SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION

TOPIC: the evolution of the English poetry

Meaning experiences of development of English poetry start with the epic poem “Beowulf” written in a language that cannot be understood today. In fact, Seamus Heaney translated “Beowulf” in modern English.

That poem showed alliterative use of the lines together with the coupled rhymed couplet.

For is nature of epic poem, it was also a narrative poem: it told the story of the hero “Beowulf”. It is important to say that it was an oral form of poetry and so it had to exploit sound elements in order to be remembered and shared to posterity., the consequence is that the first forms of poetry are narrative, as you can see also in the medieval ballads that generally are about tragic love story, supernatural and fights because confines between Scotland and England. Such ballads were arranged in quatrains, used a simple language suitable to an in-alphabetical public.

Even in this case sounds effects were very relevant because ballads are a form of poetry composed to be danced during public festivals.

The character of the story are just scratched and the story mixed narration and dialogue. Tone is generally a nostalgic one. Setting is also very relevant because it contributes the atmosphere and the mood. If ballads were ideally addressed to common people, during the middle ages a new form of poetry is represented by forms of poetry such as the prologue of Canterbury tales. The religious element plays a significant role because it is considered the privileged code.

Traditional values are those shared by the Church. During Renaissance the features of religious code are still present but the intelligent reader meets the courteous poetry and the lyric poetry how it is possible to see by the success of the sonnets collection that show women who have the aim and obligation to morally improve men. Gradually sonnet moves from courteous code keeping its structure that in Great Britain in mainly the Elizabethan sonnet exactly composed by three quatrains and one coupled rhymed couplet.

Because of sonnets belong to lyric poetry, they are focused on intimate and personal aspects of life and so they talk about intimate aspects.

Shakespeare, by his personal use of parody, will change the content of sonnet form. It is necessary to think about sonnet 130 in which his “mistress eyes” don't make the reader think about Beatrice's eyes by Dante but they aren't nothing but the sun.

as a consequence, the courteous code, that dominated all the continental lyric experiences, shows the first signs of transformation. This happens because human aspects and virtues come in the fore front. Man takes the place of God without regretting religious element. Considering all the Shakespearean drama and the Elizabethan one, it is a drama written in poetry where the privileged lines are the iambic pentameter. It follows that the poetic registers of drama have to meet all the audience's preference. Human questions and illnesses are the focal elements of the drama.

Great Shakespeare tragedies bring on stage human beings' weaknesses, the thirst for power (Macbeth), the difficulty to take decision and yo take action on the consequence (Hamlet), the jealousy (Othello), the luxury (Anthony and Cleopatra). Human beings still refer to religious values in respect to the philosophy of chain of being where everybody has yo keep his place. This is the reason why “Satan” by John Milton is a demoniac hero therefore very attractive. J. Milton is the most important poet after Shakespeare and he gives voice to puritan elements in his poetry. Readers appreciate Satan because they recognized themselves in his weakness. An additional meaningful experience in the development on the English poetry in given by metaphysical poetry that, like T. S. Elliot will say during XX century, “knows as to melt intellect and feelings” and the mixture will be totally lost after metaphysical poetry of which J. Donne is the most relevant exponent. Metaphysical poetry is based on poets' ability to integrate experiences that belong to different range of experience and they include also the areas that were considered distant from typical objects of lyrical poetry: earthquake, geometrical aspects.

During '700 poetry became mainly mock-heroic poetry : lines written to create parody of aristocracy, a social class that in that period was gradually losing importance in favor of an emergent middle class. Alexander pope writes a heroic poem that is called “the rape of the lock”: a poem to speak about the aristocratic man that cuts a lock from a girl's head. It is easy to understand that epic poetry dignity results downgraded to deal with a banal argument.

Naturally, poetry in not the privileged genre of '700 because it is the century during which the genre of the novel was born.