Hamartia
This term is
used in Greek for, “sin and fault” in Greek tragedy. That shows up in the
actions of a protagonist under the following reasons and conditions, the
character flaw, error of poor judgment, or human weakness who is, therefore,
doomed by fate. Ambition, impulsiveness, fecklessness, ignorance, jealousy, and
greed are examples of such weakness.
Head rhyme
The repetition
of the initial consonants or vowels in two or more words.
Heptameter
A seven-foot
duple meter used in Classical prosody and in much English narrative verse by
Wordsworth, E.B. Browning, and Coleridge.
Heroic couplet
Heroic couplet is derived from its use in
heroic epic poetry and drama. A two
line, rhymed form of verse in iambic pentameter. Its two main types are: the
closed couplet in which, the second line is generally the end stopped line, and
open couplet in which the second line is enjambed so that the sense and or
syntax are continued into the next couplet. Intermittently used in the
Renaissance, the form reached its popular height in the 17th century
and took on a very fixed character in the Neo Classicism period which used both
end stopped lines and closed syntactical units in each line. Chaucer introduced
the form into English (The Legend of Good
Women and the Canterbury
Heroic line
Heroic line or
the iambic pentameter line is used in epic verse.
Heroic stanza
Heroic stanza a
verse composed of four lines of iambic pentameter rhyming aabb, or as in Thomas
Gary’s Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard, rhyming abab:
The curfew
tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Hexameter
(From Greek for “six measures”) originally,
in Greek quantitative meter a six foot line that used dactylic and spondaic
syllables. The first four feet are dactylic or spondaic, the fifth foot
dactylic, and the sixth spondaic ( ).
Hyperbole
A rhetorical
form of comparison using exaggerating or obvious overstatement for comic or
dramatic effect, as Macbeth’s:
No; this my
hand will rather
The multitudinous
seas incarnadine,
Making the
green one read.
Hypermetric
Hypermetric is also
called “extra-metrical” and “hypercatalectic”. This is a line of verse having
one or more extra syllables at the end, or an unexpected extra syllable in the
regular metrical pattern. In Yeats’ ten syllable pattern below, the second line
substitutes triple feet for its normal duple iambic meter:
Once out/of na/true I shall ne/ver take
My bo/dily form/ from a/ny na/tural thing…
Iamb
Iamb is also
called iambus, a duple metrical foot composed of an unaccented syllable
followed by an accented syllable in accentual syllabic verse, or a short
syllable followed by a long syllable in quantitative meter. The i. is probably
the most frequently used foot in English verse and, used in combination with
anapestic feet, is said to be most like ordinary speech. John Newton’s classic
hymn, Amazing Grace, uses alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimester lines:
Amaz/ing grace,/
how sweet/ the sound,
That saved/ a
wretch/like me;
I once/ was lost/ but now/ am found,
Was blind but now
can see
Imagery
Imagery is the
use of pictures, figures of speech, or description to evoke action, ideas,
objects, or characters. The term ranges in meaning from the use of a single
image or detail to the accumulative effect of a poem’s figurative devices that
imply thematic structure. For instance, in Edward Arlington Robinson’s Mr.
Flood’s Party, the pattern of imagery illustrates the protagonist’s character
and the dramatic situation:
Alone, as if
enduring to the end
A valiant armor of
scarred hopes outworn,
He stood there in
the middle of the road
Like Roland’s
ghost winding a silent horn.
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