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Figurative Language and the Canterbury Tales

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1. allegory: a literary work that has a second meaning beneath the surface, often relating to a fixed, corresponding idea or moral principle. 2. alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds. It serves to please the ear and bind verses together, to make lines more memorable, and for humorous effect. • Already American vessels had been searched, seized, and sunk. -John F. Kennedy • I should like to hear him fly with the high fields/ And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. -Dylan Thomas, “Fern Hill” 3. allusion: A casual reference in literature to a person, place, event, or another passage of literature, often without explicit identification. Allusions can originate in mythology, biblical references, …show more content…

A literary ballad was a favorite form of the Romantic period. Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner” is a good example, and “The Ballad of Birmingham” is an American example. “It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. 'By thy long gray beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?'" 13. blank verse: poetry written in meter but containing no ending rhyme. Lines of verse contain forms closest to that of natural speaking, yet are flexible and adaptive. 14. characterization principles: characters should be 1) consistent in their behaviors, 2)their words and actions should spring from motivations the reader can understand, and 3) plausible and lifelike 15. cinquain: a five line stanza 16. conceit: in literature, fanciful or unusual image in which apparently dissimilar things are shown to have a relationship. The device was often used by the metaphysical poets, who fashioned conceits that were witty, complex, intellectual, and often startling, e.g., John Donne's comparison of two souls with two bullets in “The Dissolution.” 17. conflict: a struggle between two opposing forces in a short story, novel, play, or narrative poem. 18. connotation: all the emotions and associations that a word or phrase may arouse; what a word suggests beyond its basic definitions; a word’s overtones of meaning. 19. consonance: repetition of consonant sounds in the middle or at the end of words 20. continuous form: the form of a poem in

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