Literary Terms and Poetic Structures Explained

Understanding Literary Concepts and Poetic Structures

What is Literature?

Literature is an art form where the primary instrument is the word. It is used to tell stories, express feelings, and convey emotions. Literary language is distinguished by its special use of language, employing stylistic devices such as metaphor, simile, antithesis, and parallelism to enhance the beauty and expressiveness of the message.

Literary Genres

• Lyric Poetry

  In lyric poetry, the author expresses personal ideas and feelings, often in the first person, through verse. It uses elaborate language and possesses a distinct rhythm.

• Epic or Narrative Genre

  The epic or narrative genre involves an author using a narrator's voice to recount stories, situations, and events within a specific time and space. It describes places and people, often weaving dialogues into the fabric of the argument. Usually written in prose, this genre includes forms such as:

  • Epic poems
  • Romances
  • Cantares de Gesta (songs of heroic deeds)
  • Novels (in verse and prose)
  • Tales
  • Legends

• Dramatic or Theatrical Genre

  Works in the dramatic or theatrical genre are presented in dialogue form, intended for performance. The text includes stage directions (often called "asides" or "annotations") that provide fundamental indications for the representation. Key forms include:

  • Tragedy
  • Comedy
  • Drama
  • Other forms like farce and interlude

Poetic Devices and Terms

• Diphthong

  A diphthong is the union of two vowels pronounced within the same syllable (e.g., ai in "aire," eu in "Europa").

• Triphthong

  A triphthong is the union of three vowels pronounced within a single syllable, where the middle vowel is always a closed vowel (e.g., uai in "apaciguáis," uei in "Paraguay," iau in "miau").

• Hiatus

  A hiatus occurs when two vowels that would normally form a diphthong are pronounced in separate syllables (e.g., ca-no-a, po-e-ta).

• Prose and Verse

  Prose is written in a normal, continuous flow along the line, without a specific metrical rhythm. Verse, conversely, has a special rhythm and is typically structured into lines.

• Versification

  Versification is the study of the typical rhythm of verse, based on the reiteration of lines. It considers factors such as the number of syllables, the distribution of accents, and the type of rhyme (consonant or assonance).

• Verse Measure

  The measure of a verse refers to its number of syllables. Metric licenses can affect this count:

  • If the last word is acute, one syllable is added.
  • If the last word is proparoxytone (esdrújula), one syllable is subtracted.

• Metric Licenses

  • Sinalefa

    Sinalefa occurs when the final vowel sound of a word and the initial vowel sound of the following word are pronounced as a single syllable (e.g., "de este" becomes "dees-te"). This happens when a word ends in a vowel sound and the next begins with a vowel or 'h'.

  • Diaeresis

    Diaeresis (or diéresis) consists of pronouncing two vowels that normally form a diphthong as separate syllables (e.g., "suave" pronounced as "su-a-ve" instead of "sua-ve").

• Hemistich

  A hemistich is each part of a verse, especially longer ones, separated by a caesura (a pause).

• Metric Combinations of Verses

  These are metric combinations that have a fixed structure in terms of the number and distribution of lines and their rhymes.

Stanza Forms

Stanzas are groups of verses with a specific structure.

• Couplet

  A couplet is a stanza of two lines that rhyme with each other, either in assonance or consonant rhyme.

• Tercet

  A tercet is a three-line stanza, typically composed of arte mayor (more than eight syllables) verses, often with a chained consonant rhyme scheme like ABA BCB.

• Quatrain

  A quatrain is a four-line stanza. Common types include:

  • Redondilla

    A redondilla is a quatrain of arte menor (eight or fewer syllables) verses with a consonant rhyme scheme of ABBA.

  • Serventesio

    A serventesio is a quatrain of arte mayor (more than eight syllables) verses with a consonant rhyme scheme of ABAB.

• Lira

  A lira is a five-line stanza combining 7-syllable and 11-syllable verses, typically with a rhyme scheme of a7 b11 a7 b7 b11.

Poem Structures

• Strophic Poems

  These poems are formed by one or more stanzas.

  • Sonnet

    A sonnet consists of 14 hendecasyllable (11-syllable) verses, typically structured into two quatrains and two tercets.

  • Poems with Refrain

    These include forms like the Terete, Zejel, and Carol. They often feature a repeated initial verse (known as the "head rhyme") and a final chorus, which comments on the content of the head rhyme.

• Non-Strophic Poems (Continuous Verse)

  These are poems where the lines are not grouped into stanzas. A prominent example is the Romance.