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Baroque

Art
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

An elaborate artistic style marked by drama, movement, contrast, and ornament. Baroque poetry often embraces intensity, surprise, and richly layered imagery.

Detailed Definition
Baroque art developed in seventeenth-century Europe and often uses theatrical gesture, deep contrasts of light and dark, visual abundance, and emotional force. In poetry, baroque qualities appear in extravagant metaphors, intricate conceits, unstable perspectives, and heightened spiritual or sensual language. A baroque poem may turn excess into a method, making complexity and surprise central to its exploration of mortality, faith, desire, or power.
Example
Example in poetry:
John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" uses an elaborate metaphysical conceit, a quality often associated with Baroque art's complexity and dramatic tension; A Baroque-inspired poem may contrast light and darkness, flesh and spirit, or earthly decay and divine splendor; George Herbert's devotional poems use intricate form and religious intensity that parallel Baroque artistic concerns; A poet can create a Baroque effect through extravagant imagery, surprising comparisons, and a heightened sense of motion and emotion
Additional Notes
Baroque style favors theatrical contrast, elaborate metaphor, and motion. Look for paradox, heightened emotion, spiritual tension, and imagery that overwhelms ordinary scale.
Other Meanings of “Baroque”
Also Known As
Baroque Art
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