Home › Glossary › Letter P

Pact

Folklore
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

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

A binding agreement, often with a demon or spirit, exchanging soul, power, or knowledge for worldly gain, sealed in blood or oath.

Detailed Definition
Pacts in poetry embody the Faustian bargain—the cost of ambition. They appear in tragic verse as the moment when desire overcomes conscience, where the soul is not lost, but traded—and the price is always more than known.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus: “I give thee my soul / To serve thee for twenty-four years”—this is the pact”; in Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” the pact is the union of contraries; in Yeats’ “A Vision,” the pact is the soul’s bargain with the Otherworld; in Goethe’s Faust, the pact is written in blood and ink; in Robert Browning’s “Porphyria’s Lover,” the strangling is a pact with madness; in Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus,” the resurrection is a pact with the devil of public spectacle.
Additional Notes
Pact is a binding agreement with a demon or spirit, exchanging soul, power, or knowledge for worldly gain, sealed in blood or oath. In folklore, it is never a simple trade—it always costs more than expected. In poetry, the pact symbolizes Faustian ambition, the corruption of desire, and the price of transcendence. Poets use it to explore moral compromise, the illusion of control, and the slow erosion of the self.
Also Known As
Covenant Devil’s Bargain
Skip to main content