Poetry¶
Literary work expressed in verse (lyric, elegy, ode, sonnet, epic).
Genre hierarchies¶
| Classification | Description | Examples |
|---|---|---|
Poetry/Elegy |
Reflective, mournful verse | In Memoriam A.H.H. (Alfred Tennyson), Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (Thomas Gray) |
Poetry/Epic |
Long narrative verse dealing with heroic deeds | The Iliad (Homer), The Divine Comedy (Dante Alighieri), Paradise Lost (John Milton) |
Poetry/Lyric |
Subjective, emotional verse | Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman), The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot) |
Poetry/Ode |
Formal, meditative verse addressing a subject | Ode to a Nightingale (John Keats), Ode to the West Wind (Percy Bysshe Shelley) |
Poetry/Sonnet |
Fourteen-line verse form | Sonnets (William Shakespeare), Sonnets to Orpheus (Rainer Maria Rilke) |