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               The range of John Donne’s poetry was astonishing. His prolific pen produced sonnets, love poems, religious poems, Latin translations, even sermons. Stylish in his use of language, Donne was also the master of the metaphor. He is regarded as the founder of Metaphysical Poetry.

               Donne was born in London in 1572. Donne has the distinction of attending both Oxford and Cambridge Universities as a teenager. In the last decade of the sixteenth century, Donne penned the majority of his love lyrics, and several sacred poems creating two major volumes of work: ‘Satires and Songs’ and ‘Sonnets’.

              ‘An Anatomy of the World’ and ‘A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day’ are some of his well known poems. His ideas on religion gave depth to his poems.

               He served as a member of Parliament in 1601 and in 1614. This genius passed away on 31st March 1631. 

 

               Ben Johnson used his creative wizardry to turn his emotions and feelings into great poetry. Moreover, Ben Johnson was also a playwright, a playwright second only to Shakespeare. Johnson penned a poem, ‘On my first Sonne’, in 1616 in response to his son’s untimely death.

               ‘To Penshurst’, and ‘To Celia’ are two of his celebrated poems. He avoided arguments about the use of rhyme and meter in poetry. ‘Every Man in His Humour’, ‘The Alchemist’, and ‘Bartholomew Fair’, are among his famous plays.

                Johnson was born on June 11th, 1572 in London. He was influenced by William Camden, the classical scholar. Johnson used his classical learning to good effect in his poems. Johnson passed away in 1637. His influence on English poetry continues to this day. 

 

               William Shakespeare was a literary genius. He is acknowledged as the greatest writer, the English speaking world has ever seen.

               Stratford-upon-Avon was the birthplace of Shakespeare. He was born in 1564 as the son of John Shakespeare and Mary Arden. He is believed to have studied at the King’s New School in Stratford.

               ‘Venus and Adonis’, his first poem, which was published in 1593, describes the failed love Venus had for Adonis. ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ followed in 1594. Both these poems are dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton.

               Shakespeare is also known for his sonnets. He penned 154 sonnets in all. Each sonnet had three quatrains and a couplet. These sonnets can be divided into two sections. A young nobleman is the hero of sonnets 1 to126. An evil ‘Dark Lady’ with whom the poet falls in love is the subject of sonnets 127-152.

               Shakespeare authored more than thirty plays. ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘Othello’, and ‘Macbeth’ are among the most popular of his plays. He passed away in 1616. 

               Before Shakespeare, there was Marlowe. Christopher Marlowe’s beginnings were humble. Though his exact date of birth is not known, he was baptized on 26th February, 1564.

               Marlowe was popular as a dramatist, but he was a great poet too. Marlowe wrote ‘The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’. This poem was highly appreciated. Marlowe’s ‘Hero and Leander’ is a poem that retells the Greek myth of Hero and Leander. This poem was published posthumously in 1598.

               Marlowe popularized the dramatic blank verse. ‘The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus’ was Marlowe’s masterpiece, and ranks among the greatest dramas in the English language.

              ‘Tamburlaine the Great’, ‘The Jew of Malta’, etc, are some of his other acclaimed plays. Marlowe was murdered in 1593. 

 

               Edmund Spenser was an extraordinary writer. He was known as the poet’s poet. He made significant contributions to world literature. He was the one who introduced the Spenserian stanza. His magnum opus, ‘The Faerie Queene’ was considered as the finest and the greatest English poem of the Renaissance.

               The first three books of ‘The Faerie Queene’ were published together in 1590. The next set of three books was published in 1596. Spenser’s first poem, ‘The Shepheardes Calender’, was considered as a great work of poetry. Published in 1579, the calendar has 12 eclogues, one for each month of the year. The poem was well received. ‘Complaints’, ‘Amoretti’, ‘Epithalamion’ and ‘Prothalamion’ are some of his other works.

                Spenser was born in 1552 in London and he attended the Merchant Taylors’ School. He was awarded the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1573. Despite a forced absence from college the following year due to an epidemic, Spenser was conferred the Master of Arts degree in 1576.

                The great poet passed away in 1599. 

               Geoffrey Chaucer was the first gifted poet to write in English vernacular. Up until that time Anglo-Norman or Latin were the favoured court languages. Hence, Geoffrey Chaucer came to be regarded as the ‘Father of English Literature’.

               French love poetry exerted a strong influence on Chaucer. This influence can be found in ‘The Second Nun’s Tale’ in ‘The Canterbury Tales’. Chaucer composed an elegy for the first wife of his patron, John of Gaunt, and titled it, ‘The Book of the Duchess’. This was his first important work.

               ‘The Canterbury Tales’ written by Chaucer is a timeless classic of English poetry. The tales in the title refer to the stories told by people to kill time during a pilgrimage. Chaucer began to write ‘The Canterbury Tales’ in 1387. ‘Parlement of Foules’, ‘The Legend of Good Women’ and ‘Troilus and Criseyde’ are some of his other famous works.

               Chaucer was born between 1340 and 1345. He passed away on October 25th, 1400. 

 

               Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, and humanist. He was best remembered as the author of the earthy tales in the Decameron. In one of his works, he relates that, in his seventh year, before he had ever seen a book of poetry, he began to write verse in his childish fashion, and earned for himself amongst his friends, the name of ‘the poet’!

               Boccaccio became a great scholar of the classics, and a great writer too. He wrote about actual people and their real lives.

               Boccaccio’s most famous work is undoubtedly the ‘Decameron’. There are a hundred tales in the ‘Decameron’, which Boccaccio published in 1371. Many later writers, including Chaucer were inspired by ‘Decameron’ because of the compelling way in which these stories were written. 

               Petrarch the poet was the master of the sonnet. Not only was he among the first to write the Italian sonnet, he also developed and popularized this fourteen line poem. So much so that the Italian sonnet is called the Petrarchan sonnet in his honour.

               Petrarch wrote in Italian and Latin. His Italian works, the ‘Canzoniere or Songbook’ and the ‘Tri-onfi or Triumphs’ were major successes.

               His Latin works were ‘Bucolium Carmen’ and ‘Africa’. Twelve pastoral poems make up the ‘Bucolium Carmen’. ‘Africa’ is an epic that the poet failed to finish. Both these works were hugely popular.

               Petrarch was born on July 20th, 1304, in Arezzo, a city in central Italy. The great Dante was his father’s friend. Petrarch was named Francesco Petracco by his family. The name was anglicized to Petrarch.

               Petrarch was instrumental in making the writings of the Roman senator Cicero popular by public reading. He also translated the ‘Penitential psalms’. Petrarch died on July 19th, 1374. 

 

 

 

                    ‘The Divine Comedy’ penned by Dante Alighieri is the greatest poem of the Middle Ages. ‘The Divine Comedy’ is an in depth portrayal of the worldly and other worldly fate of Man. Dante, originally named Durante Alighieri, was born in Florence, Italy in 1265.

                    The boy lost his mother when he was seven years old. Dante made use of his experiences in exile from Florence to write the epic. The poem was written in vernacular Italian, and it was titled ‘Divina Commedia’. Epics were written in Latin or Greek before the publication of ‘The Divine Comedy’. Therefore, this epic reached a wide cross section of people, and gave a fillip to literacy.

                    ‘Convivio’ and ‘Monarchia’ are Dante’s other works. ‘Monarchia’ is in Latin, and is a work on political philosophy while ‘Convivio’ is an incomplete book of long poems.

 

 

 

               “You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?” wrote Rumi. Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, who is simply known as Rumi, was a master of the spiritual verse. ‘Mathnawi-i Ma’nawi’ is his great spiritual work. The work has sixty four thousand lines. His ‘Diwan-i-Shams-i- Tabrizi or ‘The Works of Shams Tabriz’ ranks as one of the outstanding works of Persian literature.

               Rumi was born in Afghanistan in 1207. Later, his family moved to Turkey. Rumi wrote the bulk of his work in Persian, but he also employed Turkish, Arabic and Greek. Rumi passed away on December 17, 1273 in Turkey. Today, Rumi is one among the world’s best selling poets. 

               The name Omar Khayyam is linked forever with Persian poetry. ‘The Rubaiyat’ of Omar Khayyam is a collection of quatrains. A quatrain is a poem or verse that has four lines.

               Each of Khayyam’s quatrains is a mini-poem. There are about one thousand quatrains in ‘The Rubaiyat’. Edward Fitzgerald’s poetic translation of ‘The Rubaiyat’ created a sensation in the Western world. This marvellous work has been translated into more than a hundred languages.

               Khayyam’s birthday falls on 18th May. He was born in Nishapur, Iran in 1048, when Malik-Shah I, the Seljuk was on the throne. Khayyam was a man of many talents. He wrote on physics and music theory. He made telling contributions to mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy. He also found time for calendar reform.

               ‘The Rubaiyat’ of Omar Khayyam continues to inspire poetry lovers all over the world.

 

           

 

             Ovid’s full name was Publius Ovidius Naso. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, but Ovid decided to be a poet. He published his first book of poetry about 18 BC. It was called ‘The Amores’, or Love Poems.

            ‘The Amores’ was followed by the ‘Epistolae Heroidum’. Ovid wrote the ‘Metamorphoses, or the Changes’, which he published probably about 8 BC. This is a long poem, telling lots of short stories about the changes in the world from the time of creation to the death of Julius Caesar. Ovid also wrote another book of poems, the ‘Ars Amatoria’.

            However, his poems offended those in power, and he was banished to a village on the shores of the Black Sea, where he died.

       

            Pindar the poet is known for his odes of victory. He is regarded as the greatest among the classical Greek poets.

            All our knowledge about Pindar comes from five ancient texts. One of these is a papyrus from Egypt, unearthed in 1961. This papyrus dates back to about AD 200, and has a brief biography of Pindar inscribed on it.

            Pindar was born in 522 BC, and hailed from as aristocratic family in Thebes. The ruling family in Thessaly asked him to write his first ode to victory for a fee. Pindar’s first Pythian ode is a tribute to the triumphs of the Greeks over invaders. This ode was written in 470 BC.

            ‘The Epinicia’, were Pindar’s masterpieces. The earliest surviving epinicion dates from 498 BC. Pindar died in 438 BC.

            In October 70 BC, Publius Vergilius Maro, popularly known as Virgil was born near Mantua in Northern Italy. This child went on to become one of the greatest Roman poets of all time.

            Virgil wrote ‘The Eclogues’, ‘The Georgics’, and ‘The Aeneid’ – three great Latin poems. ‘The Eclogues’, otherwise known as Bucolics, was believed to be published between 39 BC and 30 BC. Another work of Virgil titled ‘The Georgics’ was dedicated to Gaius Maecenas, who later became Virgil’s patron.

            ‘The Aeneid’ was Virgil’s final work. This epic poem focuses on Aeneas, the Trojan hero. His voyage to Italy and the battles he fought there form the subject of the poem. ‘The Aeneid’, created a lasting influence on Western literature.

            Dante made Virgil a character in his magnum opus ‘Divine Comedy’, where Virgil guides Dante through hell and purgatory. Virgil is also believed to be the author of ‘Appendix Vergiliana’, a collection of minor poems.

 

            Homer lived around 700 BC in Greece. It is believed that he was  blind. When Homer was born, the Greeks had just recently learned how to use the alphabet from the Phoenicians. Homer used the alphabet to write down two long epic poems called ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’.

            ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’, contain incomparable tales of the Trojan War, brave Achilles, Ulysses and Penelope, the Sirens, the Cyclops, the beautiful Helen of Troy, and the angry gods. They are perhaps the most influential works in the history of Western literature. These two poems have captured the hearts of generations throughout the world.

            ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’, are undoubtedly two of the greatest epics ever written.