PART 2

教师进入Definition of Poetry 讲解:

Let students read the first 4 paragraphs and note some key words or phrases that contribute to the definition of poetry.

Q1: What are some of the key words or phrases you can find in the first 4 paragraphs to define poetry?

A1: Poetry is an oldest form of art; poetry means a quality or a state more than a form; poetry as a genre must be a particular form combined with a particular quality.

Q2: What are the particular qualities of poetry or of form of poetic production?

A2: Words of special arrangements; language in a different manner

Let students read the fifth paragraph and the poem The Tiger in the text book and think about the language of the poem.

William Blake' s poem “The Tiger”:

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright

In the forest of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand forged thy dread feet?

Q3: What an encyclopedia says about a tiger in the fifth paragraph?

A3: “Tiger: large carnivore (Panthera tigris) of the cat family, found in the forests of Asia. Its yellow-orange coat features numerous prominent black stripes. Males may attain 10 ft (3 m) in length and 650 Ib (290 kg) in weight. Tigers are solitary, mainly nocturnal hunters and are good swimmers but poor climbers. They have been extensively hunted for their pelts and for their bones (used in traditional Chinese medicines) and are a threatened species." (The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia, 1991)

Q4: Comparing with what an encyclopedia says about a tiger, what differences can you see? And how does the poem convey the spirit of tiger to you?

A4: The encyclopedia gives many facts about tigers, but the information doesn’t make the readers have emotional response. Black’s poem doesn’t tell so many facts about the tiger, but it conveys a kind of emotional experience. The reader can see the tiger’s burning eyes and fearful symmetrical body through the use of words; Poetic language has an intellectual dimension, an emotional dimension, sensuous dimension, and an imaginative dimension. These dimensions work together to pass experience to the reader.

Poetry uses every dimension of language, so it must be very intense or compact. Poetry's most noticeable and important characteristic is compactness. Poetry tries to say the most in the fewest possible words.

Therefore, poetry is a literary genre that communicates experience in the most condensed form. Poetry is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose.

导入：

Most poems we are exposed to are in written forms, however, it is impossible to date the first poem or poet in the world, since poetry originated in a time before written languages were born. People took the form of dance or of the religious spirit for communal expression. In ancient China, there were many poems that people could sing out. Here is a picture representing a famous Chinese poem-- 《水调歌头》by Su Shi.

You probably be familiar with lullaby, too, which we call cradle song, a soothing song or piece of music that is usually played for (or sung to) children. The purposes of lullabies vary. In some societies they are used to pass down cultural knowledge or tradition. In addition, lullabies are often used for the developing of communication skills, indication of emotional intent, maintenance of infants' undivided attention, modulation of infants' arousal, and regulation of behavior. As a result, the music is often simple and repetitive. Lullabies can be found in many countries, and have existed since ancient times.

All these above are some of the forms of poetry in old time.

教师进入 Brief History of Poetry 讲解:

Q4: What are some of the other forms of the progenitor of poetry?

A1: Song (work songs, lullabies, and play songs) is the progenitor of poetry; Religious songs also play a very important role in the development of poetry.

Q5: Which mattered most when poetry first was born, the sound effect or the spelling?

A5: Sound effect mattered the most because poetry grew out of music at first when sound effect was much emphasized and spelling did not count. Besides, the form of dance was an origin of poetry. The dance rhythm could be marked not only by clapping, stamping, or rhythmic cries, but also by chanting or otherwise intoning or singing words, so sound effect was much emphasized.

Q6: What are the earliest recorded poems respectively in British literature and in American literature?

A: In British literature, the epic Beowulf, written in the 8th century, is among the earliest recorded poems while in American literature the first collection of poems is The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650) by Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672).

Since we have covered the origins of poetry, let’s see types of poetry.

Q7: What are types of poetry found among Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions dated about 2600 BC?

A: Types of poetry include laments, odes, elegies and hymns.

Q8: What are the differences between the earliest narrative verses and the later poetry?

A8: Narrative verse might have originated in the religious impulse. The earliest narrative songs, or epics, tell the stories of the creation of mankind and the myths of the gods. Later poetry became more and more concerned with human life. Epics of later times relate the lives of godlike heroes; and still later ones deal with the lives of historical heroes. Among the earliest epics are the Babylonian creation myth and the' Gilgamesh" epic, the Greek Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, the medieval French Song of Roland and the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf.

Poems, according to their forms and contents, can be divided into several categories. Obviously, these categories are not absolutely clean-cut ones, each sharing some elements with others.

教师进入Kinds of Poetry 讲解

Q9: What are some categories of poetry?

A: Ballad; lyric; narrative poem; epic; sonnet; ode; elegy; pastoral; blank verse and free verse.

Q10: Among all these categories, which one do you think has a relatively longer history than the others? Explain your reasons.

A10: Ballad enjoys a longer history. The word comes from the Latin and Italian “ballare” meaning to “dance”. Originally, the anonymous folk ballads were sung as accompaniment to dances, passed along orally, and changed in transmission. Poetry existed long before people wrote, so ballad might have a longer history.

Let students read the poem She dwelt among the untrodden ways and discuss with their groups about their feelings upon reading it.

Q11: How does the poem, She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways by William Wordsworth impress you?

A: The words in the poem are simple and readers may get a sense of sadness when reading it.

She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways William Wordsworth

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

—Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

Explanation:

“She dwelt among the untrodden ways” consists of three quatrains, and describes Lucy who lives in solitude near the source of the River Dove. In order to convey the dignity and unaffected flowerlike naturalness of his subject, Wordsworth uses simple language, mainly words of one syllable. In the opening quatrain, he describes the isolated and untouched area where Lucy lived, while her innocence is explored in the second, during which her beauty is compared to that of a hidden flower. The final stanza laments Lucy's early and lonesome death, which only he notices.

Throughout the poem, sadness and ecstasy are intertwined, emphasized by the exclamation marks in the second and third verses. The effectiveness of the concluding line in the concluding stanza has divided critics and has variously been described as "a masterstroke of understatement" and overtly sentimental.”

Q12: Ballads vary from time to time and from place to place, but the bulk of ballads share some key characteristics. After my simple explanation about the poem She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, what are some shared characteristics you can find?

A:

1) The beginning is usually abrupt.

2) The language is simple.

3) The story is told through dialogue and action.

4) The theme is usually tragic.

5) There is often a refrain.

Basically, there are two kinds of ballads. The folk or popular ballad is anonymous, existing among the illiterate and semi-illiterate. It belongs to the oral tradition. The literary ballad is written down and/or created by a poet. The literary ballad is more elaborate, a prime example being S.T. Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The earliest record of folk ballads dates back to about 12th century and that of literary ballads to the 18th century. From the late 18th century hundreds were collected-- historical, romantic, supernatural, nautical, or heroic. Many ancient English ballads deal with national heroes, wars and outlaws. A famous English ballad is Robin Hood. American ballads deal with cowboys, outlaws, folk heroes, and African Americans. The famous example is Yankee Doodle. In the mid-20th century, folk music has drawn on the tradition.

Search the poems on line after class, read them and compare the poem to each other to get a better understanding of what ballad is; S.T. Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Robin Hood; Yankee Doodle.