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Lecture One

The document is a lecture on English poetry by Dr. Shaimaa El-Ateek, outlining its definitions, characteristics, and motivations for creation. It highlights four key characteristics of poetry: imagery, sound, rhythm, and diction, and discusses the various types of imagery and the significance of rhythm and sound in enhancing poetic expression. A comprehensive definition of poetry is provided, emphasizing its role in expressing feelings and experiences through rhythmic and beautiful language.

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Jana Wael
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13 views11 pages

Lecture One

The document is a lecture on English poetry by Dr. Shaimaa El-Ateek, outlining its definitions, characteristics, and motivations for creation. It highlights four key characteristics of poetry: imagery, sound, rhythm, and diction, and discusses the various types of imagery and the significance of rhythm and sound in enhancing poetic expression. A comprehensive definition of poetry is provided, emphasizing its role in expressing feelings and experiences through rhythmic and beautiful language.

Uploaded by

Jana Wael
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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English Poetry

Lecture One
Dr. Shaimaa El-Ateek
Poetry and its Definitions
• Poetry is the oldest form of literature.
• It was mainly oral, based on performance.
• It has four defining characteristics:
– Imagery,
– Sound,
– Rhythm and
– Diction

Lecture One 2
The Characteristics of Poetry
• Imagery
– The sensory language used in poetry.
– It appeals to the senses of the reader or audience.
• Sound
– It is the auditory aspect or quality in poetry.
– Poetry is meant to be heard and in its original form .
• Rhythm
– It is the wave-like movement in poetry.
– It is the musical quality in poetry.
• Diction
– The choice or selection of words used by the poet.

Lecture One 3
Motivations for creating poetry
• Critics have identified three main motivations for creating poetry:
• Imitative (Mimetic):
– The innate human instinct to imitate things.
• Aesthetic/Emotional
– The pleasure of recognizing good or effective mimicry.
• Musical
– The instinct for tune, music and rhythm are means of expressing and thus
giving vent to emotions.

Lecture One 4
What is Poetry?
• There is no one standard definition of poetry.
– It is the language that tells us emotional reaction.
– It is a rhythmical creation.
– It is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in
tranquility.
– It is the communication of pleasure.
– It is the record of the best and happiest moments of the best and happiest
minds.
– It is the succession of experiences – sounds, images, thoughts, emotions.

Lecture One 5
What is Poetry?
• From these definitions, we can elicit a comprehensive definition
of poetry as
A form of writing in verse form, that expresses feelings or thought
in a rhythmic and beautiful language to communicate an
experience.
• This definition contains the essential elements of the genre of
poetry (imagery, rhythm, sound and diction).

Lecture One 6
ELEMENTS OF POETRY
• Imagery:
– The images in a poem.
– A language that represents sense experience.
– The sensory content of a poem that evokes a picture or an idea in the mind
of a reader or the audience.
• Poet utilize imagery to achieve the following important effects:
– Arouse emotions in the reader or audience
– Create beauty
– Communicate thoughts
– Achieve a sense of reality of life experiences and ideas.

Lecture One 7
ELEMENTS OF POETRY
• There are six main types of imagery used by poets in their works:
Auditory:
– imagery or words that evoke the sense of hearing or a specific sound.
– For example, onomatopoeia, that is, a combination of words whose sound
seems to resemble or echo the sound it denotes.
• Olfactory:
– Images that evoke our sense of smell.
• Tactile
– Images that appeal to one’s sense of touch.

Lecture One 8
ELEMENTS OF POETRY
• Gustatory
– Images that evoke our sense of taste.
• Visual
– Images that appeal to our sense of sight or vision.
• Kinesthetic
– Images that appeal to the reader‘s sense of movement or motion.

Lecture One 9
ELEMENTS OF POETRY
• Rhythm
– It is derived from the Greek word that means 'flow’.
– It also means movement.
– It is the variable repetition that alternates between stressed and unstressed
syllables.
– It contributes greatly to the emotional content and effect of poetry.
– It relates to the form and the meaning expressed by the poet.
– It is achieved through the metrical schemes.
– Meter in poetry is a repetitive and symmetrical pattern of stressed and
unstressed syllables.
– There are four common meter in English poetry: Iambic, Trochaic,
Anapestic, and Dactylic.

Lecture One 10
ELEMENTS OF POETRY
• Sound
– Sound effects give aural/auditory pleasure to the reader.
– They also equally give added significance to the words used by the poet.
– Sound in poetry is used to convey meaning, emotions and pleasure.
– It is achieved through such literary devices as alliteration, assonance,
consonance, rhyme, onomatopoeia, repetition, refrain, etc.
• Diction
– It means the use of words in oral or written discourse;
– It is the selection of words by the poet.

Lecture One 11

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