英语诗歌文体特点 Analysis on Style Characteristics of Poem

Analysis on Style Characteristics of Poem The poem is also an extremely important research discipline of literature stylistics. The author’s opinion on the style characteristics of the poem will be demonstrated on 5 aspects. 1 The different styles of poems Poems generally focus on and reflect human life, emotion, thoughts, feelings and so on. With the development of society and human life, the style of poem demonstrates different characteristics in different eras. There are several forms of poem, such as: heroic couplet, tercet, quartrain, ode, blank verse, and so on. Development of the form and style of English poem are not totally identical with other literature forms, since its development is slower. The poem form: the sonnet is a classic example for this tendency with its slow development. As time goes by, poem style began to show different characteristics since 16 Century. The language style of the poem was simple and natural at that time, which was closer to the language people used in daily life. At the second half of the 17th century, classical style was established. The “heroic couplet” was very popular at that time. Its form is almost perfect, because the metre is neat, the words is very appropriate, and the sentence structure is clear. In addition, the poet of this period was especially good at using metaphor and allusion. In the 18th century, romanticism has been established in literature and art. The romantic poet pursued the neat formal too, instead of decorating their language excessively; the romantic poet preferred the style which was more natural and simple. After the middle period of the 19th century, the new trend of the modernist came to the discipline of the poem. Some poets used freer poem forms to express their feelings, thoughts heartily. Some poet even wrote the poem with the substandard language, such as the slang to convey their thoughts and feeling in a more special way. 1 2 The vocabulary of poem As a prominent style characteristic of poem, the vocabulary used in English poem is also different from other literature style. The vocabulary of the poem is usually extremely beautiful and concise. The poet often pay great attention to choose and arrange the words in the most suitable way.This could be adequately reflected by the pace, image and rhetoric which aims at making the poem more significant and inspiring in the poems. The vocabulary used in poem is various, since some of them is very similar with the language we used in daily life, while some of them are opposite, such as the use of ancient words: thy, thee etc. The poem vocabulary has already broken the traditional hedge now, showing its diversification of vocabulary. 3 Grammars in poem The grammars and sentence structures of poem are different from general literature style, too, as there are many distortions or changes of the words and expressions which people use frequently in life .The grammar of some sentences is not even standard. For example, in the masterpiece of John Milton:Paradise Lost, there are many ancient allusions of Rome, Greece and the Holy Bible, besides the changes of the sentences structures are extremely various and frequent. In order to pursue the requirement for rhyme, the pronunciations of some words are change too. 4 Rhyme of poem The music-like style is the primary characteristic of literature style of the poem, and this is also the most prominent feature of poem by which the poem distinguishes itself from other literature forms. This feature offers the reader a special wonderful enjoyment of the poem. From early British writer Chaucer to the contemporary poet, though the rules and forms of the poem keeps changing, the music-like style of poem has always been its soul which never disappears. The music displays people’s feeling from the bottom of heart, as a result, poem ,with this special feature, could also mirror mind of people just as the music do and give readers a strong feelings or impression their soul and mind. With its special and harmonious meter and structure, the poem often reads in certain pace, which makes the poem sounds like music. In order to complete rhyme, the poets may change the pronunciation of some words. There are some patterns of metre / foot, such as: iambic; trochaic; anapestic, dactylic, amphibrach, antibacchius, antispast, etc. The foot of English poem can usually be divided into 3 kinds: trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, heptameter, etc. In order to complete rhyme and pace, it is very common to increase by or reduce a syllable. By the 20th century, the poem in free from was popular, and it emphasized the internal meter. One of the important traditional poem forms is sonnet, which often has 14 lines: the first eight express the theme of poem usually, and then the following six lines comment the first eight lines. The meter of this kind of poem is usually “abba abba cde cde”. 5 Images and figures of speech in poem By applying many figures of speech, the poet creates fascinating artistic images. This is also a critical style feature of poem. The proper imagines could inspire readers to use their own imaginations, surmount realistic world and get rid of regular thinking model, realizing the emotion state and thoughts of poets. To some extent, the poem can be regarded as a means for poets to express and constitute their image. Take metaphor as an example, the metaphor is a kind of rhetoric tactics that often appears in the poem. Authors choose the most suitable vehicle to express their feelings and thoughts more vividly way. For instance, in “To a Skylark ", Shelley even compared himself as a skylark which pursuits brightness and despises the social prejudice. This makes the whole poem more powerful and vivid. In the poem of Robert Frost , Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, the poet use the image of “sleep” to imply symbolic meanings “death”, so the poem shows a more far-reaching literature meaning in this way. Generally, the most important style characteristics of poem are its meter, image and form. For the author’s opinion, research on this discipline should pay more attention on these three aspects.