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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
Subject English
Class and Year B. A. First Year
Course Code and Title A1-ELIT2P
Applied Poetry (Paper 2, Practical)
Program Certificate
Paper Major Subject
Module Title Module-3.2 Definition and Explanation
of the terms: Allegory, Shape, Mood and
Stanza
Content Writer Dr Shraddha Ashapure
Key Words Definition, Explanation, Terms, Allegory,
Shape, Mood and Stanza
e of Content
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
Topic details
S. No.
1. Learning Outcomes
2. Introduction
3. Summary
4. Learn more
5. Assessment
6. References
Learning Outcomes
Students studying this module will be expected to develop: ·
• an advanced knowledge of literary terms
• Will be able to define and describe differing literary devices
• Can explain why and how literary devices are used in text
• identify literary devices in text samples
• Develop deep understanding of Allegory ,stanza, mood and concrete poetry
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
Introduction
Literary terms refer to the technique, style, and formatting used by writers and speakers
to masterfully emphasize, embellish, or strengthen their compositions. Literary terms
have a wide range of application, from the poet's beauty, to the speaker's persuasion, to
the novelist's story development. In the present module we shall learn more about the
literary terms such as Allegory, stanza, mood and concrete poetry along with their
examples.
Literary terms include powerful figurative language that writers use to summon emotion
ranging from guilt to anger to bliss, and to allow us to see the world in new and magical
ways. Literary terms are important in a wide variety of ways. They allow writers and
speakers to make comments on society, politics, and trends. Rhetorical devices can be
used to strengthen arguments which persuade and convince audiences. Poetic
figurative language can summon emotions and visions of nature and the world in unique
and compelling ways
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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Allegory
As a literary device, allegory is a literary device
which is used by the writers of literature to
explain intellectual and difficult ideas in the
most simplified manner so that even a common
man of average level of understanding is able
to not only relate himself to the idea of the poet
but also can enjoy it. Allegory has been used since the time immemorial to instil the
morals and ethical values and principles of mankind and society and all the aspects of
human civilization along with all the forces of nature in the mind and heart of the
common people. As we all know we have been a story teller since our inception as a
cave man and storytelling is part of our life. The readers are already familiar with the
Allegorical characters which embody religious, historical or eminent personalities and
their roles depict real life situations. Nevertheless, metaphor or Allegory just suggests to
these explanations, the acquaintances are not stated clearly.
As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is an artistic form of narration which can
be visual representation as well in which a character, place, or event can be construed
to signify a concealed meaning with ethical or dogmatic implication. Allegories are
applied by the writers and speakers characteristically to transport complex and
concealed connotations via figurative figures or metaphors which collectively compose
the ethical, mystical, or political meaning the writer desires to say through his creation.
Embodiment of abstract perceptions can be seen in various allegories. We must keep in
mind for the success of our Allegory that our Allegory must be sufficient enough to be
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
able to entertain readers as a story and the allegorical symbols used must be very
simple, adequately familiar and readily understood by the readers
Allegory is a boon for the skilled writers as it permits the debatable issues to be
approached in a practical and pragmatic manner as the subject matter of an allegory is
symbolic, not literally referenced.Symbolism used in allegory serves as a shield and
grants comfort and ease of explaining and understating of much argumentative topics
like human relationships warfare, religious conviction etc, for both the author and
reader. Allegory is therefore a very artistic use of literary skill which improves
comprehension for the s readers on several abstract notions of metaphysical concepts
and advanced reasoning.
Examples of Allegory in Literature
Allegory is a very effective literary device which is like icing on the cake
Listed below are some examples of allegory:
Example 1: Animal Farm (George Orwell)
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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Animal Farm is one of the most well-known and appreciated allegorical novels in
literature of a farm fable
On a symbolic level, Orwell’s allegory reflects the events of the Russian Revolution in
which Bolshevik and liberal revolutionaries overthrew the Russian Czar. Two of the pigs
in the novel symbolize the historical figures Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, and nearly
every literary element in story symbolizes the rise of communism and its consequences
in Russia and the Soviet Union.
Example 2: Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
The narrator’s journey from the South to the North is an allegory of American slavery,
including representations of slave narratives, the Underground Railroad, the Civil War,
and Reconstruction. In addition, the narrator’s surface story is symbolic and allegorical
of a true education of what it means to be black in America. The narrator begins with a
level of innocence that he loses through the experiences of his journey until his
perception of his identity leads him to a different sense of reality.
Example 3: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
This poem is an allegory on many levels, but particularly reflects the fall of man and the
betrayal of Jesus by Judas as symbolized by the death of the Albatross. Coleridge sets
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
forth in his poem not just the mariner’s surface story, but underlying narratives of sin
and redemption.
Allegory can be of various types like Classical allegory, Biblical allegory, Medieval
allegory Modern allegory etc
What is a Stanza?
Definition of Stanza
In poetry, most poems are divided into stanzas, groups of lines, which function like the
rooms of a house. In fact, stanza literally means 'room' in Italian stanza is a division of
four or more lines having a fixed length, meter, or rhyming scheme it is dividing and
organizing technique which places a group of lines in a poem together, separated from
other groups of lines by line spacing or indentation. Stanzas are to poetry what
paragraphs are to prose. Stanzas can be rhymed or unrhymed and fixed or unfixed in
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
meter or syllable count. Stanzas are the verse equivalent of a paragraph. Sometimes,
they contain one idea or are simply a few lines discussing a broader idea. Stanzas
range in length from one line up to an unlimited number of lines. Most poems contain
stanzas with groups of lines between three and ten lines long. They can be found in
poetic forms like an ode, sestina, and some types of sonnets. The four-line stanza is
one of the most popular. It’s been used by everyone from William Shakespeare to
Robert Frost and Edgar Allan Poe in ‘Annabel Lee.’
On the basis of a fixed number of lines and rhyming scheme, traditional English
language poems have the following kinds of stanzas:
Monostich: one line stanza.
Couplet: set of two lines.
Tercet: set of three lines.
Quatrain: set of four lines.
Quintain: set of five lines.
Sestet: set of six lines.
Septet: set of seven lines.
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
Ballad stanza: rhyming quatrain with alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. It
usually rhymes ABCB.
Spenserian stanza: used in ‘The Faerie Queene’ by Edmund Spenser. It has nine lines
in iambic pentameter (contains five metrical feet) and a final line of iambic hexameter
(contains twelve metrical feet).
In Memoriam stanza: a set of four lines written in iambic tetrameter and rhyming ABBA.
Used in Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam A.H.H.’
Isometric stanza: a stanza that contains lines of the same length.
The Importance of Using Stanzas
Stanzas are vital as they eloquently divide poetry on the page, setting it apart from
prose and permitting certain, and themes to be systematized distinctively conferring to
the intention of the poet and message. Stanzas governs the poem with certain rules like
syllable counts and rhyme schemes that go along with them. Contrarywise, poems
deficient of stanzas are disorganised and are full of chaos. Stanzas are an essential and
protuberant characteristic of poetry.
Sometimes stanzas are also referred to as verses, but the more technical term for
divisions of lines in poetry is the stanza. Singers divide their song lyrics similarly to
poets, though the divisions are referred to as verses rather than stanzas.
Stanzas are of the extreme importance in poetry in that they organize poetic lines based
on a variety of factors ranging from mood to meaning. Although stanzas are only found
in poetry, their equivalents include the paragraph in prose and the verse in song.
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
Mood
Mood is the mental state in which a writer writes his art and mood also refers to the
mental makeup of the reader while he penetrates through this mood of the writer via his
work. Every single piece of writing has its own mood which is emotionally charged by
negative or positive emotions of the writers depending on the nature of his work. The
mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or the feelings the literature induces
in the reader. Every aspect of a piece of writing can impact its mood, from
the setting and the imagery to the author's word choice, diction, genre, plot tone. For
example, a poem that begins "Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
" will certainly create mood of patriotism and motivation to inspire Indians to sacrifice for
their country and have self-pride to be an Indian.
Salient features of mood:
• Every piece of writing has a mood irrespective of its genre.
• Moods are recognized progressively over the development of a whole work one
can’t determine the mood of a literary work based on a single sentence or
paragraph.
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
• Mood is frequently muddled with tone, which is associated but unlike in that tone
denotes the attitude of a piece of writing, not its atmosphere
• Some words that are commonly used to describe mood are generally adjectives
and abstract nouns related to emotions of both kinds negative as well as positive
More Examples of Mood
The following examples of mood are from different types of literature: plays, novels, and
poems. In each, we identify how the author builds the mood of the work using a
combination of setting, imagery, tone, diction, and plot.
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
Mood in Hamlet
Shakespeare's Hamlet is a play about death, grief, and madness (among other things).
Shakespeare helps to establish the fantastical and ominous mood of the play early on
by making use of setting, imagery, tone, and diction.
Mood in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Caroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has a whimsical, light-hearted, and
often cheerful mood. It uses a combination of fantastical imagery, a famously "curious"
setting, and light-hearted language to set the mood.
Mood in Tennyson's Ulysses
Tennyson's famous poem is an excellent example of a work that establishes its mood
quickly and effectively using just setting and diction.
The mood of the poem is gloomy, melancholic, and reflective—which is reflected both in
the poem's setting (still hearth, barren crags) as well as the poet's choice of words (the
speaker describes himself as "idle," his wife as "aged," and his subjects as a "savage
race" of hoarding strangers).
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
The Function of Mood in Literature
Moods are like colours they induce different effects in the writing. They take the reader
on the flight of imagination and influences the central themes Mood is a bridge between
writer and reader and helps to link the reader emotionally with the writer’s work. Mood
makes the literature come alive
Other Helpful Mood Resources
• The Wikipedia Page on Mood: A basic overview of mood in literature.
• The Dictionary Definition of Mood: A simple definition of mood's general
meaning.
• Mood on YouTube: Many short videos available on You tube give a great
overview of how mood works in literature.
Shape or concrete poem
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
Definition of Concrete Poetry
Concrete poetry is a kind of a form of poetry in which the poet arranges the words or
letters so they fit into or form a particular shape. The visual effect, thus created, is
supposed to add to the meaning of the poem that focuses on the shape words make on
the page. Often, the graphic impression of the poem is more imperative than the text
itself.
This means that prescribed picks, like meter and the length of lines, are made in regard
to the desired shape of the poem rather than the effect they’re going to have on the
reader or the way they influence the content. Depending on the author, they may spend
more or less time focused on the content.
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
Concrete poetry, also known as shape poetry, uses some kind of visual demonstration
to boost the upshot of the poem. While the words, writing style and literary devices all
impact the meaning of the poem, the physical shape the poem takes is also significant.
Verse that emphasizes non-linguistic elements in its meaning, such as a style that
creates a visual image of the topic. Examples include George Herbert’s “Easter Wings”
and “The Altar” and George Starbuck’s “Poem in the Shape of a Potted Christmas
Tree”.
Examples of Concrete Poetry
Easter Wings by George Herbert
‘Easter Wings’ is a well-known example of a concrete poem. It’s religious in nature and
in the shape of two wings when viewed horizontally. When seen vertically, the
two stanzas appear as stacked hourglasses.
Concrete poetry has its roots in works of literature that are enhanced by a series of
images. Many medieval authors sought to couple poetry with images (such as Geoffrey
Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales), but the form was lost over time.
Types of Concrete Poems
These types of poems come in two different forms: outline and line poems.
• Outline poems used the words to create an outline of the shape. For example,
"Easter Wings" by George Herbert is an outline poem.
• Line poems use the words to actually draw an image on the page. An example of
a line-type concrete poem is "White Rose" by Mary Ellen Solt.
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
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उ Higher Education Department of Government of Madhya Pradesh
• Ezra Pound was a poet who was a part of the imagist movement, which required
conciseness, lucidity and imagery through short works. “In a Station of the Metro”
is considered by many to be a concrete poem due to its focus on visual spacing,
which enhances the poem. This work is extremely short and contains no verbs
whatsoever, which provides the reader with an immediate concrete image, like a
photo snapshot of a train going by.
References
https://images.google.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry
https://literarydevices.net/allegory/
https://www.education.gov.in/en/ict-initiatives
http://epathshala.nic.in/eresources.php
• Fletcher Angus 2012 Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode Paperback
Princeton University Press, 2012
• Kisak Paul F. , 3 September 2015 Literary Devices: All Writers Should Know!
Paperback Createspace Independent Pub
• Abrams M.H. December 3rd 2005 A Glossary of Literary Terms Wadsworth
Publishing Company (first published 1957)
• Cuddon J.A. 19 November 2014 Dictionary of Literary terms Penguin edition.
B.A. First Year Course Title- Study of Poetry
E- Text Module Title-3.2 Definition and Explanation of the terms:
Allegory, Shape, Mood and Stanza
