Ballad in Literature: Song, Story, and Popular Tradition
A detailed guide to the ballad — oral tradition, folk ballads, literary ballads, Coleridge, Keats, and close reading methods.
Poetry, Literary Analysis
Posts tagged
#poetry
16 posts
Confessional Poetry: Private Life, Persona, and Risk
A guide to confessional poetry — Plath, Lowell, Sexton, private life, persona, and close reading methods.
Poetry, Literary Analysis
Dramatic Monologue: Voice, Character, and Hidden Truth
A detailed guide to dramatic monologue in literature — definition, history, key features, examples, and how speakers reveal more than they intend.
Poetry, Literary Analysis
Ekphrasis in Literature: Writing About Art
A detailed guide to ekphrasis — writing about visual art, Keats, Auden, Homer, and close reading methods.
Poetry, Literary Analysis
Elegy in Literature: Mourning, Memory, and Consolation
A detailed guide to the elegy — mourning, memory, consolation, Milton, Tennyson, Whitman, and close reading methods.
Poetry, Literary Analysis
Enjambment and Caesura in Poetry: Line Breaks, Pauses, and Movement
A detailed guide to enjambment and caesura in poetry — definitions, examples, and how line breaks and pauses shape rhythm, meaning, voice, and reader response.
Poetry, Literary Analysis
Genre in Literature: Forms, Conventions, Hybrids, and Reader Expectations
A comprehensive guide to genre in literature — definition, major genres, conventions, forms, modes, hybridity, reader expectations, and examples.
Literary Analysis, Story Elements, Close Reading
Haiku in Literature: Image, Season, and Compression
A detailed guide to haiku — Bashō, image, season, kireji, compression, and close reading methods.
Poetry, Literary Analysis
Imagery in Literature: How Sensory Language Creates Meaning
A comprehensive guide to imagery — visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, kinesthetic, and organic imagery. How writers use sensory detail to create meaning in poetry, fiction, and drama.
Literary Devices, Close Reading
Lyric Poetry: Voice, Feeling, and Concentrated Experience
A detailed guide to lyric poetry — the lyric 'I', Romantic inwardness, Sappho, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Yeats, and close reading methods.
Poetry, Literary Analysis
Metaphor and Simile: The Complete Guide to Figurative Comparison in Literature
A comprehensive guide to metaphor and simile — what they are, how they differ, how to identify them, famous examples from Shakespeare to Dickinson, and how they shape meaning in poetry and prose.
Literary Devices, Figurative Language
Meter and Scansion in Poetry: How Rhythm Is Measured
A detailed guide to meter and scansion in poetry — definitions, poetic feet, examples, and how measured rhythm shapes emphasis, voice, form, and meaning.
Poetry, Literary Analysis
Personification and Anthropomorphism: Giving Life to the Inanimate
A comprehensive guide to personification and anthropomorphism — how writers give human qualities to animals, objects, and abstract concepts, and why these devices are so powerful.
Literary Devices, Figurative Language
Sonnet in Literature: Fourteen Lines of Argument and Desire
A detailed guide to the sonnet — Petrarchan, Shakespearean, Spenserian, form, volta, and close reading methods.
Poetry, Literary Analysis
Onomatopoeia, Alliteration, and Sound Devices: How Literature Uses the Music of Language
A comprehensive guide to sound devices in literature — onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme, and rhythm. How writers use the musical qualities of language to create meaning.
Literary Devices, Poetry
Villanelle in Poetry: Repetition, Obsession, and Control
A detailed guide to the villanelle — repetition, obsession, Do not go gentle, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, and close reading methods.
Poetry, Literary Analysis