Studying Important Literary Devices In Poetry
Poetry has played a major role in transforming societies since ancient times when the oral tradition of poetry was used to develop the rules of language. Consequently poetry was initially developed with many “rules” in mind.
Early poetry strived to be efficient and memorable. Poetic devices, such as rhyme and meter were developed in order to help achieve this. Ancient Greek and Roman poetry as well as medieval works such as Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy” was often epic in nature, and was a way for societies to distribute news as well as entertain.
The short poetry we know today began to come into play during the Renaissance when the sonnet, a 14 line poem was introduced and developed by the poets Petrach and William Shakespeare. Other short fors, such as the Villanelle and Triolet emerged from this period as well.
In the late 1700s poets such as William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Alfred Lord Tennyson made the Romantic age of poetry popular in upper class Victorian circles. While many still admired the poetry of the Romantics, the Victorian and Aristocratic influence had begun to make this poetry seem distant to many. In the 1800s increased efforts were made to bring the rhythm of poetry back to the way people actually spoke. The American, Walt Whitman, among others, developed what we call Free Verse today. During the same period, French poet, Paul Verlaine introduced Symbolism.
In the 1920s, the poets Andre Brenton and Ezra Pound developed manefestos to guide poets on using literary devices in poetry. Brenton created a Surrealist manifesto, which guided poets in incorporating dreams and the subconcious into their verse. Pound created the Manifesto of Imagists and promoted poets that used visual imagry such as W.B. Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot.
Twentieth century poets, such as Allen Ginsburg achieved success by combining the free verse styles of Whitman, with the surrealism and symbolism used by Brenton and Pound. Other devices were included as well such as metaphor, alliteratation, and personification. Poets today write in both free verse and in traditional forms.
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