Related Research Articles
In poetry, a couplet is a pair of successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (closed) couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there is a grammatical pause at the end of a line of verse. In a run-on (open) couplet, the meaning of the first line continues to the second.
A sestina is a fixed verse form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, normally followed by a three-line envoi. The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern.
Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, commonly referred to as Leviathan, is a book written by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and published in 1651. Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan. The work concerns the structure of society and legitimate government, and is regarded as one of the earliest and most influential examples of social contract theory. Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651), it argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Hobbes wrote that civil war and the brute situation of a state of nature could be avoided only by a strong, undivided government.
In rhetoric, a rhetorical device, persuasive device, or stylistic device is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading them towards considering a topic from a perspective, using language designed to encourage or provoke an emotional display of a given perspective or action. They seek to make a position or argument more compelling than it would otherwise be.
Rhyme royal is a rhyming stanza form that was introduced to English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer. The form enjoyed significant success in the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth century. It has had a more subdued but continuing influence on English verse in more recent centuries.
Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address on Saturday, March 4, 1865, during his second inauguration as President of the United States. At a time when victory over secessionists in the American Civil War was within days and slavery in all of the U.S. was near an end, Lincoln did not speak of happiness, but of sadness. Some see this speech as a defense of his pragmatic approach to Reconstruction, in which he sought to avoid harsh treatment of the defeated rebels by reminding his listeners of how wrong both sides had been in imagining what lay before them when the war began four years earlier. Lincoln balanced that rejection of triumphalism, however, with recognition of the unmistakable evil of slavery. The address is inscribed, along with the Gettysburg Address, in the Lincoln Memorial.
Envoi or envoy in poetry is used to describe:
Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham, 2nd Baron Howard of Effingham, KG, known as Lord Howard of Effingham, was an English statesman and Lord High Admiral under Elizabeth I and James I. He was commander of the English forces during the battles against the Spanish Armada and was chiefly responsible for the victory that saved England from invasion by the Spanish Empire.
Tail rhyme is a family of stanzaic verse forms used in poetry in French and especially English during and since the Middle Ages, and probably derived from models in medieval Latin versification.
Pindarics was a term for a class of loose and irregular odes greatly in fashion in England during the close of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century. Abraham Cowley, who published fifteen Pindarique Odes in 1656, was the poet most identified with the form though many others had composed irregular verses before him. The term is derived from the name of a Greek archaic poet, Pindar, but is based on a misconception since Pindar's odes were in fact very formal, obeying a triadic structure, in which the form of the first stanza (strophe) was repeated in the second stanza (antistrophe), followed by a third stanza (epode) that introduced variations but whose form was repeated by other epodes in subsequent triads. Cowley's Resurrection, which was considered in the 17th century to be a model of the 'pindaric' style, is a formless poem of sixty-four lines, arbitrarily divided, not into triads, but into four stanzas of unequal volume and structure; the lines which form these stanzas are of lengths varying from three feet to seven feet, with rhymes repeated in no order. It was the looseness of these 'pindarics' that appealed to many poets at the close of the 17th century, including John Dryden, Aphra Behn, and Alexander Pope, and many lesser poets, such as John Oldham, Thomas Otway, Thomas Sprat, John Hughes and Thomas Flatman.
John Skelton, also known as John Shelton, possibly born in Diss, Norfolk, was an English poet and tutor to King Henry VIII of England. Skelton died in Westminster and was buried in St. Margaret's Church, although no trace of the tomb remains.
In poetry, a fourteener is a line consisting of 14 syllables, which are usually made of seven iambic feet, for which the style is also called iambic heptameter. It is most commonly found in English poetry produced in the 16th and 17th centuries. Fourteeners often appear as rhymed couplets, in which case they may be seen as ballad stanza or common metre hymn quatrains in two rather than four lines.
William Shakespeare's play Hamlet has contributed many phrases to common English, from the famous "To be, or not to be" to a few less known, but still in everyday English.
A sestain is a six-line poem or repetitive unit of a poem of this format (musaddas), comparable to quatrain which is a four-line poem or a unit of a poem. There are many types of sestain with different rhyme schemes, for example AABBCC, ABABCC, AABCCB or AAABAB. The sestain is probably next in popularity to the quatrain in European literature. Usually there are three rhymes in the six-line strophe, but sometimes there are only two.
Psalm 10 is the tenth psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in English in the King James Version: "Why standest thou afar off, O LORD? why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble?" In the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, it is not an individual psalm but the second part of psalm 9, "Ut quid Domine recessisti". These two consecutive psalms have the form of a single acrostic Hebrew poem. Compared to Psalm 9, Psalm 10 is focused more on the individual than the collective human condition.
Anna Hume was a Scottish translator, poet and writer.
John 1:18 is the eighteenth verse in the first chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible.
When the king enjoys his own again is a Cavalier ballad written by Martin Parker during the English Civil War. It was later adopted by Jacobites. According to the historian Dr. Bernard Capp, this song was perhaps the most popular song in mid-seventeenth century England. The eighteenth century critic Joseph Ritson called it "the most famous and popular air ever heard in this country".
Father Mapple is a fictional character in Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick (1851). A former whaler, he has become a preacher in the New Bedford Whaleman's Chapel. Ishmael, the narrator of the novel, hears Mapple's sermon on the subject of Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale but did not turn against God.
"Contemplations" is a 17th-century poem by English colonist Anne Bradstreet. The poem's meaning is debated, with some scholars arguing that it is a Puritan religious poem while others argue that it is a Romantic poem.