Poetic Genres

Question 1

Features of a ballad

Answer 1

Uses refrains to aid with memory
Emphasises the story rather than the author
Simple language
Political and social radicalism
Content ranging between folklore, ghost stories, moral tales, love stories, military exploits and political commentary.

Question 2

Structure of a ballad

Answer 2

Quatrains
Lines 1 and 3 have 4 stresses each (tetrameter)
Lines 2 and 3 rhyme and have three stresses each (trimeter)

Question 3

Features of a lyric

Answer 3

Usually written in the first person
Conventionally capture a single moment in time
Speaker is often said to be ‘overtaken’ by a particular emotion
Many use song like metre

Question 4

Structure of a Petrarchan sonnet

Answer 4

Octave - abba abba

Volta

Sestet - cdcdcd or cdecde

Iambic pentameter

Question 5

Structure of a Shakespearean sonnet

Answer 5

Quatrain - abab
Quatrain - cdcd
Quatrain - efef

Volta

Couplet - gg

Iambic pentameter

Question 6

Conventions of love poetry (5)

Answer 6

Romance: A tale in verse that details the chivalric world of knights and ladies, often in a supernatural setting
Courtly love: a code of address and behaviour for aristocratic lovers in mediaeval lyric and romance
Blazon: a poem celebrating parts of a beloved’s body
Aubade: a poem set at dawn
Epithalamion: a wedding poem

Question 7

Features of dramatic monologue (5)

Answer 7

Tend to be regular poems rather than free verse, but can be any kind of structure
Direct speech of a character uttered at a crucial moment
Representation of the natural rhythms of speech (using colloquilaisms, exclamations, pauses, dashes and ellipses) within a formal poetic frame
A listener who is addressed within the poem, but their presence is only made evident to the reader from clues and gestures given by the speaker
An opening in mid-speech, creating immediacy, directness and the sense that the reader is overhearing a conversation

Question 8

Seven signals that a poem is free verse

Answer 8

Line lengths vary
Line breaks occur according to the content under consideration rather than metre or rhyme
Where patterns do occur they use rhetorical schemes rather than metre or rhyme
The poetry is conscious of its arrangement on the page: the space around a poem is as important as the text itself
Rhythm and some sound patterning (usually assonance, consonance and alliteration) provide coherence within individual lines, but are not replicated throughout the poem
Rhyme is absent
The ‘natural’ stress patterns of speech are maintained as much as possible

Question 9

Features of an elegy

Answer 9

Calls to a muse, figures from classical myth, or previous famous elegists.
The natural world reflects the elegists grief
Nymphs or religious deities may be accused of neglecting or failing to care for the deceased
Processions of mourners, lists of flowers or decking the hearse
The elegist is often ‘diverted’ from speaking of the dead and reflects on other pressing issues of the day
Final consolation