In Chaucer’s Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, there was a religious-minded poor Parson in the group of pilgrims riding to Canterbury. He was highly virtuous in thought and work. He…
Paragone is an Italian word that means ‘comparison’. It is a contention between the arts, usually spoken by representative practitioners, to determine supremacy.
The most typical paragone pits poetry and painting…
Definition
The lyric is the commonest kind of poetry of self-expression. Man has always liked to pour out his intensely felt feelings and emotions, and hence the lyric is among…
Sir Edmund William Gosse (1849–1928) was a famous British literary critic, poet, librarian, and man of letters. The son of Philip Henry Gosse (1810–88), an eminent zoologist and member of…
Introduction
Blank verse is a literary device that consists of unrhymed five-stress lines; properly, iambic pentameter. It was introduced in England by the Earl of Surrey in the 16th c.…
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
This stanza is extracted from the poem The Tyger by William Blake.…
Palindrome (Gk. meaning "running back again") is a word, number, or sentence that reads the same both forwards and backwards. Common palindrome words include civic, level, minim, radar, rotor, madam,…
