1. Sonnet – lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic pentameters linked by an intricate rhyme scheme. There are two major types of sonnets:

Italian or Petrarchan sonnet (imitates Petrarch’s sonnets). It consists of two main parts:

2 quatrains (1 quatrain = 4 lines) – octave (8 lines – abbaabba) – description

2 tercets (1 tercet = 3 lines) – sestet (6 lines – cdecde or cdccdc) – reflection, comparison

Sir Thomas Wyatt – first poet who imitated Petrarch’s sonnets in England (the same stanza form and subjects)

English or Shakespearean sonnet (imitates Shakespeare’s sonnets).

3 quatrains (12 lines – abab cdcd efef) – description

1 concluding couplet (2 lines – gg) – conclusion

John Donne (Holy Sonnets) – introduced religion into sonnets

John Milton – expanded the range of the sonnet to other serious matters

Edmund Spenser – introduced Spenserian sonnet (3 quatrains + 1 concluding couplet – abab bcbc cdcd ee)

Sonnet cycles or sequences – a group of sonnets that are linked together by exploring different aspects of the same thing e.g. a relationship between lovers or by indicating a development in the relationship, examples:

Sonnets from the Portuguese (Elizabeth Barrett Browning) – 44 sonnets in which she expresses her love

The River Duddon (William Wordsworth)

1. Ode – a lyrical poem written in one stanza pattern (homostrophic – one stanza form).

Pindar’s odes – established by the Greek poet Pindar, whose odes were modeled on the songs by the chorus in Greek, Pindar’s odes were written to praise and glorify someone (e.g. winners of the Olympic Games), consisted of 3 stanza patterns: strophe, antistrophe, epode (triadic structure)

Pindaric (close imitation of Pindar’s odes) or regular – consist of 2 stanza patterns – all the strophes and antistrophes written in one stanza pattern and all epodes in another, examples:

Ode to Duty (William Wordsworth)

Cowleyan (introduced by Abraham Cowley) or irregular – imitate Pindaric style and matter but disregard stanzaic pattern (no limitations in stanzas) – each stanza can have its own pattern, length and number of lines and rhyme scheme, examples:

Intimations of Immortality (William Wordsworth)

Horatian odes – based on the odes of the Roman Horace, they are usually homostrophic (written in a single repeated stanza form) and shorter than Pindaric odes, in contrast to the passion, visionary boldness, and formal language of Pindar's odes, many Horatian odes are calm, meditative, and colloquial, examples:

To Autumn (John Keats)

1. Dramatic monologue – a type of lyric poem perfected by Robert Browning, there are 3 elements that make dramatic monologue:

1. One person (not the poet) gives a lengthy speech in a specific situation at critical moment

2. This person addresses and interacts with one or more other people (we only know about them from the monologue)

3. The main principle controlling the poet's formulation of what the lyric speaker says is to reveal to the reader the speaker's temperament and character

1. Elegy – a formal and sustained lament in verse for the death of a particular person, usually ending in a consolation (=pocieszenie), examples:

   Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (Thomas Gray) – about mortality and passing

   Pastoral elegy – an elegy in which both the poet and the one he mourns (usually also a poet) are presented as shepherds (the Latin word for shepherd is "pastor"), examples:

   Lycidas (John Milton)

2. Dirge (= threnody) – a versified expression of grief on the occasion of a particular person's death, but differs from the elegy in that it is short, is less formal, and is usually represented as a text to be sung, examples:

   Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies (William Shakespeare)

   Song from Shakespeare's Cymbeline (William Collins)

3. Monody – an elegy or dirge which is presented as the utterance (=wypowiedź) of a single person, usually the speaker or the poet mourns somebody’s death