1. Poetry through the Ages
Poetic forms in Elizabethan, Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist Poetry

2. History of Poetry
from the Greek word poesis, which means “making,” or “creating.”
Originally composed and shared orally; often set to music
Commonalities with folktales
Beowulf first known recorded English (old English) poem
Beowulf Epic poem set in Scandanavia; Beowulf is a hero who fights three antagonists and eventually becomes king after slaying all.
3812 Alliterative lines

3. Genres of Poetry
Ballad: to be sung/recited; physical courage and love; about common people
Sonnet: Italian/Petrarchan and English/Shakespearian; 14 lines (ending with rhyming couplet). abab cdcd efef gg
Blank Verse: unrhymed but in iambic pentameter ( ĕé)
Free Verse: does not follow set rhyme, meter, rhythm
Lyric: often set to melody; focus on personal emotion
BALLAD: a form of verse to be sung or recited. In early ballads the supernatural is likely to play an important role; physical courage and love are frequent themes. Ballads, like folktales, typically revolve around common people.
SONNET: a poem of 14 lines and following a set rhyme scheme (with a rhyming couplet at the end). Two basic types of sonnets are the Italian/Petrarchan and the English/Shakespearian. The Shakespearian (which we will focus on) has a rhyme scheme of abab
cdcd efef gg. They usually have a personal-emotional focus.
BLANK VERSE: Unrhymed but otherwise regular verse, usually in iambic pentameter (the most common rhythm of English literature, consisting of an unaccented syllable and an accented: ~ ‘). Much of the lines in Shakespeare’s plays are written in blank verse.
FREE VERSE: Free Verse: poetry free of rhyme (it does not follow set rhyme, meter, or regular rhythm).
LYRIC: a brief, subjective poem with imagination, melody, and emotion

4. Poetry Timeline Elizabethan: 1560-1600 Romantics: 1780-1830
Victorians:
Modernist:
Post-modernist: 1980-

5. Elizabethan poetry Queen Elizabeth 1st reigned from 1558-1603
Bloody time in English history
William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlow, Edmund Spenser most popular
Sonnets, blank verse, narrative poems
Spenser’s “The Fairie Queen” (epic prose)
Despite the bloody times (King Henry VIII on the throne, beheading 8 of his wives; everyone loved a public execution), the poetry focussed on beauty and joy in the natural world

6. Romantics 1780-1830 Focus on: Libertariansim Nature and the sublime
Alternate sources of truth and beauty
The supernatural
Popular Poets
William Wordsworth, William Blake, Samuel Coleridge, Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley
Libertarianism=freedom from convention, control, tyranny (abuse of power)
Nature=love of nature, and expression of how the author felt about nature; the sublime in nature had particular resonance
Alternate sources of truth and beauty=looking to foreign history or cultures and enjoying the mystery of not knowing all
Supernatural=this pushed against earlier movements of rationalism; poets in this time became interested in death, dreams, superstition, and unusual experiences

7. Victorian 1833-1903 Focus on: Hope vs. Uncertainty
Science vs. Spirituality
The Rise of Women
Popular Poets:
Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barret Browning, the Brönte sisters, Matthew Arnold, Christina Rosetti, Lord Alfred Tennyson
Known as Victorian era for being under the rule of Queen Victoria. The themes that emerge in the Victorian era do so under the context of the Industrial Revolution; things were changing in Britain, factories were developing, the population almost doubled, and prosperity was starting to reign.
Hope vs. uncertainty: ranged from beauty of progress to uncertainty about the ability to sustain such progress (what did the future hold?)
Science vs. spirituality: poets of this era took a renewed interest in faith and spirituality; they questioned religion a great deal, but often held strong to their faith
The Rise of Women: women became increasingly visible in society, particularly in writing, where they had not been seen so often before. Because women were helping more with industry and social affairs, issues of women’s rights and roles often came to light in women’s poetry. One of the most famous female poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, wrote “Aura Leigh,” a nine-section, blank verse epic poem about one woman’s situation in Victorian London.

8. Modernist 1920-1960 Focus on: Imagism Free verse
Fundamental Spirituality
Destruction and Darkness
Self-reflection on art
Popular poets:
T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Emily Dickinson, e.e. cummings
Roughly defined as the period following Queen Victoria’s rule in 1901 to the second world war. WW1 was the key event that defines this era of modernist poetry.
Early Modernists viewed themselves as a combination of voices from before their time; they used and challenged styles of poets past.
Other early modernists searched for the perfect “image” in order to discard the misconceptions and misreadings that accompanied poetry of the past.
Late modernists reflected on the transformation of society; they drew from classics but did not use them as direct symbols or allusions
Imagism: the image is; if a context was suggested, it was only within the boundaries of the poem. Images were to be directly treated as images.
Free Verse: flung away the chains of the past (blank verse, sonnets, rhymes, alliteration, etc)
Fundamental Spirituality: they explored faith and belief often separately from religion; their goal was not to convert
Destruction and darkness: other modernists saw this period as the destructions of culture and morality; they often wrote about things ending, getting old, or lost
Self reflective on art: questioned, explored, and philosophized upon the state of poetry and society’s understanding of constructions of meaning.