Archaic lyric was characterized by strophic composition and live musical performance. These archaic and classical musician-poets included Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon and Pindar. The scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria created a canon of nine lyric poets deemed especially worthy of critical study. The lyric or melic poet was distinguished from the writer of plays (although Athenian drama included choral odes, in lyric form), the writer of trochaic and iambic verses (which were recited), the writer of elegies (accompanied by the flute, rather than the lyre) and the writer of epic. Because such works were typically sung, it was also known as melic poetry. Some forms have a combination of meters, often using a different meter for the refrain.įor the ancient Greeks, lyric poetry had a precise technical meaning: Verse that was accompanied by a lyre, cithara, or barbitos. Spondaic – two syllables, with two successive long or stressed syllables.Dactylic – three syllables, with the first one long or stressed and the other two short or unstressed.Anapestic – three syllables, with the first two short or unstressed and the last long or stressed.In English, this metre is found almost entirely in lyric poetry. Trochaic – two syllables, with the long or stressed syllable followed by the short or unstressed syllable.Iambic – two syllables, with the short or unstressed syllable followed by the long or stressed syllable.Although much modern lyric poetry is no longer song lyrics, the rhythmic forms have persisted without the music. Much lyric poetry depends on regular meter based either on number of syllables or on stress – with two short syllables typically being exchangeable for one long syllable – which is required for song lyrics in order to match lyrics with interchangeable tunes that followed a standard pattern of rhythm. Lyric poetry is also one of the earliest forms of literature. The term owes its importance in literary theory to the division developed by Aristotle among three broad categories of poetry: lyrical, dramatic, and epic. The term for both modern lyric poetry and modern song lyrics derives from a form of Ancient Greek literature, the Greek lyric, which was defined by its musical accompaniment, usually on a stringed instrument known as a kithara, a seven-stringed lyre (hence "lyric"). It is not equivalent to song lyrics, though song lyrics are often in the lyric mode, and it is also not equivalent to Ancient Greek lyric poetry, which was principally limited to song lyrics, or chanted verse, hence the confusion. Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. Lyric Poetry (1896) Henry Oliver Walker, in the Library of Congress's Thomas Jefferson Building.
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