Lyric Poetry Essay

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Lyric poetry is the most common form of poetry; it does not tell a story as the epic and narrative forms do; the lyric poem has grown into many forms since ancient times Song There are many subdivisions of lyric poetry. The weakest form is the song, especially popular songs that are heard frequently on the radio. With the exception of the hymn and chant, most songs do not achieve the level of true poetry, even though they employ some poetic devices. The words to songs are often inaccurately referred to as “lyrics.” The entire song is the lyric. Sonnet The next best-known lyric is the sonnet, which may be in the Petrarchan or Italian form, Elizabethan or Shakespearean or English form, or the American or innovative form. The Petrarchan takes its name from the 13th century Italian poet Petrarch. The Petrarchan sonnet consists of two stanzas: an octave of eight lines with the rime scheme ABBAABBA and a sestet of six lines with a varied rime scheme CDE Dramatic Monologue * The monologue may have multiple characters, but only one speaker. That speaker may or may not be reliable. The reader has to keep in mind that the speaker is telling a story from his point of view only. Were another character to tell the story, the reader would get another point of view. For example, one character, the Duke, tells the story in Robert Browning's "His Last Dutchess." He believes that the Dutchess gave herself freely to other men, but without the point of view of another more objective speaker, you can't really know whether that is true or not. Comedy * Some dramatic verse is comedy. It may be comedy in the humorous sense that readers think of today, or it may be comedy in the classical sense, in that it ends happily in spite of the sometimes very serious trouble that unfolds throughout the story. Shakespeare's "The Tempest" is a comedy, even though it's not funny,
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