Features and Functions of Poetry(Slides are based on Prof. Dr. Cecile

Sandten’s previous lectures, modified accordingly by Pavan Malreddy)

• poetry is boring• poetry is difficult• poetry is obscure• poetry is outdated• poetry is always about love• poetry is always serious• poets are either mad or male• female poets are either feminist or

lesbians

A little “who is who” in Anglo-American Poetry

• Welsh poet, orator and Anglican priest

• father of English deism

The Conceit

• The conceit operates throughout the poem either through metaphor of symbolism.

A Valediction

As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say

The breath goes now, and some say, No;

• Romanticism

• poet, painter & printmaker

• visionary

• idiosyncratic views; excentricity

• Romanticism

• Poet Laureate (1843)

• nature poetry

• Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings

• Victorianism

• poet & playwright

• dramatic verse, dramtic monologue

• Modernism

• Imagist Movement

• American poet, critic & intellectual

• Post-modernism• Light Verse• unconventional American poet• comic poetry; puns, irony in language & rhyme

The Hippopotamus Behold the hippopotamus!We laugh at how he looks to us,And yet in moments dank and grim,I wonder how we look to him.

Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus!We really look all right to us,As you no doubt delight the eyeOf other hippopotami.

Ogden Nash

Nash’s poem exemplifies Some of the basic characteristics of the genre:

• relative brevity• tendendy towards a very selective and limited treatment

of the chosen theme (think of all the other things he could have said about a hippopotamus!)

• subjective perspective of the speaker (“lyric persona”)• rhyme scheme (rhyming couplets) and an almost regular

metre• division into stanzas• lack of plot• repeated use of exclamations and other deviations from

everyday language= enhanced level of artistry

poetry

• Narrative Poetry• tells a story with a clearly developed plot

and characters in a rhymed form• usually long and often as complex as

novels: example: epic long poem, romance, mock epic, ballad

• Lyric Poetry Tells no story: event, image, idea.

poetry vs. narrative fictionMock epic

The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope

Ballad

Refrain at the end of a stanza

(late 18th century, comedy, tragedy, folk, communal, (Robert Burns , 1759-1796; Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832).

Elegy

(funeral, mourning, solitude, melancholy: Thomas Gray (1716-1771)

Ode

(in praise of, Romantic, Wordsworth, Keats)

Sonnet

a little song, three stanzas of four lines (problem), and a couplet (resolve)

Dramatic monologue

‘My Last Duchess’ by Robert Browning,

and most occasional poetry

(verse, lyric and free)

How poetry works/functions

Functions of Poetry/Foregrounding

Paradigmatic - selection

Syntagmatic – combination

Artificality, self-reference, self-reflecive (referential function to reality is reduced and minimized)

Equivalence/selection is determined by linguistic, contiguity, lexical, rhythemic, and ofen visual dimensions.

Analysing poetry – concepts and key terms

1. lexical-thematic dimension: diction, rhetorical figures, theme

2. visual dimension: stanzas, concrete poetry

3. rhythmic-acoustic dimension: rhyme and metre, onomatopoeia, etc.

Lexical• Diction – slection of words, style, vocabulary• Lyric persona, spekar, or poet himselftenor: the person, object or idea (“my love”)vehicle: object of comparison (“red, red rose)

Rhetorical Figures• Metaphor (My love is a red red rose, Robert

Burns)• Similie (My love is like a red red rose)• Symbols/Symbolism (equates emotion, feeling)

Lexical- 2

• Metonym We have always remained loyal to the crown',

The pen is mightier than the sword‘• (Robert Frosts’ Out and Out)

• Imagism (generally represents an event or object)

In A Station of the Metro (Ezra Pound)

The apparation of these faces in the crowd

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun

Pour away the Ocean and sweep the wood.

2. visual dimension: stanzas, concrete poetry George Herbert “Easter Wings” (1633)

The AltarA broken ALTAR, Lord thy servant rears,Made of a heart, and cemented with tears:

Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;No workmans tool hath touch'd the same

A HEART aloneIs such a stone,As nothing but

Thy pow'r doth cut.Wherefore each part

Of my hard heartMeets in this frame,To praise thy Name:

That if I chance to hold my peace,These stones to praise thee may not cease.

O let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,And sanctifie this ALTAR to be thine.

l(a

leaffall

s)onel

iness