2. •Poetry is a vast term which includes various forms, features and
elements
•Element of poetry: Rhythm, Rhyme, Stanza, Imagery, Diction etc
•Kinds of Poetry: Narrative, Dramatic and Lyrical Poetry
•Forms of Poetry: Sonnet, Ode, Epic, Elegy, Ballad etc
•Beowulf: Older example of long narrative heroic poetry and deals with
the adventures of brave Warrior (8th century)
•Chaucer: Father of English Poetry
POETRY
3. STAGES OFPOETRYIN
DIFFERENT PERIODS
•The Middle Ages: Religious and romantic in nature, eg- Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight (romantic theme of honor and chivalry), Piers Plowman by William Langland
(Religious)
•Renaissance Effect: began experimenting with new style of writing
-Thomas Wyatt wrote sonnets with fourteen rhyming lines
-Thomas Campion wrote songs with poetry sets to music
-Edmund Spenser returned to the old heroic style with The Faerie Queen
-John Donne, a metaphysical poet wrote intelligent poetry by exploring the theme
of love and death through metaphors
4. CONTINUED..
•The Romantic: Golden age of English Poetry in which creative expression was given
absolute importance
-Lord Byron wrote Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
-John Keats wrote beautiful love poems
-William Wordsworth wrote a lot of poetry of nature
-Samuel Coleridge wrote complex and captivating poems
-Percy Shelley wrote poetry influenced by classical mythology
•The Victorian: They followed the romantic poets
-Alfred Tennyson, poet laureate wrote lyrical poems
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote religious poetry
-William Butler Yeats wrote poems full of symbolism and beautiful imagery
•Modern Age: 20th century saw the birth of modernist movement
-TS Eliot wrote shockingly original poems
-Ezra Pound concerned with the clarity and precision
-Dylan Thomas poems known for their unique imagery and use of words and rhythm
5. Pre-ChaucerianorAngloNormanPeriod
•Pearl Poet’s Pearl, Patience, Cleanness
•Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
•Piers Plowman by Langland
•Confessio Amantis by Gower
•Romance was the most popular narrative genre
deals with the stories of King Arthur, The War of
Troy, The Mythical doing of Alexander
and,Charlemagne
•Chronicles and moral literature is also the
principal genre
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6. Phillippe De Thaun
• He is known for two poems:
• 1. Livre Des Creatures(treatise on
astronomy),
• 2. Bestiare (book of natural history
containing descriptions of various
animals along with brief
moralisations
Benoit De Sainte Maur
• He was 12th century French Poet
• His ‘Roman De Troie’ (The Romance of Troy)
was a source for later work by Chaucer,
‘Troilus and Criseyde’
• His long verse ‘Chronique Des ducs de
Normandie’ (It begins with the creation of
the world and ends with the death of Henry
I)
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7. ANGLONORMANPOETRY
CURSOR MUNDI
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- Anonymous Middle English poem containing
30,000 lines
-It begins with Prologue
-The poet tell about the Old and New Law, The
Trinity, The Fall of the Angels, of Adam, Abraham,
then of Christ’s coming
8. THEAGEOFCHAUCER(1340-1400)
8
• Important Events: The Hundred Years’ Wars(The
Edwardian, Caroline and Lancastrian War), The
Black Death,The Peasants Revolt
•Important poets: Chaucer, William Langland
(Piers Plowman), John Gower (Confessio
Amantis), John Wycliffe: The morning star of the
reformation (his followers known as ‘The Lollards’
9. • The ‘Pearl poet’ or the ‘Gawain Poet
is the name given to author of Pearl
• Symbolism of Pear- Everyone takes
his own meaning from Pearl and
reads his own life into it, means it’s
symbol varies with different
readers. For most characters it
simply brings out greed and
ambition
• Other poems: Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight, Patience, Cleanness
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ThePearlPoet
10. GeoffreyChaucer
•In 1369, Chaucer was asked to compose his first
Poem “The Book of the Duchess” by John of Gaunt
for his deseased wife Blanche.
•Other works: The Parliament of Fowls, The
Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Creseide
•It was at the fag end of his life that Chaucer
composed ‘The Canterburry Tales’. A collection of
24 tales narrated by 29 Pilgrims
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11. THECANTERBURYTALES
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- This poem is a collection of stories narrated by 29 Pilgrims on
their way to the Shrine of Martyr Saint Thomas in Canterbury
-All the Pilgrims gathered at Tabard Inn where Harry Bailly is the
host. He suggest a story telling contest and himself becomes the
judge.
- The Pilgrims who are narrating the story represent all sections of
society from gentry to humble craftsmen
-There are respectable people from the various classes such as
The Knight, The Parson, The Yeomen, The Monk, The Merchant,
The Friar, The Wife of Bath etc
12. THEWIFE OFBATH’S PROLOGUEANDTALE:AN
ARTHURIANROMANCE
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• The wife of Bath begins her lengthy prologue by announcing that she has
always followed the rule of experience rather than authority
•Having already five husband, she has experience enough to make her an
expert
•She prefers the biblical command to go forth and multiply
•She has been married five times and already waiting for her 6th husband
•The first three were old and rich, they died. Her fourth husband was
young but he had a mistress.
•Jankin was her fifth and most favorite husband
•The wife of Bath uses the prologue to explain that experience is always
better than authority and women most desire is complete control
(sovereignty) over their husband
•The wife feels that she can speak with authority from this experience and
tells how she got upper hand with each of her husbands.
13. The Age of Revival
• Poetry is the important form of writing in this
age
• English Chaucerian and Scottish Chaucerian
poets influenced by Chaucer made significant
contribution
• Wyatt and Surrey introduced the Sonnet
Competitor
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14. The Pastoral
•Pastoral mode for
satire of court and
urban life
•Alexander Barclay
was the first to use
this mode
Allegory
•Chaucer’s allegorical
poetry was imitated
by the English and
Scottish Chaucerians
• Eg- William Dunbar’s
The Golden Targe,
Stephen Hawes’
Example of Virtue,
Lydgate’s Temple of
Glas
Ballads
•Ballads are narrative
poems with folk origin
•It deals with a man
or a deed not with a
poet’s thought or
feeling
•Eg- Lamkin, The Wife
of Usher’s Well, Chevy
Chase, Lord Randal
Satire
• Works of Alexander Barclay and John
Skelelton reflects satirist’s outrage
•Eg- Barclay’s Ship of fools, Skeleton’s Bowge of
court, Dunbar’s The dance of the Seven Deadly
sins
Didacticism
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15. English
Chaucerian
•Group of 15th 16th century poets
•Thomas Hoccleve:- Letter of Cupid, La Male Regle
(autobiographical poem), The Regiment of Princes
(written for future king Henry V etc
•John Lydgate: The Troy of Book, The Siege of
Thebes, The Falle of Princis etc
Scottish Chaucerian
• They differed in tone style and subject matter
from English Chaucerian
•Robert Henryson:- The Morall fabillis of Esope
the Phyrogian, The Testament of Cresseid etc
•William Dunbar(Chaucer of Scotland):- The
Thrissil and the Rois, Lament for the makers etc
New Court Poets
• these poets are appointed as an officer of the
royal household
•Thomas Wyatt (Pioneer of new English Poetry):-
Whose List To Hunt, The Court of Venus
•Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey):- he was the first
English poet to publish in Blank Verse, His Sonnet-
Love that Doth Reign (a translation of Petrarchan
Sonnet)
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16. THE ELIZABETHAN POETRY
•During this period the writing of poetry was the part of education among the educated
people
•Sir Philip Sidney was the finest lyricist.
•Lyric was the important genre in Elizabethan Age
•Lyrical poems are short poems about personal, romantic topics
•The Faerie Queen by Spenser is the only one long Elizabethan Lyric Poem with high rank
•Other example of lyrical poems: The Paradise of Dainty Devices, The Phoenix Nest, The
Passionate Pilgrim etc
17. ELIZABETHAN
SONNETS
17
• Elizabethan sonnets were
of two types: Italian or
Petrarchan and
Shakespearean Sonnet and
apart from them other
were Spenserian Sonnet
•Petrarchan Sonnet form
was brought in England by
Sir Thomas Wyatt
18. -TheFaerieQueen
•Edmund Spenser offered his most famous
work The Faerie Queen to Queen Elizabeth to
gain her favour.
• It is an incomplete epic allegorical poem
•His model for the book was Ariosto’s
Orlando Furioso
•It tells the story of several knights, each
representing a particular virtues like
Holiness(Red Cross Knight), Temperance(Sir
Guyon), Chastity(Virgin Britomart), friendship
(Cambel and Telamond), courtesy (Sir
Calidare)
•They are on their quest for the Faerie
Queen, Gloriana
Edmund Spenser
-The Shpheard’s Calendar
• His first publicaly released poetic work ‘The
Shepheard’s Calendar was dedicated to Philip
Sydney.
• It consist of short poems ususally cast as
Pastoral Dialogues
• It’s twelve eclogues correspond to twelve
months of English Calendar
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19. ShakespeareanPoetry
•His five poems known to us are: Venus
and Adonis, Rape of lucrece, Passionate
Pilgrim, Phoenix and the Turtle and The
Lover’s Complaint
• The story of Venus and Adonis is taken
from Ovid’s metamorphosis
•It describes the unsuccessful seduction
of a handsome young man Adonis by
Venus, the Goddess of Love
•Venus failed to win him with her charm
and at the end Adonis was killed by wild
boar
•His body melts away leaving behind a
flower, which Venus then wears in her
bossom
• Astrophel and Stella
• It was a sonnet published in 1591
• It consists of 108 sonnets and 11 songs
• Astrophel means star lover and Stella means
Star
• Sidney’s Stella was Penelope Devereux
• It inspired a spate of sonnets such as Greville’s
Caelia, Samuel Daniel’s Delia and Drayton’s
Idea
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20. THE PURITAN AND RESTORATION AGEPOETRY
20
• The Puritan poetry
mainly focused on
religious and devotion to
God
•The Restoration Age
poetry witnessed the
introduction of heroic
couplets by John Dryden
21. Spenserian Poets
•Phineas Fletcher : The Purple Island (an allegorical
description of man) dedicated to his friend Edward
Benlowes
•Giles Fletcher: Christs Victorie and Triumph in
Heaven and Earth over and after death, An Elelgy
upon Prince Henry’s Death
Cavalier Poets
•These poets were called as ‘cavaliers’ because
of their loyalty and support for Charles I and
they use direct and colloquial language
•Robert Herrick: Noble Numbers ( a group of
religious poems) is included in his main work
Hesperides
Metaphysical
Poets
• This term applied to a group of 17th Century Poets
such as John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan
etc
•These poets were united by common
characterization of wit, inventiveness, intellectual
complexity
•John Dryden was the first to use the this term in his
criticism of Donne
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22. AValediction:Forbidding
Mourning
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls,to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
‘The breath goes now,’ and some say, ‘No’
• Jesus Cora Alonso divided Donne’s poetry
into three main groups:
- Satire and Cynically anti-petrarchan love
poems
- Sincere, deeply-felt neoplatonic amatory
poems and Philosophical complimentary
verses to influential female friends
- Devotional Poems
22
23. Edmund
Waller
-Go lovely Rose, On a
Girdle, Divine Poems
William
Davenant
-Madagascar and
other poems
(collection of Lyrical
Verses)
Abraham
Cowley
-Poetical Blossoms,
The MistressDavideis
(An unfinished Epic)
John Milton
-Lycidas (an Elegy
dedicated to his
friend Edward King),
L’Allergo, II Penseroso
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24. RestorationAge
•The Poetry of this age was
formal, intellectual, satirical,
realistic and written in Heroic
Couplet
•Dryden is the dominanting
Figure of this age
Political Satires
• Absalom and Achitophel
•The Medal
Doctrinal Poems
• Religio Laici
•The Hind and
the Panther
The Fables
• The Palamon and
Arcite
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25. NEOCLASSICAL/ AUGUSTANAGE
25
•The term ‘Augustan Age’ comes from the
imitation of the Original Augustan Writers,
Virgil, Horace, and many other.
• The leading poet include Thomas Gray,
George Crabbe, Christopher Smart, Robert
Burns and Oliver Goldsmith
•The poetry of this age is mainly about
supernatural form, rural life, external nature,
human emotions.
26. Graveyard Poetry
• Graveyard school of poets
refers to a group of 18th
century poets whose work
dealt with the themes of
death, sorrow and morality
• Eg- Thomas Parnell’s A night
Piece on death, Robert
Blair’s The Grave, Edward
Young’s The Night Thought
and Thomas Gray’s Elegy
written in a Country
Churchyard
Pindaric Ode
• Pindaric was a term for a
class of loose and irregular
odes and was named after a
Greek Poet ‘Pindar’
• Eg- Thomas Gray’s The
Progress of Poesy, Ben
Johnson’s ‘The Turn’
Horatian Ode
• Horatian ode is a short lyric
poem written in stanza of
two and four named after
Latin Poet ‘Horace’
• Horace’s odes are intimate
and reflective; addressed to
a friend.
• Jonathan Swift and Samuel
Johnson revived the horatian
Spirit.
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27. Alexander Pope
•His well known mock-heroic epic The Rape of the Lock
was first published in 1712
•It was based on a family quarrel between the Petres and
Fermors when the 7th Lord Petre cut off a lock of miss
Arabella Fermor’s hair
•He founded literary club “Scriblerus Club” along with
Jonathan Swift, John Gay, John Arbuthnot and Thomas
Parnell
•He translated Homer’s The Iliad (1720) and The Odyssey
Dr Samuel Johnson
•He translated Pope’s Messiah in Latin,
Father Jeronumo Lobo’s Account of
Abyssinia
•His major poem ‘London’- Imitation of
the Third Satire of Juvenal
Robert Burns
•His first published work of poetry was
“Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect”
in 1786. This is also known as Burn’s
Kilmarnock volume
•Kilmarnock volume was a mixture of
several scots poems such as The Twa
Dogs, Scotch Drink, The Holy Fair etc
•His other poem “Tam O’s Shelter”
depicted Tam’s escape from witches
based on folk legend
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28. 28
• The German Poet Friedrich Schegel is given credit for using the term ‘romantic’ to
describe literature for the first time
•Poetry was the dominant Genre in Romantic Age
•The Romantic Poets such as William Wordsworth and Coleridge turned to the nature and
recorded it’s beauty
•The poet of this age preferred poetry that spoke of personal experiences in simple
language
29. William Blake
• He was the first generation Romantic Poet
• The first generation writings were inspired by the Battle of Bastille and
the French Revolution
• Blake’s Song of Innocence consisting of 19 poems was first published in
1789
• This was followed by Song of Experience in 1794 containing 26 poems
• According to Blake, these songs showed ‘The Two Contrary States of
the Human Soul”
• The innocent world of childhood is juxtaposed against an adult world
of corruption
• Blake’s prophetic prose poem ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’ was
begun in1790 and it’s title is an ironic reference to Swedenborg’s
theological work, Heaven and Hell
Lord Byron
• He was the second generation Romantic Poet
• The Second generation writings started after the end of the war
and the poets of this generation died at very young age
• Byron’s love for his cousin Mary Chaworth found expression in
several poems, ‘Hills of Annesley’ and ‘The Adieu’
• His first collection of poetry ‘Hours of Idleness’ appeared in 1807
and it was attacked by Henry Brougham in the Edinburgh Review.
• Byron replied to it with his publication ‘English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers’
• His poetic travelogue of pictureque land ‘Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage’
29
30. 30
• The Victorian poetry witnessed varied forms like realism, pessimism,
morality, sentimentality, humor, a sense of responsibility, dramatic
monologue, advancement of science
•It can be divided into high Victorian Poetry and the Pre-Raphaelite
Poetry
•Tennyson, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold and DG Rossetti were a
few important poet of the age
31. That’s my Last Duchess painted on the
wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Fr Pandolf’s
hands
Worked busily a day and there she
stands.
Will’t please you sit and look at her? I
said
• Robert Browning was considered as the master of
Dramatic monologue
• His most famous Dramatic Monologue poems ‘My
Last Duchess’ and ‘Porphyria’s Lover
• In ‘My Last Duchess’ the Duke is negotiating for a
second wife. Even though it is the Duke who is
talking about his last wife and revealed himself as
an emotionally cold, calculating, materialistic and
haughty man
• In ‘Porphyria’a Lover’, the speaker describes the
act of murdering the woman he loved and the
speaker reveals himself as a jealous, possesive and
psychopath lover
31
32. The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the
depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were
seven
• He was the Pre-Raphaelite Poet
• His most well known poem is ‘The Blessed
Damozel’
• It narrates the story of a young woman, who
dies unexpectedly at a very young age. She
longs for the love of her Earthly Companion
• The poem unites the physical and the
spiritual, and the illustrates Rossetti’s belief
in human love beingone of life’s greatest
values
32
33. 33
•Modernist Poetry commenced with the appearance of the imagists
besides maintaining the previous trends. WB yeast and TS Eliot were
main modernist poets
•Contemporary poetry was often written in free verse inviting reader
to interpret the poem. Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin were the
important poets of this era
•American Poetry sometimes borrowed from classical models and
sometimes from realism. The period from 1820s and 1860s is known
as the Romantic period of American Literature.
34. With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, e, being what
she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
-No Second Troy
• Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright
• He founded the Abbey Theatre in 1904
• His most famous work include ‘The Tower’,
‘The Winding Stair and Other Poems’, ‘Easter
1916’ and ‘The Second Coming’
• The most significant influence on Yeats’ life
and Poetry was a beautiful woman ‘Maud
Gonne’
• He describes Maud Gonne’s beauty as an
exceptional and destructive, similar to Helen
of Troy
34
35. Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though Wise men at their end knoew dark is
right,
Because their words had forked no lightning
They
Do not go gentle into that good night
• His first collection of poems was published in
1934
• His most famous poem ‘Do not go Gentle
into that Good Night’ was published in 1952
• His other poems: 18 poems, Twenty Five
Poems, Our Eunuch dreams, I see the boys
of summer
35
36. I am silver and exact, I have no
preconceptions
Whatever I see I swallow
immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or
dislike,
I am not Cruel, only truthful
The eye of a little God, four
cornered.
-Mirror
• Plath got name and fame as a professional
poet and writer
• Following a long struggle with depression
and a marital separation, she committed
suicide on 11th February 1963
• She is famous for her two collections, ‘The
Colossus and other poems’ and ‘Ariel’
• She became the first poet to win Pulitzer
Prize after death for the collected poems
36
37. Conclusion
Therefore Poetry is a form of writing that uses not only words, but also form, patterns of
sound, imagery and figurative language to convey the message.
The theme differs according to different ages and their social, political and religious
background.
