English Poetry from its origins to the end of the 17th century

Ancient civilisations are characterised by oral traditions, while modern cultures transformed the oral
tradition into the written one.

Origins of the English Poetry: Until the end of the Middle Ages there circulated short poems having the
following themes:
nature (ritualistic poetry)
religion (religious poetry)
love (love poetry)
history (poems based on historical reconstructions of local myths)

In order to memorise these poems, people relied on main stresses in each line and the main stresses
were linked by alliteration. There was no end-rhyme. The most representative works of this period are:

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th century)

Piers Plowman (14th century)
Pearl (14th century)

Before the influence of French and Italian, English was an accentual language. After Chaucer, it
became a syllabic- accentual one (syllables achieved relevance).
After the Norman Conquest, French became the language of the court and Roman de la Rose
influenced the courtly poetry in England. This type of poetry was highly rhetorical and manneristic.

The 14th century was characterised by an interest in the sciences and in the arts. Moreover, many
cities became rich, such as Florence. Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio greatly influenced the development of
English poetry. The greatest poet in Middle English is Geoffrey Chaucer. His poems are allegorical,
mythical, historical and narrative.
The first English poet of purely lyrical poetry was Thomas Wyatt, followed by John Skelton,
Henry Howard Surrey. They opened the way to Shakespeare and to the metaphysical poets

Renaissance meant the rediscovery of the classics and of the Arabian literature. The local English
tradition was considered barbarous as compared with the French or Italian one. Renaissance in England
coincided with the Elizabethan Age.
In this period English language and poetry saw considerable developments. Edmund Spenser’s
collection of eclogues The Shepheards Calender drew inspiration from Chaucer, Virgil, and the French poet
Clement Marot. His most representative poem The Faerie Queene was the first English heroic poem in
the tradition of Ariosto and Tasso.

Two poetic genres flourished in this period: the narrative and the erotic poem and the sonnet sequence.

· Narrative and erotic poems re-elaborated mythological subjects. E.g.: Hero and Lenader by
Christopher Marlowe or Venus and Adonis by Shakespeare.

· The sonnet sequences emphasised the dramatic rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The most
famous cycles were:

Astrophel and Stella by Phillip Sidney

Amoretti by Edmund Spenser
Sonnets by Shakespeare.
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 In the second half of the 17th century Edmund Spencer also tried to revalue the local English
tradition into what is now called “metaphysical poetry”.
The most important achievement was made in the field of drama. Shakespeare imposed and
perfected the blank verse.

The 17th century was characterised by an reaction to Elizabethan musicality an a predilection for the
rational and neoclassical use of poetry. The most representative poets of this trend were Ben Johnson,
John Milton and John Dryden.

· John Milton gave “blank verse” a baroque style

· John Dryden established the tradition of the heroic couplet (couples of rhyming iambic
pentameters).

The opposition to the Elizabethan poetry gave birth to a new intellectual, witty and obscure
poetry, called metaphysical. This new poetry was concerned with such matters as philosophy and religion.
John Donne was the most remarkable poet belonging to this new school (known for the use of unusual
similes or conceits); he was followed by Henry Vaughan and Thomas Traherne who transformed the
obscure doctrine into a more baroque one.