Storytelling in poetry
A poem is called a narrative poem that tells a tale. During the past, these poems were not written down (as in lyric poetry); they were recited and transmitted verbally from person to person. Although they were typically told as fiction, other myths were based on real events-events such as great battles, or famous men's deaths. (The English ballad "Sir Patrick Spens." from the 13th century will be an example of the latter)
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Greek vase painting (about 480 B.C.) depicts a
rhapsodist, a professional reciter of epic poems
-especially those of Homer. |
Narrative poetry has many forms; ballads, epic hero sagas, and folk songs are only a handful. One of the greatest literary styles arose out of the conventional culture, passed down from generation to generation: the epic.
Maybe the oldest example of this type is the Gilgamesh Epic, an ancient Babylonian epic which is believed to be more than four thousand years old. It has many of the features of the epic that were later to become conventions; for example, a heavy mythological dimension, a heroic main figure, mighty wars, and so on.
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16th-century map showing parts of
Africa, Asia, and India explored by Vasco da
Gama, hero of Camões's epic The Lusiads. |
The best-epics include the Iliad and the Odyssey by the Greek poet Homer (who actually died in the B.c. of the eighth century). The Iliad relates the Greeks ' tale of Troy's siege and their eventual victory; the Odyssey portrays the wanderings after the Trojan war of one of the Greek characters, Odysseus.
Those two great poems were the recognized templates for the épic type in later centuries. The Aeneid, for example, by the Roman poet Vergil, and the Lusiads, by the Portuguese poet Vaz de Camões (1524-80), all fit closely the trend set by Homer.
Nevertheless, not all long narrative poems follow the comprehensive classical "rules" for the epic-rules which insist on 12 (or 24) divisions of the poem, on an initial invocation of the poetry muse, on long lists of characters and their properties, etc. But many of these long poems are still fantastic plays, given their disobedience: for example, the medieval Germanic Nibelungenlied-which the 19th-century composer Richard Wagner* made into a series of operas called the Ring of the Nibelungs*; or the Divine Comedy by the Italian poet Dante*. However, on the other hand, several poems that tried to emulate the Homeric styles were mistakes and were lost.
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woodcut depici-
-ing the pilgrims whose stories make up The
Canterbury Tales, a series of 24 narrative
poems by England's Geoffrey Chaucer. |
Since epic poems deal with great men's exploits, they are also called heroic. But the best epics are more than just entertaining stories. A great epic may also lead to strong and universal confidence (without losing any of its excitement) from the hero's example. For example, in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf of the seventh century, the acts of the hero (Beowulf) and his disciples demonstrate such virtues as bravery, integrity, and loyalty. The epic will also say a lot about a particular time in history. (Camões ' Lusiads partially deals with the exploration by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama of the sea path into India.)
The narrative or epic form has been widely used in medieval and Renaissance Europe, for example in El Cantar de Mio Cid (The Song of the Cid), published in 1 140 by an anonymous Spanish poet, in the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer of England (1340-1400), and in Jerusalem by Torquato Tasso* of Italy.
Today, narratives are seldom published. Some contemporary authors also write long poems, such as the American Ezra Pound's Cantos*, but never say tales.
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This 17th-century illustration to the ancient
Indian epic poem the Mahabharata shows the
hero, Arjuna, riding behind the god Krishna. |
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