Understanding Literary Genres, Figures, and Verse Forms

Lyrical Genres

• Ode: A poem expressing elevated feelings, often with a formal tone.
• Elegy: A poem expressing grief or sorrow over loss.
• Track/Lyrical Composition: Sung poems of varying length, often exploring themes of love.
• Eclogue: Works featuring idealized shepherds and expressing love in idyllic settings.

Narrative Genres

• Epic: A long narrative poem about the deeds of a heroic figure or the history of a nation.
• Chanson de Geste: A long poem about a hero and their adventures.
• Novel: A long, complex narrative with a central character and intricate plotlines.
• Tale: A short story with a concise narrative and a striking ending.
• Apologue: A story with a clear moral purpose.
• Fable: A short story, typically with animals as characters, conveying a moral lesson.

Drama

• Tragedy: A drama depicting a hero's downfall due to a fatal flaw or conflict, as seen in classical Greek works.
• Comedy: A drama focusing on everyday life conflicts and customs, with a happy resolution. It may include serious action but also incorporates humorous moments.

Literary Figures

• Alliteration: Repetition of initial consonant sounds.
• Anaphora: Repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.
• Parallelism: Repetition of similar grammatical structures in two or more lines.
• Polysyndeton: Repetitive use of conjunctions.
• Antithesis: Juxtaposition of contrasting ideas or words.
• Paradox: A seemingly contradictory statement that may express a truth.
• Paronomasia: Use of words with similar sounds but different meanings; a pun.
• Chiasmus: Inverted parallelism; a reversal of grammatical structures.
• Asyndeton: Omission of conjunctions for a faster pace.
• Ellipsis: Omission of words or phrases that are understood from context.
• Gradation: A sequence of increasing or decreasing intensity.
• Hyperbole: Exaggeration for emphasis.
• Hyperbaton: Inversion of the usual word order.
• Rhetorical Question: A question asked for effect, not requiring an answer.
• Pleonasm: Use of redundant words for emphasis.
• Irony: Expression of meaning through language that signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.
• Metaphor: An implicit comparison between two unlike things.
• Metonymy: Substitution of a term with a closely related term.
• Personification: Attributing human qualities to non-human entities.
• Simile: An explicit comparison between two unlike things using "like" or "as".

Measure of Verse

• Synalepha: Merging the final syllable of one word with the initial syllable of the next to create a single metrical syllable.
• Syneresis: Combining two vowels within a word into a single syllable, usually in a hiatus.

Rhyme

• Couplet: A two-line stanza, typically rhyming.
• Trio/Tercet: A three-line stanza, often rhyming.
• Solea: A three-line stanza of octosyllabic verses, with the first and third lines rhyming and the second unrhymed.
• Quartet: A four-line stanza, typically rhyming.
• Quatrain: A four-line stanza, often with a specific rhyme scheme.
• Serventesio: A four-line stanza of twelve-syllable verses with an ABAB rhyme scheme.
• Cracks (Cuarteto): A four-line stanza of eight-syllable verses with an abab rhyme scheme.
• Redondilla: A four-line stanza of eight-syllable verses with an assonant rhyme scheme, typically ABBA.
• Rima Bivia: Four alexandrine verses with consonant rhyme.
• Quintet: A five-line stanza with a variable rhyme scheme.
• Limerick: A five-line humorous poem with a specific rhyme scheme (AABBA).
• Lira: A five-line stanza with a specific syllabic structure and rhyme scheme (7a, 11B, 7a, 7b, 11B).
• Verso Quebrado (Broken Verse) Couplet: A six-line stanza with a specific syllabic structure and rhyme scheme (8a, 8b, 4c, 8a, 8b, 4c).
• Octave: An eight-line stanza, often in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme like ABABABCC.
• Tenth (Décima): A ten-line stanza of octosyllabic verses with a specific rhyme scheme (abbaaccddc).