Literary Genres
Poetic Genres
A circular walking bookshelf, part of the Archive Series Collection
designed by Barcelona born architect David Garcia (1970). The
collection was showcased at the Royal Danish Art Academy Fall
2005
You can also “lie / In vacant or in pensive mood” on or
in it.
(Who is the quotation by?)
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.”
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 16th century.
Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom
Furniss and Sara Mills: Ways of Reading. 3rd Edition.
London and New York: Routledge, 2007
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’.)”
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."
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 and 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.
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.)"
J. A. Cuddon: Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary
Theory, 4th ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1999, p 342)
Genre is a French term for a kind, a literary type or
class. The major Classical genres were: epic, tragedy,
lyric, comedy and satire, to which would now be added
novel and short story. From the Renaissance and until
well on into the 18th century the genres were carefully
distinguished and writers were expected to follow the
rules prescribed for them.
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.
Wikipedia definition of
Literary genres
A literary genre is a category of literary composition.
Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone,
content, or even (as in the case of fiction) length.
Genre should not be confused with age category, by
which literature may be classified as either adult,
young-adult or children's. They also must not be
confused with format, such as graphic novel or picture
book. The distinctions between genres and categories
are flexible and loosely defined, often with subgroups.
Wikipedia, cont.
The most general genres in literature are (in loose
chronological order) epic, tragedy, comedy, novel,
short story, and creative nonfiction. They can all be in
the genres prose or poetry, which shows best how
loosely genres are defined. Additionally, a genre such
as satire, allegory or pastoral might appear in any of
the above, not only as a sub-genre, but as a mixture of
genres. Finally, they are defined by the general cultural
movement of the historical period in which they were
composed.
Wikipedia, cont.
Sub-genres
Genres are often divided into sub-genres. Literature,
for instance, is divided into three basic kinds of
literature, the classic genres of Ancient Greece, poetry,
drama, and prose. Poetry may then be subdivided into
epic, lyric, and dramatic. Subdivisions of drama
include foremost comedy and tragedy, while e.g.
comedy itself has sub-genres, including farce, comedy
of manners, burlesque, satire and so on.
Wikipedia, cont.
Dramatic poetry, instance, might include comedy,
tragedy, melodrama, and mixtures like
tragicomedy. This parsing into sub-genres can
continue: "comedy" has its own genres, including, for
example, comedy of manners, sentimental comedy,
burlesque comedy, and satirical comedy.
Creative nonfiction can cross many genres but is
typically expressed in essays, memoir, and other
forms that may or may not be narrative but share the
characteristics of being fact-based, artistically
rendered prose.
Wikipedia, cont.
Often, the criteria used to divide up works into genres
are not consistent, and may change constantly, and be
subject of argument, change and challenge by both
authors and critics.
Genres may easily be confused with literary
techniques, but, though only loosely defined, they are
not the same; examples are parody, frame story,
constrained writing, stream of consciousness.
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
or
Genre
Genre
Subgenre
Subgenre
Sub-subgenre
Literary Kinds or Genres
Poetry
Kind
Drama
Genre
(e.g.)
Elegy Ode Epistle etc. Tragedy Comedy
Morality Miracle etc.
Funeral /
Pastoral
Sub-genre
(e.g.)
Revenge /
Domestic
Fiction
Novel Short story
Romance etc.
Picaresque /
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, 4th 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
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 18th
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 voice or 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 are art song (16th and 17th century English
madrigals), folk songs (Over the Hills and Far Away),
popular songs (Hey Jude by Lennon McCartney).
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.
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.
Folk Song
Here is a folksong from Yorkshire.
The traditional term for folk text is “traditional”.
Country Life
was recorded by the folk group Watersons
from the city of Hull.
(For Pence and Spicy Ale, 1975)
Country Life (Traditional)
I like to rise when the sun she rises,
Early in the morning
And I like to hear them small birds singing,
Merrily upon their layland
And hurrah for the life of a country boy,
And to ramble in the new mowed hay.
In spring we sow at the harvest mow
And that is how the seasons round they go
But of all the times choose I may
I'd be rambling through the new mowed hay.
Country Life, cont.
I like to rise when the sun she rises,
Early in the morning
And I like to hear them small birds singing,
Merrily upon their layland
And hurrah for the life of a country boy,
And to ramble in the new mowed hay.
In winter when the sky is gray
We hedge and ditch our times away,
But in summer when the sun shines gay,
We go ramblin' through the new mowed hay.
I like to rise etc.
The Watersons
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
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
McCartney and Harrison, respectively.
The Lennon-McCartney composition shows great
thematic similarity to Thomas Campion’s air.
Harrison’s song seems to take up the theme of Thomas
Weelkes’s madrigal.
John Lennon / Paul McCartney
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
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 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 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 do do
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes
Sun, 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 do do
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right
Here comes the sun, do do do do
Here comes the sun
It's all right
It's all right
An edition of the Beatles lyrics and the Faber & Faber
collection of Paul McCartney 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 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.
However, this said, we can distinguish 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 6oo BC) and Alcaeus (c.
620 BC-6th 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)
Abraham Cowley
Portrait by Sir Peter Lely
John Dryden (1631-1700)
Portrait by John Michael Wright
St. Cecilia at the Organ
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
(1771-183.)
Portrait by Pieter van Dyke
William Wordsworth
(1770-1850)
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 and 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
(1795-1821)
Portrait by William Hilton
P. B. Shelley
(1792-1822)
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 are 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 15th 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
(1865-1938)
W. H. Auden
(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 (3rd c. BC), Moschus (2nd c. BC) and Bion
(2nd 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
MacNeice’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
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
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
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
Portrait by Joshua Reynolds
George Crabbe
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 19th Day of the
Month of October, A.D. 1745, in
the 78th Year of his Age.
This is a poetic translation from 1933
by William Butler Yeats
Swift’s Epitaph
SWIFT has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveller; he
Served human liberty.
And this is Yeats’s own epitaph carved on his
tombstone in Sligo
Ben Bulben is a rock formation in County
Sligo, Ireland
Yeats’s epitaph is in Part VI of his poem Under
Ben Bulben
Under bare Ben Bulben's head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid,
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient Cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase,
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
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 17th c. in England by Ben Jonson,
John Donne, John Dryden, and in the 18th 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 you 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
Another portrait of Alexander Pope
from 1722 by Sir Godfrey Knelle