LITERARY TERMINOLOGY #5

ENG200.001 -- Introduction to Literary Study

Prof. Eileen Joy

Spring 2005

GHAZAL: originating in Iran in the tenth century, a poem of five to fifteen couplets (although seven couplets is often the preferred number). There is no enjambment between couplets. Think of each couplet as a separate poem, in which the first line serves the function of the octave of a Petrarchan sonnet and the second line the sestet—that is, there must be a turn, or volta, between lines 1 and 2 of each couplet. One must have a sense that line 2 is amplifying line 1, turning things around, surprising us. Each couplet is like a precious stone that can shine even when plucked from the necklace though it certainly has greater luster in its setting. What links these couplets is a strict formal scheme. This is how it works: the entire ghazal employs the same rhyme and refrain. The rhyme must always immediately precede the refrain. If the rhyme is merely buried somewhere in the line, that will have its charm, of course, but it would not lead to the wonderful pleasure of IMMEDIATE recognition which is central to the ghazal. The refrain may be a word or phrase. Each line must be of the same length (inclusive of the rhyme and refrain). In Urdu and Persian, all the lines are usually in the same meter and have the same metrical length. The last couplet may be (and usually is) a signature couplet in which the poet may invoke his/her name in the first, second, or third person. There is an epigrammatic terseness in the ghazal, but with immense lyricism, evocation, sorrow, heartbreak, wit. What defines the ghazal is a constant longing. When English and American poets employ the ghazal, they usually do not stick to the strict formal scheme, adhering instead to the idea of sets of couplets, in which each couplet is a separate poem, yet all the couplets together also make up "one poem" that addresses a particular theme.

HEROIC COUPLET: a pair of rhymed lines written in iambic pentameter. Geoffrey Chaucer was the first to compose verse using heroic couplets, but they did not become widespread until the seventeenth century (although Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare employed them liberally in their poetry; the last two lines of Shakespeare's sonnets are heroic couplets).

METAPHYSICAL CONCEIT: an extended figure of speech that involves the use of paradox, images from arcane sources not usually drawn upon by poets, and an original and usually complex comparison between two highly dissimilar things. John Donne's comparison, in his poem, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," between couples and drawing compasses is a famous example. Metaphysical conceits ("philosophical ideas," as it were, best suited for poetry dealing with philosophical and spiritual matters) often exploit verbal logic to the point of the grotesque and sometimes achieve such extravagant turns on meaning that they become absurd (for example, Richard Crashaw's description of Mary Magdalene's eyes as "Two walking baths; two weeping motions,/ Portable and compendious oceans"). Then again, it may be a matter of personal taste. Seventeenth-century poets associated with this device include John Donne, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, and henry Vaughn.

SONNET: from the Italian word sonnetto, meaning "little song," a lyric poem that almost always consists of fourteen lines (usually printed as a single stanza) and that typically follows one of several conventional rhyme schemes. Sonnets can address a range of ideas and themes, but love is the sonnet's original subject. The Shakespearean sonnet, derived from the Petrarchan type (see above), is fourteen iambic pentameter lines divided into three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. The form flourished in the Renaissance period, and is still employed by modern poets, such as W.H. Auden and Pablo Neruda.

STANZA: from the Italian word for "room," a grouped set of lines in a poem, usually physically set off from other clusters by a blank line. Stanzas within one poem need not have the exact same rhyme scheme, nor does rhyme have to be involved at all; nonetheless, the term usually refers to line clusters that have a regular, recurrent form--that is, a constant number of lines, a constant number of feet per line, the same metrical pattern, and the same rhyme scheme.

The definitions above have been partly pilfered from The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms (2nd edition). Other additions are the work of the fevered mind of Prof. Joy.