Poetic Forms and Rhetorical Devices: A Comprehensive Look
Poetic Forms
Elegy
An elegy is a song of pain. It is a melancholy lyric composition that is sung about the loss of something. It allows you to mourn death and absence. Coplas a la muerte de su padre, by Jorge Manrique, is the best-known work of this type.
Ode
Considered in ancient times the type of lyrical composition par excellence, an ode generally expresses enthusiasm, admiration, and praise. Therefore, it is associated with external factors or objectives. Its accent depends on the subject that inspires it, and this is usually a praise of what is deemed worthy of merit.
Sonnet
A sonnet consists of 14 verses of hendecasyllables (11 syllables), divided into two quatrains and two tercets. It is a standardized form of composing lyrical texts in form and theme. It is considered the most harmonious structure.
Romance
A romance has a popular origin and is transmitted orally. It deals with issues related to history or legends, very close to the time. It was the way that people remembered the facts relevant to their community. In its early oral form, it had consonant rhyme, but later evolved into assonance rhyme between even verses.
Tenth
A tenth is a ten-line octosyllabic poem with the following rhyme scheme: the first line rhymes with the fourth and fifth, the second with the third, the sixth with the seventh and tenth, and the eighth with the ninth (abbaaccddc).
Eclogue
An eclogue is a pastoral poetic composition characterized by an idealization of nature and life in bucolic settings.
Madrigal
A madrigal is a short composition in which the speaker expresses a delicate feeling of love.
Rhetorical Devices
Allegory
An allegory is a prolonged correspondence of symbols or metaphors. It translates a real plane, A, to an imaginary plane, B, through an unbroken series of metaphors.
Simile or Comparison
A simile is a rhetorical figure that links two words to explicitly express the similarity or analogy that the realities designated by them present. That relationship is usually established by means of comparative particles or links: as, well as, such as, like, so, as if, etc. Example:
Personification or Prosopopoeia
Personification is the attribution of human characteristics to animals or inanimate objects, as in fables, fairy tales, and allegories. In mystery plays, there are examples of personified allegories: guilt, wisdom, grace, and so on. The term also applies to the fact that it represents a quality, virtue, or vice, using certain features of a personality that becomes a prototype. For example, Don Juan is the epitome of a seducer.
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is a rhetorical figure consisting of offering a disproportionate vision of reality, amplifying or diminishing it. It is an exaggeration. The poet wants to give their words greater intensity or emotion. Hyperbole is the use of concrete terms in emphatic and exaggerated expressions. This procedure is often used in colloquial speech and propaganda. The latter produces disproportionate, encomiastic communication to induce the listener’s adherence to its message, which is revealed to be exceptional, extraordinary, colossal, fantastic, and so on.
Hyperbaton
Hyperbaton is the disruption of the normal grammatical order in a sentence. It is a procedure that affects the expressive level of syntax, and that is to reverse the grammatical order of words in the sentence and the logical thread of ideas to give more beauty to the expression (instead of writing subject-predicate, the poet prefers to use predicate-subject). For example, “Formidable land yawn” instead of “Land yawn formidable”, verb-final, as in Latin, imitating their complaints, etc. It is used both in prose and, above all, in verse. With hyperbaton, the logical order in the communication of ideas is also changed.
Metaphor
A metaphor is an identification of one object with another by virtue of a similarity between them, that is, a comparison. Since Greco-Roman rhetoric (Aristotle, Quintilian), metaphor has been considered an implicit comparison, founded on the principle of analogy between two realities, different in some respects and similar in others. In every comparison, there is a real term, which serves as a starting point, and an evoked term that is generally designated as the image.
Antithesis or Contrast
Antithesis contrasts two ideas or thoughts; it is an association of concepts in contrast (love-hate, black and white, etc.). The contrast can be opposed to words (antonyms), phrases of opposite meaning, and so on.
Repetition or Anaphora
Anaphora is the repetition of words at the beginning of a verse or the beginning of sentences to emphasize an idea. Repetition is a rhetorical figure consisting of the repetition of words or other expressive resources, a procedure that generates poetic significance. In every poem, repetitive elements appear that function: whether the accent, pauses, alliteration, isosilabism, rhyme, or chorus, etc.