Poetic metre & literary analysis

1. What is a two-line stanza in poetry whose lines rhyme with each other and share the same metre: a rhyming couplet or a quatrain?

2. What do we call poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter (used extensively by Shakespeare and Milton): blank verse or free verse?

3. What narrative technique presents a character’s continuous, associative flow of inner thoughts and sensory impressions without conventional transitions: stream of consciousness or omniscient summary?

4. What is the repetition of consonant sounds within or at the ends of nearby words (such as “blank and think” or “stroke of luck”): consonance or hyperbole?

5. What do we call a first-person narrator whose credibility is compromised by bias, naivety or deception, forcing the reader to read between the lines: an unreliable narrator or an omniscient narrator?

6. In poetry, what do we call a line of verse consisting of five iambic feet (ten syllables alternating unstressed and stressed, da-DUM × 5): iambic pentameter or trochaic tetrameter?

7. What is a recurring image, object, phrase or idea that appears throughout a literary work and helps develop its central theme: a motif or a bibliography?

8. In a sonnet, what is the Italian term for the rhetorical shift or “turn” in thought or emotion (often at line 9 or line 13): the volta or the stanza?

9. What is a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter with a structured rhyme scheme (such as Petrarchan or Shakespearean): a sonnet or a haiku?

10. What figure of speech uses a part of something to represent the whole (such as “all hands on deck” for sailors or “wheels” for a car): synecdoche or personification?

11. In drama, what occurs when the audience knows a crucial piece of information that a character on stage does not know: dramatic irony or comic relief?

12. In Aristotle’s Poetics, what term describes the tragic flaw or error of judgement that brings about a protagonist’s downfall: hamartia or metre?