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The Classification of Poetry in the Light of Its Evolution
The Classification of Poetry in the Light of Its Evolution Author:Olaf Morgan Norlie Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I. Imaginātivs Poetry: ĻTarrative. Narrative poetry aims to tell a story in verse. It must be distinguished from mere historical narrative, whether in prose o... more »r verse, in the same respect that poetry in general is distinguished from prose, viz., it is primarily the product of the imagination, while history simply states and discusses the facts as they are. It must not be supposed, however, that the poem is untrue to facts. It usually deals with idealized facts which accounts partly for its long life and great influence in the world, but it can use actual facts exclusively in its composition, without the introduction of a single fictitious creation. The Bible has a number of good illustrations of this. Genesis covers several centuries of time from the creation to the death of Joseph, yet it devotes fourteen out of fifty chapters to him. Though in prose, his story deserves to be classified with the great epics of other nations. It is a simple and perspicuous, yet majestic tale, full of human interest, far-reaching and permanent in its appeal. The situations and incidents are equal to those of any fictitious plot, the characters are niore human and display as varied and conspicuous qualities as those in any of the great epics, the picturing power of the writer is employed, whereas 'n the chronicles preceding it (e.g. Gen. 13) and in the constitutional history following it, there is only a record of names, events and laws. In the course of centuries man advanced to higher planes of civilization and mental culture, and narrative poetry underwent a proportionate evolution. At the present time narrative poetry has become differentiated into five classes, the epic, 'epTcXlyrlc metrical story, /epTc4dramatic and piex' dacticX Absolute classification of some poems can...« less