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Hudibrastic Verse
Hudibrastic is a type of English verse named for Samuel Butler's ''Hudibras'', published in parts from 1663 to 1678.Cox, Michael, editor, ''The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature'', Oxford University Press, 2004, For the poem, Butler invented a mock-heroic verse structure. Description Instead of pentameter, the lines were written in iambic tetrameter. The rhyme scheme is the same as in heroic verse (aa, bb, cc, dd, etc.), but Butler used frequent feminine rhyme for humor.Baldick, Christopher (1996).Hudibrastic verse in ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms''. Oxford Reference Online (subscription required), Oxford University Press. Retrieved on February 27, 2007. Example The first fourteen lines of ''Hudibras'' illustrate the verse form: :When civil dudgeon first grew high, :And men fell out they knew not why; :When hard words, jealousies, and fears, :Set folks together by the ears, :And made them fight, like mad or drunk, :For Dame Religion, as for punk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle. Poetry has a long and varied history, evolving differentially across the globe. It dates back at least to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile, Niger, and Volta River valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BCE. The earliest surviving Western Asian epic poetry, the '' Epic of Gilgamesh'', was written in Sumerian. Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese ''Shijing'', as well as religious hymns (the S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Butler (poet)
Samuel Butler (baptized 14 February 1613 – 25 September 1680) was an English poet and satirist. He is remembered now chiefly for a long satirical poem titled ''Hudibras''. Biography Samuel Butler was born in Strensham, Worcestershire, and was the son of a farmer and churchwarden, also named Samuel. His date of birth is unknown, but there is documentary evidence for the date of his baptism of 14 February. The date of Butler's baptism is given as 8 February by Treadway Russell Nash in his 1793 edition of ''Hudibras''. Nash had already mentioned Butler in his ''Collections for a History of Worcestershire'' (1781), and perhaps because the latter date seemed to be a revised account, it has been repeated by many writers and editors. However, The parish register of Strensham records under the year 1612: "Item was christened Samuell Butler the sonne of Samuell Butler the xiiijth of February anno ut supra". Lady Day, 25 March, was New Year's Day in England at the time, so the year o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hudibras
''Hudibras'' is a vigorous satirical poem, written in a mock-heroic style by Samuel Butler (1613–1680), and published in three parts in 1663, 1664 and 1678. The action is set in the last years of the Interregnum, around 1658–60, immediately before the restoration of Charles II as king in May 1660. The story shows Hudibras, a knight and colonel in the Parliamentary army, being regularly defeated, sometimes by the skills and courage of women, and ends with a witty and detailed declaration that women are superior to men. ''Hudibras'' is notable for its longevity: from the 1660s, it was more or less always in print, from many different publishers and editors, till the period of the First World War (see below). Apart from Byron’s masterpiece ''Don Juan'' (1819–24), there are few English verse satires of this length (over 11,000 lines) that have had such a long and influential life in print. The satire “delighted the royalists but was less an attack on the puritans than a c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mock-heroic
Mock-heroic, mock-epic or heroi-comic works are typically satires or parodies that mock common Classical stereotypes of heroes and heroic literature. Typically, mock-heroic works either put a fool in the role of the hero or exaggerate the heroic qualities to such a point that they become absurd. History Historically, the mock-heroic style was popular in 17th-century Italy, and in the post-Restoration and Augustan periods in Great Britain. The earliest example of the form is the ''Batrachomyomachia'' ascribed to Homer by the Romans and parodying his work, but believed by most modern scholars to be the work of an anonymous poet in the time of Alexander the Great. A longstanding assumption on the origin of the mock-heroic in the 17th century is that epic and the pastoral genres had become used up and exhausted,Griffin,Dustin H. (1994) ''Satire: A Critical Reintroduction'p.135/ref> and so they got parodically reprised. In the 17th century the epic genre was heavily criticized, bec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pentameter
Pentameter ( grc, πεντάμετρος, 'measuring five (feet)') is a poetic meter. А poem is said to be written in a particular pentameter when the lines of the poem have the length of five feet, where a 'foot' is a combination of a particular number (1 or 2) of unstressed (or weak) syllables and a stressed (or strong) syllable. Depending on the pattern of feet, pentameter can be iambic (one of three two-syllable meters alongside trochaic and spondaic) or dactylic (one of two three-syllable meters alongside anapestic An anapaest (; also spelled anapæst or anapest, also called antidactylus) is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one; in accentual stress meters it consis ...). {{Authority control Poetic forms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iambic Tetrameter
Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of ''a rhythm'', iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form , x – u – , , consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. There usually is a break in the centre of the line, thus the whole line is: , x – u – , x – u – , , x – u – , , x – u – , ("x" is a syllable that can be long or short, "–" is a long syllable, and "u" is a short one.) In modern English poetry, it refers to a line consisting of four iambic feet. The word "tetrameter" simply means that there are four feet in the line; ''iambic tetrameter'' is a line comprising four iambs, defined by accent. The scheme is thus: x / x / x / x / Some poetic forms rely upon the iambic tetrameter, for example triolet, Onegin stanza, In Memoriam stanza, long measure (or long meter) ballad stanza. Quantitative verse In Medieval Latin The term iambic tetrameter originally appl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heroic Verse
Heroic verse is a term that may be used to designate epic poems, but which is more usually used to describe the meter(s) in which those poems are most typically written (regardless of whether the content is "heroic" or not). Because the meter typically used to narrate heroic deeds differs by language and even within language by period, the specific meaning of "heroic verse" is dependent upon context. Greek and Latin The oldest Greek verseform, and the Greek line for heroic verse, is the dactylic hexameter, which was already well-established in the 9th and 8th centuries B.C.E. when the ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey'' were composed in this meter. The Saturnian was used in Latin epics of the 3rd century B.C.E., but few examples remain and the meter is little understood. Beginning at least with Ennius (239–169 B.C.E.) dactylic hexameter was introduced in imitation of the Greeks, thereafter becoming the Latin heroic meter. The Greek/Roman dactylic hexameter exerted a huge influence over ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feminine Rhyme
Masculine ending and feminine ending are terms used in prosody, the study of verse form. "Masculine ending" refers to a line ending in a stressed syllable. "Feminine ending" is its opposite, describing a line ending in a stressless syllable. This definition is applicable in most cases; see below, however, for a more refined characterization. Example Below are the first two stanzas of "A Psalm of Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In each stanza, the first and third lines have a feminine ending and the second and fourth lines a masculine one. Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream!— For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul. The final stressless syllables, creating feminine endings, are ''-bers'', again ''-bers'', ''-nest'', and again ''-nest''. The final stressed syllables, creat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Puritan
The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. Puritanism played a significant role in English history, especially during the Protectorate. Puritans were dissatisfied with the limited extent of the English Reformation and with the Church of England's toleration of certain practices associated with the Roman Catholic Church. They formed and identified with various religious groups advocating greater purity of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and corporate piety. Puritans adopted a Reformed theology, and in that sense they were Calvinists (as were many of their earlier opponents). In church polity, some advocated separation from all other established Christian denominations in favour of autonomous gathered churches. These English Dissenters, Separatist and Indepe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or exposing the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. A feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm —"in satire, irony is militant", according to literary critic Northrop Frye— but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing. This "militant" irony or sarcasm often professes to approve of (or at least accept as natural) the very things the satirist wishes to question. Satire is found in many a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish Satire, satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whig (British political party), Whigs, then for the Tories (British political party), Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean (Christianity), Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, hence his common sobriquet, "Dean Swift". Swift is remembered for works such as ''A Tale of a Tub'' (1704), ''An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity'' (1712), ''Gulliver's Travels'' (1726), and ''A Modest Proposal'' (1729). He is regarded by the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms—such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M. B. Drapier—or anonymously. He was a master of two styles of satire, the Satire#Classifications, Horatian and Juvenalian styles. His deadpan, ironic writing style, partic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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