Linguistics & Semantics

Lesson 8: Poetry

Types of Poetry

Every written message can be classified according to its characteristics. So poetry too can be divided into five general type: descriptive, reflective, narrative, the lyric and the sonnet.

Descriptive: the aim is to offer a detailed description of people, things, or personal experiences.

Reflective: the aim is to offer personal comment and to suggest conclusions that are sometimes openly stated, but frequently implied.

Narrative: the aim is to tell a story, the most famous example of narrative poetry is the ballad ‘the oldest form of poetry’. Its main characteristics are: the subject is frequently dramatic, the arrangement consists of a series of four line stanzas, the language is the combination between dialogues and mere narration, the style is characterized by a rather complicated plot, described in detail, by the presence of the repetitions in order to emphasize, to convey climax merely to help the memorize better, producing a musical effect, by a series of simple devices.

The lyric: the aim is to express the poet’s mood or feelings in a short poem.

The sonnet: it is a poem of fourteen lines following a strict rhyme pattern. It consists of two parts: the octave (the first eight lines) and the sestet (the last six lines), these two parts are different according to the contents: the first is a general statement, while the second is its illustration.

There are three kinds of sonnet: the petrarchan sonnet (it is the most rigid type of sonnet ABBAABBBACDECDE); the Shakespearean sonnet (it is simpler in its rhyme pattern ABABCDCDEFEFGG). The most famous exponent was Shakespeare: it is similar to the petrarchan sonnet, but there is no break in though between its parts. The most famous exponent was Milton.

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