Poetic metre & literary analysis

1. 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?

2. What is a narrative in which characters and events systematically stand for abstract moral, political or philosophical ideas beyond the literal story: an allegory or a biography?

3. When a narrative begins in the middle of the action rather than at the chronological beginning, what Latin phrase describes this opening structure: in medias res or ad hominem?

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

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

6. What literary genre traces the psychological and moral growth of a protagonist from youth to maturity (a “coming-of-age” novel): a Bildungsroman or a pastoral?

7. 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?

8. What poetic technique occurs when a sentence or phrase runs over from one poetic line into the next without terminal punctuation: enjambment or end-stopping?

9. In classical tragedy, what Greek term describes excessive pride or self-confidence that leads a tragic hero to ignore warnings and suffer a downfall: hubris or ethos?

10. What figure of speech substitutes the name of an attribute or closely associated object for the thing itself (such as “the Crown” for the monarchy or “the press” for journalists): metonymy or simile?

11. 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?

12. What do we call poetry that follows neither a regular metrical pattern nor a fixed rhyme scheme: free verse or blank verse?