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75-491: In poetry , a stanza ( / ˈ s t æ n z ə / ; from Italian stanza , Italian: [ˈstantsa] ; lit. ' room ' ) is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or indentation . Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes , but they are not required to have either. There are many different forms of stanzas . Some stanzaic forms are simple, such as four-line quatrains . Other forms are more complex, such as
150-467: A eulogy of Trajan considered fulsome by some scholars. Towards the end of the 3rd and during the 4th century, as a result of the orientalizing of the Imperial court by Diocletian , it became customary to celebrate as a matter of course the superhuman virtues and achievements of the reigning emperor , in a formally staged literary event. In 336, Eusebius of Caesarea gave a panegyric of Constantine
225-400: A characteristic metrical foot and the number of feet per line. The number of metrical feet in a line are described using Greek terminology: tetrameter for four feet and hexameter for six feet, for example. Thus, " iambic pentameter " is a meter comprising five feet per line, in which the predominant kind of foot is the " iamb ". This metric system originated in ancient Greek poetry , and
300-435: A common meter alone. Other poems may be organized into verse paragraphs , in which regular rhymes with established rhythms are not used, but the poetic tone is instead established by a collection of rhythms, alliterations, and rhymes established in paragraph form. Many medieval poems were written in verse paragraphs, even where regular rhymes and rhythms were used. In many forms of poetry, stanzas are interlocking, so that
375-529: A compound of Ancient Greek : παν - 'all' (the form taken by the word πᾶν, neuter of πᾶς 'all', when that is used as a prefix) and the word Ancient Greek : ἄγυρις , romanized : ágyris 'assembly' (an Aeolic dialect form, corresponding to the Attic or Ionic form Ancient Greek : ἀγορά , romanized : agorá ). Compounded, these gave Ancient Greek : πανήγυρις , romanized : panḗgyris 'general or national assembly, especially
450-549: A critique of poetic tradition, testing the principle of euphony itself or altogether forgoing rhyme or set rhythm. Poets – as, from the Greek , "makers" of language – have contributed to the evolution of the linguistic, expressive, and utilitarian qualities of their languages. In an increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles, and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. A Western cultural tradition (extending at least from Homer to Rilke ) associates
525-577: A definition that could encompass formal differences as great as those between Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Matsuo Bashō 's Oku no Hosomichi , as well as differences in content spanning Tanakh religious poetry , love poetry, and rap . Until recently, the earliest examples of stressed poetry had been thought to be works composed by Romanos the Melodist ( fl. 6th century CE). However, Tim Whitmarsh writes that an inscribed Greek poem predated Romanos' stressed poetry. Classical thinkers in
600-445: A festival in honour of a god' and the derived adjective Ancient Greek : πανηγυρικός , romanized : panēgyrikós 'of or for a public assembly or festival'. In Hellenistic Greek the noun came also to mean 'a festal oration, laudatory speech', and the adjective 'of or relating to a eulogy, flattering'. The noun Ancient Greek : πανήγυρις , romanized : panḗgyris had been borrowed into Classical Latin by around
675-727: A given foot or line and to avoid boring repetition. For example, the stress in a foot may be inverted, a caesura (or pause) may be added (sometimes in place of a foot or stress), or the final foot in a line may be given a feminine ending to soften it or be replaced by a spondee to emphasize it and create a hard stop. Some patterns (such as iambic pentameter) tend to be fairly regular, while other patterns, such as dactylic hexameter, tend to be highly irregular. Regularity can vary between language. In addition, different patterns often develop distinctively in different languages, so that, for example, iambic tetrameter in Russian will generally reflect
750-401: A key part of their structure, so that the metrical pattern determines when the listener expects instances of alliteration to occur. This can be compared to an ornamental use of alliteration in most Modern European poetry, where alliterative patterns are not formal or carried through full stanzas. Alliteration is particularly useful in languages with less rich rhyming structures. Assonance, where
825-416: A meaning separate from the repetitive sound patterns created. For example, Chaucer used heavy alliteration to mock Old English verse and to paint a character as archaic. Rhyme consists of identical ("hard-rhyme") or similar ("soft-rhyme") sounds placed at the ends of lines or at locations within lines (" internal rhyme "). Languages vary in the richness of their rhyming structures; Italian, for example, has
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#1732771715159900-674: A number of poets, including William Shakespeare and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , respectively. The most common metrical feet in English are: There are a wide range of names for other types of feet, right up to a choriamb , a four syllable metric foot with a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables and closing with a stressed syllable. The choriamb is derived from some ancient Greek and Latin poetry . Languages which use vowel length or intonation rather than or in addition to syllabic accents in determining meter, such as Ottoman Turkish or Vedic , often have concepts similar to
975-508: A panegyric; he became court poet to Stilicho . Cassiodorus , magister officiorum of Theodoric the Great , left a book of panegyrics, the Laudes . One of his biographers, James O'Donnell, has described the genre thus: "It was to be expected that the praise contained in the speech would be excessive; the intellectual point of the exercise (and very likely an important criterion in judging it)
1050-476: A poem. For example, the strophe , antistrophe and epode of the ode form are often separated into one or more stanzas. Panegyric A panegyric ( US : / ˌ p æ n ɪ ˈ dʒ ɪ r ɪ k / or UK : / ˌ p æ n ɪ ˈ dʒ aɪ r ɪ k / ) is a formal public speech or written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or thing . The original panegyrics were speeches delivered at public events in ancient Athens. The word originated as
1125-420: A process known as lineation . These lines may be based on the number of metrical feet or may emphasize a rhyming pattern at the ends of lines. Lines may serve other functions, particularly where the poem is not written in a formal metrical pattern. Lines can separate, compare or contrast thoughts expressed in different units, or can highlight a change in tone. See the article on line breaks for information about
1200-473: A regularity in the use of accents to reinforce the meter, which does not occur, or occurs to a much lesser extent, in English. Some common metrical patterns, with notable examples of poets and poems who use them, include: Rhyme, alliteration, assonance and consonance are ways of creating repetitive patterns of sound. They may be used as an independent structural element in a poem, to reinforce rhythmic patterns, or as an ornamental element. They can also carry
1275-693: A resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses , in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Some poetry types are unique to particular cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Readers accustomed to identifying poetry with Dante , Goethe , Mickiewicz , or Rumi may think of it as written in lines based on rhyme and regular meter . There are, however, traditions, such as Biblical poetry and alliterative verse , that use other means to create rhythm and euphony . Much modern poetry reflects
1350-430: A rich rhyming structure permitting maintenance of a limited set of rhymes throughout a lengthy poem. The richness results from word endings that follow regular forms. English, with its irregular word endings adopted from other languages, is less rich in rhyme. The degree of richness of a language's rhyming structures plays a substantial role in determining what poetic forms are commonly used in that language. Alliteration
1425-414: A sentence without putting the sound only at the front of a word. Consonance provokes a more subtle effect than alliteration and so is less useful as a structural element. In many languages, including Arabic and modern European languages, poets use rhyme in set patterns as a structural element for specific poetic forms, such as ballads , sonnets and rhyming couplets . However, the use of structural rhyme
1500-468: A series of more subtle, more flexible prosodic elements. Thus poetry remains, in all its styles, distinguished from prose by form; some regard for basic formal structures of poetry will be found in all varieties of free verse, however much such structures may appear to have been ignored. Similarly, in the best poetry written in classic styles there will be departures from strict form for emphasis or effect. Among major structural elements used in poetry are
1575-557: A series or stack of lines on a page, which follow a rhythmic or other deliberate structure. For this reason, verse has also become a synonym (a metonym ) for poetry. Poetry has a long and varied history , evolving differentially across the globe. It dates back at least to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile , Niger , and Volta River valleys. Some of
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#17327717151591650-542: Is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings. Any particular instance of poetry is called a poem and is written by a poet . Poets use a variety of techniques called poetic devices, such as assonance , alliteration , euphony and cacophony , onomatopoeia , rhythm (via metre ), and sound symbolism , to produce musical or other artistic effects. Most written poems are formatted in verse :
1725-404: Is an attempt to render the beautiful or sublime without the burden of engaging the logical or narrative thought-process. English Romantic poet John Keats termed this escape from logic " negative capability ". This "romantic" approach views form as a key element of successful poetry because form is abstract and distinct from the underlying notional logic. This approach remained influential into
1800-593: Is considered to be one of the official Confucian classics . His remarks on the subject have become an invaluable source in ancient music theory . The efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in " poetics "—the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient societies, such as China's through the Shijing , developed canons of poetic works that had ritual as well as aesthetic importance. More recently, thinkers have struggled to find
1875-451: Is most often founded on the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables (alone or elided ). In the classical languages , on the other hand, while the metrical units are similar, vowel length rather than stresses define the meter. Old English poetry used a metrical pattern involving varied numbers of syllables but a fixed number of strong stresses in each line. The chief device of ancient Hebrew Biblical poetry , including many of
1950-645: Is not universal even within the European tradition. Much modern poetry avoids traditional rhyme schemes . Classical Greek and Latin poetry did not use rhyme. Rhyme entered European poetry in the High Middle Ages , due to the influence of the Arabic language in Al Andalus . Arabic language poets used rhyme extensively not only with the development of literary Arabic in the sixth century , but also with
2025-529: Is perceived. Languages can rely on either pitch or tone. Some languages with a pitch accent are Vedic Sanskrit or Ancient Greek. Tonal languages include Chinese, Vietnamese and most Subsaharan languages . Metrical rhythm generally involves precise arrangements of stresses or syllables into repeated patterns called feet within a line. In Modern English verse the pattern of stresses primarily differentiate feet, so rhythm based on meter in Modern English
2100-409: Is the repetition of letters or letter-sounds at the beginning of two or more words immediately succeeding each other, or at short intervals; or the recurrence of the same letter in accented parts of words. Alliteration and assonance played a key role in structuring early Germanic, Norse and Old English forms of poetry. The alliterative patterns of early Germanic poetry interweave meter and alliteration as
2175-407: Is the speaker, not the poet, who is the killer (unless this "confession" is a form of metaphor which needs to be considered in closer context – via close reading ). Some scholars believe that the art of poetry may predate literacy , and developed from folk epics and other oral genres. Others, however, suggest that poetry did not necessarily predate writing. The oldest surviving epic poem,
2250-587: The Epic of Gilgamesh , dates from the 3rd millennium BCE in Sumer (in Mesopotamia , present-day Iraq ), and was written in cuneiform script on clay tablets and, later, on papyrus . The Istanbul tablet#2461 , dating to c. 2000 BCE, describes an annual rite in which the king symbolically married and mated with the goddess Inanna to ensure fertility and prosperity; some have labelled it
2325-850: The Hurrian songs , and the Hebrew Psalms ); or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Egyptian Story of Sinuhe , Indian epic poetry , and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey . Ancient Greek attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle 's Poetics , focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric , drama , song , and comedy . Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition , verse form , and rhyme , and emphasized aesthetics which distinguish poetry from
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2400-477: The Spenserian stanza . Fixed verse poems , such as sestinas , can be defined by the number and form of their stanzas. The stanza has also been known by terms such as batch , fit , and stave . The term stanza has a similar meaning to strophe , though strophe sometimes refers to an irregular set of lines, as opposed to regular, rhymed stanzas. Even though the term "stanza" is taken from Italian, in
2475-703: The Tamil language , had rigid grammars (to the point that they could be expressed as a context-free grammar ) which ensured a rhythm. Classical Chinese poetics , based on the tone system of Middle Chinese , recognized two kinds of tones: the level (平 píng ) tone and the oblique (仄 zè ) tones, a category consisting of the rising (上 sháng ) tone, the departing (去 qù ) tone and the entering (入 rù ) tone. Certain forms of poetry placed constraints on which syllables were required to be level and which oblique. The formal patterns of meter used in Modern English verse to create rhythm no longer dominate contemporary English poetry. In
2550-591: The West employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Notably, the existing fragments of Aristotle 's Poetics describe three genres of poetry—the epic, the comic, and the tragic—and develop rules to distinguish the highest-quality poetry in each genre, based on the perceived underlying purposes of the genre. Later aestheticians identified three major genres: epic poetry, lyric poetry , and dramatic poetry , treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry. Aristotle's work
2625-518: The famous speech of Pericles in Thucydides , also partook of the nature of panegyrics. The Romans generally confined the panegyric to the living—with the deceased receiving funeral orations instead. The most celebrated example of a Latin panegyric, however, is that delivered by the younger Pliny (AD 100) in the Senate on the occasion of his assumption of the consulship , which contained
2700-519: The psalms , was parallelism , a rhetorical structure in which successive lines reflected each other in grammatical structure, sound structure, notional content, or all three. Parallelism lent itself to antiphonal or call-and-response performance, which could also be reinforced by intonation . Thus, Biblical poetry relies much less on metrical feet to create rhythm, but instead creates rhythm based on much larger sound units of lines, phrases and sentences. Some classical poetry forms, such as Venpa of
2775-608: The scanning of poetic lines to show meter. The methods for creating poetic rhythm vary across languages and between poetic traditions. Languages are often described as having timing set primarily by accents , syllables , or moras , depending on how rhythm is established, although a language can be influenced by multiple approaches. Japanese is a mora -timed language. Latin , Catalan , French , Leonese , Galician and Spanish are called syllable-timed languages. Stress-timed languages include English , Russian and, generally, German . Varying intonation also affects how rhythm
2850-437: The "a-bc" convention, such as the ottava rima and terza rima . The types and use of differing rhyming schemes are discussed further in the main article . Poetic form is more flexible in modernist and post-modernist poetry and continues to be less structured than in previous literary eras. Many modern poets eschew recognizable structures or forms and write in free verse . Free verse is, however, not "formless" but composed of
2925-519: The 20th century. During the 18th and 19th centuries, there was also substantially more interaction among the various poetic traditions, in part due to the spread of European colonialism and the attendant rise in global trade. In addition to a boom in translation , during the Romantic period numerous ancient works were rediscovered. Some 20th-century literary theorists rely less on the ostensible opposition of prose and poetry, instead focusing on
3000-632: The Byzantine Empire. Persian language panegyric poems from the Middle Ages contain details on the life of court poets and their patrons, and shed light on contemporary attitudes and matters of political and military interest such as Farrukhi Sistani 's qasida on Ghaznavid ruler Mahmud of Ghazni 's incursion against the Somnath temple . Poems were composed for festivals like Eid al-Fitr , Nowruz and Mihragan . Some poems depicted
3075-634: The French word, but no doubt with cognisance of its Latin and Greek origins. In Athens such speeches were delivered at national festivals or games , with the object of rousing the citizens to emulate the glorious deeds of their ancestors . The most famous are the Olympiacus of Gorgias , the Olympiacus of Lysias , and the Panegyricus and Panathenaicus (neither of them, however, actually delivered) of Isocrates . Funeral orations, such as
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3150-418: The Great on the 30th year of his reign, in which he broke from tradition by celebrating the piety of the emperor, rather than his secular achievements. A well-delivered, elegant and witty panegyric became a vehicle for an educated but inexperienced young man to attract desirable attention in a competitive sphere. The poet Claudian came to Rome from Alexandria before about 395 and made his first reputation with
3225-597: The Indian Sanskrit -language Rigveda , the Avestan Gathas , the Hurrian songs , and the Hebrew Psalms , possibly developed directly from folk songs . The earliest entries in the oldest extant collection of Chinese poetry , the Classic of Poetry ( Shijing ), were initially lyrics . The Shijing, with its collection of poems and folk songs, was heavily valued by the philosopher Confucius and
3300-585: The Italian language the word "strofa" is more commonly used. In music, groups of lines are typically referred to as verses . The stanza in poetry is analogous with the paragraph in prose : related thoughts are grouped into units. This short poem by Emily Dickinson has two stanzas of four lines each: I had no time to hate, because The grave would hinder me, And life was not so ample I Could finish enmity. Nor had I time to love; but since Some industry must be, The little toil of love, I thought,
3375-504: The case of free verse , rhythm is often organized based on looser units of cadence rather than a regular meter. Robinson Jeffers , Marianne Moore , and William Carlos Williams are three notable poets who reject the idea that regular accentual meter is critical to English poetry. Jeffers experimented with sprung rhythm as an alternative to accentual rhythm. In the Western poetic tradition, meters are customarily grouped according to
3450-608: The complex cultural web within which a poem is read. Today, throughout the world, poetry often incorporates poetic form and diction from other cultures and from the past, further confounding attempts at definition and classification that once made sense within a tradition such as the Western canon . The early 21st-century poetic tradition appears to continue to strongly orient itself to earlier precursor poetic traditions such as those initiated by Whitman , Emerson , and Wordsworth . The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman (1929–2016) used
3525-850: The continent's numerous ethnic groups, and are usually also tied to tribal spirituality . Examples include Oriki amongst the Yoruba people , Isibongo amongst the Zulu people , and Iziduko amongst the Xhosa people . The custom of panegyrics addressed to monarchs was revived in the Baroque period , though there do exist Renaissance examples such as Bruni's Laudatio florentinae urbis to Florence of 1403, and Erasmus 's Panegyricus , first published in 1504. Thus, in 1660 , several panegyrics were published by English poets in honour of Charles II of England coming to power. Another significant work includes
3600-444: The division between lines. Lines of poems are often organized into stanzas , which are denominated by the number of lines included. Thus a collection of two lines is a couplet (or distich ), three lines a triplet (or tercet ), four lines a quatrain , and so on. These lines may or may not relate to each other by rhyme or rhythm. For example, a couplet may be two lines with identical meters which rhyme or two lines held together by
3675-839: The earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE. The earliest surviving Western Asian epic poem , the Epic of Gilgamesh , was written in the Sumerian language . Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing as well as from religious hymns (the Sanskrit Rigveda , the Zoroastrian Gathas ,
3750-506: The first half of the 20th century coincided with a questioning of the purpose and meaning of traditional definitions of poetry and of distinctions between poetry and prose, particularly given examples of poetic prose and prosaic poetry. Numerous modernist poets have written in non-traditional forms or in what traditionally would have been considered prose, although their writing was generally infused with poetic diction and often with rhythm and tone established by non-metrical means. While there
3825-501: The first, second and fourth lines of a quatrain rhyme with each other and the third line do not rhyme, the quatrain is said to have an AA BA rhyme scheme . This rhyme scheme is the one used, for example, in the rubaiyat form. Similarly, an A BB A quatrain (what is known as " enclosed rhyme ") is used in such forms as the Petrarchan sonnet . Some types of more complicated rhyming schemes have developed names of their own, separate from
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#17327717151593900-457: The format of more objectively-informative, academic, or typical writing, which is known as prose . Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretations of words, or to evoke emotive responses. The use of ambiguity , symbolism , irony , and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly, figures of speech such as metaphor , simile , and metonymy establish
3975-422: The ground; Dead boughs take root in ponds And ferns on windows shoot their ghostly fronds. But vainly the fierce frost Interns poor fish, ranks trees in an armed host, Hangs daggers from house-eaves And on the windows ferny am bush weaves; In the long war grown warmer The sun will strike him dead and strip his armour. Poetry Poetry (from the Greek word poiesis , "making")
4050-606: The heat of the sun./I have laid the foundations of a high palace of poetry which will not be damaged by wind and rain." This is similar to the grandiose claims of the Roman poet Horace who says, in an address to the Emperor Augustus , that his poetry was more lasting than bronze and grander than the pyramids . African oral tradition includes panegyric customs such as praise names and praise poetry. Often these customs serve mnemonic and genealogical functions within
4125-414: The iamb and dactyl to describe common combinations of long and short sounds. Each of these types of feet has a certain "feel," whether alone or in combination with other feet. The iamb, for example, is the most natural form of rhythm in the English language, and generally produces a subtle but stable verse. Scanning meter can often show the basic or fundamental pattern underlying a verse, but does not show
4200-418: The language. Actual rhythm is significantly more complex than the basic scanned meter described above, and many scholars have sought to develop systems that would scan such complexity. Vladimir Nabokov noted that overlaid on top of the regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of verse was a separate pattern of accents resulting from the natural pitch of the spoken words, and suggested that
4275-403: The line, the stanza or verse paragraph , and larger combinations of stanzas or lines such as cantos . Also sometimes used are broader visual presentations of words and calligraphy . These basic units of poetic form are often combined into larger structures, called poetic forms or poetic modes (see the following section), as in the sonnet . Poetry is often separated into lines on a page, in
4350-523: The major American verse of the twenty-first century, may yet be seen as what Stevens called 'a great shadow's last embellishment,' the shadow being Emerson's." In the 2020s, advances in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models , enabled the generation of poetry in specific styles and formats. A 2024 study found that AI-generated poems were rated by non-expert readers as more rhythmic, beautiful, and human-like than those written by well-known human authors. This preference may stem from
4425-507: The much older oral poetry, as in their long, rhyming qasidas . Some rhyming schemes have become associated with a specific language, culture or period, while other rhyming schemes have achieved use across languages, cultures or time periods. Some forms of poetry carry a consistent and well-defined rhyming scheme, such as the chant royal or the rubaiyat , while other poetic forms have variable rhyme schemes. Most rhyme schemes are described using letters that correspond to sets of rhymes, so if
4500-613: The patron as a hero in a battle between Islam and infidels . Wars against Muslims required additional explanations and some poems by Farrukhi and Mu'izzi advocated in favor of Mahmud's capture of Rayy and Ahmad Sanjar 's attacks against the Ghaznavid ruler Arslan-Shah in 1117. These poems are important sources for the Great Seljuq period from which few records survive. In a panegyric poem address to Mahmud of Ghazna, Firdausi said: "Noble buildings are ruined by rain and by
4575-564: The phrase "the anxiety of demand" to describe the contemporary response to older poetic traditions as "being fearful that the fact no longer has a form", building on a trope introduced by Emerson. Emerson had maintained that in the debate concerning poetic structure where either "form" or "fact" could predominate, that one need simply "Ask the fact for the form." This has been challenged at various levels by other literary scholars such as Harold Bloom (1930–2019), who has stated: "The generation of poets who stand together now, mature and ready to write
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#17327717151594650-443: The poet as simply one who creates using language, and poetry as what the poet creates. The underlying concept of the poet as creator is not uncommon, and some modernist poets essentially do not distinguish between the creation of a poem with words, and creative acts in other media. Other modernists challenge the very attempt to define poetry as misguided. The rejection of traditional forms and structures for poetry that began in
4725-461: The production of poetry with inspiration – often by a Muse (either classical or contemporary), or through other (often canonised) poets' work which sets some kind of example or challenge. In first-person poems, the lyrics are spoken by an "I", a character who may be termed the speaker , distinct from the poet (the author ). Thus if, for example, a poem asserts, "I killed my enemy in Reno", it
4800-463: The relative simplicity and accessibility of AI-generated poetry, which some participants found easier to understand. Prosody is the study of the meter, rhythm , and intonation of a poem. Rhythm and meter are different, although closely related. Meter is the definitive pattern established for a verse (such as iambic pentameter ), while rhythm is the actual sound that results from a line of poetry. Prosody also may be used more specifically to refer to
4875-420: The rhyming scheme or other structural elements of one stanza determine those of succeeding stanzas. Examples of such interlocking stanzas include, for example, the ghazal and the villanelle , where a refrain (or, in the case of the villanelle, refrains) is established in the first stanza which then repeats in subsequent stanzas. Related to the use of interlocking stanzas is their use to separate thematic parts of
4950-486: The second century CE, as panēgyris 'festival' (in post-Classical usage also 'general assembly'). Correspondingly, Classical Latin also included the adjective panēgyricus , which appears meaning 'laudatory', but also came to function as a noun, meaning 'public eulogy'. These words inspired similar formations in European languages in the early modern period, such as French panégyrique , attested by 1512. The English noun and adjective panegyric seems to have been borrowed from
5025-534: The term "scud" be used to distinguish an unaccented stress from an accented stress. Different traditions and genres of poetry tend to use different meters, ranging from the Shakespearean iambic pentameter and the Homeric dactylic hexameter to the anapestic tetrameter used in many nursery rhymes. However, a number of variations to the established meter are common, both to provide emphasis or attention to
5100-421: The use of similar vowel sounds within a word rather than similar sounds at the beginning or end of a word, was widely used in skaldic poetry but goes back to the Homeric epic. Because verbs carry much of the pitch in the English language, assonance can loosely evoke the tonal elements of Chinese poetry and so is useful in translating Chinese poetry. Consonance occurs where a consonant sound is repeated throughout
5175-437: The varying degrees of stress , as well as the differing pitches and lengths of syllables. There is debate over how useful a multiplicity of different "feet" is in describing meter. For example, Robert Pinsky has argued that while dactyls are important in classical verse, English dactylic verse uses dactyls very irregularly and can be better described based on patterns of iambs and anapests, feet which he considers natural to
5250-979: The world's oldest love poem. An example of Egyptian epic poetry is The Story of Sinuhe (c. 1800 BCE). Other ancient epics includes the Greek Iliad and the Odyssey ; the Persian Avestan books (the Yasna ); the Roman national epic , Virgil 's Aeneid (written between 29 and 19 BCE); and the Indian epics , the Ramayana and the Mahabharata . Epic poetry appears to have been composed in poetic form as an aid to memorization and oral transmission in ancient societies. Other forms of poetry, including such ancient collections of religious hymns as
5325-402: Was a substantial formalist reaction within the modernist schools to the breakdown of structure, this reaction focused as much on the development of new formal structures and syntheses as on the revival of older forms and structures. Postmodernism goes beyond modernism's emphasis on the creative role of the poet, to emphasize the role of the reader of a text ( hermeneutics ), and to highlight
5400-677: Was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age , as well as in Europe during the Renaissance . Later poets and aestheticians often distinguished poetry from, and defined it in opposition to prose , which they generally understood as writing with a proclivity to logical explication and a linear narrative structure. This does not imply that poetry is illogical or lacks narration, but rather that poetry
5475-474: Was large enough for me. This poem by Andrew John Young has three stanzas of six lines each: Frost called to the water Halt And crusted the moist snow with sparkling salt; Brooks, their one bridges, stop, And icicles in long stalactites drop. And tench in water-holes Lurk under gluey glass-like fish in bowls. In the hard-rutted lane At every footstep breaks a brittle pane, And tinkling trees ice-bound, Changed into weeping willows, sweep
5550-664: Was to see how excessive the praise could be made while remaining within boundaries of decorum and restraint, how much high praise could be made to seem the grudging testimony of simple honesty". In the Byzantine Empire , the basilikos logos was a formal panegyric for an emperor delivered on an important occasion. Panegyric poems were a major literary form among the Arabs. Writing in the Arabic language, Al-Mutanabbi wrote about Sayf al-Dawla 's celebrated campaign against
5625-416: Was used by poets such as Pindar and Sappho , and by the great tragedians of Athens . Similarly, " dactylic hexameter ", comprises six feet per line, of which the dominant kind of foot is the " dactyl ". Dactylic hexameter was the traditional meter of Greek epic poetry , the earliest extant examples of which are the works of Homer and Hesiod . Iambic pentameter and dactylic hexameter were later used by
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