http://geoff-chaucer.livejournal.com/ (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
geoff-chaucer.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2005-11-09 03:28 pm
geoff-chaucer.livejournal.com) wrote in fandomhigh2005-11-09 03:28 pm
Entry tags:
Creative Writing: Poetry, Lesson Three
Wednesday, November 9, 7:00PM FST
[Professor Chaucer is sitting in his chair, feet propped up on his desk, writing in a leather-bound journal (is this sounding familiar?). He welcomes all the students once they've arrived.]
Today we'll continue our lesson on the elements of poetry, but first I would like to announce that Paige Matthews will be acting as my assistant for this class. Thank you, Paige.
All right, on the with lecture.
[Lecture] Foot refers to the most basic component of meter. The meter is made up of the stresses that recur at fixed intervals in a poem. There are four commonly used meters:
Iambic (foot: "iamb" - /) is the most familiar meter used in the English language -- in fact, ordinary speech often falls into this meter. Example: "The falling out of the faithful friends", where the stress falls on "fall-", "out", "faith-", and "friends".
Anapestic (foot: "anapest"- - /) Example: "I am monarch of all I survey", where the stress falls on "mon-", "all", and "-vey".
Trochaic (foot: "trochee" / -) Example: "Double, double, toil and trouble", where the stress falls on "Dou-", "dou-", "toil", and "trou-".
Dactylic (foot: "dactyl" / - -) Example: "Take her up tenderly", where the stress falls on "Take" and "tend-".
Iambic and trochaic are known as "rising meters", while anapestic and dactylic are "falling meters". Another somewhat lesser-used form of meter is accentual meter. This is not written in feet but rather counts accents (stresses), placing the same number of stresses in each line, regardless of where they lay or how long the line is. Old English poetry is written using a strict accentual meter. An excellent example of accentual meter can be found in Coleridge's poem "Christabel":
"There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the top-most twig that looks up at the sky."
Meter can be found in any length, although most commonly between one foot (monometer) and eight (octameter). The most common poetic meter in the English language is the iambic pentameter, a line made of five iambs, or iambic feet. It occurs in nearly all blank verse, heroic couplets, and sonnets.
Pause, or cesura, refers to a light but definite pause within a line, often occuring at a punctuation mark, although also occasionally found at the end of a line. An end-stop is the punctuated pause at the end of a line. A run-on line ends with no puncuation and only the slightest pause before continuing to the next line.
Form is the design of a poem as a whole. Closed form has a set pattern, and tneds to look regular and symmetrical on paper. Open form has no pattern, and often makes use of white space for emphasis.
The works you've been reading by Petrarch, in Canzoniere, are sonnets. From the Italian sonnetto, meaning "little song", the sonnet owes a great deal of its prestige to Petrarch. This style of poetry utilizes a fourteen line pattern and a set rhyme scheme, which is different for English and Italian sonnets. Both rhyme schemes are set into two distinct parts: the "octave", or first eight lines, and the "sestet", or second six lines.
The English sonnet follows this rhyme scheme, which ends in a couplet: abab cdcd efef gg
The Italian sonnet uses a slightly different scheme: abba abba for the octave, and any of cdcdcd/cdecde/cdccdc for the sestet.
[Discussion] From your assigned reading, choose one sonnet from Canzoniere and give the class a brief analysis of it. Tell us what about the poem interested you enough to choose it, talk about the subject and the sybolism, tell us what you didn't like or didn't understand.
***Assignment for next week: Write your own sonnet. You may use either the English or Italian rhyme scheme. (OOC: Plagiarize if needed, but an original will get you a higher grade.) Also, begin reading The Collected Sonnets by William Shakespeare.***
EDITED: [At the end of class, Professor Chaucer makes an announcement.] I've decided that the classroom needs redecorating. Therefore, I am inviting all of you to do one of the following: either bring something to class next week with which to decorate the room, or write down your suggestions for what you'd like to see and I'll look into making the arrangements.
[Professor Chaucer is sitting in his chair, feet propped up on his desk, writing in a leather-bound journal (is this sounding familiar?). He welcomes all the students once they've arrived.]
Today we'll continue our lesson on the elements of poetry, but first I would like to announce that Paige Matthews will be acting as my assistant for this class. Thank you, Paige.
All right, on the with lecture.
[Lecture] Foot refers to the most basic component of meter. The meter is made up of the stresses that recur at fixed intervals in a poem. There are four commonly used meters:
Iambic (foot: "iamb" - /) is the most familiar meter used in the English language -- in fact, ordinary speech often falls into this meter. Example: "The falling out of the faithful friends", where the stress falls on "fall-", "out", "faith-", and "friends".
Anapestic (foot: "anapest"- - /) Example: "I am monarch of all I survey", where the stress falls on "mon-", "all", and "-vey".
Trochaic (foot: "trochee" / -) Example: "Double, double, toil and trouble", where the stress falls on "Dou-", "dou-", "toil", and "trou-".
Dactylic (foot: "dactyl" / - -) Example: "Take her up tenderly", where the stress falls on "Take" and "tend-".
Iambic and trochaic are known as "rising meters", while anapestic and dactylic are "falling meters". Another somewhat lesser-used form of meter is accentual meter. This is not written in feet but rather counts accents (stresses), placing the same number of stresses in each line, regardless of where they lay or how long the line is. Old English poetry is written using a strict accentual meter. An excellent example of accentual meter can be found in Coleridge's poem "Christabel":
"There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the top-most twig that looks up at the sky."
Meter can be found in any length, although most commonly between one foot (monometer) and eight (octameter). The most common poetic meter in the English language is the iambic pentameter, a line made of five iambs, or iambic feet. It occurs in nearly all blank verse, heroic couplets, and sonnets.
Pause, or cesura, refers to a light but definite pause within a line, often occuring at a punctuation mark, although also occasionally found at the end of a line. An end-stop is the punctuated pause at the end of a line. A run-on line ends with no puncuation and only the slightest pause before continuing to the next line.
Form is the design of a poem as a whole. Closed form has a set pattern, and tneds to look regular and symmetrical on paper. Open form has no pattern, and often makes use of white space for emphasis.
The works you've been reading by Petrarch, in Canzoniere, are sonnets. From the Italian sonnetto, meaning "little song", the sonnet owes a great deal of its prestige to Petrarch. This style of poetry utilizes a fourteen line pattern and a set rhyme scheme, which is different for English and Italian sonnets. Both rhyme schemes are set into two distinct parts: the "octave", or first eight lines, and the "sestet", or second six lines.
The English sonnet follows this rhyme scheme, which ends in a couplet: abab cdcd efef gg
The Italian sonnet uses a slightly different scheme: abba abba for the octave, and any of cdcdcd/cdecde/cdccdc for the sestet.
[Discussion] From your assigned reading, choose one sonnet from Canzoniere and give the class a brief analysis of it. Tell us what about the poem interested you enough to choose it, talk about the subject and the sybolism, tell us what you didn't like or didn't understand.
***Assignment for next week: Write your own sonnet. You may use either the English or Italian rhyme scheme. (OOC: Plagiarize if needed, but an original will get you a higher grade.) Also, begin reading The Collected Sonnets by William Shakespeare.***
EDITED: [At the end of class, Professor Chaucer makes an announcement.] I've decided that the classroom needs redecorating. Therefore, I am inviting all of you to do one of the following: either bring something to class next week with which to decorate the room, or write down your suggestions for what you'd like to see and I'll look into making the arrangements.
Re: OOC