Literary Genres Poetic Genres
Chris Baldick: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp 104 -105) Genre - The French term for a type, species, or class of composition. A literary genre is a recognizable and established category of written work employing such common CONVENTIONS as will prevent readers or audiences from mistaking it for another kind. Much of the confusion surrounding the term arises from the fact that it is used simultaneously for the most basic modes of literary art (LYRIC, NARRATIVE, DRAMATIC); for the broadest categories of composition (poetry, prose fiction),
Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, cont. and for more specialized sub-categories, which are defined according to several different criteria including formal structure (SONNET, PICARESQUE NOVEL), length (NOVELLA, EPIGRAM), intention (SATIRE), effect (COMEDY), origin (FOLKTALE), and subject matter (PASTORAL, SCIENCE FICTION). While some genres, such as the pastoral ELEGY or the MELODRAMA, have numerous conventions governing subject, style, and form, others—like the NOVEL—have no agreed rules, although they may include several more limited SUBGENRES.
Genre (Source: Ways of Reading, pp 41 -47) “In its most general sense, ‘genre’ simply means a sort, or type, of text: thriller, horror movie, musical, autobiography, tragedy, etc. ” “The word comes from the Latin word ‘genus’, meaning ‘kind’ or ‘type’ of anything, not just literary or artistic works. ” “(‘Genus’, in fact, is still used to describe a technical sense of type, in the classification of species; and ‘generic’ is sometimes used to mean ‘broad’ or ‘with the properties of a whole type or class’. )”
Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss and Sara Mills: Ways of Reading. 3 rd Edition. London and New York: Routledge, 2007
Ways of Reading, cont. “There is an obvious convenience in being able to label texts. We can fit any given text into a class that offers a convenient shorthand in which to describe what it is like: it resembles others that people already know. ” “The notion is useful when applied not only to literary works but also to non-literary discourse, distinguishing the typical features of, say, a shopping list from those of food labeling, a menu or a recipe. ”
Ways of Reading, cont. Difficulties "For all its convenience, however, the notion of genre presents difficulties. Is there a fixed number of sorts of text? If so, when and how was this decided, and on what basis? And who will decide for still evolving types, such as emergent styles in popular music, texting or multimedia? A more theoretical question also arises: whether genre is a prescriptive category – grouping features to be incorporated into writing or production of a given type – or whether it is descriptive, generalizing on the basis of agreement among language users. "
Ways of Reading, cont. Classification on the basis of formal arrangement "One basis for classifying texts is their formal properties. Sonnets, for instance, have fourteen lines and follow distinctive stanzaic and rhyme patterns. At the same time, sonnets are a type of poetry, which in turn exists within a conventional three-way distinction between poetry, drama and fiction – a classification derived historically from Aristotle’s distinction between lyric, epic or narrative, and drama. "
Aristotle : On the Art of Poetry Translated by Ingram Bywater Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920 “Our subject being Poetry, I propose to speak not only of the art in general but also of its species and their respective capacities; of the structure of plot required for a good poem; of the number and nature of the constituent parts of a poem; and likewise of any other matters in the same line of inquiry. ” Note: Aristotle’s 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. ”
Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, 1483– 1520)
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. ”
The Tripartite Division Aristotle in the first passages of his work argues that different arts can be separated on the basis of the kinds of means they employ. However, you won’t find the so-called Aristotelian tripartite classification in his poetics. There is a division between dramatic poetry (theatre as direct imitation of persons) and epic poetry which is the narrative portrayal of human actions. There is no clear-cut recognition of lyric poetry. Direct expression of personal feelings and thoughts was added after a long process by the 16 th century.
Ways of Reading, cont. Difficulties "Aristotle further emphasized one particular, distinguishing aspect of form: who speaks. Lyrics are uttered in the first person; in epic or narrative, the narrator speaks in the first person, then lets characters speak for themselves; in drama, the characters do all the talking. " "Although common ever since Aristotle, genre classification on the basis of formal differences can be difficult to sustain. What about verse drama? Or narrative poetry (as in ballads)? "
Ways of Reading, cont. Classification on the basis of theme or topic "Sometimes subject matter is the basis for genre classification. Texts show thematic affinities by treating the same or similar topics, often topics or subject matter that may be especially important for the society in which the texts circulate (e. g. war, love, independence struggles). "
Ways of Reading, cont. Difficulties "The pastoral, for instance, is concerned with country life; crime fiction is about crime; biography relates events in a life, etc. ; but in principle it is possible to treat any of these topics following formal conventions of any of the different kinds listed above, or in different moods that will create different kinds of effect on the reader or viewer. "
Ways of Reading, cont. Classification on the basis of mood or anticipated response "What a text is about can overlap with an attitude or emotion conventionally adopted towards that subject matter. Pastoral often implies not just concern with country life, but also a reflective or nostalgic mode. Elegies – although first defined on the basis of the metre they used – became primarily concerned with lamenting deaths (and often take the form of pastoral elegies, delivered in the personae of shepherds). "
Ways of Reading, cont. Difficulties "A more complex case is that of tragedy. Classical tragedy combines conventions about the protagonist (the ‘tragic hero’, who has a character with a crucial flaw) and conventions about the nature of the plot (in which the main character typically suffers and dies). At the same time, tragedy is also defined (at least in Aristotle’s account in Poetics) by its characteristic mode of audience response: what Aristotle called catharsis, or a purging or purification by means of feelings of pity and fear aroused in the audience by the dramatic spectacle. "
Ways of Reading, cont. Classification on the basis of occasion "Literary forms may now seem specialized kinds of discourse, isolated from the rest of society and mainly discussed in literature classes, but for most of its history literature has not been marked off within specified boundaries in this way. Rather, its involvement in public life, including in various kinds of social ritual, meant that many different texts had their origins in composition for or performance on specific kinds of social occasion. "
Ways of Reading, cont. "An epithalamium is a poem written for – and proclaimed at – a public occasion, in celebration of a victorious person (e. g. an athlete or a general). The genre of elegy evolved during the seventeenth century into its modern role as a consolatory lament for the death of a particular person. Ballads began as poems to be danced to, but evolved into two divergent traditions: continuing folk ballads in the oral tradition, and urban broadside ballads circulated as single sheets or chapbooks that typically contained popular songs, jests, romantic tales and sensational topical stories. "
Ways of Reading, cont. Classification on the basis of mode of address "Even when dissociated from specific social occasions or performance rituals, texts are still in some cases labelled on the basis of how they address their readers or audience. Some texts involve direct address to a reader or audience (e. g. public speeches, letters); others have a specific addressee named in the text but are written so as to be overheard (e. g. odes, dialogue in most stage drama). Sometimes within a single form there is variation between modes of address. "
Genre Classification A few examples of various modes of address
Henry Fielding: The History of Tom Jones Book X. In Which the History Goes Forward about Twelve Hours I. Containing Instructions Very Necessary to Be Perused by Modern Critics READER, it is impossible we should know what sort of person thou wilt be; for, perhaps, thou may’st be as learned in human nature as Shakespear himself was, and, perhaps, thou may’st be no wiser than some of his editors. Now, lest this latter should be the case, we think proper, before we go any farther together, to give thee a few wholesome admonitions; that thou may’st not as grossly misunderstand misrepresent us, as some of the said editors have misunderstood and misrepresented their author.
Image is a frontispiece etching of Henry Fielding (1707 -1754) from a 1920 edition of The History of the Life of the Late Mr Jonathan Wild the Great. Original image is from a drawing by William Hogarth (16971764)
William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar Act III Scene 1 Rome. Before the Capitol; the Senate sitting above. ANTONY O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, Shrunk to this little measure? Fare thee well. I know not, gentlemen, what you intend, Who else must be let blood, who else is rank: If I myself, there is no hour so fit As Caesar's death hour, nor no instrument Of half that worth as those your swords, made rich With the most noble blood of all this world. I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard, Now, whilst your purpled hands do reek and smoke, Fulfil your pleasure. Live a thousand years, I shall not find myself so apt to die: No place will please me so, no mean of death, As here by Caesar, and by you cut off, The choice and master spirits of this age.
Robert Browning: My Last Duchess That's my last duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will't please you sit and look at her? I said "Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read Strangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and passion of its earnest glance, But to myself they turned (since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, How such a glance came there; so, not the first Are you to turn and ask thus.
Browning, cont. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master’s known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretense Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
Robert Browning (1812 -1889) Oil painting by Michele Gordigiani, 1858
Recognizing or deciding what genre a text is in Ways of Reading "Criteria for distinguishing different genres tend to work together rather than independently of one another. Deciding what genre a text is in therefore involves weighing up a number of interlocking considerations. This can make it difficult to judge whether a text fits a category simply by ticking off features in a list of required attributes. "
Genre as an expression of conventional agreement Ways of Reading "An alternative to thinking of genre as a list of essential properties is to start instead with the idea that genres may be focused in especially influential texts that serve as exemplary cases. Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex (c. 400 BC) is often appealed to as an exemplary tragedy, for example: a sort of benchmark, with other texts defined as tragedies to the extent that they are similar to it. This view of genre, where a prototype is taken to exist and where other texts are judged to be more or less close to the prototype, enables texts to be assigned to genres even when they do not have all the apparently necessary features. "
Genre as an expression of conventional agreement, cont. Ways of Reading "It then becomes possible for a text to be a novel even if it has no discernible narrative (as many experimental novels don’t), so long as the text works with or exploits our expectation that it should have. " "Even notions of the typical or ‘prototypical’ are not fixed, however. Generic conventions come to us as a historical legacy, shaped and reshaped by the changing production and circulation of texts, as well as by changing attitudes to them. "
Functions of genre Ways of Reading Genre as a framework for a text’s intelligibility "The main psychological function of genre is to act as a sort of schema, or structured set of assumptions within our tacit knowledge, that we draw on to guide reading, rather like a series of signposts or instructions. " Genre as reflecting the nature of human experience "Some critics have suggested connections between specific genres and fundamental kinds of human experience. "
Functions of genre, cont. Ways of Reading Genre as a promotional device "By comparison with the previous two functions, most other functions suggested for genre are concerned more with the social circulation of texts than with cognitive processes involved in interpreting them. Genres allow audiences to predict and plan kinds of experience for themselves. (The problemsolving pleasure of detective fiction, for a story to make you cry, etc. )" Genre as a way of controlling markets and audiences "Genres in this view are part of a process of controlling the production of entertainment and directing culture markets, by actively repeating the formula of whatever has already been successful. (The financing of Hollywood films, with notable exceptions, is often argued to follow this pattern. )"
Literary Kinds or Genres Although the term seems highly flexible (if not vague) it is yet to be used for literary analyses. Literay kinds and genres are hierarchical, like a family tree: Kind Genre or Genre Subgenre Sub-subgenre
Literary Kinds or Genres Kind Poetry Drama Fiction Genre (e. g. ) Elegy Ode Epistle etc. Tragedy Comedy Novel Short story Morality Miracle etc. Romance etc. Sub-genre (e. g. ) Funeral / Revenge / Picaresque / Pastoral Domestic Epistolary / Utopia / Detective
Literary Kinds or Genres Here is a list of literary genres as defined by the California Department of Education (http: //www. cde. ca. gov/ci/rl/ll/litrlgenres. asp) Although kinds/genres are hierarchical, this list differentiates between two main categories (fiction and nonfiction, i. e. works of imagination and factual information) and, for simplicity’s sake, within these categories provides two lists in alphabetical order.
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.
California Department of Education Despite its pragmatic reduction, even this division is debatable. To what extent does a biased biography or an apologetic autobiography distorting facts belong to nonfiction?
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, 4 th 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
Narrative Poetry, cont. Novels in verse – George Byron: Don Juan Ballads – Sir Patrick Spens Idylls – Tennyson: Idylls of the King Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is a sequences of interrelated short stories resembling short stories
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 Shakespeare’s 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. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. Dramatic monologues, such as Robert Browning’s 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 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 18 th century. Now popular songs seem to replace this function, therefore it is necessary to make distinction between poem and lyrics.
Most important Genres of Lyric Poetry Ode Song Elegy Eclogue Epistle Epigram Epitaph Rhapsody Dramatic monologue, etc. Ballads, though by definition classified as narrative genre, are often referred to as lyric poem. Ballads are in fact generally included in lyric anthologies.
Song In music, a composition for 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 art song (16 th and 17 th century English madrigals), folk songs (Over the Hills and Far Away), popular songs (Hey Jude by Lennon Mc. Cartney).
Robert Burns (1759 -1796) Burns worked for the final ten years of his life on projects to preserve traditional Scottish songs for the future. In all, Burns had a hand in preserving over 300 songs for posterity, the most famous being Auld Lang Syne.
Robert Burns: My luve is like a red, red rose Source: Complete Songs of Robert Burns - online book http: //www. traditionalmusic. co. uk/burns-songs My luve is like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June : My luve is like the melodie, That's sweetly play'd in tune. As fair art thou, my bonie lass, So deep in luve am I, And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun ! And I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o' life shall run. And fare-thee-weel, my only luve, And fare-thee-weel a while! ! , . And I will come again, my Juve, J Tho' it were ten thousand mile. '
o. 152. My luve is like a red, red rose. Tune : Major Graham Scots Musical Museum, 1796, No. 402.
Song Yeats’s 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. Performed by (Brandon Farley – Cotton Eyed Joe)
Poem and Song The term, in literary sense, usually denotes a poem and its musical setting; a poem for singing or chanting. In literature many poems, even if not set to music, may be called songs. Many poets of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods wrote fine songs as well as poems that might be set to music. Yet we read them with no regard to the melody, but refer to them as songs.
Poem and Song Here is an example by John Donne. The title of poem is simply Song. The title indeed suggests that the poem was composed for a tune which is the case, yet it is a poem to be fully appreciated as a text on the page on its own right. This may be one difference between poems and lyrics.
John Donne (1572 -1631) Song Go and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me where all past years are, Or who cleft the devil's foot, Teach me to hear mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind.
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 Weelkes’s madrigal is performed by the Alfred Deller Consort
Thomas Weelkes (c. 1575 -1623) To Shorten Winter’s Sadness To shorten winter’s sadness, See where the nymphs with gladness, Falala. Disguised all are coming Right wantonly a-mumming, Falala. Though masks encloud their beauty Yet give the eye her duty, Falala. When heaven is dark it shineth And unto love inclineth, Falala.
Air The following poem by Thomas Campion, titled Follow thy fair sun is called an air. This is also a song, an air for a solo voice and instrumental accompaniment. As for the images and versification the text shows greater poetic complexity.
Thomas Campion (1567 -1620) Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow. Though thou be black as night, And she made all of light, Yet follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow. Follow her whose light thy light depriveth. Though here thou livest disgraced, And she in heaven is placed, Yet follow her whose light the world reviveth. Follow those pure beams whose beauty burneth, That so have scorched thee, As thou still black must be, Till her kind beams thy black to brightness turneth.
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 Mc. Cartney and Harrison, respectively. The Lennon-Mc. Cartney composition shows great thematic similarity to Thomas Campion’s air. Harrison’s song seems to take up theme of Thomas Weelkes’s madrigal.
John Lennon / Paul Mc. Cartney I'll Follow the Sun (1964) One day you'll look to see I've gone One day you'll find that I have gone But tomorrow may rain, For tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun But tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun Some day you'll know I was the one But tomorrow may rain, And now the time has come so I'll follow the sun and, my love, I must go And though I lose a friend And now the time has come In the end you will know, oh and, my love, I must go And though I lose a friend One day you'll find that I have gone In the end you will know, oh But tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun
George Harrison Here Comes the Sun (1969) Here comes the sun, 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 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 Here comes the sun, and I say It's all right Sun, sun, sun, here it comes Sun, sun, here it comes Little darling I feel that ice is slowly melting Little darling It seems like years since it's been clear Here comes the sun, do do Here comes the sun, and I say It's all right Here comes the sun, do do Here comes the sun It's all right
An edition of the Beatles lyrics and the Faber & Faber collection of Paul Mc. Cartney poems and lyrics. Faber is the most prestigious publisher of poetry in Britain.
Harrison, cont. Harrison’s 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”.
Ode (Source: Cuddon) Ode (Greek 'song') is a lyric poem, usually of some length. The main features are an elaborate stanza structure, a marked formality and stateliness in tone and style (which make it ceremonious), and lofty sentiments and thoughts. In short, an ode is rather a grand poem; a full-dress poem. There are two basic kinds: the public and the private. the public is used for ceremonial occasions, like funerals, birthdays, state events; the private often celebrates rather intense, personal, and subjective occasions; it is inclined to be meditative, reflective.
Ode cont. Tennyson's Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington is an example of the former; Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, an example of the latter.
Ode, cont. The earliest odes were written by the ancient Greek poets Sappho (c. around 6 oo BC) and Alcaeus (c. 620 BC-6 th century BC). Another ancient Greek poet, Pindar (ca. 522– 443 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. Horace’s (65 BC– 8 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 Marvell’s 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.
Horatian Ode, cont. 'Tis time to leave the books in dust, And oil the unused armour's rust, Removing from the wall The corslet of the hall. So restless Cromwell could not cease In the inglorious arts of peace, But through adventurous war Urged his active star.
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 (1631 -1700) St. Cecilia at the Organ Portrait by John Michael Wright Painting by Carlo Dolci
Georg Friedrich Händel (1685– 1759) Portrait by Balthasar Denner Ode for St. Cecilia's Day (HWV 76) is a cantata composed by Georg Friderich Händel in 1739, his second setting of the poem by the English poet John Dryden. The title of the oratorio refers to Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians.
John Dryden Song for St. Cecilia’s Day (excerpt) From Harmony, from heavenly Harmony This universal frame began: When Nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms lay And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high, ‘Arise, ye more than dead!’ Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry In order to their stations leap, And Music’s power obey.
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. ) (1770 -1850) Portrait by Pieter van Dyke Portrait by William Shuter
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.
Immortality Ode, cont. II The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose; The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
Immortality Ode, cont. III Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound As to the tabor's sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong. The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep, -- No more shall grief of mine the season wrong: I hear the echoes through the mountains throng.
Immortality Ode, cont. The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay; Land sea Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every beast keep holiday; -Thou child of joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy!
Rhapsody (source: Cuddon) “Rhapsody means 'stitch song‘ in Greek. In ancient Greece a rhapsodist was an itinerant minstrel who recited epic poetry. Part came from memory: part was improvised. A rhapsodist was thus a poet who 'stitched‘ together various elements. In a more general sense a rhapsody may be an effusive and emotional (perhaps even ecstatic) utterance in verse. ” Pseudo-Pindaric odes are hardly distinguishable from rhapsodies. This may one reason why the genre was taken up be Romantic poets.
Rhapsody – a modern example T. S. Eliot (1888 -1965) Rhapsody on a Windy Night Twelve o'clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium. (Excerpt)
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 P. B. Shelley (1795 -1821) (1792 -1822) Portrait by William Hilton Portrait by Alfed Clint
Epithalamion (Source: Cuddon) Epithalamion (Greek ‘at the bridal chamber') is originally a song or a poem sung outside the bride's room on her wedding night. It celebrates the married couple. At the Renaissance poets revived it. Edmund Spenser's Epithalamion is the most admired of its type in the English language. It was written for his wedding to his young bride, Elizabeth Boyle. The tone of an epithalamion is often kin to the elevated emotions expressed in an ode.
Portrait of Edmund Spenser (1552 -1599) by unknown artist
Dramatic Monologue (Source: Cuddon) Dramatic monologue or lyric soliloquy is a poem in which there is one imaginary speaker addressing an imaginary audience. In most dramatic monologues some attempt is made to imitate natural speech. In a successful example of the genre, the persona will not be confused with the poet. Andrew Marvell's (1621 -1678) The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Faun is a metaphysical version of a woman’s complaint.
Dramatic Monologue, cont. In its most fully developed form, the dramatic monologue is a Victorian genre, effectively created by Alfred Tennyson (1819 -1892) and Robert Browning (1812 -1889) yet the idea of a lyric in the voice of an imagined persona seems to be very ancient. It is the role of the persona, or the interlocutor, more than anything else, that gives the Victorian monologue its innovatory distinctiveness.
Dramatic Monologue, cont. The outstanding example of this device, as Robert Browning uses it, is My Last Duchess, in which an Italian Renaissance duke, addressing the envoy of a prospective father-in-law appears to confess to the murder of the wife he is hoping to replace. Browning tended to classify his monologues as either dramatic lyrics or dramatic romances. The distinction is not always very clear but he seems to have meant, by the first, a rhymed lyric ascribed to an imaginary persona, and by the second, a narrative dramatically related.
Dramatic Monologue, cont. The subsequent history of the genre, however, emerges by way of the French Symbolist poets, many of whom transform the dramatic monologue into what the French writer Valéry Larbaud (1881 -1957) was to call the interior monologue. These interior reveries are the source for many important modernist poems, such as T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
Dramatic Monologue, cont. Today the dramatic monologue is accepted as one of the fundamental poetic genres. Most modern dramatic monologues are indistinguishable from interior monologues. It is also common for poets to create personae distinct from, and yet connected with, themselves; like Philip Larkin (1922 -1985) in Mr Bleaney and Dockery and Son. A poet especially associated with the genre is Carol Ann Duffy (1955) who has used the genre for ironically and for gender-oriented purposes, lending her voice to historically muted women such as Mrs Lazarus.
Philip Larkin Carol Ann Duffy
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) Epistle is verse-letter, a poem addressed to a friend or patron. There approximately two types: (a) on moral and philosophical themes (e. g. John Donne’s epistolary poems or verse letters on religious subject), (b) on romantic or sentimental themes (e. g. Alexander Pope’s Epistle to Miss Blount, On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation).
Alexander Pope Martha and Theresa Blount Portraits by Charles Jervas
Alexander Pope (1688 -1744) Epistle to Miss Blount On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation As some fond virgin, whom her mother’s 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 o’er 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 that’s 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 o’ershades 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) In Classical literature an elegy (Greek 'lament') was any poem composed of elegiac distichs (a hexameter and a pentameter), also known as elegiacs, and the subjects were various: death, war, love and similar themes. The elegy was also used for epitaphs and commemorative verses, and very often there was a mourning strain in them. However, it is only since the 15 th c. that an elegy has come to mean a poem of mourning for an individual, or a lament for some tragic event.
Elegy, cont. John Donne’s 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 Paul’s, Dr. John Donne; P. B. Shelley’s Adonais (commemorating the death of John Keats), W. H. Auden's In Memory of W. B. Yeats.
W. B. Yeats W. H. Auden (1865 -1938) (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 (3 rd c. BC), Moschus (2 nd c. BC) and Bion (2 nd 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 BC– 19 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 Spenser’s The Shepherd’s Calendar or Louis Mac. Neice’s (1917 -1963) An Eclogue for Christmas are excellent examples of the eclogue.
Pastoral Elegies in English They were the prototypes of such English pastoral elegies as Milton's Lycidas and Shelley’s Adonais. Edmund Spenser was one of the earliest English poets to use for elegy what are known as the pastoral conventions; in Astrophil he lamented the death of his fellow poet Sir Philip Sidney (1554 -1586).
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 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’s Elegy Written in Country Churchyard is a pastoral completed in 1750 and first published in 1751. It was partly inspired by Gray’s 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 Gray’s 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.
Gray’s Elegy ends with the poet’s Epitaph Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown. Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth, And Melancholy mark'd him for her own. Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, Heav'n did a recompense as largely send: He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear, He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend. No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose) The bosom of his Father and his God.
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 Crabbe’s (1754 -1832) poem The Village can be interpreted as an anti-pastoral reply to Oliver Goldsmith’s (1730 -1774) sentimentalization of rural life in his The Deserted Village.
Oliver Goldsmith George Crabbe Portrait by Joshua Reynolds Engraving by E. Findon from the portrait by Thomas Phillips
Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village (excerpt) SWEET Auburn! loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain, Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, And parting summer's lingering blooms delay'd: Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green, Where humble happiness endear'd each scene!
George Crabbe The Village (excerpt) The Village Life, and every care that reigns O'er youthful peasants and declining swains; What labour yields, and what, that labour past, Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last; What form the real picture of the poor, Demand a song--the Muse can give no more. Fled are those times, when, in harmonious strains, The rustic poet praised his native plains: No shepherds now, in smooth alternate verse, Their country's beauty or their nymphs' rehearse.
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.
Cover image of Tony Harrison’s v. and Beeston Cemetery vandalised
The epitaph at the end of v. Harrison uses Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard as a hypertext, a source which he exploits. The epitaph at the end of v. alludes to Gray’s epitaph: Beneath your feet's a poet, then a pit. Poetry supporter, if you're here to find How poems can grow from (beat you to it!) SHIT find the beef, the beer, the bread, then look behind.
Epitaph (Source: Cuddon) An epitaph (Greek 'writing on a tomb‘, inscription on a grave) is a kind of valediction which may be solemn, complimentary, witty or even flippant.
This is the epitaph of Jonathan Swift (1667 -1745) composed by himself in Latin and engraved in his tombstone in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin
Swift’s Epitaph Hic depositum est Corpus IONATHAN SWIFT S. T. D. Hujus Ecclesiæ Cathedralis Decani, Ubi sæva Indignatio Ulterius Cor lacerare nequit, Abi Viator Et imitare, si poteris, Strenuum pro virili Libertatis Vindicatorem. Obiit 19º Die Mensis Octobris A. D. 1745 Anno Ætatis 78º. The literal translation is: Here is laid the Body of Jonathan Swift, Doctor of Sacred Theology, Dean of this Cathedral Church, where fierce Indignation can no longer injure the Heart. Go forth, Voyager, and copy, if you can, this vigorous (to the best of his ability) Champion of Liberty. He died on the 19 th Day of the Month of October, A. D. 1745, in the 78 th Year of his Age.
Epigram (Source: Cuddon) An epitaph is usually very brief. It has an epigrammatic quality. An epigram (Greek ‘inscription’) is as a rule a short, witty statement in verse or prose which may be complimentary, satiric or aphoristic. Originally an inscription on a monument or statue, the epigram developed into a literary genre. The form was much cultivated in the 17 th c. in England by Ben Jonson, John Donne, John Dryden, and in the 18 th c. by Alexander Pope, Matthew Prior, Robert Burns.
Epigram Here is an epigram by Matthew Prior (1664 -1721) Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool. But 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 Pope’s 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
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