Literary Terms

Persona
Meter/rhythm
Image
Image pattern
Stanza
 Persona
The voice or speaker of a poem or other work
of literature

The persona is NOT the writer as s/he exists

in the world. Even when the persona is an
aspect of the writer, the speaker of a literary
work is a literary fiction

The persona will have certain characteristics,

which can be determined with reference to
the content, tone, and diction of the
utterance
 Meter and Rhyme
In English poetry, the meter is a pattern of
stressed and unstressed syllables. When you
figure out the meter of a poem, you are
“scanning” the lines.

Rhyme is the repetition of the sound of the

last stressed syllable: late/fate
Rhymes can come in the middle of a line, but
when we talk about a “rhyme scheme,” we
are talking about the ends of lines – or end
rhymes.
 Image/Imagery/Image
Patterns
An image is a word that stands for a sensory
element – something you can see, hear,
taste, smell, or touch
Imagery is the collective term for “images”
An image pattern is a set of images that
share some common element – such as a
pattern of comforting images or frightening
images or sharp images or smooth images
 Stanza
A stanza is a group of lines in a poem,
usually set off with white space
There are numerous standard stanzas:
Couplets
Quatrains
Tercet or triplet
Sestet