TYPES OF POETRY This chapter is a glossary of types of poetry that came to be used by English poets along the centuries.

Most of them are not English inventions but originate either from the Greek and Latin literatures or from other Western cultures. Allegory An allegory is a narrative that has two meanings, one a literal or surface meaning (the story itself) and one a metaphorical meaning (the characters or actions or even the objects of which have a one-to-one equivalence with those of the literal narrative). Or, it is a story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning. The principal technique of allegory is personification, whereby abstract qualities are given human shape as in public statues of Liberty or Justice. An allegory may be conceived as a metaphor that is extended into a structured system. Allegorical thinking permeated the Christian literature of the Middle Ages, flourishing in the morality plays and in the dream visions of Dante Alighieri and William Langland. Ballad Ballads are short folk songs that tell stories. The oldest recorded ballad in the English language, called Judas, was written down in a late thirteenth-century manuscript. The Celts and Anglo-Saxon undoubtedly composed ballads but there is no record of these early works. Ballads were very popular throughout the Middle Ages. Many first appeared in written form with the introduction of the printing press in 1476. They flourished particularly strongly in Scotland from the fifteenth century onward. They were printed on sheets of paper about the size of a banknote. Pedlars sold the ballads in the streets singing the songs so that anyone who did not know the melody could learn it. Since the eighteenth century, educated poets outside the folk-song tradition notably Coleridge and Goethe have written imitations of the popular ballads form and style. Coleridges The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) is a celebrated example. Elegy Until the seventeenth century the term elegy was used to refer to any poem whose theme was solemn meditation. Since then, it has been applied to poems in which the speaker laments the death of a particular person (a friend or public figure) or the loss of something he valued. In Greek and Latin verse, the term referred to the metre of a poem alternating dactylic hexameters and pentameters in couplets known as elegiac distichs, not to its mood or content: love poems were often included. John Donne, for example, applied the term to his amorous and satirical poems in heroic couplets. But since Miltons Lycidas (1637), the term in English has denoted a lament, while the adjective elegiac has come to refer to the mournful mood of such poems. Two important English elegies that follow Milton in using pastoral conventions are Percy Bysshe Shelleys Adonais (1821) on the death of Keats and Matthew Arnolds Thyrsis (1867). This tradition of the pastoral elegy, derived from Greek poems by Theocritus and other Sicilian poets in the third and second centuries BC, evolved a very elaborate series of conventions by which the dead friend is represented as a shepherd mourned by the natural world: pastoral elegies usually include many mythological figures such as the nymphs who are supposed to have guarded the dead shepherd, and the muses invoked by the elegist. In a broader sense, an elegy may be a poem of melancholy reflection upon lifes transience or its sorrows. In this respect, an eighteenth-century example is Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray. The elegiac stanza is a quatrain of iambic pentameters rhyming ABAB, named after its use in Grays Elegy.

Epic The epic is one of the earliest literary forms. It consists of a long narrative in elevated style that deals with a great and serious object. The works of Homer and Virgil provide the prototypes in classical literature, while Beowulf and Miltons Paradise Lost are examples in English literature. Epics generally have the following features: .. The hero is a figure of great importance; .. The setting of the poem is ample in scale; .. The action involves superhuman deeds in battle or a long and difficult journey; .. The gods or supernatural beings take an interest or active part in the action; .. There are catalogues of some of the principal characters, introduced in formal detail; .. The narrator begins by stating his theme and invoking a muse; .. The narrative starts in medias res, i.e. in the middle of things, when the action is at a critical point. Virgil and Milton wrote about the founder of a nation and the human race itself (Aeneas and Adam) in secondary or literary epics in imitation of the earlier primary or traditional epics of Homer, whose Iliad and Odyssey, dating from the eighth century BC, are derived from an oral tradition of recitation.

Epigram An epigram (from the Greek for inscription) is a very short poem which is condensed in content and polished in style. Epigrams often have surprising or witty endings. Originally a form of monumental inscription in ancient Greece, the epigram was developed into a literary form by the poets of the Hellenistic age and by the Roman poet Martial, whose epigrams were often obscenely insulting. Samuel Taylor Coleridges On a Volunteer Singer is an epigram: Swans sing before they die Twere no bad thing Should certain people Die before they sing! Idyll An idyll is a short poem describing an incident of country life in terms of idealized innocence and contentment; or any such episode in a poem or prose work. The term is virtually synonymous with pastoral poem, as in Theocritus Idylls. Mock Epic A mock heroic (or mock epic) poem imitates the elevated style and conventions (invocations of the Gods, descriptions of armour, battles, extended similes etc.) of the epic genre in dealing with a frivolous or minor subject. The mock heroic has been widely used to satirise social vices such as pretentiousness, hypocrisy, superficiality, etc. The inappropriateness of the grandiose epic style highlights the trivial and senseless nature of the writers target, as in Popes The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad. Ode An ode is an elaborately formal lyric poem, often in the form of a lengthy ceremonious address to a person or an abstract entity, serious in subject, usually exalted in style and varied or irregular in metre. The first odes were written by the Greek poet Pindar in the fifth century BC. There are, in fact, two different classical models: Pindars Greek choral odes devoted to public praise of athletes, and Horaces more privately reflective odes in Latin. A version of the ode which imitated the Pindaric ode in style and matter but simplified the stanza pattern became very popular in seventeenth-century England. Abraham Cowleys Pindarique Odes (1656) introduced the fashion of this type of looser irregular ode with varying lengths of strophes. The Romantic poets at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century wrote some of their finest verses in the form of odes, for example John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Odes in which the same form of stanza is repeated regularly are called Horatian odes. In English these include the celebrated odes of John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale. The popularity of the ode continued while the classics formed the basis of English education. By the middle of the Victorian period, however, it was considered old-fashioned and had fallen out of use. Pastoral Pastoral poetry is a highly conventional mode of writing, an ancient literary form which deals with the lives of shepherds, and the idyllic aspects of the rural life in general, and typically draws a contrast between the innocence of a simple life and the corruption of city and especially court life. Pastoral literature describes the loves and sorrows of shepherds, usually in an idealized Golden Age of rustic innocence and idleness. It is an elaborately artificial cult of simplicity and virtuous frugality. Pastorals were first written by the Greek poet Theocritus in the third century BC. He wrote for an urban readership in Alexandria about the shepherds in his native Sicily. His most influential follower, the Roman poet Virgil, wrote eclogues set in the imagined tranquillity of Arcadia. Edmund Spensers Shepherds Calendar (1579) introduced the pastoral into English literature and throughout the Renaissance it was a very popular poetic style. In later centuries there was a reaction against the artificiality of the genre and it fell out of favour. Critics now use the term pastoral to refer to any work in which the main character withdraws from ordinary life to a place close to nature where he can gain a new perspective on life. Romance The romance is a form of narrative poetry which developed in the twelfth century in France. It relates improbable adventures of idealized characters in some remote or enchanted setting; or, more generally, it shows a tendency in fiction opposite to that of realism. It is, hence, characterized by the fanciful, often idealistic treatment of subject matter. The word romance refers to the French language which evolved from Latin or Roman. The plot of these poems usually centres on a single knight who fights at tournaments, slays dragons and undergoes a series of adventures in order to win the heart of his heroine. Romances introduced and concentrated on the idea of courtly love according to which the lover idealizes and idolizes his beloved, who is usually another mans wife (marriage among the medieval nobility was usually for

economic or political reasons). The lover suffers agonies for his heroine but remains devoted to her and shows his love by adhering to a rigorous code of behaviour both in battles and in his courtly conduct. The Arthurian stories are typical illustrations of the romance. Satire The satire is a mode of writing that exposes the failings of individuals, institutions, and society to ridicule and scorn. It deals with external objects and facts. It cannot ridicule a state of mind, a feeling, but something that is obvious, palpable, such as ones behaviour or deeds; hence, the aim of the satire is to reform, to contribute to the elimination of a particular vice. The satirist has to exaggerate, to distort, to reduce to the absurd his demonstrations for proving in an irrefutable manner what he wants. The tone of the satire may vary from tolerant amusement (Horace) to bitter indignation (Juvenal). The modes of Roman satire, especially the verse satires of Horace and Juvenal, inspired some important imitations by Boileau, Pope, and Samuel Johnson. Chaucer and Byron are also worth mentioning among the greatest English satirists. Sonnet The term sonnet comes from the Italian word sonetto, which means little song or sound. In a sonnet a poet expresses his thoughts and feelings in fourteen lines. The sonnet originated in Italy, where it was popularised by the fourteenth-century poet Petrarch. In the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet the first eight lines the octave introduce the subject while the last six lines the sestet provides a comment and express the personal feelings of the poet. The rhyming scheme is usually ABBA-ABBA-CDC-CDC. The English sonnet (also called the Shakespearean sonnet after its most famous practitioner) comprises three quatrains and a final couplet rhyming ABAB-CDCD-EFEF-GG. As a major form of love poetry, the sonnet came to be adopted in Spain, France and England in the sixteenth century and in Germany in the seventeenth century. The standard subject-matter of early sonnets was the torments of sexual love (usually within a courtly love convention), but in the seventeenth century John Donne extended the sonnets scope to religion, while Milton extended it to politics. Although largely neglected in the eighteenth century, the sonnet was revived in the nineteenth century by Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats. The essential characteristic of most sonnets is the dynamic interrelationship of their parts the octave with the sestet or the three quatrains with each other and the final couplet. According to the supporters of New Criticism, with this interrelationship in mind, we see that the sonnet can be a good index to a formalistic reading of poems. Specii ale genului liric

Elegia este un poem liric al crui ton e adesea tandru, trist i melancolic. n secolul al XV-lea, elegia tinde s dobndeasc un caracter filozofic Oda este un poem cntat la vechii greci. La moderni, poem liric de nalt inspiraie, compus din strofe simetrice. Asemenea cntecelor corului, oda avea o compoziie triagic. Pastelul este un termen provenit din limba germana semnificnd pictura cu creioane moi. De la pictura n pastel termenul s-a extins n literatur, definind delicateea unei descrieri lirice. Meditaia (filozofic) este o specie a genului liric n versuri n care e descris un fenomen din natur ale crui concluzii devin valabile i pentru oameni. Satira este o oper n general n versuri, n care autorul ironizeaz ridicolul contemporanilor sau le contureaz viciile. Pamfletul este o specie a genului liric n care sunt criticate defectele unei persoane, societii cu intenia ndreptrii. Poate fi n proz sau n versuri. Sonetul este o pies liric alctuit din paisprezece versuri cu aceeai msur dispus n dou catrene cu rim mbriat. Este o poezie cu form fix cea mai frecventat. Rondelul este o poezie cu form fix alcatuit din trei catrene i un vers izolat. Versurile unu i doi sunt identice cu versurile apte i opt. Gazelul este o poezie cu form fix alcatuit din strofe cu dou versuri; originar din literaturile orientale, ajunge n Europa la nceputul secolului al XIX-lea. Glosa s-a nscut n Spania secolului al XV-lea. Este o specie a genului liric cu form fix. Prima strof este alctuit din patru, ase, sau opt versuri ce conin tema de baz. Fiecare vers e comentat ntr-o strof special de aceeai mrime cu prima. Ultima strof o reproduce pe prima cu ordinea inversat a versurilor. Romana are un aspect erotic, sentimental, duios, melancolic . Este dedicat celibrrii faptelor istorice vetejeti , sau conin exclamaii ori chemri. Imnul este un cntec de preamrire a divinitii, conine cuvinte de importan naional i are un caracter solemn.