Page 14 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 1: Major Literary Terms–I

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, Notes
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun.
When we read the words, the natural rhythm is not de-dum, de-dum, de-dum—it is not strictly
iambic. The first line, for example, scans as a trochee and four iambs. Scansion, by the way is how
poets demonstrate the meter of a poem using accents to show the stressed syllables. With scanning,
one can tell if a poem is metered or not and, if so, what kind of meter is present, as in “Mending
Wall:”
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”.
Of course, how a person scans a single line or an entire poem depends on the reader’s natural
rhythms and inclinations, and, while there may be better ways to scan a poem, there is not always a
single correct scan. In the first line of “Mending Wall”, for instance, the first iamb could be read as a
trochee, with the stress falling on “there” instead of “is.”

1.4 Summary
• Genre is an important word in the English class. We teach different genres of literature such
as poetry, short stories, myths, plays, non-fiction, novels, mysteries, and so on.
• Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds to create internal rhyming within phrases or
sentences.
• European Ballads have been generally classified into three major groups: traditional, broad-
side and literary.
• The traditional, classical or popular ballad has been seen as originating with the wandering
minstrels of late medieval Europe.
• Broadside ballads were a product of the development of cheap print in the 16th century.

1.5 Keywords

Rhyme : Correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words.
Assonance : The resemblance of sound between syllables in near by words arising from the rhyming
of stressed vowels.
Eponymous : A word or name derived from the name of a person.
Tetrameter : A verse of four measures.

1.6 Review Questions
1. What do you mean by the term Assonance?
2. What is Ballad and Classification of ballads? Explain.
3. Define literary ballads.
4. Explain blank verse.

Answers: Self Assessment
1. Assonance 2. End-Rhyme 3. Verse
4. Three 5. Blank verse

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