Literary Terms from The Bedford Glossary of Literary and Critical Terms

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Literary Terms from The Bedford Glossary of
Literary and Critical Terms

• Theme for English B

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Harlem Renaissance

• A literary movement that began in the 1920s in
  the almost exclusively African American area of
  Harlem in New York City.
• Harlem had grown tremendously following World War
  I, when a mass migration of black Americans out
  of the South and into northern cities had taken
  place.
• Who are some writers and musicians from the
  Harlem Renaissance?

3
Free Verse

• Poetry that lacks a regular meter, does not
  rhyme, and uses irregular (and sometimes very
  short) line lengths.
• Writers of free verse disregard traditional
  poetic conventions of rhyme and meter, relying
  instead on parallelism, repetition, and the
  ordinary cadences and stresses of everyday
  discourse.
• What does this mean in your own words?

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Parallelism

• A rhetorical device used in written and oral
  compositions since ancient times to accentuate or
  emphasize ideas or images by using grammatically
  similar constructions.
• By using parallelism, authors or speakers
  implicitly invite their readers or audiences to
  compare and contrast parallel elements.
• It was the best of times, it was the worst of
  times. - Dickens
• I have a dreamI have a dreamI have a dream
  MLK
• Can you provide some examples (poetry, rap)?

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Alliteration

• The repetition of sounds in a sequence of words.
• Alliteration generally refers to repeated
  consonant sounds (but some use it to refer to
  starting vowel sounds).
• Dunkin Donuts
• Billy peels the label off his bottle of Bud.
  Sheryl Crow
• Can you provide some examples of your own?

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Assonance

• The repetition of identical or similar vowel
  sounds, usually in stressed syllables.
• Assonance is different from perfect rhyme in that
  rhyming words also repeat the final consonant
  sounds.
• Step outside, cameras point and shoot /
• Ask me whats my best side, I step back and
  point at you.
• - Big Sean, As Long As You Love Me
• Can you provide other songs that use this
  literary device?