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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 ...
The characteristics of such poems include (but are not limited to) a strong narrative, regular poetic meter, simple content and simple form. At the same time, many poems that read well aloud have none of the characteristics exhibited by T. S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi", for example. Poems that read aloud well include: "The Frog", by Jean Dao
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.
This is generally taken as marking the beginning of Anglo-Saxon poetry. [1] 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. [2]
Poetics is the study or theory of poetry, specifically the study or theory of device, structure, form, type, and effect with regards to poetry, [1] though usage of the term can also refer to literature broadly. [2] [3] Poetics is distinguished from hermeneutics by its focus on the synthesis of non-semantic elements in a text rather than its ...
"Maxims I" (sometimes treated as three separate poems, "Maxims I, A, B and C") and "Maxims II" are pieces of Old English gnomic poetry. The poem "Maxims I" can be found in the Exeter Book and "Maxims II" is located in a lesser known manuscript, London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B i.
The Structure of Literature is a 1954 book of literary criticism by Paul Goodman, the published version of his doctoral dissertation in the humanities.The book proposes a mode of formal literary analysis that Goodman calls "inductive formal analysis": Goodman defines a formal structure within an isolated literary work, finds how parts of the work interact with each other to form a whole, and ...
Poems should not be thought of as carrying messages or statements that can be translated more concisely or exactly in prose. Instead, the reader must "surrender to" the impact of the poem as a whole, which includes comprehending the form of the poem. In fact, the kind of knowledge that poetry gives readers can be comprehended "only through form."