6. Style
O-Z
Ode: a poem that praises a particular thing or person. Highly lyrical, an ode often praises nature in both intellectual and emotional ways.
Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn”
Keat’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is one of the most famous English odes, at the end of which Keats asserts that “Beauty is truth, truth, beauty.” Below I’ve included the first two stanzas (out of four), which celebrate the durability of art and the ecstasy of desire. Keats starts by addressing the urn itself, calling it a “bride of quietness” because it has no voice, and a “Sylvan historian” because it nevertheless allows us to see into the past (history) and into the beauty of nature, represented by the woods (the sylvan dales of Arcady in Greece).
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Crater with Bacchic Scenes (c. 1st C. A.D) portraying “a Dionysiac train with satyrs and menads overwhelmed by the rhythm of the orgiastic dances.” From the Capitoline Museum in Rome (photos RYC). Keats wrote on a tracing of the more subdued Sosibios vase from the Louvre.
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Onomatopoeia is when the name of a thing or action resembles that thing or action — as in the words eerie, buzzing, or mooing.
Onomatopoeia in Poe’s “Ulalume”
The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
In the first stanza of this nine-stanza poem, Poe appears to merely set a scene, yet the words are so evocative of the things they describe that the scene takes on an almost surreal quality. The leaves are not just crisp, but crisped, which puts them in the past, makes them fallen, and aligns them with the October setting. Crisped also requires a p-d pronunciation in addition to the sharp sound of crisp. One might even say the sound of crisp is itself crisp — dry, brisk, terse. The suggestion of winter is emphasized by the use of sere, which is repeated and which is a short word that nevertheless lingers, just as the empty barren Winter will contain little life yet will stretch on for months. Sere also rhymes with Weir, which again is repeated and is brief yet pronounced with a linger, emphasized by the use of alliteration in “woodland of Weir.” Alliteration also highlights the starkness of the landscape in the monosyllabic “down by the dark tarn,” which highlights the downward and colourless direction the poet’s pushing his reader emotionally. Finally, once we’re down in this dark, stark place, Poe suggests that it’s “ghoul-haunted,” lending a supernatural element of horror or tension, which is emphasized by the irregular gh and ou spelling, and by the creepy sound of ghoul.
Paradox is an idea that is true but seems to contain a contradiction.
Persona or speaker: the "I" in the poem; a fictional character who is distinct from the poet. The persona may or may not be similar to the poet.
Personification occurs when you give human characteristics to non-human things or ideas.
Refrain: repeated word or group of words; similar to a chorus in a song.
Rhyme: repeating sounds, usually at the end of the line; sometimes referred to as end rhymes. Internal rhymes occur within lines rather than at the end of lines. In "Under No Pretext / Sous aucun prétexte," Françoise Hardy uses end rhymes in the original French, yet these are very hard to translate effectively. Her internal rhymes, which contrast consumer products with her emotions, are on the other hand easier to translate: "My heart of silex quickly catches fire / Your heart of pyrex resists the flames / [...] Under no pretext do I want / in front of you to overexpose my eyes / Behind a kleenex I would know better / how to say goodbye (Mon cœur de silex vite prend feu, / Ton cœur de pyrex résiste au feu / [...] Sous aucun prétexte je ne veux / Devant toi surexposer mes yeux, / Derrière un kleenex je saurais mieux / Comment te dire adieu)
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Sonnet: a fourteen-line poem. Two famous English forms are the Spenserian (abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee) and the Shakespearean (abab cdcd efef gg). The Spenserian form is very integrated, while the Shakespearean form groups ideas into three quatrains, followed by a twist or emphasis in the final couplet. The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet has an octave (8 interconnected lines) followed by a sextet (six interconnected lines), as in abba abba cde cde (or cdc dcd). In the following sonnet, how does Rosetti mix Petrarchan and Shakespearean structure? How does he take full advantage of the powerful final couplet of the Shakespearean sonnet?
“The Sonnet” (Rosetti, 1881)
A Sonnet is a moment's monument, — a
Memorial from the Soul's eternity b
To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be, b
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent, a
Of its own intricate fulness reverent: a
Carve it in ivory or in ebony, b
As Day or Night prevail; and let Time see b
Its flowering crest impearled and orient. a
A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals c
The soul, — its converse, to what Power 'tis due: — d
Whether for tribute to the august appeals c
Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue d
It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath, e
In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death. e
Sonnet 130 (Shakespeare)
In the following sonnet, how does Shakespeare’s sonnet use simile and comparison? What does line 1 do as opposed to line 2? How does he structure his comparisons from one line to the next? Where does he contrast sound as well as idea — for instance, “roses damasked” versus “no such roses”? How does he shift in the final couplet, and how is this accompanied by a shift in rhyme scheme?
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;*
If hairs be wires,* black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked,* red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.*
dun = dark or dusky; wires = fine gold or filigree ornament damasked = velvety pink or light red; As ... compare ~ As anybody who lied about her by making a false comparison
Stanza form is determined by the number of lines that are grouped together within a larger poem.
- A couplet has two lines grouped together, a tercet has three, a quatrain has four.
- The Spenserian stanza is nine lines, following the ab ab bc bc c pattern.
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- Ottava rima has eight lines, follows the rhyme scheme abababcc, and is often used for long narratives, epics and mock epics.
Ottava Rima in Byron’ Don Juan
Byron uses ottava rima throughout his very long mock-epic Don Juan (1819-24). Sometimes the final rhyme creates humour and at other times it underscores a serious point. In the following stanza from Canto 9, Byron begins with the question asked by the French skeptic Montaigne — “What do I know?” — and concludes with the paradoxical suggestion that doubt is such a fundamental human condition that it’s closer to certainty than to doubt.
"Que scais-je?" was the motto of Montaigne,
As also of the first academicians:
That all is dubious which man may attain,
Was one of their most favourite positions.
There's no such thing as certainty, that's plain
As any of Mortality's conditions;
So little do we know what we're about in
This world, I doubt if doubt itself be doubting.
Trope is a term that is often used, yet can cause some confusion because it has several meanings. Apple’s American Dictionary defines it as “a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression: he used the two-Americas trope to explain how a nation free and democratic at home could act wantonly abroad” or “a significant or recurrent theme; a motif: she uses the Eucharist as a pictorial trope.” I suggest that in literary analysis you use more specific terms, such as figure, metaphor, theme, motif, and image.
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Next: The Epic