93-697: The Commonwealth Poetry Prize was an annual poetry prize established in 1972, for a first published book of English poetry from a country other than the United Kingdom . It was initially administered jointly by the Commonwealth Institute and the National Book League . In 1985 the prize received sponsorship from British Airways . £11,000 prize money was provided for the prize, which was advertized as "the world's most comprehensive award for poetry". Poems by 35 winners of
186-468: A dialect continuum that includes standard French and its closest autochthonous relatives historically spoken in the northern half of France , southern Belgium , and the Channel Islands . They belong to the larger category of Gallo-Romance languages , which also include the historical languages of east-central France and western Switzerland , southern France , portions of northern Italy ,
279-420: A considerable influence on many of the poets of the 1940s. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a mid-19th century arts movement dedicated to the reform of what they considered the sloppy Mannerist painting of the day. Although primarily concerned with the visual arts, a member of the inner circle, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a poet of some ability, whilst his sister Christina Rossetti is generally considered
372-638: A greater poet, whose contribution to Victorian Poetry is of a standard equal to that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Rossettis' poetry shares many of the concerns of the Pre-Raphaelite movement: an interest in Medieval models, an almost obsessive attention to visual detail and an occasional tendency to lapse into whimsy. Langues d%27o%C3%AFl The langues d'oïl ( / d ɔɪ ( l )/ doy(l) , US also / d ɔː ˈ iː l / daw- EEL , French: [lɑ̃ɡ dɔjl] ) are
465-674: A large number of extant anonymous songs from the period. Perhaps the greatest of all the songwriters was Thomas Campion . Campion is also notable because of his experiments with metres based on counting syllables rather than stresses. These quantitative metres were based on classical models and should be viewed as part of the wider Renaissance revival of Greek and Roman artistic methods. The songs were generally printed either in miscellanies or anthologies such as Richard Tottel 's 1557 Songs and Sonnets or in songbooks that included printed music to enable performance. These performances formed an integral part of both public and private entertainment. By
558-585: A later version), expressing the view that British society was falling apart morally, culturally, and intellectually. The 18th century is sometimes called the Augustan age, and contemporary admiration for the classical world extended to the poetry of the time. Not only did the poets aim for a polished high style in emulation of the Roman ideal, they also translated and imitated Greek and Latin verse resulting in measured rationalised elegant verse. Dryden translated all
651-443: A monastery at Whitby . This is generally taken as marking the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry . Much of the poetry of the period is difficult to date, or even to arrange chronologically; for example, estimates for the date of the great epic Beowulf range from A.D. 608 right through to A.D. 1000, and there has never been anything even approaching a consensus. It is possible to identify certain key moments, however. The Dream of
744-493: A note of almost savage satire, which may have owed something to the Gaelic bards , while Douglas' Eneados , a translation into Middle Scots of Virgil's Aeneid , was the first complete translation of any major work of classical antiquity into an English or Anglic language . The Renaissance period and the renaissance literature were slow in coming to England, with the generally accepted start date being around 1509. It
837-544: A platform for literary writing. Apart from French, an official language in many countries (see list ), the Oïl languages have enjoyed little status in recent times. Currently Walloon, Lorrain (under the local name of Gaumais ), and Champenois have the status of regional languages of Wallonia . The Norman languages of the Channel Islands enjoy a certain status under the governments of their Bailiwicks and within
930-523: A poet's body of work (such as Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" and "Christabel"). This argument has, however, been challenged in Zachary Leader 's study Revision and Romantic Authorship (1996). Additionally, the Romantic movement marked a shift in the use of language. Attempting to express the "language of the common man", Wordsworth and his fellow Romantic poets focused on employing poetic language for
1023-670: A same language" and "French as the common langue d'oïl" appear in a text of Roger Bacon , Opus maius , who wrote in Medieval Latin but translated thus: " Indeed, idioms of a same language vary amongst people, as it occurs in the French language which varies in an idiomatic manner amongst the French, Picards , Normans and Burgundians . And terms right to the Picards horrify the Burgundians as much as their closer neighbours
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#17327734098141116-464: A single homogeneous language but to mutually intelligible linguistic varieties . In those times, spoken languages in Western Europe were not codified (except Latin and Medieval Latin), the region's population was considerably lower than today, and population centers were more isolated from each other. As a result, mutually intelligible linguistic varieties were referred to as one language. In
1209-410: A wider audience, countering the mimetic, tightly constrained Neo-Classic poems (although it's important to note that the poet wrote first and foremost for his/her own creative expression). In Shelley's " Defense of Poetry ", he contends that poets are the "creators of language" and that the poet's job is to refresh language for their society. The Romantics were not the only poets of note at this time. In
1302-410: Is French ( oïl was pronounced [o.il] or [o.i] , which has become [wi] , in modern French oui ). There are three uses of the term oïl : In the singular, langue d'oïl refers to the mutually intelligible linguistic variants of lingua romana spoken since the 9th century in northern France and southern Belgium ( Wallonia ), since the 10th century in the Channel Islands , and between
1395-588: Is also generally accepted that the English Renaissance extended until the Restoration in 1660. However, a number of factors had prepared the way for the introduction of the new learning long before this start date. A number of medieval poets had, as already noted, shown an interest in the ideas of Aristotle and the writings of European Renaissance precursors such as Dante. The introduction of movable-block printing by Caxton in 1474 provided
1488-527: Is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of free speech and freedom of the press . William Hayley 's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author", and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language". The world of fashion and scepticism that emerged encouraged the art of satire . All the major poets of the period, Samuel Butler , John Dryden , Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson , and
1581-587: Is characterized by a number of frequently overlapping developments. The introduction and adaptation of themes, models and verse forms from other European traditions and classical literature, the Elizabethan song tradition, the emergence of a courtly poetry often centred around the figure of the monarch and the growth of a verse-based drama are among the most important of these developments. A wide range of Elizabethan poets wrote songs, including Nicholas Grimald , Thomas Nashe and Robert Southwell . There are also
1674-494: Is effectively an extended hymn of praise to the queen, and Philip Sidney 's Arcadia . This courtly trend can also be seen in Spenser's Shepheardes Calender . This poem marks the introduction into an English context of the classical pastoral , a mode of poetry that assumes an aristocratic audience with a certain kind of attitude to the land and peasants. The explorations of love found in the sonnets of William Shakespeare and
1767-562: Is merely ornamental . With the Norman conquest of England, beginning in 1111 the Anglo-Saxon language rapidly diminished as a written literary language. The new aristocracy spoke predominantly Norman , and this became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. As the invaders integrated, their language and literature mingled with that of the natives: the Oïl dialect of
1860-552: Is often dated to the publication in 1798 of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads . However, Blake had been publishing since the early 1780s. Much of the focus on Blake only came about during the last century when Northrop Frye discussed his work in his book Anatomy of Criticism . Shelley is most famous for such classic anthology verse works as Ozymandias , and long visionary poems which include Prometheus Unbound . Shelley's groundbreaking poem The Masque of Anarchy calls for nonviolence in protest and political action. It
1953-484: Is perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent protest . Mahatma Gandhi 's passive resistance was influenced and inspired by Shelley's verse, and would often quote the poem to vast audiences. In poetry, the Romantic movement emphasised the creative expression of the individual and the need to find and formulate new forms of expression. The Romantics, with the partial exception of Byron, rejected
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#17327734098142046-636: Is sometimes considered pejorative, the trend today among French linguists is to refer to these languages as langues d'oïl rather than dialects . Five zones of partially mutually intelligible Oïl dialects have been proposed by Pierre Bec : Non-standard varieties: Gallo has a stronger Celtic substrate from Breton . Gallo originated from the oïl speech of people from eastern and northern regions: Anjou ; Maine ( Mayenne and Sarthe ); and Normandy ; who were in contact with Breton speakers in Upper Brittany . See Marches of Neustria Named after
2139-554: Is spoken, including the Republic of Ireland after December 1922. The earliest surviving English poetry , written in Anglo-Saxon , the direct predecessor of modern English, may have been composed as early as the 7th century. The earliest known English poem is a hymn on the creation; Bede attributes this to Cædmon ( fl. 658–680), who was, according to legend, an illiterate herdsman who produced extemporaneous poetry at
2232-480: Is standard French, in which the ancestral "oïl" has become "oui". Langue d'oïl (in the singular), Oïl dialects and Oïl languages (in the plural) designate the ancient northern Gallo-Romance languages as well as their modern-day descendants. They share many linguistic features, a prominent one being the word oïl for yes . ( Oc was and still is the southern word for yes , hence the langue d'oc or Occitan languages ). The most widely spoken modern Oïl language
2325-548: The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . The langues d'oïl were more or less influenced by the native languages of the conquering Germanic tribes , notably the Franks . This was apparent not so much in the vocabulary (which remained overwhelmingly of Latin origin) as in the phonology and syntax; the invading Franks, Burgundians and Normans became the rulers and their accents were imposed as standard on
2418-539: The Finnesburg Fragment show that it was not unique in its time. Other genres include much religious verse, from devotional works to biblical paraphrase; elegies such as The Wanderer , The Seafarer , and The Ruin (often taken to be a description of the ruins of Bath ); and numerous proverbs, riddles , and charms . With one notable exception ( Rhyming Poem ), Anglo-Saxon poetry depends on alliterative verse for its structure and any rhyme included
2511-574: The Spenser of the new age and his Idylls of the Kings can be read as a Victorian version of The Faerie Queen , that is as a poem that sets out to provide a mythic foundation to the idea of empire. The Brownings spent much of their time out of England and explored European models and matter in much of their poetry. Robert Browning's great innovation was the dramatic monologue , which he used to its full extent in his long novel in verse, The Ring and
2604-685: The Val d'Aran in Spain , and under certain acceptations those of Catalonia . Linguists divide the Romance languages of France , and especially of Medieval France , into two main geographical subgroups: the langues d'oïl to the North, and the langues d'oc in the Southern half of France. Both groups are named after the word for "yes" in their recent ancestral languages. The most common modern langue d'oïl
2697-534: The late 14th century in the ancient province of Pays de France —the then Paris region later called Île-de-France . This Francien , it is claimed, became the Medieval French language. Current linguistic thinking mostly discounts the Francien theory, although it is still often quoted in popular textbooks. The term francien was never used by those people supposed to have spoken the variant; but today
2790-608: The 11th and 14th centuries in England (the Anglo-Norman language ). Langue d'oïl , the term itself, has been used in the singular since the 12th century to denote this ancient linguistic grouping as a whole. With these qualifiers, langue d'oïl sometimes is used to mean the same as Old French (see History below). In the plural, Oïl dialects refer to the varieties of the ancient langue d'oïl . Oïl languages are those modern-day descendants that evolved separately from
2883-502: The 13th century these varieties were recognized and referred to as dialects ("idioms") of a single language, the langue d'oïl . However, since the previous centuries a common literary and juridical "interdialectary" langue d'oïl had emerged, a kind of koiné . In the late 13th century this common langue d'oïl was named French ( françois in French, lingua gallica or gallicana in Medieval Latin). Both aspects of "dialects of
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2976-495: The 16th century that we find the first occurrence of the word "Walloon" in the same linguistic sense that we use it today. By late- or post-Roman times Vulgar Latin within France had developed two distinctive terms for signifying assent ( yes ): hoc ille ("this (is) it") and hoc ("this"), which became oïl and oc , respectively. Subsequent development changed "oïl" into "oui", as in modern French. The term langue d'oïl itself
3069-562: The 18th century but began to be read again in the Victorian era. Donne's reputation was finally fully restored by the approbation of T. S. Eliot in the early 20th century. Influenced by continental Baroque , and taking as his subject matter both Christian mysticism and eroticism, Donne's metaphysical poetry uses unconventional or "unpoetic" figures, such as a compass or a mosquito, to reach surprise effects. For example, in "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", one of Donne's Songs and Sonnets ,
3162-584: The 18th century was a time of social and political turbulence, with revolutions in the United States , France , Ireland and elsewhere. In Great Britain, movement for social change and a more inclusive sharing of power was also growing. This was the backdrop against which the Romantic movement in English poetry emerged. The main poets of this movement were William Blake , William Wordsworth , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Percy Bysshe Shelley , Lord Byron , and John Keats . The birth of English Romanticism
3255-410: The 8th and 12th centuries. Walloon "had a clearly defined identity from the beginning of the thirteenth century". In any case, linguistic texts from the time do not mention the language, even though they mention others in the Oïl family, such as Picard and Lorrain. During the 15th century, scribes in the region called the language "Roman" when they needed to distinguish it. It is not until the beginning of
3348-659: The Book . Elizabeth Barrett Browning is perhaps best remembered for Sonnets from the Portuguese but her long poem Aurora Leigh is one of the classics of 19th century feminist literature. Matthew Arnold was much influenced by Wordsworth , though his poem Dover Beach is often considered a precursor of the modernist revolution. Hopkins wrote in relative obscurity and his work was not published until after his death. His unusual style (involving what he called "sprung rhythm" and heavy reliance on rhyme and alliteration) had
3441-513: The Christopher Marlowe/ George Chapman Hero and Leander are examples of this kind of work. Translations of classical poetry also became more widespread, with the versions of Ovid 's Metamorphoses by Arthur Golding (1565–67) and George Sandys (1626), and Chapman's translations of Homer 's Iliad (1611) and Odyssey (c.1615), among the outstanding examples. English Renaissance poetry after
3534-628: The Elizabethan poetry can be seen as belonging to one of three strains; the Metaphysical poets , the Cavalier poets and the school of Spenser. However, the boundaries between these three groups are not always clear and an individual poet could write in more than one manner. Shakespeare also popularized the English sonnet , which made significant changes to Petrarch 's model. A collection of 154 sonnets by Shakespeare, dealing with themes such as
3627-508: The English tongue, to civilise it, to raise its powers to those of its neighbours. Much of his literary output consists of translations and imitations of sonnets by the Italian poet Petrarch , but he also wrote sonnets of his own. Wyatt took subject matter from Petrarch's sonnets, but his rhyme schemes make a significant departure. Petrarchan sonnets start with an octave (eight lines), rhyming ABBA ABBA. A ( volta ) occurs (a dramatic turn in
3720-411: The French court who blamed him for using words of Artois . By the late 13th century the written koiné had begun to turn into a spoken and written standard language , and was named French . Since then French started to be imposed on the other Oïl dialects as well as on the territories of langue d'oc . However, the Oïl dialects and langue d'oc continued contributing to the lexis of French. In 1539
3813-478: The French language was imposed by the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts . It required Latin be replaced in judgements and official acts and deeds. The local Oïl languages had always been the language spoken in justice courts. The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts was not intended to make French a national language, merely a chancery language for law and administration. Although there were competing literary standards among
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3906-631: The French" . It is from this period though that definitions of individual Oïl languages are first found. The Picard language is first referred to by name as "langage pikart" in 1283 in the Livre Roisin . The author of the Vie du bienheureux Thomas Hélye de Biville refers to the Norman character of his writing. The Sermons poitevins of around 1250 show the Poitevin language developing as it straddled
3999-522: The Irish poet Jonathan Swift , wrote satirical verse. Their satire was often written in defence of public order and the established church and government. However, writers such as Pope used their gift for satire to create scathing works responding to their detractors or to criticise what they saw as social atrocities perpetrated by the government. Pope's The Dunciad is a satirical slaying of two of his literary adversaries (Lewis Theobald, and Colley Cibber in
4092-839: The Orders of Cluny and Cister , the many sections of the Way of St. James pilgrimage route that come from elsewhere in Europe out of the Iberian Peninsula, and the settlement in Iberia of people from the other side of the Pyrenees, arriving during and after the Reconquista . The anti-Portuguese factor of Brazilian nationalism in the 19th century led to an increased use of the French language in detriment of Portuguese, as France
4185-419: The Oïl languages faced with competition. The Third Republic sought to modernise France and established primary education where the only language recognised was French. Regional languages were discouraged, and the use of French was seen as aspirational, accelerating their decline. This was also generally the case in areas where Oïl languages were spoken. French is now the best-known of the Oïl languages. Besides
4278-452: The Oïl languages in the mediæval period, the centralisation of the French kingdom and its influence even outside its formal borders sent most of the Oïl languages into comparative obscurity for several centuries. The development of literature in this new language encouraged writers to use French rather than their own regional languages . This led to the decline of vernacular literature . It
4371-544: The Restoration period. Some of Milton's important poems were written before the Restoration (see above). His later major works include Paradise Regained , 1671, and Samson Agonistes , 1671. Milton's works reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. Writing in English, Latin, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica (1644), written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship,
4464-515: The Rood was written before circa A.D. 700, when excerpts were carved in runes on the Ruthwell Cross . Some poems on historical events, such as The Battle of Brunanburh (937) and The Battle of Maldon (991), appear to have been composed shortly after the events in question, and can be dated reasonably precisely in consequence. By and large, however, Anglo-Saxon poetry is categorised by
4557-496: The classical Latin sic, "thus", such as the Italian sì , Spanish and Catalan sí , Portuguese sim , and even French si (used when contradicting another's negative assertion). Sardinian is an exception in that its word for "yes", eja , is from neither origin. Similarly Romanian uses da for "yes", which is of Slavic origin. However, neither lingua romana nor langue d'oïl referred, at their respective time, to
4650-443: The end of the 16th century, a new generation of composers, including John Dowland , William Byrd , Orlando Gibbons , Thomas Weelkes and Thomas Morley were helping to bring the art of Elizabethan song to an extremely high musical level. Elizabethan poems and plays were often written in iambic meters, based on a metrical foot of two syllables, one unstressed and one stressed. However, much metrical experimentation took place during
4743-542: The following terms: In the 9th century, romana lingua (the term used in the Oaths of Strasbourg of 842) was the first of the Romance languages to be recognized by its speakers as a distinct language, probably because it was the most different from Latin compared with the other Romance languages (see History of the French language ). Many of the developments that are now considered typical of Walloon appeared between
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#17327734098144836-406: The former provinces of Poitou and Saintonge For the history of phonology, orthography, syntax and morphology, see History of the French language and the relevant individual Oïl language articles. Each of the Oïl languages has developed in its own way from the common ancestor, and division of the development into periods varies according to the individual histories. Modern linguistics uses
4929-404: The handling of nature, with a move away from poems about formal gardens and landscapes by urban poets and towards poems about nature as lived in. The leading exponents of this new trend include Thomas Gray , George Crabbe , Christopher Smart and Robert Burns as well as the Irish poet Oliver Goldsmith . These poets can be seen as paving the way for the Romantic movement . The last quarter of
5022-593: The important poems Milton wrote during this period are L'Allegro , 1631; Il Penseroso , 1634; Comus (a masque), 1638; and Lycidas (1638). The early 17th century saw the emergence of this group of poets who wrote in a witty, complicated style. The most famous of the Metaphysicals is probably John Donne . Others include George Herbert , Thomas Traherne , Henry Vaughan , Andrew Marvell , and Richard Crashaw . John Milton in his Comus falls into this group. The Metaphysical poets went out of favour in
5115-549: The influence of French literature , small-scale literature has survived in the other Oïl languages. Theatrical writing is most notable in Picard (which maintains a genre of vernacular marionette theatre), Poitevin and Saintongeais . Oral performance (story-telling) is a feature of Gallo , for example, while Norman and Walloon literature, especially from the early 19th century tend to focus on written texts and poetry (see, for example, Wace and Jèrriais literature ). As
5208-513: The known works of Virgil, and Pope produced versions of the two Homeric epics. Horace and Juvenal were also widely translated and imitated, Horace most famously by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester and Juvenal by Samuel Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes . A number of women poets of note emerged during the period of the Restoration, including Aphra Behn , Margaret Cavendish , Mary Chudleigh , Anne Finch , Anne Killigrew , and Katherine Philips . Nevertheless, print publication by women poets
5301-419: The late Medieval and Renaissance styles. The new king, Henry VIII , was something of a poet himself. Thomas Wyatt (1503–42), one of the earliest English Renaissance poets, was responsible for many innovations in English poetry, and alongside Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/1517–47) introduced the sonnet from Italy into England in the early 16th century. Wyatt's professed object was to experiment with
5394-404: The line between oïl and oc. As a result, in modern times the term langue d'oïl also refers to that Old French which was not as yet named French but was already—before the late 13th century—used as a literary and juridical interdialectary language . The term Francien is a linguistic neologism coined in the 19th century to name the hypothetical variant of Old French allegedly spoken by
5487-410: The long 18th century: first, to reclaim them and make them available in contemporary editions in print or online, and second, to assess them and position them within a literary tradition. Towards the end of the 18th century, poetry began to move away from the strict Augustan ideals and a new emphasis on the sentiment and feelings of the poet was established. This trend can perhaps be most clearly seen in
5580-711: The manuscripts in which it survives, rather than its date of composition. The most important manuscripts are the four great poetical codices of the late 10th and early 11th centuries, known as the Cædmon manuscript , the Vercelli Book , the Exeter Book , and the Beowulf manuscript . While the poetry that has survived is limited in volume, it is wide in breadth. Beowulf is the only heroic epic to have survived in its entirety, but fragments of others such as Waldere and
5673-402: The means for the more rapid dissemination of new or recently rediscovered writers and thinkers. Caxton also printed the works of Chaucer and Gower and these books helped establish the idea of a native poetic tradition that was linked to its European counterparts. In addition, the writings of English humanists like Thomas More and Thomas Elyot helped bring the ideas and attitudes associated with
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#17327734098145766-690: The modern discoveries of geography and science, one that is no longer the centre of the universe. Another important group of poets at this time were the Cavalier poets. The Cavalier poets wrote in a lighter, more elegant and artificial style than the Metaphysical poets. They were an important group of writers, who came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–51). (King Charles reigned from 1625 and
5859-644: The monarchies that preceded the Republic. Even if Charles had wanted to reassert the divine right of kingship, the Protestantism and taste for power of the intervening years would have rendered it impossible. One of the greatest English poets, John Milton (1608–1674), wrote during this period of religious and political instability. He is generally seen as the last major poet of the English Renaissance, though his major epic poems were written in
5952-584: The most marked, through the status Provençal in particular achieved in southwestern Europe around the troubadour apex in the Middle Ages, when Galician-Portuguese lyric was developed. Aside the direct influence of Provençal literature, the presence of languages from modern-day France in the Galician-Portuguese area was also strong due to the rule of the House of Burgundy , the establishment of
6045-593: The new learning to an English audience. Three other factors in the establishment of the English Renaissance were the Reformation , Counter Reformation, and the opening of the era of English naval power and overseas exploration and expansion. The establishment of the Church of England in 1535 accelerated the process of questioning the Catholic world-view that had previously dominated intellectual and artistic life. At
6138-415: The passage of time, love, beauty, and mortality, were first published in a 1609 quarto. John Milton (1608–74) is considered one of the greatest English poets, and wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval. He is generally seen as the last major poet of the English Renaissance, though his most renowned epic poems were written in the Restoration period, including Paradise Lost (1667). Among
6231-410: The period, and many of the songs, in particular, departed widely from the iambic norm. With the consolidation of Elizabeth's power, a genuine court sympathetic to poetry and the arts in general emerged. This encouraged the emergence of a poetry aimed at, and often set in, an idealised version of the courtly world. Among the best known examples of this are Edmund Spenser 's The Faerie Queene , which
6324-481: The poetic ideals of the 18th century, and each of them returned to Milton for inspiration, though each drew something different from Milton. They also put a good deal of stress on their own originality. To the Romantics, the moment of creation was the most important in poetic expression and could not be repeated once it passed. Because of this new emphasis, poems that were not complete were nonetheless included in
6417-425: The poetry of Walter Raleigh and others also implies a courtly audience. Virgil's Aeneid , Thomas Campion's metrical experiments, and Spenser's Shepheardes Calender and plays like Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra are all examples of the influence of classicism on Elizabethan poetry. It remained common for poets of the period to write on themes from classical mythology ; Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and
6510-414: The points of a compass represent two lovers, the woman who is home, waiting, being the centre, the farther point being her lover sailing away from her. But the larger the distance, the more the hands of the compass lean to each other: separation makes love grow fonder. The paradox or the oxymoron is a constant in this poetry whose fears and anxieties also speak of a world of spiritual certainties shaken by
6603-456: The pressure of friends. Women writers were increasingly active in all genres throughout the 18th century, and by the 1790s women's poetry was flourishing. Notable poets later in the period include Anna Laetitia Barbauld , Joanna Baillie , Susanna Blamire , Felicia Hemans , Mary Leapor , Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , Hannah More , and Mary Robinson . In the past decades there has been substantial scholarly and critical work done on women poets of
6696-417: The prize, each introduced with a brief biographical note, were collected in a 1987 anthology, Under another Sky . The prize was discontinued in 1987, and a Commonwealth Writers Prize established in its place. English poetry This article focuses on poetry from the United Kingdom written in the English language . The article does not cover poetry from other countries where the English language
6789-629: The regional and lesser-used language framework of the British-Irish Council . The Anglo-Norman language , a variant of Norman once the official language of England, today holds mostly a place of ceremonial honour in the United Kingdom (now referred to as Law French ). The French government recognises the Oïl languages as languages of France , but the Constitutional Council of France barred ratification of
6882-441: The regions. The mining poets of Picardy may be compared with the tradition of rhyming Weaver Poets of Ulster Scots in a comparable industrial milieu. There are some regional magazines, such as Ch'lanchron (Picard), Le Viquet (Norman), Les Nouvelles Chroniques du Don Balleine [1] (Jèrriais), and El Bourdon (Walloon), which are published either wholly in the respective Oïl language or bilingually with French. These provide
6975-662: The rest of the population. This accounts in large part for the relative distinctiveness of French compared to other Romance languages. The English language was heavily influenced by contact with Norman following the Norman Conquest and much of the adopted vocabulary shows typically Norman features. Portuguese was heavily influenced by more than a millennium of perennial contact with several dialects of both Oïl and Occitan language groups, in lexicon (up to 15–20% in some estimates, at least 5000 word roots), phonology and orthography. The influence of Occitan was, nevertheless,
7068-494: The same name; Layamon's language is recognisably Middle English, though his prosody shows a strong Anglo-Saxon influence remaining. Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the greatest poets of England. Other transitional works were preserved as popular entertainment, including a variety of romances and lyrics . With time, the English language regained prestige, and in 1362 it replaced French and Latin in Parliament and courts of law. It
7161-438: The same time, long-distance sea voyages helped provide the stimulus and information that underpinned a new understanding of the nature of the universe which resulted in the theories of Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler . With a small number of exceptions, the early years of the 16th century are not particularly notable. The Douglas Aeneid was completed in 1513 and John Skelton wrote poems that were transitional between
7254-488: The sense), and the next lines are a sestet with various rhyme schemes. Petrarch's poems never ended in a rhyming couplet . Wyatt employs the Petrarchan octave, but his most common sestet rhyme scheme is CDDC EE. This marks the beginnings of English sonnet with 3 quatrains and a closing couplet. Elizabethan literature refers to bodies of work produced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). In poetry
7347-456: The term could be used to designate that specific 10th-and-11th centuries variant of langue d'oïl spoken in the Paris region; both variants contributed to the koine, as both were called French at that time. For political reasons it was in Paris and Île-de-France that this koiné developed from a written language into a spoken language. Already in the 12th century Conon de Béthune reported about
7440-406: The upper classes became Anglo-Norman , and Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual transition into Middle English . While Anglo-Norman or Latin was preferred for high culture, English literature by no means died out, and a number of important works illustrate the development of the language. Around the turn of the 13th century, Layamon wrote his Brut , based on Wace 's 12th century Anglo-Norman epic of
7533-399: The varieties of the ancient langue d'oïl . Consequently, langues d'oïl today may apply either: to all the modern-day languages of this family except the French language; or to this family including French. " Oïl dialects" or "French dialects" are also used to refer to the Oïl languages except French —as some extant Oïl languages are very close to modern French. Because the term dialect
7626-464: The vernacular Oïl languages were displaced from towns, they have generally survived to a greater extent in rural areas - hence a preponderance of literature relating to rural and peasant themes. The particular circumstances of the self-governing Channel Islands developed a lively strain of political comment, and the early industrialisation in Picardy led to survival of Picard in the mines and workshops of
7719-464: The work of John Clare the late Augustan voice is blended with a peasant's first-hand knowledge to produce arguably some of the finest nature poetry in the English language. Another contemporary poet who does not fit into the Romantic group was Walter Savage Landor . Landor was a classicist whose poetry forms a link between the Augustans and Robert Browning , who much admired it. The Victorian era
7812-780: Was a period of great political, social and economic change. The Empire recovered from the loss of the American colonies and entered a period of rapid expansion. This expansion, combined with increasing industrialisation and mechanisation, led to a prolonged period of economic growth. The Reform Act 1832 was the beginning of a process that would eventually lead to universal suffrage . The major Victorian poets were John Clare , Alfred, Lord Tennyson , Robert Browning , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Matthew Arnold , Christina Rossetti , Dante Gabriel Rossetti , Robert Louis Stevenson , Oscar Wilde , William Butler Yeats , Rudyard Kipling , Thomas Hardy , and Gerard Manley Hopkins , though Hopkins
7905-471: Was executed 1649). Leading members of the group include Ben Jonson , Richard Lovelace , Robert Herrick , Edmund Waller , Thomas Carew , Sir John Suckling , and John Denham . The Cavalier poets can be seen as the forerunners of the major poets of the Augustan era , who admired them greatly. They "were not a formal group, but all were influenced" by Ben Jonson . Most of the Cavalier poets were courtiers , with notable exceptions. For example, Robert Herrick
7998-760: Was first used in the 12th century, referring to the Old French linguistic grouping noted above. In the 14th century, the Italian poet Dante mentioned the yes distinctions in his De vulgari eloquentia . He wrote in Medieval Latin : " nam alii oc, alii si, alii vero dicunt oil " ("some say 'oc', others say 'sì', others say 'oïl'")—thereby distinguishing at least three classes of Romance languages: oc languages (in southern France); si languages (in Italy and Iberia ) and oïl languages (in northern France). Other Romance languages derive their word for "yes" from
8091-530: Was not a courtier, but his style marks him as a Cavalier poet. Cavalier works make use of allegory and classical allusions, and are influence by Latin authors Horace , Cicero , and Ovid . John Milton 's Paradise Lost (1667), a story of fallen pride, was the first major poem to appear in England after the Restoration. The court of Charles II had, in its years in France, learned a worldliness and sophistication that marked it as distinctively different from
8184-426: Was not published until 1918. John Clare came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption. His biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self". Tennyson was, to some degree,
8277-639: Was seen at the time as a model of civilization and progress. The learning of French has historically been important and strong among the Lusophone elites, and for a great span of time it was also the foreign language of choice among the middle class of both Portugal and Brazil, only surpassed in the globalised postmodernity by English. The French spoken in Belgium shows some influence from Walloon. The development of French in North America
8370-622: Was seen by his contemporaries as a successor to the great tradition of Virgil and Dante . The reputation of Chaucer's successors in the 15th century has suffered in comparison with him, though Lydgate and Skelton are widely studied. A group of Scottish writers arose who were formerly believed to be influenced by Chaucer . The rise of Scottish poetry began with the writing of The Kingis Quair by James I of Scotland . The main poets of this Scottish group were Robert Henryson , William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas . Henryson and Douglas introduced
8463-424: Was still relatively scarce when compared to that of men, though manuscript evidence indicates that many more women poets were practising than was previously thought. Disapproval of feminine "forwardness", however, kept many out of print in the early part of the period, and even as the century progressed women authors still felt the need to justify their incursions into the public sphere by claiming economic necessity or
8556-675: Was the French Revolution which imposed French on the people as the official language in all the territory. As the influence of French (and in the Channel Islands, English) spread among sectors of provincial populations, cultural movements arose to study and standardise the vernacular languages. From the 18th century and into the 20th century, societies were founded (such as the "Société liégoise de Littérature wallonne" in 1856), dictionaries (such as George Métivier 's Dictionnaire franco-normand of 1870) were published, groups were formed and literary movements developed to support and promote
8649-465: Was with the 14th century that major works of English literature began once again to appear; these include the so-called Pearl Poet 's Pearl , Patience , Cleanness , and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ; Langland 's political and religious allegory Piers Plowman ; Gower 's Confessio Amantis ; and the works of Chaucer , the most highly regarded English poet of the Middle Ages, who
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