Literary Terms:Poetry

Farjana Pireya, Raquel Mejia & Allyson Suria

Poetry

Definition:The art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts. Literary work in metrical form; verse.

Poetry Example

Little Father by Li-Young Lee is an example of free verse poetry:

I buried my father in my heart.

Now he grows in me, my strange son,

My little root who won’t drink milk,

Little pale foot sunk in unheard-of night,

Little clock spring newly wet

In the fire,little grape, parent to the future

Wine, a son the fruit of his own son,

Little father I ransom with my life.

Epic Poetry

Definition:A long narrative poem telling of a hero’s deeds.

Example: “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many

a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. `'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door - Only this, and nothing more.'”

Dramatic PoetryDefinition:

Dramatic poetry, also known as dramatic verse or verse drama, is a written work that both tells a story and connects the reader to an audience through emotions or behavior. A form of narrative closely related to acting, it usually is performed physically and can be either spoken or sung.

Example: Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great:From jigging veins of riming mother wits

And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay

We'll lead you to the stately tent of war,

Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine

Threatening the world with high astounding terms

And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.

Lyric Poetry

Definition:

Lyric Poetry consists of a poem, such as a sonnet or an ode, that expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet. The term lyric is now commonly referred to as the words to a song. Lyric poetry does not tell a story which portrays characters and actions. The lyric poet addresses the reader directly, portraying his or her own feeling, state of mind, and perceptions.

Example: part of Sonnet Number 18, written by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake

the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of

heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By

chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose

possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines

to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to

thee.

Dramatic Monologue

Definition:A literary, usually verse composition in which a speaker reveals his or her

character, often in relation to a critical situation or event, in a monologue addressed to the reader or to a presumed listener.

Example: Juliet's Monologue from Act 3 Scene 2 by William Shakespeare: Juliet waits impatiently for night to fall so she can celebrate her wedding night with Romeo

Satire

Definition:Satire is the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing,

denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.

Example:Book IV of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. It is set on an imaginary island, inhabited by two different species, brutish Yahoos, who are human beings, and their masters, the Houyhnhnms, who are talking horses that embody the human intelligence, that the Yahoos do not have.

Direct Satire, Formal Satire

Definition:Direct satire is aimed towards a certain group of individuals.

Example:Lord Byron’s mock epic, Don Juan.

The urbane narrator confides to the reader the amorous adventures of Don Juan, a legendary rake, in his youth: Byron depicts him as naive and irresistibly attractive.

Indirect Satire

Definition: Indirect satire uses a fictional narrative in which characters who represent

particular points of view are made ridiculous by their own behaviour and thoughts, and by the narrator's usually ironic commentary.

Example: Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726)

The hero narrating his own adventures appears ridiculous in taking pride in his Lilliputian title of honour, "Nardac"; by making Gulliver look foolish in this way, Swift indirectly satirizes the pretensions of the English nobility, with its corresponding titles of "Duke" and "Marquess."

Horatian satire, Juvenalian satire

Definition: Horatian Satire gently mocks, Juvenalian aims to destroy and to provoke

Example:“The Rape of The Lock” ridicules the vanity and idleness of the British upper classes in the form of a mock epic on the supposed tragedy of the lovely Belinda, a lock of whose hair is ravished by the scissors of a wicked Baron.

Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”, in which the author denounces the exploitation of British landlords, who were indifferent to the suffering they were causing and who were abetted by the apathy of the British Parliament and monarchy.