What are the main forms of narrative poetry and what are their chief characteristics?
What Is Narrative Poetry
What Is Narrative Poetry?
The two main forms of poetry are: (1) narrative poetry, (ii) lyrical poetry.
What Is Narrative Poetry?
The main forms which the narrative poetry takes are: (i) The Ballad, (ii) The Epic, (iii) The Mock Epic, (iv) The Romance.
1. The ballad –
The ballad is a short narrative poem. It tells a story in verse. These stories grew from the popular folklore and were originally sung in the dancing halls. Ballad has some relation with word ‘ball’ in which a group of men and women danced. So it is a communal poem. Many old ballads have repeated lines or ‘refrains’ which were sung by the dancing groups. Some important features of the ballad are :
(i) Originally it was an oral poem sung in the dancing halls or before
an assembly in the hall of the lord by a minstrel or bard.
(ii) It is a communal poem – in which some lines – the ‘refrains’ are
repeated.
(iii) It is a highly dramatic narrative; the story begins at the most
arresting moment to catch the attention of the audience at once.
(iv) It deals with elementary passions of love, hatred, revenge, courage and loyalty to clan or tribe or its ruler etc.
(v) The metrical arrangement is simple with conventional patterning
of numbers with a preference for 3 or 7.
(vi) It has certain stock epithets – ‘bold’, ‘golden’, ‘silver’, ‘milk-white’
etc.
(vii) The movement of the story is brisk and graphical with vivid
occasional details. It is swift and economical.
Some famous ballads are: ‘Chevy Chase’, Edward’ Edward ‘Sir Patrick Spens’; ‘Sir Walter Scott’s Proud Masie’; Coleridges’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Keats’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Yeats’s ‘The Ballad of a Spanish Armada’.
There are two kinds of Ballad : Broadside Baillad, and Literary Ballad. A Broadside Ballad is printed on one side of a single sheet. It deals with a current event or issue. It is sung to wll-known tune. These ballads were sung in the streets and country fairs.
The Literary Ballad or the Ballad of Art is a narrative poem in deliberate imitation of the form and spirit of the popular ballad. W.H. Hudson considers it “as a literary development of the traditional form”. Some great Ballads of this were composed in the Romantic Age. Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge, Proud Maisie by Scott, and La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats present the example Literary Ballad.
There is also a minor form of the Ballad which is known as the Ballad
of Art, in which a comic theme is treated with the seriousness appropriate to the Ballad. In everything but its humorous subject, it follows its model close by John Gilpin by Cowper is a famous ballad of this kind. The Rime of the Ancient Waggoner is also an interesting ballad of this type.
There are a few most popular ballads which are still being sung in the British Isles and the remote rural areas of America. M.H. Abrams writes. “To the songs it in herited from Great Britain America has added native forms of the ballad, such as those sung by lumberjacks and cow boys. A member of recent falk singers themselves compose ballads; most of there, however, such as Bonnie and Clyde, are closer to the journalistic “broadside ballad” them to the primitive and heroic mode of the popular ballads in the child collection.
2. The epic –
The epic is a long narrative poem with a principal here. The theme of the epic is of great importance in the life of the nation or the race. It is familiar to the people. It embodies the thoughts and aspiration of the whole race rather than one individual. It offers inspiration and ennoblement to a national or cultural tradition. Just as the theme of the epic is great in the same way its style is grand. It is marked by dignity and sublimity. The epic is usually written in one metre. Epics occur in almost all national cultures. They commonly give the account of national origin and enshrine the ancient heroic myths central to the culture.
Kinds of epic –
There are two kinds of epic. The true or the primary epic such as those of Homer’s the lliad and the Odyssey. The Epic of Art or the secondary epic is that of the Roman poet Virgil’s the Aeneid or the English poet Milton’ the Paradise Lost. In English the primary epic is in old English: It called Beowulf.
3. The mock epic –
It is a form of satire in which the grand manner of the epic is employed to subjects which are trivial or base. Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock’ is the most famous example in English. It describes a family quarrel provoked by a young man robbing a girl of a lock of her hair. It uses a dignified style appropriate to the Rape of Helen which gave rise to Homer’s epic. Dryden’s ‘Absolem and Achitophel is
another form of mock epic in which a bad man committing base deeds is described in epic style, without disguising his badness.
4. The Romance –
Another form which the long narrative poem took in the 11 to 13 cent is called Romance or Metrical Romance. It is tale of love and adventure is verse. In the beginning it dealt with the heroic adventures of knight, who set out to deal justice and protect the weak. It is filled miraculous events, extravagant incidents, wizards enchantment. Later on it dealt with tales of passionate lovers who defy all obstacles and go through fire and water to attain their love. Spenser’s Fairie Queene, Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King, Sir Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake and Lady of the Last Minstrel are some famous examples.
Important links
What is poetry? What are its main characteristics?
What is a lyric and what are its main forms?
