Unseen Poetry Flashcards
Renaissance era
14th century
1350 - 1599
- Shakespeare/Edmund Spenser/Thomas Wyatt
Features of Renaissance poetry
- many written in iambs
- themes from classical mythology
- rebirth of classic literature (old ideas - new way)
- movement away from Latin prose
- elegy (poem/song in elegiac couplets, written in honour of someone deceased)
- satire (criticising people/ideas in humorous way, political point)
- ode (short lyrical poem praises idea, individual, event)
- sonnet (Italian word ‘sonetto’ meaning little song)
Renaissance Context
- tied prosperous families together
- women & children - possessions/collateral
- Printing Press 1440s
- everyone familiar with the Bible
- interest in death/judgement/heaven & hell
Metaphysical era
17th century
Features of Metaphysical poetry
- characterised by impatience
- conventional forms of expression
- adoption of startling innovations
- unexpected/unusual metaphors
- tendencies to write about deep philosophical issues
- witty
- focus on lyrical quality of language, rather than sticking with metre, rhythm and rhyme
Carpe Diem poetry
17th century - preoccupied with the passage of time and unpredictability of death
Medieval poetry
12th century - 14th century
- Geoffrey Chaucer/Dante Alighieri
Features of Medieval poetry
- religious
- use of poetry as lyrics (setting it to music) and progression into bawdiness
- celebration of life/nature/sexuality
- lyric poetry (private expression of emotion by an individual speaker)
- reverdie (French poetic genre - celebrates arrival of spring - ‘re-greening’ - poet encounter spring symbolised by a beautiful woman)
Enlightenment and Restoration era
1650 - 1780
- John Milton/ Andrew Marvell/Anne Finch
Features of Enlightenment and Restoration poetry
- more humanist/neo classical
- allegory (narrative nearly all elements, represents symbols for something else)
- sonnet
- lyric
- abundance of rhyming couplets
Enlightenment and Restoration Context
- age of reason
- new ideas, progress
- scientific advances more important than church teachings
- critical of ethics, politics and social norms
Romanticism era
1770-1850
- Lord Byron, Percy Shelly, William Wordsworth
Features of Romanticism poetry
- concerned with the spectrum and intensity of human emotions
- imagination over reason, emotions over logic and intuition over science.
- early philosophical thoughts of empiricism (the idea that our knowledge comes primarily from our feeling, human experience & rationally less significant)
- epic (lengthy narrative poems concerning serious subject of heroic deeds/events)
- blank verse (doesn’t rhyme, written in iambic pentameter)
- ballad (narrative poem originally set to music)
Romanticism Context
- revolt established order
- ‘Heroes’ now complex & nuanced & grotesque, focus on fallibility of human nature.
Victorian era
1837-1901
- Christina Rossetti, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Features of Victorian poetry
- charge and upheaval
- blank verse
- lyric
- sonnet
Victorian Context
- widening gap between rich and the poor meant increase in charitable acts and legislation
- philosophy of female emancipation became popular
- industrial vibes
Modernism era
1910-1965
- TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, WH Auden
Features of Modernism poetry
- rise of stream of consciousness writing
- symbolism
- unreliable narrators
- time is non-linear and fragmented
- free verse
- modern epic
- villanelle (follows strict form consisting of five tercets followed by one quatrain)
Modernism Context
- horrors of WW1 & WW2 created introspective and cynical literature
- visceral reaction against Victorian culture and aesthetics
- metropolitan & elitist/highbrow movement
- more about grief and death over the men who died in the war
Postmodernism era
1960-2000
- Robert Lowell, Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes
Features of Postmodernism poetry
- total freedom & creativity
- fragmentation
- paradox
- symbolism
- multiple narrators
- intertextuality
- pastiche
- free verse
- confessional (person, first person narrative, often reflective of poet’s life)
- satire
Postmodernism Context
- encountered a lot in media
- technology advancing
- globalisation
Contemporary era
2000-now
- Sarah Howe, Claudia Rankine, Alice Oswald
Features of Contemporary poetry
- rap
- music
- song-writing
- spoken word poetry
- free verse very popular
Contemporary Context
- conscious of poetry outside the West
- lines of ‘genre’ are becoming blurred
Metaphor
Rhyme
Simile
Juxtaposition
Hyperbole
Alliteration/assonance
Repetition
Litotes
Onomatopoeia
Personification
How to structure essay
intro
p1 - characterisation
p2 - narration
p3 - setting
or
p1 - theme
p2 - theme
p3 - structure
