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The theory proposes that features of at least some of the poetry may be explained by positing oral-formulaic composition, meaning that poets have a store of verbal formulae which they freely recombine to form poems. While Anglo-Saxon (Old English) epic poetry may bear some resemblance to Ancient Greek epics such as the Iliad and Odyssey, the ...
Magoun thought that formulaic poetry was necessarily oral in origin. That sparked a major and ongoing debate over the extent to which Old English poetry, which survives only in written form, should be seen as, in some sense, oral poetry. The oral-formulaic theory of composition has now been applied to a wide variety of languages and works.
Oral poetry differs from oral literature in general because oral literature encompasses linguistic registers which are not considered poetry. In most oral literature, poetry is defined by the fact that it conforms to metrical rules; examples of non-poetic oral literature in Western culture include some jokes, speeches and storytelling.
Examples from classical and modern poetry illustrate how poetry achieves its purposes: to teach, to move, and to delight the reader. Proceeding from the work of scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558), Scott dwells upon the four virtues of poetry, which apply to the poet's choice of matter (genus) and style of writing, noting that Scaliger:
Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition, verse form, and rhyme, and emphasized aesthetics which distinguish poetry from 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 ...
A roundel (not to be confused with the rondel) is a form of verse used in English language poetry devised by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909). It is the Anglo-Norman form corresponding to the French rondeau. It makes use of refrains, repeated according to a certain stylized pattern.
Verse in the uncountable sense refers to poetry in contrast to prose. [3] Where the common unit of verse is based on meter or rhyme , the common unit of prose is purely grammatical, such as a sentence or paragraph .
The Martian poets were English poets of the 1970s and early 1980s, including Craig Raine and Christopher Reid. Through the heavy use of curious, exotic, and humorous metaphors, Martian poetry aimed to break the grip of "the familiar" in English poetry, by describing ordinary things as if through the eyes of a Martian.