Introduction to English Poetry
I. Introductory Remarks
Poetry is a literary form with a long history. It began when language began; it developed as history developed. English poetry, like the poetry of other nations, came into being in the cour of labor. Unlike fiction, pro, drama or other literary forms, poetry is characterized by its terness and compactness. It has greater artistic appeal than other literary forms in expressing our emotions and lofty ideals, and in reflecting the reality. In addition, poetry is easily sung and remembered therefore it has always been popular among the people.
II. Features of Poetry
Generally speaking, poetry is characterized by:
A. Focus on the expression of emotion高一英语必修1单词
To convey emotion is the basic feature of poetry. Poetic language has to be very brief and rhythmical, with harmonious rhyme scheme, rich emotional color, and musical beauty.egame
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B. Rich imagery
Images are pictures in words. A good poem, even a good line, often embodies vivid images, which touch the heart string of the reader, enabling him to think of a clo succession of other images.
All the soliloquies in Hamlet are written in blank ver. The most important image involved is that Denmark is a prison.
From the term “paper tiger”, we may get the image that the imperialism looks fierce but actually very weak.
C. Highly compact content
In order to have a direct appeal to the reader, poetry needs make u of the fewest, the most accurate, and the most expressive words, to reflect society in the shortest possible length and convey the poet’s feeling in terms of brief and clear summary. It is said that brevity is the soul of poetry.
D. Richness in the beauty of harmony
At the beginning, poetry was inparable from music. In fact, poetry and music were once united as a single art. The guiding principle of this early art was harmony. Rhythm is a very important factor for the beauty of harmony. It is the musical flow of language. Rhythm is the distinguishing feature of poetry. Without rhythm, there will be no poem. But without rhymes, we may still have poems, for example, blank ver.
III. Kinds of Poetry
As far as the content is concerned, there are three main kinds of poetry:
A. Lyric poetry
Lyrics are usually short poems which express the poet’s inten personal emotions. In ancient Greece, this kind of poetry was intended to be sung to the accompaniment of the lyre or other musical instruments. Now lyric poetry covers most forms of short poetry, whether it is intended to be sung or not---songs, odes and ballads. A song is usually very
short, while an ode is usually longer and more dignified. What’s the difference between a song and a ballad? A ballad usually contains a story while a song does not.
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B. Epic poetry (Heroic poetry)
An epic is usually a long narrative poem telling a story of great adventurous or heroic deeds. Epics are of folk origin as in Beowulf, in Homer’s Iliad and Odysy, in Dante’s Divine Comedy, and later epics became linked with literary legends and conventions, as in Milton’s Paradi Lost.
C. Dramatic poetry
formaldehydeDramatic poetry is made up of dialogues and is intended to be acted. Tragedy and comedy are the two chief forms. It is usually is blank ver.
As far as the metre is concerned, English poetry can be divided into three kinds:
A. Metrical poems
Metrical poems have regular rhythm and rhyme, and definite number of lines.
清闲adulteryB. Free ver
Free ver has rhythm and rhyme, but it has no regular rhythm or rhyme. It is distinguished from blank ver. Blank ver belongs to metrical poems. It is unrhymed but it is usually with regular rhythm.
C. Half-metrical poems
Half-metrical poems refers to the poems between metrical poems and free ver. They sometimes have regular rhythm and rhyme, and sometimes have not.
IV. Sonnet
Sonnet is a very important form of English metrical poetry. It has 14 lines written to a regular rhyme scheme. Sonnet was invented by the Italian poet, Francesco Petrarch in the early 13th century. Dante was the first poet to u it. Sonnet makes it easier to express deep thought and emotion.
In English poetry, there are three types of sonnet: the Italian, the Shakespearean and the Spenrian. The three types of sonnet all consist of 14 lines, but the thyme schemes are different.
In the Italian sonnet, the first 8 lines form an octave, which rhymes abba, abba and the remaining 6 lines forms a stet which rhymesatca cde,cde.
The Shakespearean sonnet is made up of 3 quatrains followed by a couplet. This structure produce a sweeping movement and the concluding couplet often makes the thought of the poet an effective epigram and also makes the theme of the poem clearer. Its rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg.
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The Spenrian sonnet also consists of 3 quatrains and a couplet just like the Shakespearean but their rhyme scheme are different. It is abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee.
德语字母V. Rhythm
In English, words of two syllables usually contain one that is stresd and one that is un
stresd; long words contain one stresd and two or more unstresd syllables. In a line of poem when the stresd and unstresd syllables of all the words are arranged in a definite order, in the order of one stresd syllable followed by an unstresd one, the line will ri and fall in a musical way, as in
