luke is the protagonist of "Star Wars," the conflict in the drama crystallizes to that between Luke and Darth.

Canto

A subdivision of an epic poem. Each of the three books of Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" is divided into cantos. For example, in each of the cantos of "The Inferno," Dante meets the souls of people who were once alive and who have been condemned to punishment for sin.

Carpe Diem

A Latin phrase which translated means "Sieze (Catch) the day," meaning "Make the most of today." The phrase originated as the title of a poem by the Roman Horace (65 B.C.E.-8B.C.E.) and caught on as a theme with such English poets as Robert Herrick and Andrew Marvell. Consider these lines from Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time":
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
To-morrow will be dying.

Catastrophe

The scene in a tragedy which includes the death or moral destruction of the protagonist. In the catastrophe at the end of Sophocles' "Oedipus the King," Oedipus, discovering the tragic truth about his origin and his deeds, plucks out his eyes and is condemned to spend the rest of his days a wandering beggar. The catastrophe in Shakespearean tragedy occurs in Act 5 of each drama, and always includes the death of the protagonist. Consider the fates of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello.

Character

A person, or anything presented as a person, e. g., a spirit, object, animal, or natural force, in a literary work. In a cartoon scene, firemen may be putting out a fire which a coyote has deliberately started, while a hydrant observes the scene fearfully. The firemen, the coyote and the hydrant would all be considered characters in the story. If a billowy figure complete with eyes, nose, and mouth representing the wind thwarts the efforts of the firemen, the wind, too, qualifies as a character. Animals who figure importantly in movies of live drama are considered characters. Mr. Ed, Lassie, and Tarzan's monkey Cheetah are examples.

Characterization

The method a writer uses to reveal the personality of a character in a literary work: Methods may include (1) by what the character says about himself or herself; (2) by what others reveal about the character; and (3) by the character's own actions.

Classicism

A movement or tendency in art, music, and literature to retain the characteristics found in work originating in classical Greece and Rome. It differs from Romanticism in that while Romanticism dwells on the emotional impact of a work, classicism concerns itself with form and discipline.

Autobiography

The story of a person's life written by himself or herself. William Colin Powell's "My American Journey" is an example. Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, of which "Big Two-Hearted River" is a sample, are considered autobiographical.

Ballad

A story in poetic form, often about tragic love and usually sung. Ballads were passed down from generation to generation by singers. Two old Scottish ballads are "Sir Patrick Spens" and "Bonnie Barbara Allan." Coleridge’s, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a 19th century English ballad.

Biography

The story of a person's life written by someone other than the subject of the work. Katherine Drinker Bowen's "Yankee from Olympus" which details the life and work of the great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. is an example. A biographical work is supposed to be rigorously factual. However, since the biographer may by biased for or against the subject of the biography, critics, and sometimes the subject of the biography himself or herself, may come forward to challenge the trustworthiness of the material.

Blank Verse

A poem written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Consider the following from "The Ball Poem" by John Berryman:
What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,
What, what is he to do? I saw it go
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then
Merrily over-there it is in the water!

Cacophony/Euphony

Cacophony is an unpleasant combination of sounds. Euphony, the opposite, is a pleasant combination of sounds. These sound effects can be used intentionally to create an effect, or they may appear unintentionally. The cacophony in Matthew Arnold's lines "And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,/Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honor'd, self-secure,/Didst tread on earth unguess'd at," is probably unintentional.

Aesura

A pause within a line of poetry which may or may not affect the metrical count (see #62. meter). In scansion, a caesura is usually indicated by the following symbol (//). Here's an example by Alexander Pope:
Know then thyself,//presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind//is Man.

Anapest

In a line of poetry, two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable forming the pattern for the line or perhaps for the entire poem.

Anecdote

A very short tale told by a character in a literary work. In Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," "The Miller's Tale" and "The Carpenter's Tale" are examples.

Antagonist

A person or force which opposes the protagonist in a literary work. In Stephen Vincent Benet's "The Devil and Daniel Webster," Mr. Scratch is Daniel Webster's antagonist at the trial of Jabez Stone. The cold, in Jack London's "To Build a Fire" is the antagonist that defeats the man on the trail.

Aphorism

A brief statement which expresses an observation on life, usually intended as a wise observation. Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanac" contains numerous examples, one of which is Drive thy business; let it not drive thee. which means that one should not allow the demands of business to take control of one's moral or worldly commitments.

Apostrophe

A figure of speech wherein the speaker speaks directly to something nonhuman. In these lines from John Donne's poem "The Sun Rising" the poet scolds the sun for interrupting his nighttime activities:

Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Aside

A device in which a character in a drama makes a short speech which is heard by the audience but not by other characters in the play. In William Shakespeare's "Hamlet," the Chamberlain, Polonius, confronts Hamlet. In a dialogue concerning Polonius' daughter, Ophelia, Polonius speaks this aside:

How say you by that? Still harping on my daughter.
Yet he knew me not at first; 'a said I was a fishmonger.
'A is far gone. And truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love,
very near this. I'll speak to him again.

Assonance

The repetition of vowel sounds in a literary work, especially in a poem. Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells" contains numerous examples. Consider these from stanza
2:
Hear the mellow wedding bells-
and
From the molten-golden notes,

The repetition of the short e and long o sounds denotes a heavier, more serious bell than the bell encountered in the first stanza where the assonance included the i sound in examples such as tinkle, sprinkle, and twinkle.

Alliteration

Used for poetic effect, a repetition of the initial sounds of several words in a group. The following line from Robert Frost's poem "Acquainted with the Night provides us with an example of alliteration,": I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet." The repetition of the s sound creates a sense of quiet, reinforcing the meaning of the line.

Allusion

A reference in one literary work to a character or theme found in another literary work. T. S. Eliot, in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" alludes (refers) to the biblical figure John the Baptist in the line Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, . . . In the New Testament, John the Baptist's head was presented to King Herod on a platter.

Ambiguity

A statement which can contain two or more meanings. For example, when the oracle at Delphi told Croesus that if he waged war on Cyrus he would destroy a great empire, Croesus thought the oracle meant his enemy's empire. In fact, the empire Croesus destroyed by going to war was his own.

Analogue

A comparison between two similar things. In literature, a work which resembles another work either fully or in part. If a work resembles another because it is derived from the other, the original work is called the source, not an analogue of the later work.

Short story

A prose narrative that is brief in nature. The short story also has many of the same characteristics of a novel including characters, setting and plot. However, due to length constraints, these characteristics and devices generally may not be as fully developed or as complex as those developed for a full-length novel. There are many authors well known for the short story including Edgar Allan Poe, Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway. According to the book Literary Terms by Karl Beckoned Arthur Ganz, “American writers since Poe, who first theorized on the structure and purpose of the short story, have paid considerable attention to the form” (257). The written “protocol” regarding what comprises a short versus a long story is vague. However, a general standard might be that the short story could be read in one sitting. NTC’s Dictionary of Literary Terms quotes Edgar Allan Poe’s description as being ‘a short prose narrative, requiring from a half-hour to one or two hours in its perusal’

Protagonist

A protagonist is the main character or lead figure in a novel, play, story, or poem. It may also be referred to as the "hero" of a work. Over a period the meaning of the term protagonist has changed. The word protagonist originated in ancient Greek drama and referred to the leader of a chorus. Soon the definition was changed to represent the first actor onstage. In some literature today it may be difficult to decide who is playing the role of the protagonist. For instance, in Othello, we could say that Iago is the protagonist because he was at the center of all of the play's controversy. But even if he was a main character, was he the lead character? This ambiguity can lead to multiple interpretations of the same work and different ways of appreciating a single piece of literature.

Personification

A figure of speech where animals, ideas or inorganic objects are given human characteristics. One example of this is James Stephens’s poem "The Wind" in which wind preforms several actions. In the poem Stephens writes, “The wind stood up and gave a shout. He whistled on his two fingers.” Of course the wind did not actually "stand up," but this image of the wind creates a vivid picture of the wind's wild actions. Another example of personification in this poem is “Kicked the withered leaves about…. And thumped the branches with his hand.” Here, the wind is kicking leaves about, just like a person would and using hands to thump branches like a person would also. By giving human characteristics to things that do not have them, it makes these objects and their actions easier to visualize for a reader. By giving the wind human characteristics, Stephens makes this poem more interesting and achieves a much more vivid image of the way wind whips around a room. Personification is most often used in poetry, coming to popularity during the 18th century.

Persona

In literature, the persona is the narrator, or the storyteller, of a literary work created by the author. As Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama puts it, the persona is not the author, but the author’s creation--the voice “through which the author speaks.” It could be a character in the work, or a fabricated onlooker, relaying the sequence of events in a narrative. Such an example of persona exists in the poem “Robin Hood and Allin a Dale,” in which an anonymous character, perhaps one of Robin’s “merry men,” recounts the events of the meeting and adventures of Robin Hood and Allin a Dale. After telling of their initial introduction in the forest, the persona continues to elaborate on their quest to recover Allin’s true love from the man she is about to marry. Robin and his entourage succeed and then proceed to marry her and Allin a Dale. The persona’s importance is recognized due to the more genuine way the events of a story are illustrated to the reader—with a sense of knowledge and emotion only one with a firsthand view of the action could depict.

Hyperbole

A figure of speech in which an overstatement or exaggeration occurs as in the following lines from Act 2, scene 2 of Shakespeare's "Macbeth." In this scene, Macbeth has murdered King Duncan. Horrified at the blood on his hands, he asks:

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No. This my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

Literally, it does not require an ocean to wash blood from one's hand. Nor can the blood on one's hand turn the green ocean red. The hyperbole works to illustrate the guilt Macbeth feels at the brutal murder of his king and kinsman.

Iamb

A metrical pattern of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.

Imagery

A word or group of words in a literary work which appeal to one or more of the senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell. The use of images serves to intensify the impact of the work. The following example of imagery in T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,"

When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.

uses images of pain and sickness to describe the evening, which as an image itself represents society and the psychology of Prufrock, himself.

Inference

A judgement based on reasoning rather than on direct or explicit statement. A conclusion based on facts or circumstances. For example, advised not to travel alone in temperatures exceeding fifty degrees below zero, the man in Jack London's "To Build a Fire" sets out anyway. One may infer arrogance from such an action.

Irony

Irony takes many forms. In irony of situation, the result of an action is the reverse of what the actor expected. Macbeth murders his king hoping that in becoming king he will achieve great happiness. Macbeth never knows another moment of peace, and finally is beheaded for his murderous act. In dramatic irony, the audience knows something that the characters in the drama do not. For example, the identity of the murderer in a crime thriller may be known to the audience long before the mystery is solved. In verbal irony, the contrast is between the literal meaning of what is said and what is meant. A character may refer to a plan as brilliant, while actually meaning that (s)he thinks the plan is foolish. Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony.