Unseen Poetry Timeline and Tactics

Form Checklist:

What type of Poem is it?
Traditional or non-traditional form

Borrows from any previous time periods?

Structure Checklist:

Stanzas? - How does the content in each stanza change

Meter? - Are there any points where the meter shifts

Rhythm? - Is it clear?

Rhyme? - Does it change or is it set?

Language Checklist :

Imagery?

Tone - Saterical? Melancholy? Romantic?

Style - In/Formal? Matter of Fact?

Semantic Field -

Voice Checklist:

• How many voices?

• 1st Person/3rd Person?

• How many presences?

Context checklist:

Date, writer, similar poems and topics.

What themes?

Medieval Poetry Conventions (Main Ideas, Themes, Purpose and Devices

• Courtly Love

  Ideas: Idealized and chivalric love, often featuring unattainable or forbidden love between a knight and a noble lady.

• Themes: Longing, devotion & Chivalry

• Purpose: Entertainment, Idealization, lesson on moral virtue, commentary on constraint of feudal society that cause much forbidden or unrequited love.

• Devices:

  • The notion of the poet being a humble servant of the beloved

  • Symbolism: Rose, Nightingale, Castle or Courtly Setting

  • Lyrical Alliteration to make it more song-like as a lot of poetry was sung

Medieval Poets

Geoffrey Chaucer - Courtly Love Poetry, loss and longing. His earlier works, such as "The Book of the Duchess" and "The Parliament of Fowls,"

Chrétien de Troyes - founding fathers of Arthurian romance literature

William Langland -

Renaissance Poetry Conventions (Main Ideas, Themes, Purpose and Devices

Renaissance -

Main Idea:

Themes: Idealized, Unrequited, Nature of Love itself and it’s paradoxical nature, Passion/Desire, Salvation

Purpose:

• Petrarchan Sonnet: For an unattainable or idealized beloved - following courtly love conventions

• Shakespearean Sonnet:

  • ‘Fair Youth’ Love is depicted as pure, noble, and transcendent

  • 127 ‘Dark Lady’is depicted tumult, passion, and conflict.

• Spenserian Sonnet - Introduced by Edmund Spenser and a freer form that allowed for more

Devices:

• CONCEITS: Conceits are elaborate and extended metaphors or analogies used in poetry - two things that are not typically associated with each other.

• The use of iambic pentameter to imitate the sound of a heartbeat

• Couplets - convey succinct ideas

• Same use of Alliteration for lyrical feel

• Volta - (Shkspr) Usually in his Sonnets at start of Q3

Renaissance Poets

William Shakespeare

Edmund Spenser - celebrates the virtues of chivalry, honor, and the English monarchy.

John Donne - Metaphysical + conceits, intellectual rigor, wit.

Christopher Marlowe -

1600s

Cavaliers -Metaphyscial

1700s

1700s - 1800s

Romanticism - Nature, Religion, Sublime & Love

1840s - 1900s

Victorian - Sensory Imagery

Decadent Movement - immoral

Charlotte Mew

War Poetry

Modernism

Experimentation, Free Verse, Subverting of the form

T.S.Elliot

Ezra Pound

1945

Post Modernism - Simon Armitage, Ted Hughs, Carol Ann Duffy, Sylvia Plath, Robert Burns