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An Introduction to Poetic Forms offers specimen discussions of poems through the lens of form. While each of its chapters does provide a standard definition of the form in question in its opening paragraphs, their main objective is to provide readings of specific examples to illustrate how individual poets have deviated from or subverted those expectations usually associated with the form under discussion. While providing the most vital information on the most widely taught forms of poetry, then, this collection will very quickly demonstrate that counting syllables and naming rhyme schemes is not the be-all and end-all of poetic form. Instead, each chapter will contain cross-references to other literary forms and periods as well as make clear the importance of the respective form to the culture at large: be it the democratising communicative power of the ballad or the objectifying male gaze of the blazon and resistance to same in the contreblazon - the efficacy of form is explored in the fullness of its cultural dimensions.
In using standard definitions only as a starting point and instead focusing on lively debates around the cultural impact of poetic form, the textbook helps students and instructors to see poetic forms not as a static and lifeless affair but as living, breathing testament to the ongoing evolution of cultural debates. In the final analysis, the book is interested in showing the complexities and contradictions inherent in the very nature of literary form itself: how each concrete example deviates from the standard template while at the same time employing it as a foil to generate meaning.
List of contents
1 Introduction: Repetition and Variation
Patrick Gill
SECTION ONE
Elements of Form
2 Rhyme
Stefan Blohm and Christine A. Knoop
3 Metre
Jesper Kruse
4 Toeing and Breaking the Line: On Enjambment and Caesura
Heather H. Yeung
5 Persona: Its Meaning and Significance
James Dowthwaite
6 Poetry in Performance
Jessica Bundschuh
SECTION TWO
Poetic Forms
7 The Ballad
Catherine Charlwood
8 Blank Verse
Calista McRae
9 The Blazon
Jordan Kistler
10 Concrete Poetry
Tymon Adamczewski
11 The Dramatic Monologue
Gabriella Hartvig
12 Ekphrastic Poetry
Anja Müller-Wood
13 The Elegy
Patrick Gill
14 The Epic
Rachael Sumner
15 Free Verse
Andrew Rowcroft
16 The Heroic Couplet
Alex Streim
17 The Long Poem
Patrick Gill and Miguel Juan Gronow Smith
18 Mock-Heroic Poetry
Purificación Ribes Traver
19 The Ode
Florian Klaeger
20 The Prospect Poem
Roslyn Irving
21 The Sestina
Matthew Kilbane
22 The Sonnet
Patrick Gill
23 The Villanelle
Patrick Gill
About the author
Patrick Gill is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Culture at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, where he also received his PhD. The co-editor of Constructing Coherence in the British Short Story Cycle (2018) and Translating Renaissance Experience (2021), his ongoing interest is in the efficacy of literary form.
Summary
An Introduction to Poetic Forms offers specimen discussions of poems through the lens of form. This volume highlights the cultural impact of poetic form, not as a static and lifeless affair but as living, breathing testament to the ongoing evolution of cultural debates.
