Fiction and Its Relation to the Origins of Poetry
Introduction
It has long been recognized that in its early development, the English novel of the eighteenth century was variously dependent upon the contemporary idea of history as the factual narrative of an actual past, useful in the present toward the end of public and private virtue. The connection has probably been taken as evident in the titles of the volumes of fiction which announce themselves as “histories”; in Defoe’s introduction of Moll Flanders’ narrative and the ordering and firmness of detail of that narrative: in, similarly, Richardson’s editorial pose and the use of the epistolary method; and in another way in Fielding’s insistence upon the author himself as historian. The matter has been much commented upon by scholars all this granted, the complex relationship between the two kinds of writing was in part determined by the recognition of writers and readers that the novel was fiction and at least earlier in the eighteenth century was distinguished from and probably opposed to what was understood as true history. The definition of distinctions between history and narrative fiction is as old as criticism; a concern for the problems created by both differences and similarities was common in continental and British discussions of epic and romance, and to some extent of historiography, in the Renaissance and seventeenth century. In practice, as in theory, the degree to which epic fictions should depend upon historical fact is an old source of debate in which verisimilitude may be taken as either the probable or the historical, and it is possible to argue that a reader’s credulity rests upon his knowing that actions and names of epic characters are not only probable but were historically so. The pleasing mixture of historical truth and fiction which was commonly taken to be characteristic of epic narrative might on the other hand be the bane of true history. Bishop Huet’s account of romances provides a case in point in its denial of the virtue of romance to those “certain Histories which in the gross and in the detayl are mere invention, but invented only for default of truth: such are the imaginary Originals for most Nations.”
Main elements of the research:
- Definition of poetry and fiction?
- History of poetry.
- The origin of fiction.
- Definition of Poetry and Fiction?
Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning. Poetry has a long history dating back to prehistoric times with hunting poetry in Africa, and to panegyric and elegiac court poetry of the empires of the Nile, Niger, and Volta River valleys.
Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa occurs among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BC. The earliest surviving Western Asia epic poetry, the Epic of Gilgamesh, was written in Sumerian. Early poems in the Eurasian continent evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing; or from a need to retell oral epics, as with the Sanskirt Vedas, the Zoroastrian Gathas, and the Homeric epics, the lliad and the Odyssey. Ancient Greek attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle’s Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song, and rhyme, and emphasized the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from more objectively-informative prosaic writing.
Definition of Poetry
Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretations of words, or to evoke emotive responses. Devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and rhythm may convey musical or incantatory effect. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony, and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly, figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, and metonymy establish a resonance between otherwise disparate images a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm.
Fiction in the other hand, generally is a narrative form, in any medium, consisting of people, events, or places that are imaginary in other words, not based strictly on history or fact. In its most narrow usage, fiction refers to written narratives in prose and often specifically novels, though also novellas and short stories. More broadly, fiction has come to encompass stories with imaginary elements in any format, including not just writings but also most live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games.
Definition of Fiction
A work of fiction implies the inventive construction of any imaginary world and, most commonly, its ficionality is publicly acknowledged, so its audience typically expects it to deviate in some ways from the real world rather than presenting only characters who are actual people or descriptions that are factually true. Fiction is generally understood as not adhering precisely to real world, which also opens it up to various interpretations. Characters and events within a fictional work may even be set in their own context entirely separate from the known universe: an independent fictional universe.
In contrast to fiction is its traditional opposite: non-fiction, in which the creator assumes responsibility for presenting only the historical and factual truth. Despite the usual distinction between fiction and non-fiction, some fiction creators certainly attempt to make their audience believe the work is non-fiction or otherwise blur the boundary, often through forms of experimental fiction (including some postmodern fiction and auto-fiction) or even through deliberate literary fraud.
- History of Poetry.
Poetry as an art form predates written text. The earliest poetry is believed to have been recited or sung, employed as a way of remembering oral history, genealogy, and law. Poetry is often closely related to musical traditions, and the earliest poetry exists in the form of hymns (such as the work of Sumerian priestess Enheduanna), and other types of song such as chants. As such poetry is a verbal art. Many of the poems surviving from the ancient world are recorded prayers, or stories about religious subject matter, but they also include historical accounts.
Instructions for everyday activities, love songs, and fiction. Many scholars, particularly those researching the Homeric tradition and the oral epics of the Balkans, suggest that early writing shows clear traces of older oral traditions, including the use of repeated phrases as building blocks in larger poetic units. A rhythmic and repetitious form would make a long story easier to remember and retell, before writing was available as a reminder. Thus many ancient works, from the Vedas (1500-1000BC) to the Odyssey (800-675BC), appear to have been composed in poetic from to aid memorization and oral transmission, in prehistoric and ancient societies. Poetry appears among the earliest records of most literate cultures, with poetic fragments found on early monoliths, rune-stones and stelae.
In Africa, poetry has a history dating back to prehistorical times with the creation of hunting poetry, and panegyric and elegiac court poetry were developed extensively throughout the history of the empires of the Nile, Niger and Volta river valleys. Some of the earliest written poetry in Africa can be found among the Pyramid Texts written during the 25th century BC, while the Epic of Sundiata is one of the most well-known examples of griot court poetry. In African cultures, performance poetry is traditionally a part of theatrics, which was present in all aspects of pre-colonial African life and whose theatrical ceremonies had many different functions, including political, educative, and spiritual and entertainment. Poetic were an element of theatrical performances of local oral artists, linguists and historians, accompanied by local instruments of people such as the kora, the xalam, the mbira and the djembe drum. Drumming for accompaniments is not to be confused with performances of the talking drum, which is a literature of its own, since it is a distinct method of communication that depends on conveying meaning through non-musical grammatical, tonal and rhythmic rules limitating speech. Although, these performances could be included in those griots.
Classical and early modern Western traditions
Classical thinkers employed classification as a way to define and assess the quality of poetry. Notably, Aristotle’s Poetics describes the three genres of poetry: the epic, comic, and tragic, and develops rules to distinguish the highest-quality poetry of each genre, based on the underlying purposes of that genre. Later aestheticians identified three major genres: epic poetry, lyric poetry and dramatic poetry, treating comedy and tragedy as subgenres of dramatic poetry. Aristotle’s work was influential throughout the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age, as well as in Europe during the Renaissance. Later poets and aestheticians often distinguished poetry from, and defined it in opposition to, prose, which was generally understood as writing with a proclivity to logical explication and global trade. In addition to a boom in translation, during the Romantic period numerous ancient works were rediscovered.
History and development of Chinese poetry
The Classic of Poetry, often known by its original name of the Odes or Poetry is the earliest existing collection comprises 305 poems and songs dating from the 10th to the 7th century BC. The stylistic development of Classical Chinese Poetry consists of both literary and oral cultural processes, which are conventionally assigned to certain standard periods or eras, corresponding with Chinese Dynastic Eras, the traditional chronological process for Chinese historical events. The poems preserved in written form constitute the poetic literature. Furthermore, there is or were parallel traditions of oral and traditional poetry also known as popular or folk poems or ballads. Some of these poems seem to have been preserved in written form. Generally, the folk type poems they are anonymous, and may show signs of having been edited or polished in the process of fixing them in writing characters. Besides the Classical of Poetry, or Shijing, another early text is the songs of the south (or, Chuci), although some individual pieces or fragments survive in other forms, for example embedded in classical histories or other literature.
Modern developments
The development of modern poetry is generally seen as having started at the beginning of the 20th century and extends into the 21st century. Among its major practitioners are Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and Anne Carson.
The use of verse to transmit cultural information continues today. Many Americans know that “in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”. An alphabet song teaches the name and the order of the letters of the alphabet; another jungle states the lengths and names of the months in the Gregorian calendar. Some writers believe poetry has its origins in song. Most of the characteristics that distinguish it from other forms of utterance rhythm, rhyme, compression, intensity of feeling, the use of refrains appear to have come about from efforts to fit words to musical forms. In the European tradition the earliest surviving poems, the Homeric and Hesiodic epics, identify themselves as poems to be recited or chanted to a musical accompaniment rather than as pure song. Another interpretation is that rhythm, refrains, and kennings are essentially paratactic devices that enable the reciter to reconstruct the poem from memory.
In preliterate societies, these forms of poetry were composed for, and sometimes during, performance. There was a certain degree of fluidity to the exact wording of poems. The introduction of writing fixed the content of a poem to the version that happened to be written down and survive. Written composition meant poets began to compose for an absent reader. The invention of printing accelerated these trends. Poets were now writing more for the eye than for the ear.
- The Origin of Fiction.
Today we are perfectly aware that crime fiction and other novels are based purely on imagination. We know full well that characters like Harry Potter aren’t real and that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson never actually walked the streets of London.
However, had these books been published in the Middle Ages, their readers would have thought that the stories about Harry, Holms and Watson were real, simply because there were books about them.
New research reveals how our ancestors came up with the idea to tell tall tales in books.
“In the Middle Ages, books were perceived as exclusive and authoritative. People automatically assumed that whatever was written in a book had to be true,” says Professor Lars Boje Mortensen of the institute of History and Civilization at the University of Southern Denmark.
“Most people only knew the Bible, which was believed to tell the truth about the world. Because of this, it came as a big surprise when books full of fabrications first started to appear in the 21st century.”
The preliminary research that Mortensen and his colleagues have carried out has been published in the book (Medieval Narratives between History and Fiction.)
Historians made up things too
The bible wasn’t the only book to receive imaginative makeovers and extensions. In the centuries that followed, historical accounts were supplemented with a little imagination.
One such example is the medieval history of Denmark, Saxo Grammaticus, from around 1200. Saxo’s book was riddled with fictional tales, designed to creat coherence between a numbers of legends that had been passed down through history.
However, as the ‘Fiction Contract’ between readers and writers had not yet been established, people readily assumed that the descriptions they found in the books were true.
“It is our impression that it was actually perceived as historical fact, because there was no clear-cut line between fiction and non-fiction at the time,” says Mortensen.
Alexander the Great in a submarine
As time passed, the number of supplementary stories increased. And they grew better and wilder, as so often happens with good stories.
“During the course of the Middle Ages, the supplementary stories were rewritten so many times that people eventually figured out that they were just tall tales and pretence. The most extreme example are the historic accounts of the life of Alexander the Great,” he explains.
“Those books contain elements where Alexander the Great is flying in a kind of airplane. He sails in a submarine of sorts, and he meets a variety of mysterious beings. Those were popular books in the Middle Ages.”
In that way, people gradually got used to the fact that books could also be a form of entertainment, and that they were not necessarily telling the truth from cover to cover. Thus, the road was paved for the novels we know today.
King Arthur stories were the first novels
The first straightforward work of fiction was written in the 1170s by the Frenchman Chretien de Troyes. The book, a story about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, became immensely popular.
Especially the genteel French aristocracy loved the imaginative tales, which were written in French. Readers were unaccustomed to this, as books were previously written either in Old Greek or Latin, which only clergymen were able to read.
However, several hundred years passed before the ‘Fiction Contract’ became a wholly integrated part of book culture in European countries. It wasn’t until the 19th century that it become common practice to divide literature into fiction and non-fiction.
And perhaps some of the medieval blind faith in the credibility of the book still lingers today.
Isn’t it often the case that a piece of information gains more authority if it is written in a book than if it is passed on by a friend?