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Poetic Genres
Genre
(Source: Ways of Reading, pp 41-47)
Note: Aristotles work is better known under the title Poetics but
the translation quoted above is also relevant and reliable.
Aristotle cont.
Epic poetry and Tragedy, as also Comedy,
Dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and
lyre-playing, are all, viewed as a whole, modes of
imitation.
But at the same time they differ from one another in
three ways, either by a difference of kind in their
means, or by differences in the objects, or in the
manner of their imitations.
Aristotle cont.
Classification according to the difference in the
manner in which each kind of object is represented:
Given both the same means and the same kind of
object for imitation, one may either
(1) speak at one moment in narrative and at another in
an assumed character, as Homer does;
or
(2) one may remain the same throughout, without any
such change;
or
(3) the imitators may represent the whole story
dramatically, as though they were actually doing the
things described.
Genre Classification
Browning, cont.
Functions of genre
Ways of Reading
Kind
or
Genre
Genre
Subgenre
Subgenre
Sub-subgenre
Kind
Drama
Genre
(e.g.)
Elegy Ode Epistle etc. Tragedy Comedy
Morality Miracle etc.
Funeral /
Pastoral
Sub-genre
(e.g.)
Revenge /
Domestic
Fiction
Picaresque /
Epistolary /
Utopia /
Detective
All Fiction
Drama
Stories composed in verse or prose, usually for theatrical
performance, where conflicts and emotion are expressed
through dialogue and action.
Fable
Narration demonstrating a useful truth, especially in
which animals speak as humans; legendary,
supernatural tale.
Fairy Tale
Story about fairies or other magical creatures, usually for
children.
Fantasy
Fiction with strange or other worldly settings or
characters; fiction which invites suspension of reality.
Fiction, cont.
Fiction
Narrative literary works whose content is produced by the
imagination and is not necessarily based on fact.
Fiction in Verse
Full-length novels with plot, subplot(s), theme(s), major and
minor characters, in which the narrative is presented in (usually
blank) verse form.
Folklore
The songs, stories, myths, and proverbs of a people or "folk"
as handed down by word of mouth.
Historical Fiction
Story with fictional characters and events in a historical setting.
Horror
Fiction in which events evoke a feeling of dread in both the
characters and the reader.
Fiction, cont.
Humour
Fiction full of fun, fancy, and excitement, meant to
entertain; but can be contained in all genres.
Legend
Story, sometimes of a national or folk hero, which has a
basis in fact but also includes imaginative material.
Mystery
Fiction dealing with the solution of a crime or the
unravelling of secrets.
Mythology
Legend or traditional narrative, often based in part on
historical events, that reveals human behaviour and
natural phenomena by its symbolism; often pertaining to
the actions of the gods.
Fiction, cont.
Poetry
Verse and rhythmic writing with imagery that creates
emotional responses.
Realistic Fiction
Story that can actually happen and is true to life.
Science Fiction
Story based on impact of actual, imagined, or potential
science, usually set in the future or on other planets.
Short Story
Fiction of such brevity that it supports no subplots.
Tall Tale
Humorous story with blatant exaggerations, swaggering
heroes who do the impossible with nonchalance.
All Nonfiction
Biography/Autobiography
Narrative of a person's life, a true story about a real
person.
Essay
A short literary composition that reflects the author's
outlook or point.
Narrative Nonfiction
Factual information presented in a format which tells a
story.
Nonfiction
Informational text dealing with an actual, real-life subject.
Speech
Public address or discourse.
Classification, categorization
For clarifications, definitions of terms, go for
Chris Baldick: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of
Literary Terms. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001
J. A. Cuddon: Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary
Theory, 4th ed. London: Penguin Books, 1999
Alex Preminger, ed.: Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry
and Poetics, enlarged ed. London: Macmillan, 1975
http://www.britannica.com/
Narrative Poetry
1 Narrative Poetry is poetry that has a plot. The poems
may be short or long. Narrative poems include
Heroic epic: Beowulf
Epic poetry John Milton: Paradise Lost
William Wordsworth: Prelude
S. T. Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Romances Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Edmund Spenser: The Faeire Queene
Mock heroic: Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock
Poetic Genres
Narrative, Dramatic, and Lyric Poetry
2 Dramatic Poetry
Dramatic poetry is any poetry that uses the discourse
of the characters involved to tell a story or portray a
situation. In this sense verse drama, such as William
Shakespeares plays, belong to the category of
dramatic poetry. Poetic plays, not necessarily meant
for stage production, are also dramatic poetry. These
are also termed as closet dramas. A good example is P.
B. Shelleys Prometheus Unbound. Dramatic
monologues, such as Robert Brownings My Last
Duchess, can also be regarded as dramatic poetry.
Lyric Poetry
Scruples of categorization re-visited
When discussing and classifying lyric poetry,
categories show a cavalcade of often incongruent
terms mixing up thematic, metrical, formal and other
approaches. Do philosophical poems or war poems
constitute genres? When discussing the poetry of
John Donne, do love poems and devotional poems
represent genres? If yes, do epistles and elegies
written in that genre belong to different sub-genres? Is
the sonnet form a generic category? Is sonnet
sequence a generic category?
Poetic Genres
Narrative, Dramatic, and Lyric Poetry
3 Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is more difficult to define. It is a genre of
poetry that, broadly and somewhat vaguely speaking,
expresses personal and emotional feelings.
In the prehistoric age lyric poems were sung, in the
antiquity they were sung to the lyre. This tradition,
though permanently declining, survived up the 18th
century. Now popular songs seem to replace this
function, therefore it is necessary to make distinction
between poem and lyrics.
Song
In music, a composition for voice or voices, performed
by singing. A song may or may not be accompanied by
musical instruments (the latter case is called a
cappella). The text of a song is called lyrics.
There are art song (16th and 17th century English
madrigals), folk songs (Over the Hills and Far Away),
popular songs (Hey Jude by Lennon McCartney).
Song
Yeatss poem Down by the Salley Gardens was based
on a folk ballad Ye Rambling Boys of Pleasure. One
stanza of the folk ballad goes like this:
It was down by Sally's Garden one evening late I took my way.
'Twas there I spied this pretty little girl, and those words to me
sure she did say
She advised me to take love easy, as the leaves grew on the tree.
But I was young and foolish, with my darling could not agree.
W. B. Yeats
Down by the Salley Gardens
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
Donne, cont.
If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.
Donne, cont.
If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.
Madrigal Songs
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition,
usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early
Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are
unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two
to eight, and most frequently from three to six.
Madrigal poems are lyrics, usually displaying lesser
poetic complexity.
Thomas Weelkess madrigal is performed by the Alfred
Deller Consort
Air
Campion, cont.
Follow her, while yet her glory shineth.
There comes a luckless night,
That will dim all her light;
And this the black unhappy shade divineth.
Follow still, since so thy fates ordained.
The sun must have his shade,
Till both at once do fade,
The sun still proved, the shadow still disdained.
Lyrics
Here follow two examples for lyrics by Lennon
McCartney and Harrison, respectively.
The Lennon-McCartney composition shows great
thematic similarity to Thomas Campions air.
Harrisons song seems to take up the theme of Thomas
Weelkess madrigal.
George Harrison
Here Comes the Sun
(1969)
Here comes the sun, do do do do
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right
Little darling
It's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling
It feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, do do do do
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right
Little darling
The smiles returning to the faces
Little darling
I seems like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, do do do do
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right
Harrison, cont.
Harrisons lyrics is hardly articulate as a poem, which
is not to say it fails to work as a song.
Mark the functional equivalence between fa la la and
do do do do.
Ode
(Source: Cuddon)
Ode cont.
Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of
Wellington is an example of the former; Keatss
Ode to a Nightingale, an example of the latter.
Ode, cont.
The earliest odes were written by the ancient Greek
poets Sappho (c. around 6oo BC) and Alcaeus (c.
620 BC-6th century BC).
Another ancient Greek poet, Pindar (ca. 522443 BC)
wrote his odes for public occasions, especially in
honour of victors in the Greek games. Modelled on
the choric songs of Greek drama, they consisted of
strophe, antistrophe and epode; a patterned stanza
movement intended for choral song and dance.
Horaces (65 BC8 BC) Latin odes were private and
personal.
Sapphic Ode
Sapphic odes follow in regular stanzaic form, called
Sapphics, in quatrain stanza with a particular metrical
scheme. Since the metre is quantitative, very few
experiments exist in English. One is by Ezra Pound:
Golden rose the house, in the portal I saw
thee, a marvel, carven in subtle stuff, a
portent. Life died down in the lamp and flickered,
caught at the wonder.
(Apparuit)
Horatian Ode
Andrew Marvells An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's
Return from lreland (1650) is a good example of a
Horatian ode. It does not follow the quantitative
versification of Latin poetry.
The forward youth that would appear
Must now forsake his Muses dear,
Nor in the shadows sing
His numbers languishing.
Pindaric Ode
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) published his so-called
Pindaric odes or, more properly, pseudo-Pindaric odes
dispensing with the strophic arrangement. His stanzas
were free and varied; so are the lines and meters.
This flexibility had much influence on later writers,
including John Dryden. His Song for St Cecilia's Day
(1687) is such a pseudo-Pindaric ode.
(Musical illustration by Choir and Orchestra of the
King's Consort directed by Robert King)
John Dryden
Song for St. Cecilias Day
(excerpt)
Pseudo-Pindaric Ode
Pseudo-Pindaric odes had a revival in the Romantic
period. Ode. Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood by William
Wordsworth and its complementary poem,
Dejection: An Ode by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
S. T. Coleridge
William Wordsworth
(1771-183.)
(17701850)
William Wordsworth
Immortality Ode
(Excerpt)
I
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;-Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
Rhapsody
(source: Cuddon)
Back to Ode
The odes of John Keats (all composed in 1819), Ode on
a Grecian Urn, Ode on Indolence, Ode on Melancholy,
Ode to a Nightingale, Ode to Psyche and To Autumn, or
Ode to the West Wind (also composed in 1819) by P. B.
Shelley are lyric odes in more general sense.
John Keats
(1795-1821)
P. B. Shelley
(17921822)
Epithalamion
(Source: Cuddon)
Dramatic Monologue
(Source: Cuddon)
Philip Larkin
Dramatic Monologue
The crucial feature of a dramatic monologue is that the
poet employs a persona so distances himself/herself
from the statements in the text, offering a
multiplication of perspective, often ironic, and creates
the illusion of objectivity.
Epistle
(Source: Cuddon)
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
(1688-1744)
Epistle to Miss Blount
On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation
As some fond virgin, whom her mothers care
Drags from the town to wholesome country air,
Just when she learns to roll a melting eye,
And hear a spark, yet think no danger nigh;
From the dear man unwillingly she must sever,
Yet takes one kiss before she parts for ever:
Thus from the world fair Zephalinda flew,
Saw others happy, and with sighs withdrew;
Not that their pleasures caused her discontent,
She sighed not that They stayed, but that She went.
Pope, cont.
She went, to plain-work, and to purling brooks,
Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks,
She went from Opera, park, assembly, play,
To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day;
To pass her time twixt reading and Bohea,
To muse, and spill her solitary tea,
Or oer cold coffee trifle with the spoon,
Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon;
Divert her eyes with pictures in the fire,
Hum half a tune, tell stories to the squire;
Up to her godly garret after seven,
There starve and pray, for thats the way to heaven.
Pope, cont.
Some Squire, perhaps, you take a delight to rack;
Whose game is Whisk, whose treat a toast in sack,
Who visits with a gun, presents you birds,
Then gives a smacking buss, and cries No words!
Or with his hound comes hollowing from the stable,
Makes love with nods, and knees beneath a table;
Whose laughs are hearty, tho his jests are coarse,
And loves you best of all things but his horse.
Pope, cont.
In some fair evening, on your elbow laid,
Your dream of triumphs in the rural shade;
In pensive thought recall the fancied scene,
See Coronations rise on every green;
Before you pass th imaginary sights
Of Lords, and Earls, and Dukes, and gartered Knights;
While the spread fan oershades your closing eyes;
Then give one flirt, and all the vision flies.
Thus vanish scepters, coronets, and balls,
And leave you in lone woods, or empty walls.
Pope, cont.
So when your slave, at some dear, idle time,
(Not plagued with headaches, or the want of rhyme)
Stands in the streets, abstracted from the crew,
And while he seems to study, thinks of you:
Just when his fancy points your sprightly eyes,
Or sees the blush of soft Parthenia rise,
Gay pats my shoulder, and you vanish quite;
Streets, chairs, and coxcombs rush upon my sight;
Vexed to be still in town, I knit my brow,
Look sour, and hum a tune as you may now.
Elegy
(Source: Cuddon)
Elegy, cont.
John Donnes elegies follow the Classical convention
as they are poems on various subjects, including
amatory topics, in pentametrical pair lines
Elegy, cont.
English literature is especially rich in elegiac poetry
which combines something of the ubi sunt (Latin
where are they) motif with the qualities of the lyric
and
which, at times, is closely akin to the lament and the
dirge. For instance, the Old English poems The
Wanderer, The Seafarer; Oliver Goldsmith's The
Deserted Village, Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in
a Country Churchyard, John Keats's Ode to
Melancholy are such poems.
Elegy, cont.
Many elegies have been songs of lament for
specific people. Well-known examples are Thomas
Carew's An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of
Pauls, Dr. John Donne; P. B. Shelleys Adonais
(commemorating the death of John Keats), W.
H. Auden's In Memory of W. B. Yeats.
W. B. Yeats
(1865-1938)
W. H. Auden
(1907-1973)
W. H. Auden
In Memory of W. B. Yeats
(excerpt)
I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
The snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
W. H. Auden
In Memory of W. B. Yeats
(excerpt)
III
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate.
(This can be regarded as an example of funeral elegy.)
Pastoral Elegy
The major elegies belong to a sub-species known as
pastoral elegy, the origins of which are to be found
in the pastoral laments of three Sicilian poets:
Theocritus (3rd c. BC), Moschus (2nd c. BC) and Bion
(2nd c. BC).
Theocritus called his poems idylls (Greek: eidyllion,
little picture). An idyll is a short poem, descriptive of
rustic life, written in the style of Theocritus.
Eclogue
Later the Roman poet Virgil (70 BC19 BC) imitated
Theocritus in poems he called eclogues (Latin
selection).
An eclogue is a pastoral poem in the form of a
dialogue or a soliloquy.
Edmund Spensers The Shepherds Calendar or Louis
MacNeices (1917-1963) An Eclogue for Christmas are
excellent examples of the eclogue.
Pastoral
Pastoral is a mode of literature in which the
author employs imitates rural life, usually the
life of shepherds. Very often these shepherd lament
the loss of the Golden Age. Traditionally, pastoral
refers to the lives of herdsmen in a romanticized,
exaggerated, highly unrealistic, but representative way.
Pastoral
Pastoral as a mode occurs in all three kinds of
literature (poetry, drama, fiction) as well as genres
(most notably the pastoral elegy).
Pastoral may refer to any rural subject and aspects of
life in the countryside among shepherds, cowherds or
even farm workers that are often romanticized.
Thomas Gray
(1716-1771)
Portrait by John Giles Eccart
Thomas Gray
Thomas Grays Elegy Written in Country Churchyard is
a pastoral completed in 1750 and first published in
1751. It was partly inspired by Grays thoughts
following the death of the poet Richard West in 1742.
The poem was completed when Gray was living near
the Stoke Poges churchyard. The poem, however, is
not addressed to the memory Richard West, but is a
meditation on the fate of man and good and bad
remembrance.
Thomas Grays
Monument and Memorial at Stoke Poges
Thomas Gray
The first stanza of Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Anti-Pastoral
When pastoral setting is used ironically, mockingly, or
pastoral setting is played out against the brutal reality
of rural life, we may talk about anti-pastoralism.
George Crabbes (1754-1832) poem The Village can be
interpreted as an anti-pastoral reply to Oliver
Goldsmiths (1730-1774) sentimentalization of rural
life in his The Deserted Village.
Oliver Goldsmith
Portrait by Joshua Reynolds
George Crabbe
Engraving by E. Findon from
the portrait by Thomas Phillips
Oliver Goldsmith
The Deserted Village
(excerpt)
George Crabbe
The Village
(excerpt)
Anti-Pastoral
A recent example of an
anti-pastoral poem is v.
(1985) by Tony Harrison
(1937). His poem is set in
Leeds cemetery
vandalised by skinhead
football hooligans. He
even provides his bitterly
ironical epitaph at the end
of the poem.
Epitaph
(Source: Cuddon)
Swifts Epitaph
Hic depositum est Corpus
IONATHAN SWIFT S.T.D.
Hujus Ecclesi Cathedralis
Decani,
Ubi sva Indignatio
Ulterius
Cor lacerare nequit,
Abi Viator
Et imitare, si poteris,
Strenuum pro virili
Libertatis Vindicatorem.
Obiit 19 Die Mensis Octobris
A.D. 1745 Anno tatis 78.
Epigram
(Source: Cuddon)
Epigram
Here is an epigram by Matthew Prior (1664-1721)
Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool.
But you yourself may serve to show it,
Every fool is not a poet.
Epigrammatic quality
Epigrams are individual poems. As a genre it is rather
rare, however, we can talk about the epigrammatic
quality or brevity or density of parts of works.
Alexander Popes couplets have more than often an
epigrammatic quality, as in these lines:
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
From Essay on Criticism