Lesson 3.

1 History of Poetry

Learning Objectives:

 Identify the origin and development of poetry

 Determine and describe the notable literary pieces and poets in a specific period in Literature
 Explain how the elements specific to a genre contribute to the theme of a particular literary selection

Essential Question: Why do we need to study the history of poetry?

Geoffrey Chaucer
Poetic, Famous
Alluring, Entertaining, Inspiring
th
Poetry, 14 Century, Canterbury Tales, Westminster
Serving, Loving, Writing
Imaginative, Brilliant
Father

Initiating Questions:
1. What do you call this poem?
2. What does this say about Geoffrey Chaucer?
3. What do you think is the reason he is hailed as the Father of English Poetry?

Lesson Proper

A. The Diamante Poem

A diamante poem consists of 7 lines that describe a person or object in a unique way. If you put the poem at the center,
you would be able to see that the diamante takes on the shape of a diamond. Diamante is the Italian word for diamond.
This type of diamante poem is sometimes called as synonym diamante poem. (See the poem above for an example of a
diamante poem.)

Structure:

Line 1: one noun/ pronoun (name of something)

Line 2: two adjectives (describing)
Line 3: three participles (-ing verbs)
Line 4: four nouns (name words)
Line 5: three participles/ verbs
Line 6: two adjectives
Line 7: one noun (a synonym for the first line)
B. Read the Brief History of Poem by Audrey Golden (See the attached paper)

C. Brief Biography of some famous poets

1. Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342/43- Oct 25, 1400)

He is considered the greatest English poet and the first founder of our language. With the single exception of
William Shakespeare, no English writer has surpassed his achievements. The Canterbury Tales, an unfinished
masterpiece, classifies as one of the world’s finest works of literature. Of these tales, only 24 out of 120 tales were
completed which shows his absolute mastery of the story -teller’s art. In his twenties, he started writing poetry until the rest
of his life. He also contributed importantly in the second half of the 14th century to the management of public affairs as
courtier, diplomat, and civil servant. In that career he was trusted and aided by three successive kings —Edward
III, Richard II, and Henry IV. But it is his avocation—the writing of poetry—for which he is remembered. Chaucer was the
first person to be buried in Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.

2. Maya Angelou (Apr 4, 1928- May 28, 2014)

Her original name is Marguerite Annie Johnson. She is an American poet, memoirist, and actress whose several
volumes of autobiography explore the themes of economic, racial, and sexual oppression.

She spent much of her childhood in the care of her paternal grandmother in rural Stamps, Arkansas. When she
was not yet eight years old, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend and told of it, after which he was murdered; the
traumatic sequence of events left her almost completely mute for several years. This early life is the focus of her first
autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969; TV movie 1979), which gained critical acclaim and
a National Book Award nomination.

In 1981 Angelou, who was often referred to as “Dr. Angelou” despite her lack of a college educ ation, became a
professor of American studies at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Among numerous honors was
her invitation to compose and deliver a poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” for the inauguration of U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton in
1993.

3. Matthew Arnold (Dec 24, 1822- Apr 15, 1888)

He is an English Victorian poet and literary and social critic, noted especially for his classical attacks on the
contemporary tastes and manners of the “Barbarians” (the aristocracy), the “Philistines” (the commercial middle class),
and the “Populace.” He became the apostle of “culture” in such works as Culture and Anarchy (1869).

The work that gives Arnold his high place in the history of literature and the history of ideas was all accomplished
in the time he could spare from his official duties. His first volume of verse was The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems.
By A. (1849); this was followed (in 1852) by another under the same initial: Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems. In
1853 appeared the first volume of poems published under his own name; it consisted partly of poems selected from the
earlier volumes and also contained the well-known preface explaining (among other things) why Empedocles was
excluded from the selection: it was a dramatic poem “in which the suffering finds no vent in action, ” in which there is
“everything to be endured, nothing to be done.” This preface foreshadows his later criticism in its insistence upon the
classic virtues of unity, impersonality, universality, and architectonic power and upon the value of the classical
masterpieces as models for “an age of spiritual discomfort”—an age “wanting in moral grandeur.” Other editions followed,
and Merope, Arnold’s classical tragedy, appeared in 1858, and New Poems in 1867. After that date, though there were
further editions, Arnold wrote little additional verse.

4. Edgar Allan Poe (Jan 19, 1809- Oct 7, 1849)

He is an American short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor who is famous for his cultivation of mystery and
the macabre. His tale “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere
in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction. His “The Raven” (1845) numbers among the best-known poems in
the national literature.

5. Thomas Gray (Dec 26, 1716- Jul 30, 1771)

He is English poet whose “An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard” is one of the best known of English lyric
poems. Although his literary output was slight, he was the dominant poetic figure in the mid-18th century and
a precursor of the Romantic Movement.

It was not until “An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard,” a poem long in the making, was published in 1751
that Gray was recognized. Its success was instantaneous and overwhelming. A dignified elegy
in eloquent classical diction celebrating the graves of humble and unknown villagers was, in itself, a novelty. Its theme that
the lives of the rich and poor alike “lead but to the grave” was already familiar, but Gray’s treatment —which had the effect
of suggesting that it was not only the “rude forefathers of the village” he was mourning but the death of all men and of the
poet himself—gave the poem its universal appeal. Gray’s newfound celebrity did not make the slightest difference in his
habits. He remained at Peterhouse until 1756, when, outraged by a prank played on him by students, he moved to
Pembroke College. He wrote two Pindaric odes, “The Progress of Poesy” and “The Bard,” published in 1757 by Walpole’s
private Strawberry Hill Press. They were criticized, not without reason, for obscurity, and in disappointment, Gray virtually
ceased to write. He was offered the laureateship in 1757 but declined it. He buried himself in his studies of Celtic and
Scandinavian antiquities and became increasingly retiring and hypochondriacal. In his last years his peace was disrupted
by his friendship with a young Swiss nobleman, Charles Victor de Bonstetten, for whom he conceived
a romantic devotion, the most profound emotional experience of his life.

6. Novalis (May 2, 1772- Mar 25, 1801)

His real name is Friedrich Leopold, Freiherr von (baron of) Hardenberg and his pseudonym is Novalis. He
is an early German Romantic poet and theorist who greatly influenced later Romantic thought. Novalis was born into a
family of Protestant Lower Saxon nobility and took his pseudonym from “de Novali,” a name his family had formerly used.

In 1794 Novalis met and fell in love with 12-year-old Sophie von Kühn. They were engaged in 1795, but she died
of tuberculosis two years later. Novalis expressed his grief in Hymnen an die Nacht (1800; Hymns to the Night), six prose
poems interspersed with verse. In this work Novalis celebrates night, or death, as an entry into a higher life in the
presence of God and anticipates a mystical and loving union with Sophie and with the universe as a whole after his own
death. In 1797 he went to the Academy of Freiberg to study mining. Novalis became engaged (to Julie von Charpentier) in
1798, and a year later he became a mine inspector at the saltworks at Weissenfels . He died of tuberculosis in 1801.

Essential Question: Why do we need to study the history of poetry?

It is important to go back to the history of poetry because if someone knows the origin of a certain context , it
would be easier for him/her to connect since there will be more information given.
 Poetry is a literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of
distinctive style and rhythm; poems collectively or as a genre of literature.

Poetry is like any other art-form, totally artificial – perhaps a better word would be synthetic. There is nothing
wrong with that. Poetry does not grow naturally on trees like autumn leaves (which can evoke a very poetic vision) and
without the human race on this planet would never evolve from the handful of letters and thousands of words or symbols
that make up each language into a poem. It’s like going into a field day after day with a skip full of bricks and tipping the m
onto the grass – in a million years they will not form a house. A dictionary will never become a poem without a wordsmith
concentrating with single-minded purpose on shepherding these lonely words into a concise image or flock of images.