Famous Poets

Acock, Fleur (New Zealand);

Akhmatova, Anna (Russian);

Alcaeus (Greek);

Anacreon (Greek);

Angelou, Maya (American);

Apollinaire, Guillaume (Wilhelm de Kostrowitzki; French);

Archilochus (Greek);

Ariosto, Ludovico (Italian);

Arnold, Matthew (English);

Auden, W. H. (American);

Baraka, Imamu Amiri (American);

Barbour, John (Scottish);

Bashō Matsuo (Matsuo Munefusa; Japanese);

Baudelaire, Charles (French);

Baxter, James (New Zealand);

Belloc, Hilaire (British, b. in France);

Betjeman, John (English);

Bishop, Elizabeth (American);

Blake, William (English);

Blok, Aleksandr (Russian);

Blunden, Edmund (English);

Borges, Jorge (Argentinian);

Breton, André (French);

Bridges, Robert (English);

Brodsky, Joseph (American, b. in Russia);

Brontë, Emily (English);

Brooke, Rupert (English);

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (English);

Browning, Robert (English);

Bunin, Ivan (Russian);

Bunting, Basil (English);

Bürger, Gottfried (German);

Burns, Robert (Scottish);

Butler, Samuel (English);

Byron, George Gordon, Lord (English);

Caedmon (Anglo-Saxon);

Callimachus (Greek);

Camões, Luís de (Portuguese);

Campbell, Roy (South African);

Carew, Thomas (English);

Castilho, Antonio Feliciano de (Portuguese);

Catullus (Roman);

Cavafy, Constantine (Greek);

Cavalcanti, Guido (Italian);

Chapman, George (English);

Chatterton, Thomas (English);

Chaucer, Geoffrey (English);

Chrétien de Troyes (French);

Clare, John (English);

Clough, Arthur Hugh (English);

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (English);

Cowley, Abraham (English);

Cowper, William (English);

Crabbe, George (English);

Crane, Hart (American);

cummings, e. e. (American);

Cynewulf (Anglo-Saxon);

Dafydd ap Gwilym (Welsh);

D'Annunzio, Gabriele (Italian);

Dante Alighieri (Italian);

Da Ponte, Lorenzo (Italian);

Davies, W. H. (English);

Day Lewis, C. (English);

de la Mare, Walter (English);

Dickinson, Emily (American);

Donne, John (English);

Doolittle, Hilda (American);

Dowson, Ernest (English);

Dryden, John (English);

Dunbar, William (Scottish);

Eliot, T. S. (British, b. in America);

Éluard, Paul (French);

Elytis, Odysseus (Greek);

Emerson, Ralph Waldo (American);

Empson, William (English);

Ennius (Roman);

Ferlinghetti, Lawrence (American);

Firdausi (Abu al-Qasim Mansur; Persian);

FitzGerald, Edward (English);

Flecker, James Elroy (English);

Foscolo, Ugo (Italian);

Freneau, Philip (American);

Frost, Robert (American);

Gautier, Théophile (French);

Gay, John (English);

Gibran, Khalil (American, b. in Lebanon);

Ginsberg, Allen (American);

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (German);

Góngora y Argote, Luis de (Spanish);

Graves, Robert (English);

Gray, Thomas (English);

Gunn, Thom (English);

Gurney, Ivor (English);

Haavikko, Paavo (Finnish);

Hardy, Thomas (English);

Harrison, Tony (English);

Heaney, Seamus (Irish);

Heine, Heinrich (German);

Herbert, George (English);

Herbert, Zbigniew (Polish);

Herrick, Robert (English);

Hesiod (Greek);

Hofmannsthal, Hugo von (Austrian);

Hogg, James (Scottish);

Hölderlin, Friedrich (German);

Homer (Greek);

Hood, Thomas (English);

Hopkins, Gerard Manley (English);

Horace (Roman);

Housman, A. E. (English);

Hughes, Ted (English);

Hugo, Victor (French);

Iqbal, Muhammad (Indian);

Jonson, Ben (English);

Kalidasa (Indian);

Kavanagh, Patrick (Irish);

Keats, John (English);

La Fontaine, Jean de (French);

Laforgue, Jules (French);

Lamartine, Alphonse de (French)

Landor, Walter Savage (English)

Langland, William (English)

Larkin, Philip (English)

Lawrence, D. H. (English)

Layamon (English)

Lear, Edward (English)

Leconte de Lisle, Charles (French)

Leopardi, Giacomo (Italian)

Lermontov, Mikhail (Russian)

Li Po (Chinese)

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (American)

Lorca, Federico Garcia (Spanish)

Lovelace, Richard (English)

Lowell, Amy (American)

Lowell, Robert (American)

Lucan (Roman)

Lucretius (Roman)

Lydgate, John (English)

Macdiarmid, Hugh (Christopher Grieve; Scottish)

MacNeice, Louis (Northern Irish)

Malherbe, François de (French)

Mallarmé, Stéphane (French)

Mandelstam, Osip (Russian, b. in Poland)

Marinetti, Filippo (Italian)

Martial (Roman)

Marvell, Andrew (English)

Masefield, John (English)

Mayakovsky, Vladimir (Russian)

Meleager (Greek)

Millay, Edna St Vincent (American)

Milosz, Czeslaw (American, b. in Lithuania)

Milton, John (English)

Montale, Eugenio (Italian)

Moore, Marianne (American)

Moore, Thomas (Irish)

Motion, Andrew (English)

Muir, Edwin (Scottish)

Murray, Les (Australian)

Nash, Ogden (American)

Neruda, Pablo (Neftalí Reyes; Chilean)

Omar Khayyam (Persian)

Ovid (Roman)

Owen, Wilfred (English)

Pasternak, Boris (Russian)

Patmore, Coventry (English)

Paz, Octavio (Mexican)

Péguy, Charles (French)

Petrarch (Italian)

Pindar (Greek)

Plath, Sylvia (American)

Pope, Alexander (English)

Porter, Peter (British, b. in Australia)

Pound, Ezra (American)

Propertius, Sextus (Roman)

Pushkin, Aleksandr (Russian)

Quasimodo, Salvatore (Italian)

Raine, Craig (British)

Rilke, Rainer Maria (German, b. in Czechoslovakia)

Rimbaud, Arthur (French)

Rochester, 2nd Earl of (John Wilmet; English)

Rossetti, Christina (English)

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (English)

Russell, George (Irish)

Sadi (Persian)

Sappho (Greek)

Sassoon, Siegfried (English)

Schiller, Friedrich von (German)

Shakespeare, William (English)

Shelley, Percy Bysshe (English)

Sidney, Philip (English)

Simonides (Greek)

Sitwell, Edith (English)

Skelton, John (English)

Smith, Stevie (English)

Southey, Robert (English)

Spender, Stephen (English)

Spenser, Edmund (English)

Statius, Publius Papinius (Roman)

Stevens, Wallace (American)

Suckling, John (English)

Swinburne, Algernon Charles (English)

Tagore, Rabindranath (Indian)

Taliesin (Welsh)

Tannhäuser (German)

Tasso, Torquato (Italian)

Tate, Nahum (Irish)

Tennyson, Alfred, Lord (English)

Theocritus (Greek)

Thespis (Greek)

Thomas, Dylan (Welsh)

Thomas, Edward (English)

Thomas, R. S. (Welsh)

Thompson, Francis (English)

Thomson, James (Scottish)

Tibullus, Albius (Roman)

Traherne, Thomas (English)

Tu Fu (Chinese)

Tulsidas (Indian)

Tzara, Tristan (French, b. in Romania)

Ungaretti, Giuseppe (Italian)

Valéry, Paul (French)

Vaughan, Henry (Welsh)

Verlaine, Paul (French)

Vigny, Alfred de (French)

Villon, François (French)

Virgil (Roman)

Vogelweide, Walther von der (German)

Walcott, Derek (St Lucian)

Warren, Robert Penn (American)

Whitman, Walt (American)

Williams, William Carlos (American)

Wordsworth, William (English)

Wright, Judith (Australian)

Wyatt, Thomas (English)

Yeats W. B. (Irish)

Yesenin, Sergei (Russian)

Yevtushenko, Yevgenii (Russian)

 

 

Religions and Sects

Baha'i;

Babism;

Buddhism;

Falun Gong;

Hinayana;

Lamaism;

Mahayana;

Nichiren;

Rinzai Zen;

Soka Gakkai;

Soto Zen;

Tantrism;

Theravada;

Tibetan Buddhism;

Zen;

Christianity;

Confucianism;

neo-Confucianism;

Hinduism;

Brahmanism;

Krishna Consciousness;

Saivism;

Shaktism/Saktism;

Shivaism/Sivaism;

Tantrism;

Vaishnavism;

Vedantism;

Vishnuism;

Islam;

Druzes;

Ismailis;

Mahdism;

Senussi;

Shia;

Sufism;

Sunni;

Wahhabism;

Jainism;

Digambara;

Svetambara;

Judaism;

Conservative Judaism;

Essenes;

Falashas;

Hasidism;

Kabbalah;

Karaism

Messianic Judaism

Orthodox Judaism

Pharisaism

Rabbinism

Reconstructionism

Reform Judaism

Samaritanism

Zionism

Shinto

Sikhism

Taoism

Zoroastrianism

Mazdaism

Parseeism

other

ancestor worship

animism

candomblé

cargo cult

Druidism

Eleusinian mysteries

Ghost Dance cult

Hau-hauism

Macumba

Mithraism

Myalism

Neopaganism

Orphism

Paganism

Pocomania

Rastafarianism

Ratana Church

Sabaism

Scientology (trademark)

Shamanism

Shango

Spiritualism

Subud

Theosophy

Totemism

Umbanda

Unification Church ('Moonies')

Voodoo

Wicca

Yezidism

 

 

Rhetorical Devices and Figures of Speech

allegory;

alliteration;

anacoluthon;

anadiplosis;

anaphora;

anastrophe;

antiphrasis;

antistrophe;

antithesis;

antonomasia;

aporia;

apostrophe;

assonance;

bathos;

cacophemism;

catachresis;

chiasmus;

circumlocution;

diacope;

dysphemism;

echoism;

ellipsis;

enallage;

epanalepsis;

epanorthosis;

epiphora;

epistrophe;

epizeuxis;

euphemism;

euphony;

euphuism;

hendiadys;

homeoteleuton;

hypallage

hyperbaton

hyperbole

hysteron proteron

innuendo

irony

isocolon

litotes

meiosis

metaphor

metonymy

onomatopoeia

oxymoron

paradox

paralipsis

paronomasia

periphrasis

personification

pleonasm

prolepsis

prosopopoeia

pun

rhetorical question

sarcasm

simile

syllepsis

symploce

synecdoche

tautology

transferred epithet

trope

zeugma

Verse Forms

alcaics (or alcaic verse);

alexandrine verse;

alliterative verse;

Anacreontics;

ballad;

ballade;

blank verse;

Clerihew;

dactylics (or dactylic verse);

doggerel;

dramatic monologue;

echo verse;

elegy;

epic;

epigram;

epode;

epopee;

fixed form;

free verse;

haiku;

heroic verse;

Horatian ode;

iambics (or iambic verse);

Leonines;

limerick;

lyric;

macaronics (or macaronic verse)

madrigal

monody

ode

ottava rima

pantoum/pantun

Petrarchan sonnet

Pindaric

quatorzain

rhyme royal

ritornello

rondeau

roundel

sapphics

secondary epic

sequidilla

sestina

sonnet

Spenserian stanza

tail rhyme

tanka

terza rima

triolet

triplet

trochaics (or trochaic verse)

villanelle

virelay

Metres and Metrical Feet

alexandrine;

amphibrach;

amphimacer;

anapaest/anapest;

choree;

choriamb/choriambus;

cretic;

dactyl;

decasyllable;

dimeter;

dipody;

distich;

disyllable;

duple metre;

elegiac couplet;

elegiac distich;

heptameter;

heroic couplet

hexameter

iamb/iambus

iambic pentameter

ionic

monometer

octameter

paeon

pentameter

pyrrhic

spondee

tetrameter

tribrach

trimeter

trisyllable

trochee

Types of Poem

aubade;

ballad;

ballade;

bucolic;

chanson;

clerihew;

dirge;

dithyramb;

dramatic monologue;

eclogue;

elegy;

encomium;

epic;

epigram;

epithalamium;

epode;

epyllion;

georgic;

ghazal;

haiku;

idyll;

lay;

limerick;

lyric

madrigal

monody

nursery rhyme

ode

palinode

pastoral

prothalamion

quatorzain

renga

rondeau

roundel

roundelay

saga

sapphics

satire

sestina

sonnet

tanka

threnody

triolet

vilanelle

virelay

 

Types of Novel

Aga saga;

antinovel;

autobiographical novel;

Bildungsroman;

bodice-ripper;

detective story/novel;

dime novel;

epistolary novel;

Gothic novel;

graphic novel;

historical novel;

nouveau roman;

novelette;

novelization;

novella;

photonovel;

picaresque novel

police procedural

policier

roman-à-clef

roman-à-thèse

roman expérimental

roman-fleuve

roman noir

romantic novel

saga

stream of consciousness

sword and sorcery

techno-thriller

thriller

western

whodunnit

Types of Story

adventure story

allegory

bedtime story

black comedy

blockbuster

cliffhanger

comedy

conte

crime story

detective story

epic

exemplum

fable

fabliau

fairy story

fairy tale

fantasy

folk story

folk tale

ghost story

gothic novel

heartbreaker

historical novel

horror story

just-so story

legend

Märchen

mystery

myth

nancy story

parable

romance

saga

short story

spine-chiller

tearjerker

thriller

true story

urban myth

western

whodunnit

 

Firsts

of 

English Literary History

 

·  ca. 670 Caedmon: first English Poet known by name

·  ca. 690 Adawman's Life of St. Columba – first biography in Britain

·  ca. 700 Beowulf : first Anglo-Saxon epic.

·  731 Bede's Eccles. Hist. – first history of English people (in Latin).

·  ca. 800 Nennius's History of the Britons – first mention of Arthur.

·  875-900 Quem Quaeritis: first known trope

·  887 Alfred's handbook of Pastoral Care tr. – first English prose work.

·  893 Asser's Life of Alfred  The Great – first biography of a layman.

·  ca. 975 Concordia Regularis – first evidence of dramatic activity in England.

·  ca. 1100 Play of St. Catherine – first recorded miracle play in English.

·  ca. 1136 Geofferey of Monmouth's History of Kings of Britain:  first romantic account of Arthur

·  ca. 1225 First English metrical romanceKing Horn

·  ca. 1300+ York cycle

·  1340-1400 Chaucer, first major English poet

·  ca. 1375 Paternoster & Creed plays

·  1382 first edition of Wyclif's translation of Bible into English

·  1400-25 The Pride of Life – first extant morality play

·  ca. 1425 The Castle of Perseverance – first complete morality play

·  1440 First step toward a dictionary: Galfridus Grammatious, Promptorius Parvulorum, English-Latin word-list.

·  ca. 1474 Caxton's Recuyell of the Histories of Troy – first book printed in English

·  ca. 1477 Caxton's first printing press in England

·  1477 First dated book printed in England: Dictes And Sayings of the Philosophers

·  ca. 1497 Medwall's Fudgens and Cucres – first extant interlude

·  1519 Rastell's The Four Elements – first published interlude

·  ca. 1525 Tyndale's New Testament – first printed English translation of Bible

·  1535 Coverdale's Bible – first complete printed English Bible

·  1538 First use of term "dictionary": Sir Thomas Elyot's Dictionarie

·  ca. 1540 First English sonnets: Wyatt & Surrey, Printed in Tottel's Miscellany, called Songs And Sonnets, 1557

·  ca. 1552 Udall Ralph R. D. – first regular English comedy

·  1557 Surrey – first blank verse

·  1562 Gorgoduc – first English tragedy

·  1575 Gascoigne – first English treatise on verification

·  1576 The Theatre – first London playhouse (also Blackfriars, the Curtain)

·  1579 First English eclogues: Spenser's Shepheardes Calendar

·  ca. 1581 Sidney's Defense of Poesie – first great English critical essay

·  1597 First English "Essay" – by Bacon

·  1609 First prose autobiography in English: Life of Sir Thomas Bodley

·  1640 Bay Psalm Book – first book printed in America

·   1704 First periodical essay: Defoe's column in Weekly Review