Types and genres of poems - a brief review

Fans of poetry often argue to which genre to include a particular poem. In fact, there are a great many varieties of literary works, including lyrical works . To understand them sometimes on the shoulder only specialist-philologists. Here, elegy, and ode, and satirical poems, and poems in prose - all you will not list. Many genres in our time "left the stage" and in modern poetry are almost never met.

Let's look briefly at what genres are. As you know, lyrical forms can vary in volume (small - poems, sonnets, epigrams, odes, etc., larger ones - poems, ballads), genres, content (love lyrics, friendly message, solemn eulogy, satirical epigram And so forth). Poetic works can be strictly canonized in form (have a strictly defined number of lines or stanzas) or they are written in free form, sometimes without observing the size and rhyme ("white" verses). However, the impression of "complete freedom" of versification in this case is deceptive - any work is created according to certain canons.

So, the main genres of poems. A classic poem is a small (in contrast, for example, from a poem) literary work in poetic form. Since the 19th century is the most common form of lyrics. Ode - a pathetic, solemn work, glorifying someone or anything, was often performed with music. In Greek, it means "song". Elegy - under this name in ancient poetry was understood as a poem written in the form of an elegiac distich, later (in Western European poetry), elegiac works began to be called romantic-sentimental works, which tell of unhappy love, disappointment, frailty of being.

A ballad is a poetic work that has a story, usually of a folklore or historical nature, often based on a legend. Ballads often had a mysterious, sometimes gloomy color. The song refers to the verbal and musical art. The form usually consists of stanzas or couplets. The content can be from lyrical to satirical, the composition of performers - solo or choral, with or without music. The song can be folk or professional, it can be authored (for example, a romance).

Many genres of poems are no longer in our days. This message is a work addressed to a specific or fictional person (it was popular from the ancient times until about the middle of the 19th century), madrigal - a poem-compliment addressed, more often than not, to a woman, an apologist-a poem of a moralizing nature.

Bucolic (pastoral) - the general name of two separate genres, which are often confused - eclogues and idylls. Ekloga depicts everyday rural sketches, dialogues between shepherds and cowherds. The idyll narrates about a peaceful and carefree life in the bosom of nature (often this concept is used with irony). Both these varieties originated in ancient Greece and existed until the beginning of the 19th century.

There are genres of poems, clearly structured, with a given classical canons form. This is a sonnet consisting of 14 lines, including 2 quatrains for 2 rhymes (called quatrains) and 2 triathodes (so-called tercets) for 3 or 2 rhymes. Sonnets appeared in Italy in the 13th century and were unusually popular in the Renaissance, reflected in the poetry of the styles of baroque, romanticism and partly modernism.

To solid forms can also be attributed genre of rondo. This is a kind of poem of 15 lines, and the 9th and 15th lines are an unrefined refrain repeating the beginning of the first line. In addition to the rondo, solid forms include triolet, riturnel, stanza, octave, siciliana, rondel.

Always popular were and there are genres of comic poems. This is a fable - a short moralizing work with an indispensable morality in the end, the heroes of which were usually animals and fairy-tale characters. The epigram is a small satirical poem, often sharply ridiculing someone. Burlesque is a kind of comic genre.

In a separate group can be distinguished genres of poems, one way or another based on varying grammatical forms or simply the play of words. It is acrostic, from the initial letters of which it is possible to add a word or phrase, an anacyclic verse (read from beginning to end and vice versa), a burime (poems on a pre-set rhyme), a palindrome (equally readable from right to left and vice versa), etc.