Different Types of Poetry

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Different Types of Poetry. Different Types of Poetry. 

Poetry is the expression of a thought, an idea, i dea, a concept or a story in a structured form which has a flow and a music created by the sounds and syllables in it. Acrostic: Acrostic poetry is one that contains certain letters, which are usually placed at the beginning of each line. These letters form a message m essage or word when they are read in a sequence. Ballad: This type of poetry is short and narrative and is made up of stanzas of two to four lines. Ballads usually have a refrain. They also deal mostly with folklore or popular trends though some also originate from a wide range of subject matter. The verses in ballads are straight-forward straight-forwa rd and seldom have any detail. Apart from that, ballads always p possess ossess graphic simplicity and force. Blank Verse: A blank verse is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. This form is a little like the rhythms of speech. Burlesque: In this kind of poetry a subject that is serious in nature is treated as humor. Cinquain: A cinquain is short poem that is made up of five lines that are usually unrhymed. These five lines contain two, four, six, eight and two syllables respectively. Clerihew: This type of poetry is made up of a comic verse that has two couplets and a specific rhyming scheme. Didactic Poetry: Didactic poems are poems that are written in order to instruct i nstruct or teach. Epic: This type of poem is i s long and narrative in nature. It talks about the adventures of a hero. Epics usually deal with the history and traditions tradi tions of a nation. Epigram: Practiced by poets like Robert Frost, William Blake and Ben Jonson, epigrams are short poems that possess satire. This type of poetry ends with a stinging punchline or humorous retort. Common forms of epigrams are written as a couplet. Epitaph: A short poem with rhyming lines written on a tombstone in praise of a deceased person is called an epitaph. Elegy: This type of poetry is sad and thoughtful in nature. They talk about the death of an individual. Free Verse: Like the name suggests, free verse is poetry that is i s irregular. This type of poetry has content which is free from the traditional rules of using verse. Ode: A poem that is written in praise of a place, thing or person, is known as an ode.

Sonnet: A poem that is made up of 14 lines and a particular rhyming scheme is called a sonnet. Couplet: Perhaps the most popular type of poetry used, the couplet has stanzas made up of two lines which rhyme with each other.

 

 

Types of Poetry    When studying poetry, poetry, it is useful first of al alll to consider the thetheme theme and  and the overalldevelopment overall development of  of the  the theme  theme in the poem. Obviously, the sort of development that takes place depends to a considerable extent on the type of poem one is dealing with. It is useful to keep two general distinctions in mind (for more detailed definitions consult

 

 Abrams 1999 1999 and Preminge Premingerr et al 1993): lyric poetry and na narrative rrative poetry.

Lyric Poetry    A lyric poem is poem is a comparative comparatively ly short, non-narrative poem in which a single speaker presents a state of mind or an emotional state. Lyric poetry retains some of the elements of song which is said to be its origin: For Greek writers the lyric was a song accompanied  by the lyre.  Subcategories of the lyric are, for example elegy, ode, sonnet and dramatic monologue and most occasional poetry:  In modern usage, elegy  is  is a formal lament for the death of a particular person (for  In Memoriam A.H.H. A.H.H.). ). More broadly defined, the term elegy is also example  Tennyson’ example Tennyson’s In used for solemn meditations, often on questions of death, such as  as Gray 's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard .   An ode ode is  is a long lyric poem with a serious subject written in an elevated style. Famous examples are  are  Wordsworth’ Wordsworth’s Hymn  Hymn to Duty or Duty or  Keats’ Keats’ Ode to a Grecian Urn. Urn.  The sonnet sonnet was  was originall y  y a love poem which which dealt with the llover’s over’s sufferings a and nd hopes. It originated in Italy and became popular in England in the Renaissanc Renaissance, e, Thomas Wyatt  the  Earl of Surrey  translated and imitated the sonnets written  whenThomas  when Wyatt and the  by P etrarch (Petrarchan sonnet). Petrarch  sonnet). From the seventeenth century onwards the sonnet  was also used for other topics th than an love, for instance instance for religious ex experience perience (by  Donne Donne  and and  Milton Milton)), reflections on art (by  Keats  Keats or or  Shelley ) or even the war experience (by  Brooke  Brooke or or  Owen Owen)). The sonnet uses a single stanza of (usually) fourteen forms)). Many poets wrote a series of lines and an intricate rhyme pattern (see  (see stanza forms sonnets linked by the same theme, so-called sonnet cycles (for cycles (for instance Petrarch,  Spenser Petrarch, Spenser,, Shakespeare Shakespeare,, Drayton,  Drayton, Barret-Browning, Barret-Browning, Meredith Meredith)) which depict the  various stages of of a love relationsh relationship. ip.  In a dramatic monologue a monologue a speaker, who is explicitly someone other than the author, makes a speech to a silent auditor in a specific situation and at a critical moment.  Without intending intending to do so, the speaker reveals aspe aspects cts of his temper temperament ament and Browning''s My Last Duchess for Duchess for instance, the Duke shows the picture of character. In  In Browning his last wife to the emissary from his prospective new wife and reveals his excessive pride in his position and his jealous temperament. 

 

Occasional poetry  is  is written for a specific occasion: a wedding (then it is called anepithalamion anepithalamion,, for instance  instance Spenser Spenser’’s Epithalamion),  Epithalamion), the return of a king from exile (for instance  instance Dryden’ Dryden’s  Annus Annus Mirabilis Mirabilis)) or a death (for example example  Milton Milton’’s Lycidas  Lycidas), ), etc. 

Narrative Poetry   Narrative poetry  gives  gives a verbal representatio representation, n, in verse, of a sequence of connected events, it propels characters through a plot. It is always told by a narrator. Narrative Tennyson''s Maud ), ), the story of a father and son poems might tell of a love story (like  (like Tennyson (like  Walter Walter Scott Scott''s Lay of (like   Wordsworth' (like Wordsworth's Michael ) or the deeds of a hero or heroine (like  the Last Minstrel ))..  Sub-categories of narrative poetry:  Epics usually operate on a large scale, both in length and topic, such as the founding of Epics usually a nation ( Virgil’  Virgil’s  Aeneid  Aeneid ) or the beginning of world history (Milton Milton''s Paradise Lost )),, they tend to use an elevated style of language and supernatural supernatural beings take part in the action.  The mock-epic mock-epic makes  makes use of epic conventions, like the elevated style and the assumption that the topic is of great importance, to deal with completely insignificant Pope''s The Rape of the Lock, Lock, which tells the story of a occurrences. A famous example is  is Pope  young beauty whose whose suitor secr secretly etly cuts off a lock o off her hair.   A ballad  A ballad is  is a song, originally transmitted orally, which tells a story. It is an important form of folk poetry which was adapted for literary uses from the sixteenth century onwards. The ballad stanza is usually a four-line stanza, alternating tetrameter tetrameter and trimeter. 

Descriptive and Didactic Poetry   lyric and poetry  narrative poetry can lengthy and detailed descriptions (Both descriptive ) or scenes in contain direct speech (dramatic (dramatic poetry  ))..  The purpose of a didactic poem is poem is primarily to teach something. This can take the form of very specific instructions, such as how to catch a fish, as in  in James Thomson’ Thomson’sThe  Seasons (  Seasons  ( Spring  Spring 379-442)  379-442) or how to write good poetry as in in   Alexander Alexander Pope Pope’’s Essay on Criticism.. But it can also be meant as instructive in a general way. Until the twentieth Criticism century all literature was expected to have a didactic purpose in a general g eneral sense, that is, Horacef  f a amously mously demanded to impart moral, theoretical or even practical knowledge;  knowledge; Horace that poetry should combine prodesse prodesse (learning)  (learning) anddelectare anddelectare (pleasure).  (pleasure). The twentieth century was more reluctant to proclaim literature openly as a teaching tool.  English Poetry 

 

English poetry The history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th century to the present day. Over this period, English poets have written some of the t he most enduring poems in European culture, and the language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently, the term English poetry is unavoidably ambiguous. It can mean poetry written in England, or poetry written in the English language. The earliest surviving poetry from the area currently known as England was likely transmitted orally and then written down in versions that do not now survive; thus, dating the earliest poetry remains difficult and often controversial. The earliest surviving manuscripts date from the 10th century. Poetry written in Latin, Brythonic (a predecessor language of Welsh) and Old Irish survives which may date as early as the th e 6th century. The earliest surviving poetry written in Anglo-Saxon, the most direct predecessor of modern English, may have been composed as early as the seventh century. With the growth of trade and the British Empire, the English language had been widely used outside England. In the twenty-first century, only a small percentage of the world's native English speakers live in England, and there is also a vast population of non-native speakers of English who are capable of writing poetry in the language. A number of major national poetries, including the American, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and Indian poetry have emerged and developed. Since 1922, Irish poetry has also been increasingly i ncreasingly viewed as a separate area of study. This article focuses on poetry written in English by poets born b orn or spending a significant part of their lives in England. However, given the nature of the subject, this guideline guideli ne has been applied common sense, reference is made to poetry in other languages or poets who arewith not primarily Englishand where appropriate. Contents • 1 The earliest English poetry  poetry   • 2 The Anglo-Norman Anglo-Norman period and the Later Middle Ages • 3 The Renaissance in England  England   o 3.1 Early Renaissance poetry o 3.2 The Elizabethans  3.2.1 Elizabethan song  3.2.2 Courtly poetry  3.2.3 Elizabethan verse drama  3.2.4 Classicism o 3.3 Jacobean and Caroline poetry  3.3.1 The Metaphysical poets  3.3.2 The Cavalier poets • 4 The Restoration and 18th century  century   o 4.1 Satire o 4.2 18th century classicism o 4.3 Women poets in the 18th century o 4.4 The late 18th century • 5 The Romantic movement  movement  • 6 Victorian poetry  poetry  o 6.1 High Victorian poetry o 6.2 Pre-Raphaelites, arts and crafts, Aestheticism, and the "Yellow" 1890s • 7 The 20th century  century   o 7.1 The first three decades  7.1.1 The Georgian poets and World War I  7.1.2 Modernism o 7.2 The Thirties o 7.3 The Forties o 7.4 The Fifties

 

o 7.5 The 1960s and 1970s • 8 English poetry now  now   • 9 Notes  Notes  • 10 References  References  • 11 See also  also  • 12 External links  links  [edit] The earliest English poetry The earliest known English poem is a hymn on the creation; Bede attributes this to Cadman (fl. 658– 658–680), who was, according to legend, an illiterate herdsman who produced extemporaneous poetry at a monastery at Whitby.[1] This is generally taken as marking the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry. Much of the poetry of the period is difficult to date, or even to arrange chronologically; for example, estimates for the date of the great epic Beowulf range from AD 608 right through to AD 1000, and there has never been anything even approaching a consensus.[2] It is possible to identify certain key moments, however. The Dream of the Rood was written before circa AD 700, when excerpts were carved in runes on the Ruth well Cross.[3] Some poems on historical events, such as The Battle of Brunanburh (937) and the Battle of Malden (991), appear to have been composed shortly after the events in i n question, and can be dated reasonably precisely in consequence. By and large, however, Anglo-Saxon poetry is categorized by the manuscripts in which it survives, rather than its date of composition. The most important manuscripts are the four great poetical codices of Book, the late and earlyand eleventh centuries, known as the Cadman manuscript, the Vercelli thetenth Exeter Book, the Beowulf manuscript. While the poetry that has survived is limited in volume, it is wide in breadth. Beowulf is the only heroic epic to have survived in its entirety, but fragments of others such as Waldere and the Finns burg Fragment show that it was not unique in its time. Other genres include much religious verse, from devotional works to biblical paraphrase; paraphrase; elegies such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Ruin (often taken to be a description of the ruins of Bath); and numerous proverbs, riddles, and charms. With one notable exception (Rhyming Poem), Anglo-Saxon poetry depends on alliterative verse for its structure and any rhyme included is merely ornamental. [edit] The Anglo-Norman period and the Later Middle Ages See also: Anglo-Norman literature With the Norman Conquest of England, beginning in 1066, the Anglo-Saxon language rapidly diminished as a written literary language. The new aristocracy spoke French, and this became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. As the invaders integrated, their language and literature mingled with that of the natives: the French dialect of the upper classes became Anglo-Norman, and Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual transition into Middle English. While Anglo-Norman or Latin was preferred for high culture, English literature by no means died out, and a number of important i mportant works illustrate the development of the language. Around the turn of the thirteenth thi rteenth century, Layman wrote his Brut, based on Wace's twelfth century Anglo-Norman epic of the same name; Layman's language is recognizably Middle English, though his prosody shows a strong Anglo-Saxon influence remaining. Other transitional works were preserved as popular entertainment, including a variety of romances and lyrics. With time, the English language l anguage regained prestige, and in 1362 it replaced French and Latin in Parliament and courts of law. It was with the fourteenth century that major works of English literature began once again to appear; these include the so-called Pearl Poet's Pearl, Patience, Cleanness, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Langland's political and religious allegory all egory Piers Plowman; Gower's Confessio Amantis; and, of course, the works of Chaucer, the most highly regarded English poet of the Middle Middl e Ages, who was seen by his contemporaries as a successor to the

 

great tradition of Virgil and Dante. The reputation of Chaucer's successors in the 15th century has suffered iin n comparison with him, though Lydgate and Skelton are widely studied. However, the century really belongs to a group of remarkable Scottish writers. The rise of Scottish poetry began with the writing of The Kingis Quair by James I of Scotland. The main poets of this Scottish group were Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. Henryson and Douglas introduced a note of almost savage satire, which may have owed something to the Gaelic bards, while whil e Douglas' version of Virgil's Aeneid is one of the early monuments of Renaissance literary humanism in English. [edit] The Renaissance in England The Renaissance was slow in coming to England, with the generally accepted start date being around 1509. It is also al so generally accepted that the English Renaissance extended until the Restoration in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the way for the introduction of the new learning long before this start date. A number of medieval poets had, as already noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle and the writings of European Renaissance precursors such as Dante. The introduction of movable-block printing by Caxton in 1474 provided the means for the more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers. Caxton also printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish the idea of a native poetic tradition that was linked to its i ts European counterparts. In addition, the writings of English humanists like Thomas More and Thomas Eliot helped bring the ideas and attitudes associated with the new learning to an English audience. Three other factors in the the English Renaissance wereand the overseas Reformation, Counter Reformation, and establishment the opening ofof the era of English naval power exploration and expansion. The establishment of the Church of England in 1535 accelerated the process of questioning the Catholic world-view that had previously dominated intellectual and artistic life. At the same time, ti me, long-distance sea voyages helped provide the stimulus and information that underpinned a new understanding of the nature of the universe which resulted in the theories of Nicolas Copernicus and Johannes Kepler. [edit] Early Renaissance poetry With a small number of exceptions, the early years of the 16th century are not particularly notable. The Douglas Aeneid was completed in 1513 and John Skelton wrote poems that were transitional between the late Medieval and Renaissance styles. The new king, Henry VIII, was something of a poet himself. The most significant English poet of this period was Thomas Wyatt, who was among the first poets to write sonnets in English. [edit] The Elizabethans The Elizabethan period (1558 to 1603) in poetry is i s characterized by a number of frequently overlapping developments. The introduction and adaptation of themes, models and verse forms from other European traditions and classical literature, the Elizabethan song tradition, the emergence of a courtly poetry often centred around the figure of the monarch and the growth of a verse-based drama are among the most important of these developments. [edit] Elizabethan song A wide range of Elizabethan poets wrote songs, including Nicholas Grimald, Thomas Nashe and Robert Southwell. There are also a large number of extant anonymous songs from the period. Perhaps the greatest of all the songwriters was Thomas Campion. Campion is also notable because of his experiments with meters based on counting syllables rather than stresses. These quantitative meters were based on classical models and should be viewed as part of the wider Renaissance revival of Greek and Roman artistic methods. The songs were generally printed either in miscellanies or anthologies such as Richard Tottel's 1557 Songs and Sonnets or in songbooks that included printed music to enable performance. These performances formed an integral part of both b oth public and private entertainment. By the end of the 16th century, a new generation of composers, including John Dow land, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Weelkes and Thomas Morley were

 

helping to bring the art of Elizabethan song to an extremely high musical level. [edit] Courtly poetry With the consolidation of Elizabeth's power, a genuine court sympathetic to poetry and the arts in general emerged. This encouraged the emergence of a poetry aimed at, and often set in, an idealised version of the courtly world. Among the best known examples of this are Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen, which is is effectively an extended hymn of praise to the queen, and Philip Sidney's Arcadia. This courtly trend can also be seen in Spenser's Shepherds Calendar. This poem marks the introduction into an English context of the classical pastoral, a mode of poetry that assumes an aristocratic audience with a certain kind of attitude to the land and peasants. The explorations of love found in the sonnets of William Shakespeare and the poetry of Walter Raleigh and others also implies a courtly audience. [edit] Elizabethan verse drama Elizabethan verse drama is widely considered to be one of the major achievements of literature in English, and its most famous exponent, William Willi am Shakespeare, is revered as the greatest poet in the language. l anguage. This drama, which served both as courtly masque and popular entertainment, deals with all the major themes of contemporary literature and life. There are plays on European, classical, and religious themes reflecting the importance of humanism and the Reformation. There are also a number of plays dealing with English history that may be read as part of an effort to strengthen the British national myth and as artistic underpinnings for Elizabeth's resistance to the Spanish and other foreign threats. A number of the comic works for the stage also use bucolic themes connected with the pastoral genre. In addition to Shakespeare, other notable dramatists of the period include Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker and Ben Jonson. [edit] Classicism Gavin Douglas' Aeneid, Thomas Campion's metrical experiments, and Spenser's Shepherds Calendar and plays like Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra are all examples of the influence of classicism on Elizabethan poetry. It remained common for poets of the period to write on themes from classical mythology; Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and the Christopher Marlowe/George Marlowe/George Chapman Hero and Leander are examples of this kind of work. Translations of classical poetry also became more widespread, with the versions of Ovid's Metamorphoses by Arthur Golding (1565– (1565–7) and George Sandys (1626), and Chapman's translations of Homer's Iliad (1611) and Odyssey (c.1615), among the outstanding examples. [edit] Jacobean and Caroline poetry English Renaissance poetry after the Elizabethan poetry can be seen as belonging to one of three strains; the Metaphysical poets, the Cavalier poets and the school of Spenser. However, the boundaries between these three groups are not always clear and an individual poet could write in more than one manner. [edit] The Metaphysical poets The early 17th century saw the emergence of this thi s group of poets who wrote in a witty, complicated style. The most famous of the Metaphysicals is probably John Donne. Others include George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell and Richard Crashaw. John Milton in his Comus falls into this thi s group. The Metaphysical poets went out of favour in the 18th century but began to be read again in the Victorian era. Donne's reputation was finally fully restored by the approbation of T. S. Eliot Eli ot in the early 20th century. [edit] The Cavalier poets The Cavalier poets wrote in a lighter, li ghter, more elegant and artificial style than the Metaphysical poets. Leading members of the group include Ben Jonson, Richard Lovelace, Robert Herrick, Edmund Waller, Thomas Carew and John Denham. The Cavalier poets can be seen as the forerunners of the major poets of the Augustan era, who admired them greatly. [edit] The Restoration and 18th century

 

It is perhaps ironic that Paradise Lost, a story of fallen pride, was the first major poem to appear in England after the Restoration. The court of Charles II had, in i n its years in France, learned a worldliness and sophistication that marked it as distinctively different from the monarchies that preceded the Republic. Even if Charles had wanted to reassert the divine right of kingship, the Protestantism and taste for power of the t he intervening years would have rendered it impossible. [edit] Satire It is hardly surprising that the world of fashion and scepticism that emerged encouraged the art of satire. All the major poets of the period, Samuel Butler, John Dryden, Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson, and the Irish poet Jonathan Swift, wrote satirical verse. What is perhaps more surprising is that their satire was often written in defence of public order and the established church and government. However, writers such as Pope used their gift for satire to create scathing works responding to their detractors or to criticize what they saw as social atrocities perpetrated by the government. Pope's "The Dunciad" is a satirical slaying of two of his literary li terary adversaries adversaries (Lewis Theobald, and Colley Cibber in a later version), expressing the view that British society was falling apart morally, culturally, and intellectually. [edit] 18th century classicism The 18th century is sometimes called the Augustan age, and contemporary admiration for the classical world extended to the poetry of the th e time. Not only did the poets aim for a polished high style in emulation of the Roman ideal, they also translated and imitated Greek and Latin verse. Dryden translated all the known works of Virgil, and Pope produced versions the two Homeric epics. and Juvenal also widely translated and imitated,of Horace most famously byHorace John Wilmot, Earl ofwere Rochester and Juvenal by Samuel Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes.479 [edit] Women poets in the 18th century A number of women poets of note emerged during duri ng the period of the Restoration, including Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, Mary Chudleigh, Anne Finch, Anne Killigrew, and Katherine Philips. Nevertheless, print publication by women poets was still relatively scarce when compared to that of men, though manuscript evidence indicates that many more women poets were practicing than was previously thought. Disapproval of feminine "forwardness,"" however, kept many out of print in the early part of the period, and even as "forwardness, the century progressed women authors still felt the need to justify justi fy their incursions into the public sphere by claiming economic necessity or the pressure of friends. Women writers were increasingly active in all genres throughout the eighteenth century, and by the 1790s women's poetry was flourishing. Notable poets later in the period include i nclude Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Joanna Baillie, Susanna Blamire, Felicia Hemans, Mary Leapor, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Hannah More, and Mary Robinson. In the past decades there has been substantial scholarly and critical work done on women poets of the long eighteenth century: first, to reclaim them and make them available in contemporary editions in print or online, and second, to assess them and position them within a literary li terary tradition. [edit] The late 18th century Towards the end of the 18th century, poetry began to move away from the strict Augustan ideals and a new emphasis on sentiment and the feelings feeli ngs of the poet. This trend can perhaps be most clearly seen in the handling of nature, with a move away from poems about formal gardens and landscapes l andscapes by urban poets and towards poems about nature as lived in. The leading exponents of this new trend include Thomas Gray, William Cowper, George Crabbe, Christopher Smart and Robert Burns as well as the Irish poet Oliver Goldsmith. These poets can be seen as paving the way for the Romantic movement. [edit] The Romantic Movement The last quarter of the 18th century was a time of social and poli political tical turbulence, with revolutions in the United States, France, Ireland and elsewhere. In Great Britain, movement for social change and a more inclusive sharing of power was also growing. This was the

 

backdrop against which the Romantic movement in English poetry emerged. The main poets of this movement were William Will iam Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats. The birth of English Romanticism is often dated to the publication in 1798 of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads. However, Blake had been publishing since the early 1780s. However, much of the focus on Blake only came about during the last l ast century when Northrop Frye discussed his work in his book "The Anatomy of Criticism." In poetry, the Romantic movement emphasised the creative expression of the individual and the need to find and formulate new forms of expression. The Romantics, with the partial exception of Byron, rejected the poetic ideals of the eighteenth century, and each of them returned to Milton for inspiration, though each drew something different from Milton. Mil ton. They also put a good deal of stress on their own originality. To the Romantics, the moment of creation was the most important in poetic expression and could not be repeated once it passed. Because of this new emphasis, poems that were not complete were nonetheless included in a poet's body of work (such as Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and "Christabel"). Additionally, the Romantic movement marked a shift in the use of language. Attempting to express the "language of the common man", Wordsworth and his fellow Romantic poets focused on employing poetic language for a wider audience, countering the mimetic, tightly ti ghtly constrained Neo-Classic poems (although it's important to note that the poet wrote first fi rst and foremost for his own creative, expression). In Shelley's "Defense of Poetry", he contends that poets are the "creators of language" and that the poet's job j ob is to refresh language for their society. The wereisnot the only poets of note at this time. In the work of John Clare the late Romantics Augustan voice blended with a peasant's first-hand knowledge to produce arguably some of the finest nature poetry in the English language. Another contemporary poet who does not fit into the Romantic group was Walter Savage Landor. Landor was a classicist whose poetry forms a link between the Augustans and Robert Browning, who much admired it. [edit] Victorian poetry The Victorian era was a period of great political, social and economic change. The Empire recovered from the loss of the American colonies and entered a period of rapid expansion. This expansion, combined with increasing industrialisation and mechanisation, led to a prolonged period of economic growth. The Reform Act 1832 was the beginning of a process that would eventually lead to universal suffrage. [edit] High Victorian poetry The major High Victorian Vi ctorian poets were Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Tennyson was, to some degree, the Spenser of the new age and his hi s Idylls of the Ki Kings ngs can be read as a Victorian version of The Faerie Queen, that is as a poem that sets out to provide a mythic foundation to the idea of empire. The Brownings spent much of their time out of England and explored European models and matter in much of their poetry. Robert Browning's great innovation was the dramatic monologue, which he used to its full extent in his long novel iin n verse, The Ring and the Book. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is perhaps best remembered for Sonnets from the Portuguese but her long poem Aurora Leigh is one of the classics of 19th century feminist literature. Matthew Arnold was much influenced by Wordsworth, though his poem Dover Beach is often considered a precursor of the modernist revolution. Hopkins wrote in relative obscurity and his work was not published until after his death. His unusual style (involving what he called "sprung rhythm" and heavy reliance on rhyme and alliteration) had a considerable influence on many of the poets of the 1940s. [edit] Pre-Raphaelites, arts and crafts, Aestheticism, and the "Yellow" "Yell ow" 1890s The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a mid-19th century arts movement dedicated to the

 

reform of what they considered the sloppy Mannerist painting of the day. Although primarily concerned with the visual arts, two members, the brother and sister Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Rossetti, were also poets of some ability. Their poetry shares many of the concerns of the painters; an interest in Medieval models, an almost obsessive attention to visual detail and an occasional tendency to lapse into whimsy. Dante Rossetti worked with, and had some influence on, the leading Arts and crafts painter and poet William Morris. Morris shared the Pre-Raphaelite interest in the poetry poet ry of the European Middle Ages, to the point of producing some illuminated manuscript volumes of his work. Towards the end of the century, English poets began to take an interest in French symbolism and Victorian poetry entered a decadent fin-de-siecle phase. Two groups of poets emerged, the Yellow Book poets who adhered to the tenets of Aestheticism, including Algernon Charles Swinburne, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Symons and the Rhymer's Club group that included Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson and William Butler Yeats. [edit] The 20th century [edit] The first three decades The Victorian era continued into the early years of the 20th century and two figures emerged as the leading representative of the poetry of the old era to act as a bridge into the new. These were Yeats and Thomas Hardy. Yeats, although not a modernist, was to learn a lot from the new poetic movements that sprang up around him and adapted his writing to the new circumstances. Hardy was, in terms of technique at least, a more traditional figure and was to be a reference point for various anti-modernist reactions, especially the 1950s onwards. [edit] The from Georgian poets and World War I The Georgian poets were the first major grouping of the post-Victorian era. Their work appeared in a series of five anthologies called Georgian Poetry which were published by Harold Monro and edited by Edward Marsh. The poets featured included Edmund Blunden, Rupert Brooke, Robert Graves, D. H. Lawrence, Walter de la Mare and Siegfried Sassoon. Sa ssoon. Their poetry represented something of a reaction to the decadence of the 1890s and tended towards the sentimental. Brooke and Sassoon were to go on to win reputations as war poets and Lawrence quickly distanced himself from the group and was associated with the modernist movement. Other notable poets who wrote about the war include Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas, Wilfred Owen, May Cannan and, from the home front, Hardy and Rudyard Kipling. Although many of these poets wrote socially-aware criticism of the war, most remained technically conservative and traditionalist. [edit] Modernism The early decades of the 20th century saw the United States begin to overtake the United Kingdom as the major economic power. In the world of poetry, this period also saw American writers at the forefront of avant-garde practices. Among the foremost of these poets were T.S. Eliot, H.D. and Ezra Pound, each of whom spent an important part of their writing lives in England. Pound's involvement with the Imagists marked the beginning of a revolution in the way poetry was written. English poets involved with this group included D. H. Lawrence, Richard Aldington, T. E. Hulme, F. S. Flint, E. E. Cummings, Ford Madox Ford, Allen Upward and John Cournos. Eliot, particularly after the publication of The Waste Land, became a major figure and influence on other English poets. In addition to these poets, other English modernists began to emerge. These included the London-Welsh poet and painter David Jones, whose first book, In Parenthesis, was one of the very few experimental poems to come out of World War I, the Scot Hugh MacDiarmid, Mina Loy and Basil Bunting. [edit] The Thirties The poets who began to emerge in the 1930s had two things in common; they had all been

 

born too late to have any real experience of the pre-World War I world and they grew up in a period of social, economic and political turmoil. Perhaps as a consequence of these facts, themes of community, social (in)justice and war seem to dominate the poetry of the th e decade. The poetic landscape of the decade was dominated by four poets; W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Cecil Day-Lewis and Louis MacNeice, although the last of these belongs bel ongs at least as much to the history of Irish poetry. These poets were all, in their early days a att least, politically active on the Left. Although they admired Eliot, Eli ot, they also represented a move away from the technical innovations i nnovations of their modernist predecessors. A number of other, less enduring, poets also worked in the same vein. One of these was Michael Mi chael Roberts, whose New Country anthology both introduced the group to a wider audience and gave them their name. The 1930s also saw the emergence of a home-grown English surrealist poetry whose main exponents were David Gascoyne, Hugh Sykes Davies, George Barker, and Philip O'Connor. These poets turned to French models rather than either the New Country poets or Englishlanguage modernism, and their work was to prove of importance to later English Engli sh experimental poets as it broadened the scope of the English avant-garde tradition. John Betjeman and Stevie Smith, who were two of the most significant poets of this period, stood outside all schools and groups. Betjeman was a quietly ironic poet of Middle England with a fine command of a wide range of verse techniques. Smith was an entirely unclassifiable one-off voice. [edit] The Forties The 1940s opened with the United Kingdom at war and a new generation of war poets emerged in response. These included Keith Douglas, Alun Lewis, Henry Reed and F. T. Prince. As with the poets of the First Fi rst World War, the work of these writers can be seen as something of an interlude in the history of 20th century poetry. Technically, many of these war poets owed something to the 1930s poets, but their work grew out of the particular circumstances in which they found themselves living and fighting. The main movement in post-war 1940s poetry was the New Romantic group that included i ncluded Dylan Thomas, George Barker, W. S. Graham, Kathleen Raine, Henry Treece and J. F. Hendry. These writers saw themselves as in revolt against the classicism of the New Country poets. They turned to such models as Gerard Manley Hopkins, Arthur Rimbaud and Hart Crane and the word play of James Joyce. Thomas, in particular, helped Anglo-Welsh Anglo -Welsh poetry to emerge as a recognisable force. Other significant poets to emerge in the 1940s include Lawrence Durrell, Bernard Spencer, Roy Fuller, Norman Nicholson, Vernon Watkins, R. S. Thomas and Norman McCaig. These last four poets represent a trend towards regionalism and poets writing about their native areas; Watkins and Thomas in Wales, Nicholson in Cumberland and MacCaig in Scotland. [edit] The Fifties The 1950s were dominated by three groups of poets, The Movement, The Group and a number of poets that gathered around the label Extremist Art. The Movement poets as a group came to public publi c notice in Robert Conquest's 1955 anthology New Lines. The core of the group consisted of Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Jennings, D. J. Enright, Kingsley Amis, Thom Gunn and Donald Davie. They were identified i dentified with a hostility to modernism and internationalism, and looked to Hardy as a model. However, both Davie and Gunn later moved away from this position. As befits their name, the Group were much more formally a group of poets, meeting for weekly discussions under the chairmanship of Philip Phili p Hobsbaum and Edward Lucie-Smith. Other Group poets included Martin Bell, Peter Porter, Peter Redgrove, George MacBeth and David Wevill. Hobsbaum spent some time teaching in Belfast, where he was a formative influence on the emerging Northern Ireland poets including Seamus Heaney. The term Extremist Art was first used by the poet p oet A. Alvarez to describe the work of the American poet Sylvia Plath. Other poets associated with this group included Plath's one-time

 

husband Ted Hughes, Francis Berry and Jon Silkin. Si lkin. These poets are sometimes compared with the Expressionist German school. A number of young poets working in what might be termed a modernist vein also started publishing during this decade. These included Charles Tomlinson, Gael Turnbull, Roy Fisher and Bob Cobbing. These poets can now be seen as forerunners of some of the major developments during the following two decades. [edit] The 1960s and 1970s In the early part of the 1960s, the centre of gravity of mainstream poetry moved to Ireland, with the emergence of Seamus Heaney, Tom Paulin, Paul Muldoon and others. In England, the most cohesive groupings can, in retrospect, be seen to cluster around what might loosely be called the modernist tradition and draw on American as well as indigenous models. The British Poetry Revival was a wide-reaching collection of groupings and subgroupings that embraces performance, sound and concrete poetry as well as the legacy of Pound, Jones, MacDiarmid, Loy and Bunting, the Objectivist poets, the Beats and the Black Mountain poets, among others. Leading poets associated with this movement include J. H. Prynne, Eric Mottram, Tom Raworth, Denise Riley and Lee Harwood. The Mersey Beat poets were Adrian Henri, Brian Patten and Roger McGough. Their work was a self-conscious attempt at creating an English equivalent to the Beats. Many of their poems p oems were written in protest against the established social order and, particularly, the threat of nuclear war. Although not actually a Mersey Beat poet, Adrian Mitchell is often associated with the group in critical discussion. Conte Contemporary mporary poet Steve Turner has also been compared with them. [edit] English poetry now The last three decades of the 20th century saw a number of short-lived poetic groupings such as the Martians, along with a general trend towards what has been termed 'Poeclectics'[4], namely namely an intensification within individual poets' oeuvres of "all kinds of style, subject, voice, register and form". There was also a growth in interest i nterest in women's writing and in poetry from England's ethnic groupings, especially the West Indian community. Poets who emerged include Carol Ann Duffy, Andrew Motion, Craig Raine, Wendy Cope, James Fenton, Blake Morrison, Liz Lochhead, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Benjamin Zephaniah. Combined with this was a growth in performance poetry fuelled by the Poetry Slam movement. A new generation of innovative poets has also sprung up in i n the wake of the Revival grouping. Further activity focussed around poets in Bloodaxe Books The New Poetry including Simon Armitage, Kathleen Jamie, Glyn Maxwell, Selima Hill, Maggie Hannan, and Michael Hofmann. The New Generation movement flowered in the 1990s and early twenty first century producing poets such as Don Paterson, Julia Copus, John Stammers, Jacob Polley, David Morley and Alice Oswald. There has been, too, a remarkable upsurge in independent and experimental poetry pamphlet publishers such as Flarestack, Heaventree and Perdika Press. Throughout this period, and to the present, independent poetry presses such as Enitharmon have continued to promote original work from (among others) Dannie Abse, Adriano Bulla, Martyn Crucefix, Jane Duran and Mario Petrucci. 

.  S. T. Coleridge: Function of Poetry  Coleridge poses numerous questions regarding the nature and function of poetry and then answers them. He also examines the ways in which poetry differs from other kinds of artistic activity, and the role and significance of metre as an essential and significant part of a poem.

 

He begins by emphasizing the difference between prose and poetry. “A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition.”  composition.”  

Both use words. Then, the difference between poem and a prose composition cannot lie in the medium, for each employs words. It must, m ust, therefore, “consists in a different combination of them, in consequence of a different object being bei ng proposed.” A poem combines words differently, because it is seeking to do something different. “All it may be seeking to do may be to facilitate memory. memo ry. You may take a piece of prose and cast it into rhymed and metrical form in order to remember it better.”  better.”  

Rhymed tags of that kind, with their frequent, “sounds and quantities”, yield a particular pleasure too, though not of a very high order. If one wants to gi give ve the name of poem to a composition of this kind, there is no reason why one should not. As Coleridge says: “But we should note that, though such rhyming tags have the charm of metre and rhyme, metre and rhyme have been „superadded‟; they do not n ot arise from the nature of the content, but have been imposed on it in order to make it more easily memorized.” 

The “Superficial form”, the externalities, provides no profound logical reason for distinguishing between different ways of handling language. “A difference of object and contents supplies an additional ground of distinction.”  distinction.” 

The philosopher will seek to differentiate between two ways of handling language by asking what each seeks to achieve and how that aim determines its nature. “The immed i mmediate iate purpose may be the communication of truth or the communication of pleasure. pl easure. The communication of truth might in turn yield a deep pleasure, but, Coleridge insists, one must distinguish between the ultimate and the immediate i mmediate end.” Similarly, if the imm immediate ediate aim be the communication of pleasure, truth may nevertheless be the ultimate end, and while whil e in an ideal society nothing that was not truth could yield pleasure, in society as it always existed, a literary work might communicate pleasure has always existed, a literary work might communicate pleasure without having any concern with “truth, either moral or intellectual”.   intellectual”. “The proper kinds of distinction between different kinds of writing can thus be most logically discussed in terms of the difference in the immediate aim, or function, of each.”  each.” 

The immediate aim of poetry is to t o give pleasure. But, “The communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a work not metrically composed” – in – in novels, for example. Do we make these into poems simply by superadding metre with or without rhyme? To which Coleridge replies repli es by emphasizing a very important principle: you cannot derive true and permanent pleasure out of any feature or a work which does not arise naturally from the total nature of that work. “To work.  “To „superadd‟ metre is to provide merely a superficial decorative charm.” “Nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise. If metre be superadded, all other parts must be made consonant with it.” it .” Rhyme and metre involve, “an exact correspondent recurrence of accent and sound” which in turn “are calculated to excite” a “perpetual and distinct attention to each part.” “A poem, therefore, must be an

 

organic unity in the sense that, while we note and appreciate each part, to which the regular recurrence of accent and sound draw attention, our pleasure in the whole develops cumulatively out of such appreciation, which is at the same time pleasurable pl easurable in itself and conductive to an awareness of the total total pattern of the complete poem.”  p oem.”    “Thus a poem differs from a work of scientific prose in having as as its immediate object pleasure and not truth, and it differs from other kinds of writing which have pleasure and not truth as their immediate object by the fact that in a poem the pleasure we take from the whole work in compatible with, and even led up to by the pleasure we take in each competent part.” Therefore, a legitimate poem is a composition, in which the rhyme and the metre bear an organic relation to the total work; in it, “parts mutually support and explain each other, all in their proportion harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of, metrical arrangement.”   Thus Coleridge puts an end for good to the th e age old controversy whether the end of poetry is instruction or delight or both. Its aim is i s definitely to give pleasure, and further poetry has its own distinctive pleasure, pleasure arising from the parts, and this pleasure of the parts supports and increases the pleasure of the whole. Not only that, Coleridge also distinguishes a „Poem‟ from „Poetry‟. According to Shawcross: Shawcross:   “This distinction between „poetry‟ and „poem‟ is not very clear, and instead of defining poetry he proceeds to describe a poet, and from the poet he proceeds to enumerate the characteristics of the Imagination.”  Imagination.” 

This is so because „poetry‟ for Coleridge is an activity of the „poet‟s‟ mind, and a „poem‟ is is merely one of the forms of its i ts expression, a verbal expression of that activity, and poetic activity is basically an activity of the imagination. As David Daiches points out: “‟Poetry‟ for Coleridge is a wider category than that of „poem‟; that is, poetry is is a kind of activity which can be engaged in by painters or philosophers or scientists and is not confined to those who employ metrical m etrical language, or even to those who employ language of any kind. Poetry, in this large sense, brings, „the whole soul of man‟, into activity, with each faculty playing its proper part according to its „relative worth and dignity‟.”  dignity‟.” 

This takes place whenever the „secondary imagination‟ comes into operation. Whenever the synthesizing, the integrating, powers of the secondary imagination are at work, bringing all aspects of a subject into a complex unity, then poetry in this llarger arger sense results.  “The employment of the secondary secondary imagination is, a poetic activity, and w we e can see why Coleridge is led from a discussion of a poem to a discussion of the poet‟s activity when we realize that for him the poet belongs to the larger company of those who are distinguished by the activity of their imagination.” i magination.” A poem is always the work of a poet, of a man employing the secondary imagination and so achieving the harmony of meaning, the reconciliation of opposites, and so on, which Coleridge so stresses; but a poem is also a specific work of art produced by a special handling of language. l anguage. The harmony and reconciliation resulting from the special kind of creative awareness achieved by the exercise of the imagination, cannot operate over an extended composition; one could not sustain that blending and balance, that reconciliation, “of sameness sameness,, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and f reshens, reshens, with old and familiar objects”, and so

 

on, for an indefinite period. A long l ong poem, therefore, would not be all poetry. Indeed, Coleridge goes to the extent of saying that there is no such thing as a long poem. Rhyme and metre are appropriate to a poem considered in the larger sense of poetry, because they are means of achieving harmonization, reconciliation reconciliation of opposites, and so forth, which, as we have seen, are objects of poetry in its widest imaginative meaning. In a legitimate poem, i.e. in i n a poem which is i s poetry in the true sense of the word, there is perfect unity of form and content. The notion of such organic unity runs through all Coleridge‟s pronouncements of poetry. Rhyme and Metre, are not pleasure superadded for,  for,   “Nothing can permanently permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise.”  otherwise.” 

Nothing that is, “superadded”, merely stuck on for ornament or decoration, can really please in a poem; every one of its characteristics must grow out of its whole n nature ature and be an integral part of it. Rhyme and metre are integral to the poem, an essential part of it, because the pleasure of poetry is a special kind of pleasure, pleasure which results both from the parts and the whole, and the pleasure pl easure arising from the parts augments the pleasure of the whole. Thyme and metre are essential parts for by their, thei r, “recurrence of accent and sound”, they invite attention to the pleasure pl easure of each separate part, and thus add to the pleasure of the whole. “When, therefore, metre is thus in consonance with the language and content of the poem, it excites a „perpetual and distinct attention to each part‟, „by the quick reciprocations of curiosity still gratified and still rere-excited‟, and carries the reader forward to the end „by the th e pleasurable‟ activity of the mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself. There is no stopping for him on the way, attracted by the parts; nor any hastening forward to the end, unattracted by the parts. It is i s one unbroken pleasure trip from the parts to the whole.”   Thus Coleridge's contribution to the theory of poetry is significant. First, he puts an end for good to the age old controversy between instruction and delight being the end of poetry, and establishes that pleasure is the end of the poetry, and that poetry has its own distinctive pleasure. Secondly, he explodes the neo-classical view of poetry as imitation, imi tation, and shows that it is an activity of the imagination which in turn is a shaping and uni unifying fying power, which dissolves, dissipates and creates. Thirdly, he shows that in its very nature poetry must differ from prose. He controverts Wordsworth's view that „rhyme and metre‟ are merely superadded, shows that they are an organic part of a poem in the real sense of the word. 

Glossary of Poetry Terms  accent The prominence or emphasis given to a syllable or word. In the word poetry, the accent (or stress) falls on the first syllable. alexandrine A line of poetry that has 12 syllables. The name probably comes from a medieval romance about Alexander the Great that was written in 12-syllable lines. li nes. alliteration The repetition of the same or similar simil ar sounds at the beginning of words: “What would the world be, once bereft/Of wet and wildness?” (Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Inversnaid”)  “Inversnaid”) 

 

  anapest A metrical foot of three syllables, two short (or unstressed) followed by one long (or stressed), as in seventeen and to the moon. The anapest is the reverse of the dactyl. antithesis A figure of speech in which words and phrases with opposite meanings are balanced against each other. An example of antithesis is “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” (Alexander Pope) apostrophe Words that are spoken to a person who is absent or imaginary, or to an object or abstract idea. The poem God's World by Edna St. Vincent Millay begins with an apostrophe: “O World, I cannot hold thee close enough!/Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!/Thy mists that roll and rise!”   assonance The repetition or a pattern of similar simil ar sounds, especially vowel sounds: “Thou still unravished bride bride of quietness,/Thou foster child of silence and slow time” ti me” (“Ode to a Grecian Urn,” John Keats). ballad A poem that tells a story similar to a folk tale or llegend egend and often has a repeated refrain.  “The Rime of the Ancient Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Samuel Taylor Cole Coleridge ridge is an example of a ballad. ballade A type of poem, usually with three stanzas of seven, eight, or ten lines and a shorter fi final nal stanza (or envoy) of four or five lines. All stanzas end with the same one-line refrain. blank verse Poetry that is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in blank verse. caesura A natural pause or break in a line of poetry, usually near the middle of the line. There is a caesura right after the question mark in the first line l ine of this sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “How do I love thee? Let me m e count the ways.”   canzone A medieval Italian lyric poem, with five fi ve or six stanzas and a shorter concluding stanza (or envoy). The poets Petrarch and Dante Alighieri were masters of the canzone. carpe diem A Latin expression that means “seize the day.” Carpe diem poems urge the reader (or the person to whom they are addressed) to live for today and enjoy the pleasures of the moment. A famous carpe diem poem by Robert Herrick begins “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…”   chanson de geste An epic poem of the 11th 11t h to the 14th century, written in i n Old French, which details the exploits of a historical or legendary figure, especially Charlemagne.

 

classicism The principles and ideals of beauty that are characteristic of Greek and Roman art, architecture, and literature. Examples of classicism in poetry can be found in the works of John Dryden and Alexander Pope, which are characterized by their formality, simplicity, and emotional restraint. conceit A fanciful poetic image or metaphor that likens one thing thi ng to something else that is seemingly very different. An example of a conceit can be found in Shakespeare's sonnet  “Shall I compare thee thee to a summer's day?” day?” and in Emily Dickinson's poem “There is no no frigate like a book.”   consonance The repetition of similar consonant sounds, especially at the ends of words, as in lost and past or confess and dismiss. couplet In a poem, a pair of lines that are the same length and usually rhyme and form a complete thought. Shakespearean sonnets sonnets usually end in a couplet. dactyl A metrical foot of three syllables, one long (or stressed) followed by two short (or unstressed), as in happily. The dactyl is the reverse of the anapest. elegy A poem that laments the death of a person, or one that is simply sad and thoughtful. An example of this type of poem is Thomas Gray's “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”   enjambment The continuation of a complete idea (a sentence or clause) from one line li ne or couplet of a poem to the next line li ne or couplet without a pause. An example of enjambment can be found in the first line of Joyce Kilmer's poem Trees: “I think that I shall never see/A poem as lovely as a tree.” Enjambment comes from the French word for “to straddle.”   envoy The shorter final stanza of a poem, as in a ballade. epic A long, serious poem that tells the story of a heroic figure. Two of the most famous epic poems are the Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer, which tell about the Trojan War and the adventures of Odysseus on his voyage home after the war. epigram A very short, witty poem: “Sir, I admit your general rule,/That every poet is a fool,/But you yourself may serve to show it,/That every fool is not a poet.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)  Coleridge)  epithalamium (or epithalamion) A poem in honor of a bride and bridegroom. feminine rhyme A rhyme that occurs in a final unstressed syllable: pleasure/leisure, longing/yearning.

 

  figure of speech A verbal expression in which words or sounds are arranged in a particular way to achieve a particular effect. Figures of speech are organized into different categories, such as alliteration, assonance, metaphor, metonymy, onomatopoeia, simile, and synecdoche. foot Two or more syllables that together make up the smallest unit of rhythm in i n a poem. For example, an iamb is a foot that has two syllables, one unstressed followed by one stressed. An anapest has three syllables, two unstressed followed by one stressed. free verse (also vers libre) Poetry composed of either rhymed or unrhymed lines that have no set meter. haiku A Japanese poem composed of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Haiku often reflect on some aspect of nature. heptameter A line of poetry that has seven metrical feet. heroic couplet A stanza composed of two rhymed lines in iambic i ambic pentameter. hexameter A line of poetry that has six metrical feet. hyperbole A figure of speech in which deliberate exaggeration is used for emphasis. Many everyday expressions are examples of hyperbole: tons of money, waiting for ages, a flood fl ood of tears, etc. Hyperbole is the opposite of litotes. iamb A metrical foot of two syllables, one short (or unstressed) and one long (or stressed). There are four iambs in the line “Come live/ with me/ and be/ my love,” from a poem poem by Christopher Marlowe. (The stressed syllables are in bold.) The iamb is the reverse of the trochee. iambic pentameter A type of meter in i n poetry, in which there are five iiambs ambs to a line. (The prefix penta- means  “five,” as in pentagon, a geometrical figure geometrical figure with five sides. Meter refers to rhythmic units. In a line of iambic pentameter, there are five rhythmic units that are iambs.) Shakespeare's plays were written mostly in iambic pentameter, which is the most common type of meter in English poetry. An example of an iambic pentameter line from Shakespeare's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is “But soft!/ What light/ li ght/ through yon/der win/dow breaks?” Another Another,, from Richard III, is “A horse!/ A horse!/ My king/dom for/ a horse!” (The stressed syllables are in bold.)  bold.)  idyll, or idyl Either a short poem depicting a peaceful, idealized country scene, or a long poem that tells a story about deedsisor extraordinary events set Knights in the distant diof stant of the King, by Alfred Lordheroic Tennyson, about King Arthur and the the past. RoundIdylls Table.

 

  lay A long narrative poem, especially one that was sung by medieval minstrels mi nstrels called trouvères. The Lais of Marie de France are lays. limerick A light, humorous poem of five usually anapestic lines with the rhyme scheme of aabba. litotes A figure of speech in which a positive is stated by negating it its s opposite. Some examples of litotes: no small victory, not a bad idea, i dea, not unhappy. Litotes is the opposite of hyperbole. lyric A poem, such as a sonnet or an ode, that expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet. A lyric poem may resemble a song in form or style. masculine rhyme A rhyme that occurs in a final stressed syllable: cat/hat, cat/hat, desire/fire, observe/deserve. metaphor A figure of speech in which two things are compared, usually by saying one thing is i s another, or by substituting a more descriptive word for the more common or usual word that would be expected. Some examples of metaphors: the world's a stage, he was a lion l ion in battle, drowning in debt, and a sea of troubles. meter The arrangement of a line of poetry by the number of syllables and the rhythm of accented (or stressed) syllables. metonymy A figure of speech in which one word is substituted for another with which it is i s closely associated. For example, in the expression The pen is mightier mi ghtier than the sword, the word pen is used for “the written word,” and sword is used for “military power.”   narrative Telling a story. Ballads, epics, and lays are different kinds of narrative poems. ode A lyric poem that is serious and thoughtful in tone and has a very precise, formal structure. John Keats's “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a famous example of this type of poem. poem.   onomatopoeia A figure of speech in which words are used to imitate sounds. Examples of onomatopoeic words are buzz, hiss, zing, clippety-clop, and tick-tock. tick- tock. Keats's “Ode to a Nightingale” not only uses onomatopoeia, but calls our attention to it: “Forlorn! The very word is like a bell/To toll me back from thee to my sole self!” Another example of onomato onomatopoeia poeia is found in this line from Tennyson's Come Down, O Maid: Mai d: “The moan of doves in iimmemorial mmemorial elms,/And murmuring of innumerable bees.” The repeated “m/n” sounds reinforce the idea of “murmuring” by imitating the hum of insects i nsects on a warm warm   summer day. ottava rima

 

A type of poetry consisting of 10- or 11-syllable lines arranged in 88-line line “octaves” with the rhyme scheme abababcc. pastoral A poem that depicts rural life in a peaceful, idealized way. pentameter A line of poetry that has five metrical feet. personification A figure of speech in which things or abstract ideas are given human attributes: dead leaves dance in the wind, blind justice. poetry A type of literature that is written in meter. quatrain A stanza or poem of four lines. refrain A line or group of lines l ines that is repeated throughout a poem, usually after every stanza. rhyme The occurrence of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or more words. When the rhyme occurs in a final stressed syllable, it is said to be masculine: cat/hat, desire/fire, observe/deserve.. When the rhyme occurs in a final unstressed syllable, it is said to be observe/deserve feminine: longing/yearning. The pattern of rhyme in a stanza or poem is shown usually by using a different letter for each final sound. In a poem with an aabba rhyme scheme, the first, second, and fifth lines end in one sound, and the third and fourth li lines nes end in another. rhyme royal A type of poetry consisting of stanzas of seven lines l ines in iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme ababbcc. Rhyme royal was an innovation introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer. romanticism The principles and ideals of the Romantic movement in literature li terature and the arts during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Romanticism, which was a reaction to the classicism of the early 18th century, favored feeling over reason and placed great emphasis on the subjective, or personal, experience of the individual. Nature was also a major theme. The great English Romantic poets include Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. scansion The analysis of a poem's meter. This is usually done by marking the stressed and unstressed syllables in each line and then, based on the pattern of the stresses, dividing the line into feet. senryu A short Japanese poem that is similar to a haiku in structure but treats human beings rather than nature, often in a humorous or satiric way. simile A figure of speech in which two things are compared using the word “like” or “as.” An

 

example of a simile using like li ke occurs in Langston Hughes's poem “Harlem”: “What happens to a dream deferred?/ Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?”   sonnet A lyric poem that is 14 lines long. Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnets are divided into two quatrains and a six-line six-line “sestet,” with the rhyme scheme abba abba cdecde (or cdcdcd). English (or Shakespearean) sonnets are composed of three quatrains and a final couplet, with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg. English sonnets are written generally in iambic pentameter. spondee A metrical foot of two syllables, both of which are long (or stressed). stanza Two or more lines of poetry that together form one of the divisions of a poem. The stanzas of a poem are usually of the same length and follow the same pattern of meter and rhyme. stress The prominence or emphasis given to particular syllables. Stressed syllables usually stand out because they have long, rather than short, vowels, or because they have a different pitch or are louder than other syllables. synecdoche A figure of speech in which a part is used to designate the whole or the whole is used to designate a part. For example, the phrase “all hands on deck” means “all men on deck,” not  just their hands. The The reverse situation, in which which the whole is used for a part, occurs occurs in the sentence “The U.S. beat Russia in the final game,” where the U.S. and Russia stand for “the U.S. team” and “the Russian team,” respectively.  respectively.  tanka A Japanese poem of five lines, the first and third composed of five syllables and the rest of seven. terza rima A type of poetry consisting of 10- or 11-syllable lines arranged in threethree-line line “tercets” with the rhyme scheme aba bcb cdc, etc. The poet Dante D ante is credited with inventing terza rima, which he used in his Divine Di vine Comedy. Terza rima was borrowed into English by Chaucer, and it has been used by many English poets, including Milton, Shelley, and Auden. tetrameter A line of poetry that has four metrical feet. trochee A metrical foot of two syllables, one long l ong (or stressed) and one short (or unstressed). An easy way to remember the trochee is to memorize the first line of a lighthearted poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which demonstrates the use of various kinds of metrical m etrical feet:  “Trochee/ trips from/ from/ long to/ short.” (The (The stressed sy syllables llables are in bold.) The trochee is the reverse of the iamb. trope A figure of speech, such as metaphor or metonymy, in which words are not used in their

 

literal (or actual) sense but in a figurative fi gurative (or imaginative) sense. verse A single metrical line of poetry, or poetry in general (as opposed to prose).  __________________ ஜ иστнιπg ιš ιмթ Θ ιвlε тσ α ωιℓℓιиg нєαят ஜ  รร

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@ Aanoo Did you mean by alienation. This term has various meanings mentioned below : 1. alienation, disaffection, estrangement, dislike usage: the feeling of being alienated from other people 2. alienation, estrangement, isolation usage: separation resulting from hostility 3. alienation, transfer, transference usage: (law) the voluntary and absolute transfer of title and possession of real property from one person to another; "the power of alienation is an essential ingredient of ownership" 4. alienation, action usage: the action of alienating; the action of causing to become unfriendly; "his behavior alienated the other students" Besides, This term is also used to "Property law"; defines different aspects.

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