The Evolution of the English Poetry

Meaningful experiences of development of the English poetry start with the Epic poem Beowulf written in a language that cannot be understood today. Indeed, Seamus Heaney has translated Beowulf into modern English. That poem showed the alliterative use of line together with rhyme couplets. Being an epic poem it was also a narrative poem: it told the story of the hero Beowulf. It is to say that it was an oral form of poetry and as a consequence it has to relay on several sound devices to be remembered and handed down to posterity. It follows that the first forms of poetry are narrative as you can see in Medieval ballads that generally are about tragic love stories, the supernatural and the fights on the borders between Scotland and England. Such ballads were organized in quatrains, used a simple language suitable to a public illiterate. Even in the case, the sound effects were very significant because ballads are a form of poetry composed to be danced during the public parties. The characters are just sketching and the story fuse narration and dialogue. Tone is generally nostalgic, the setting therefore is very important because it contributes to atmosphere and mood. If ballads were ideally addressed to the common people in the Middle Ages a literally form suitable is represented by poetic forms like the Prologues to the Canterbury tales. The religious element plays a relevant role considering that the privileged code of the time is the religious one. As a consequence the traditional values are the ones widespread by the Church.

During the Renaissance the feature of the religious code are still present, but the intelligent reader meets courteous poetry and lyrical poetry as you can see from the successful of collections of sonnets that present women that have the purpose and obligation to morally improve man. Gradually, the sonnet moves on from the courteous code even if it keeps its structure that in England is mostly the one of Elizabethan sonnet and mainly the one consisting of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. Being sonnets a lyrical form of poetry, they focus on intimate and personal aspects of life and therefore they tell about reserved and personal experiences. It will be Shakespeare through a personal use of parody to change the content of the sonnet. Suffice is to think of sonnet where “My mistress eyes” do no longer remind to the blue eyes of Dante’s Beatrice but they rather “are nothing like the sun”. As a consequence the courteous code that dominated all the lyrical experience off and on the Continent shows its first signs of transformation. This happen because human aspects and human beings values arrives in the forefront. The man replaced God without neglection the religious element. Considering all Shakespearean drama as well as the Elizabethan one : it’s a drama written in verse where the privileged line is the iambic pentameter. As a result the poetic register presented in drama have to meet all the taste of whatever spectator. Human matters and problems represent  the focus  of drama. The grates tragedies of Shakespeare bring on the stage human being’s faults: the thirst of power (Macbeth), the difficulty to make decisions and act accordingly (Hamlet), jealousy (Othello), lust (Antony and Cleopatra). However the human refers still to religious values respecting the philosophy of the Chain of Being, where anybody must stay at his own position. This is the reason why John Milton’s Satan Speech is a devilish and demon and yet really attractive. ”it is better to dominate in Hell than serve in Heaven” is Satan’s motto, really appreciated by readers because they identify themselves with that peculiar human feature. John Milton is the second best in importance after Shakespeare and gives voice to the Puritan element; in his epic poetry. Readers appreciate Satan because they recognise themselves in his weakness. An additional significant experience in the development of the English poetry is represented by the metaphysical poetry that as T.S. Eliot will say in 20^th century is able to mix mind and emotion, and the mixture will be totally lose after Metaphysical poetry of which John Donne is the most outstanding figure. The novel of metaphysical poetry consists in the poet’s skills to integrate experiences that belong to different fields of human experience and include also areas considered far from the typical poetry. Earth quakes, geometrical aspects and others enter the poetical text becoming for the readers of the Enlightenment particularly “strange” and bitterly criticised. During the 18^th century, poetry becomes mainly mock-heroic poetry: lines written to create a parody of aristocracy, a social class that in the period was gradually losing its mainstream position in favour of an emergent middle class. Alexander Pope writes an heroic poem called The Rape of the lock: a poem to speak about a trivial topic. Of course, poetry is not the typical literary genre of the 18^th century, being the Enlightenment the century that records the birth of the novel.