● Term explanation

Sonnet

A poem, properly expressive of a single, complete thought, idea, or sentiment, of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to one of certain definite schemes, being in the strict or Italian form divided into a major group of 8 lines (the octave) followed by a minor group of 6 lines (the sestet), and in a common English form into 3 quatrains followed by a couplet.

For example, "Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18)" by Shakespeare.

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Poetry

One of the three major genres of imaginative literature, which has its origins in music and oral performance and is characterized by controlled patterns of rhythm and syntax (often using meter and rhyme); compression and compactness and an allowance for ambiguity; a particularly concentrated emphasis on the sensual, especially visual and aural, qualities and effects of words and word order; and especially vivid, often figurative language.

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Didacticism

Didacticism is a philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature and other types of art. The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word, related to education and teaching, and signified learning in a fascinating and intriguing manner.

Didactic art was meant both to entertain and to instruct. Didactic plays, for instance, were intended to convey a moral theme or other rich truth to the audience. An example of didactic writing is Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism (1711), which offers a range of advice about critics and criticism. An example of didactism in music is the chant Ut queant laxis, which was used by Guido of Arezzo to teach solfege syllables.

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Romance

Romance or romantic a usually refers to romance (love), love emphasizing emotion over libido.

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe—especially that which is experienced in confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublimity and beauty of nature.

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Personification

Anthropomorphism, or personification, is attribution of human form or other characteristics to anything other than a human being. Examples include depicting deities with human form, creating fictional non-human animal characters with human physical traits, and ascribing human emotions or motives to forces of nature, such as hurricanes or tropical cyclones.

Example 1, “I wandered lonely as a cloud” by William Wordsworth

[1. glee, gay, jocund: extremely happy]

[2. End rhyme: rhyme of the terminal syllables of lines of poetry. (cloud/crowd, trees/breeze,...)]

Example 2, "Shall I compare Thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18)" by William Shakespeare

[The idea of the sun having a "gold complexion" (line 6) is personification, as is the idea that death can brag about the reader wandering in his shade (line 11).  In addition, the final line, referring to the sonnet having life is also personification.]

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Iambic

Referring to a metrical form in which each foot consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one; this type of foot is an iamb. The most common poetic meter in English is iambic pentameter—a metrical form in which most lines consist of five iambs: "One cóm- | mon nóte | on éi- | ther lýre | did stríke" (Dryden, "To the Memory of Mr. Oldham").

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Pentameter

А poem is said to be written in (a particular) pentameter when the lines of the poem have the length of five feet, where 'foot' is a combination of a particular number (1 or 2) of unstressed (or weak) syllables and a stressed (or strong) syllable. Depending on the pattern of feet, pentameter can be iambic (one of three two-syllable meters alongside trochaic and spondaic) or dactylic (one of two three-syllable meters alongside anapestic).

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● Vocabulary

encounter vs. face

encounter: something or someone implies that it is by chance or maybe an unplanned circumstance and it does not have the same negative connotation

encounter: 通常指遇到困難或挫折，也指偶然或意外地相遇

face: something or someone usually means you are confronting something that is not easy to deal with

face: 側重雙方靜止地面對面，或指指充滿勇氣、信心和決心正視人或事

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environment vs. circumstances

environment: the state of affairs

circumstances: the way in which something took place; the state of your finances

p.s. circumstantial: providing or including the details of a particular situation or event

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dic: say, speak

e.g., dictionary (a reference resource which provides information about words and their meanings, uses, and pronunciations. A dictionary may be published as a printed book, or as a digital product such as a website or app, and it may be monolingual, bilingual, or multilingual)

e.g., dictate (to influence or control how something is done)

e.g., dictator (someone who uses force to take and keep power in a country)

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hex: six

e.g., hexagon (a geometric shape with six straight sides. Something in the shape of a hexagon is hexagonal)

e.g., hexameter (a line of poetry that has six metrical feet)

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penta: five

e.g., pentagon (a shape with five sides, usually of equal length, and angles greater than 90°)

e.g., pentameter (a line of poetry with five strong beats)

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di: two, twice, double

e.g., divide (to separate people or things into smaller groups or parts)

e.g., diverge (to start to go in separate directions)

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love at first sight 

An instantaneous attraction to someone or something. 一見鍾情

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coming out of the closet

Coming out of the closet, or simply coming out, is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. 出櫃

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I'm sorry: 感同身受

Condolences are an expression of sympathy to someone who is experiencing pain arising from death, deep mental anguish, or misfortune.

apologize: 道歉

e.g., I owe you an apology.

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● Figure of Speech 修辭；比喻

A figure of words/speech is figurative language in the form of a single word or phrase. It can be a special repetition, arrangement or omission of words with literal meaning, or a phrase with a specialized meaning not based on the literal meaning of the words. There are mainly five figures of speech: simile (明喻), metaphor (隱喻), hyperbole (誇飾), personification (擬人) and synecdoche (提喻法). Figures of speech often provide emphasis, freshness of expression, or clarity. However, clarity may also suffer from their use, as any figure of speech introduces an ambiguity between literal and figurative interpretation. A figure of speech is sometimes called a rhetorical figure or a locution.

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● Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish author, playwright and poet. Wilde published The Happy Prince and Other Tales in 1888, and had been regularly writing fairy stories for magazines. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.

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● "somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond"

The Age of Adaline 

A young woman, born at the turn of the 20th century, is rendered ageless after an accident. After many solitary years, she meets a man who complicates the eternal life she has settled into.

www.imdb.com/title/tt1655441/

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● Punctuating Titles

homeworktips.about.com/od/mlastyle/a/titles.htm

Titles and Names to Italicize: novel, film, play, magazine, newspaper, sculpture or statue

e.g., Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Titles to Put Into Quotation Marks: Poem, Short story, chapter, article

e.g., "I wandered lonely as a cloud" by William Wordsworth

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● 詩的用意

東方: an obligation to fulfill its expectation

西方: to demonstrate its personality or character

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● "Traveling Is a Fool's Paradise"

“Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Response to this quote: travelsofjofo.com/2012/12/01/my-response-to-emersons-quote-travel-is-a-fools-paradise/

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● Mandela Statue

www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/22/nelson-mandela-statue-hidden-rabbit

A new, nine-metre sculpture of Nelson Mandela is billed as the biggest statue of the South African leader. It also has a tiny, barely visible quirk: a sculpted rabbit tucked inside one of the bronze ears.

The bronze rabbit, sitting on its haunches with one floppy ear, is about half the height of the ear canal.

The artists said that they added the rabbit as a trademark after officials would not allow them to engrave their signatures on the statue's trousers. They also said the rabbit represented the pressure of finishing the sculpture on time because "haas" – the word for rabbit in the Dutch-based Afrikaans language – also means "haste."