Poetry总介绍.pdf

Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language —such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre—to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning. Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskrit Vedas (吠陀经), Zoroastrian Gathas（索罗亚斯德教的 《迦特》）, and the Homericepics, the Iliad and the Odyssey . Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition, verse form and rhyme, and emphasized the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from more objectively informative, prosaic forms of writing. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a fundamental creative act employing language. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, or to evoke emotive responses. Devices such as assonance （类韵，谐音） , alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory（咒语的，魔咒的）effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly figures of speech such as metaphor, simile and metonymy （转喻） create a resonance（共鸣，反响） between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred（相似的，亲属关系）forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Some poetry types are specific to particular cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language in which the poet writes. Readers accustomed to identifying poetry with Dante, Goethe, and Rumi may think of it as written in lines based on rhyme and regular meter; there are, however, traditions, such as Biblical poetry, that use other means to create rhythm and euphony （悦耳之音） . Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, playing with and testing, among other things, the principle of euphony itself, sometimes altogether forgoing （放弃，停止） rhyme or set rhythm. In today's increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. HISTORY Poetry as an art form may predate literacy. Epic poetry, from the Indian Vedas(1700– 1200 BC) and Zoroaster's Gathas to the Odyssey(800– 675 BC), appears to have been composed in poetic form to aid memorization and oral transmission, in prehistoric and ancient societies. Other forms of poetry developed directly from folk songs. The earliest entries in the ancient compilation Shijing, were initially lyrics, preceding later entries intended to be read. The oldest surviving epic poem is the Epic of Gilgamesh, from the 3rd millennium BC in Sumer (in Mesopotamia, now Iraq), which was written in cuneiform （楔形文字） script on clay tablets and, later, papyrus（纸沙草） . Other ancient epic poetry includes the Greek epics Iliad and Odyssey , the Old Iranian books the Gathic Avesta and Yasna , the Roman national epic, Virgil's Aeneid（埃涅依德）, and the Indian epics Ramayana（罗摩传） and Mahabharata（摩诃婆罗多）. The efforts of ancient thinkers to determine what makes poetry distinctive as a form, and what distinguishes good poetry from bad, resulted in “poetics“—the study of the aesthetics of poetry. Some ancient poetic traditions; such as, contextually, Classical Chinese poetry in the case of the Shijing (Classic of Poetry), which records the development of poetic canons （真作，真经）with ritual and aesthetic importance. More recently, thinkers have struggled to find a definition that could encompass formal differences as great as those between Chaucer's Canterbury Talesand Matsuo Bashō's（松尾芭蕉） Oku no Hosomichi（奥之细道）, as well as differences in context spanning Tanakh（希伯来圣经） religious poetry, love poetry, and rap. Genres A poetic genre is generally a tradition or classification of poetry based on the subject matter, style, or other broader literary characteristics. Some commentators view genres as natural forms of literature. Others view the study of genres as the study of how different works relate and refer to other works. Narrative poetry Narrative poetry is a genre of poetry that tells a story. Broadly it subsumes epic poetry, but the term “narrative poetry“ is often reserved for smaller works, generally with more appeal to human interest. Narrative poetry may be the oldest type of poetry. Many scholars of Homer have concluded that his Iliad and Odyssey were composed from compilations of shorter narrative poems that related individual episodes. Much narrative poetry—such as Scottish and English ballads, and Baltic （波罗的海） and Slavic （斯拉夫语的）heroic poems —is performance poetry with roots in a preliterate oral tradition. It has been speculated that some features that distinguis。