Faculty of Philosophy

English Department
Introduction to the Anglophone Literary Theory
Professor: Radoje Šoškić, PhD

Lecture 3f – Week 4
Thinking Theoretically – Poetry

Poetry is one of the oldest genres in literary

history. Its earliest examples go back to ancient Greek
literature. In spite of this long tradition, it is
harder to define than any other genre. Poetry is
closely related to the term “lyric,” which derives
etymologically from the Greek musical instrument “lyra”
(“lyre” or “harp”) and points to an origin in the
sphere of music. In classical antiquity as well as in
the Middle Ages, minstrels recited poetry, accompanied
by the lyre or other musical instruments. The term
“poetry,” however, goes back to the Greek word “poieo”
(“to make,” “to produce”), indicating that the poet is
the person who “makes” verse. Although etymology sheds
light on some of the aspects of the lyric and the
poetic, it cannot offer a satisfactory explanation of
the phenomenon as such.
The genre of poetry is often subdivided into the
two major categories of narrative and lyric poetry.
Narrative poetry includes genres such as the epic long
poem, the romance, and the ballad, which tell stories
with clearly developed, structured plots. The shorter
lyric poetry, the focus of the following comments, is
mainly concerned with one event, impression, or idea.
 Some of the precursors of modern poetry can be
found in Old English riddles and charms. These cultic
and magic texts seem strange today, but were common in
that period.
In the Old English period, ancient forms of poetry
such as the elegy, which laments the death of a dear
person, were newly adapted. Thomas Gray’s (1716–71)
“Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard” (1751) or Walt
Whitman’s (1819–92) “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard
Bloom’d” (1865–66) are examples from later periods. The
ode, which was also known in classical antiquity, was
revived in the Renaissance and used in the subsequent
literary periods.
As John Keats’s (1795–1821) “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
(1820) demonstrates, it consists of several stanzas
with a serious, mostly classical theme. However, the
most important English literary form with a consistent
rhyming pattern is the sonnet, which, from the
Renaissance onward, has been used in poetry primarily
to deal with the theme of “worldly love”.
Although some elements discussed in the chapter on
fiction can also be applied to the analysis of poetry,
there are, of course, idiosyncratic features associated
with the genre of poetry in particular. The following
elements are not restricted to poetry alone, but
nevertheless stand at the center of attention in
analyses of this genre. An important and controversial
term is “image” or imagery, which is pertinent to a
number of divergent issues under discussion. The word
itself can be traced back to the Latin “imago”
(“picture”) and refers to a predominantly visual
component of a text which can, however, also include
other sensory impressions. Imagery is often regarded as
the most common manifestation of the “concrete”
character of poetry. Even if an abstract theme is at
the center of the poem, the poet still uses concrete
imagery in order to make it more accessible. The
concrete character of poetic language can be achieved
on lexical-thematic, visual, and rhythmic-acoustic
levels which reflect the most important elements in
poetry:

lexical-thematic
dimension
diction
rhetorical figures
theme

visual
dimensi rhythmic-
on acoustic
dimension
stanza
rhyme and
s
meter
concret
onomatopoe
e
ia
poetry

a)
Lexical-thematic dimension

The issue of the narrator, which has been dealt

with in the context of point of view and characters in
the treatment of fiction, is usually referred to in
poetry with the terms “voice” or “speaker.” As poetry
is often regarded as a medium for the expression of
subjective, personal events—an assumption which does
not always correspond to the facts —the issue of the
speaker is central to the analysis of poems. The
question whether the speaker and the author are one and
the same person is, of course, also relevant to
fiction. In the novel and the short story, however, a
distinctive use of point of view techniques easily
creates a distance between the narrator and the author.
In longer poetic forms, the narrative situation can
be as complex as that of the novel or the short story.
A good example is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772–1834)
ballad “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”(1798). Here, a
frame narrative in a figural narrative situation
relates an incident in which a wedding guest is
addressed by an uncanny mariner. “It is an ancyent
Mariner,/And he stoppeth one of three” (1–2). The
Mariner then recounts his adventures in a detailed
first-person narration: “Listen, Stranger! Storm and
Wind,/A Wind and Tempest strong!/For days and weeks it
play’d us freaks” (45–47). By placing the story of the
“Mariner” within a frame narrative, Coleridge presents
the plot of the ballad on two levels (frame narrative
and actual plot) as well as in two narrative situations
(figural and firstperson narration). The ballad assumes
a position between the epic long forms and the lyric
short forms. In spite of a well-developed plot and
complex narrative perspective the ballad is, however,
surpassed by the epic and the romance in size and
complexity.
In contrast to philosophical texts, which remain
abstract in their expression, poetry tries to convey
themes in a concrete language of images. Images and
concrete objects often serve the additional function of
symbols if they refer to a meaning beyond the material
object. A cross in Christian thinking is, for example,
much more than two crossed wooden bars. The poet can
either use a commonly known, conventional symbol or
create his own private symbol which develops its
symbolic function in its particular context. The
albatross in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner” (1798), for example, is a private
symbol. In the course of the poem, the murdered bird
becomes a symbol of natural order which has been
destroyed by man. It is only in the context of
Coleridge’s ballad that the albatross takes on this
far-reaching symbolic meaning Further stylistic
features include rhetorical figures, or figures of
speech. These classified stylistic forms are
characterized by their “nonliteral” meanings.
Rhetorical handbooks distinguish more than two hundred
different figures, of which simile and metaphor are
those most commonly used in poetry. A simile is a
comparison between two different things which are
connected by “like,” “than,” “as,” or “compare,” as in
Robert Burns’ (1759–96) poem “A Red, Red Rose” (1796):
Oh, my love is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
My love is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune. […]

The equation of one thing with another without actual

comparison is called metaphor. If Burns said “My love
is a red, red rose,” instead of “Oh, my love is like a
red, red rose,” the simile would be transformed into a
metaphor. In his poem “Auguries of Innocence” (c.
1803), William Blake (1757–1827) uses a different
metaphor in each stanza:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
 And eternity in an hour.

A grain of sand is used as a metaphor for the world, a

flower for the sky, and so on. In the metaphor and in
the simile, two elements are juxtaposed: the tenor (the
person, object, or idea) to which the vehicle (or
image) is equated or compared. In “Oh, my love is like
a red, red rose,” “my love” functions as the tenor and
“red rose” as the vehicle. Rhetorical figures are
widely used in poetry because they produce a “non-
literal” meaning and reduce abstract or complex tenors
to concrete vehicles, which again enhances the concrete
character poetry ought to achieve.

b)
Visual dimension

The multitude of different stanzas in English

poetry can be reduced to a few basic forms. Most poems
are composed of couplets (two lines), tercets (three
lines) or quatrains (four lines). The sonnet is an
example of the combination of different stanzas.
According to the rhyming scheme and the kind of
stanzas, one can distinguish between Shakespearean,
Spenserian, and Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnets. In the
Renaissance, sonnet cycles—consisting of a number of
thematically related poems—became popular as a result
of Italian influence. These cycles enabled poets to
deal with certain topics in greater detail while
working within the sonnet form. The English or
Shakespearean sonnet, which holds a privileged position
in the English tradition, deserves a more detailed
explanation. It consists of three quatrains and one
couplet. The fourteen lines are in iambic pentameter
and follow the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg.