CHAPTER ONE: BRIEF HISTORY OF BOTH ENGLISH POETRY AND CONGOLESE LYRIC SONGS/MUSIC
While learning any given language, it is advisable to penetrate
and know both its history and culture. This is why, before analyzing our topic about poetry and Congolese music deeply, in details, we’re going to review the history of the English poetry evolution and that of the Congolese music as well.
In other words, for a better understanding of both poetry and Congolese music, we think it is better to recall their evolution accordingly so as to seize various changes from Old English Period up to today.
In fact, the majority of all the oldest texts were written in
poetry style with unknown writers. In the following lines, we are going to summarize the history of the evolution of both English Poetry from Old English Period to Modern English Period on one side and the Congolese music from, before and after independence up to now.
.1. HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH POETRY
Like all other literature of the world, English literature began
with poetry. It started back in the fifth century. It is believed that the earliest poems in English were written between 450 A. D. and 1066 A. D., the time known as the Anglo-Saxon period and discuss on the brief history of English poetry.
.1.1. Old English poetry
– Bief History
The Angles, Saxons, and–Characteristics
Virtually all Old English poetry is written in a single meter, a
four-stress line with a syntactical break, or caesura, between the second and third stresses, and with1.1.2. Middle English Poetry
– History
After the Norman Conquest in 1066, English poetry took a
significant turn. Between 1066 and 1500, the period which is known as the Middle Ages, English language developed to a certain standard. However, the language used in this period was still not the English of our time. In this period Renaissance took place and broadened the general outlook. It was the result of various series of events that followed and accompanied one another from the fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century. With the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the scholars living there fled to different parts of Europe. They took with them the ancient Greek and Roman literature. Those scholars had profound influence on the poets of this period. They came out of the religious bias and emphasized idealism from a more secular point of view.
– Characteristics
The poets of this period still used alliterative language. They
introduced meters and rhyme in the verse lines.
The subjects chosen for poetry were liberal religious faith,
morality, chivalry and love.
1.1.3. Modern English Poetry
– Brief History
The Renaissance a kind of wild fire of knowledge that kept on
burning for several centuries. It had its fullest flowering in the sixteenth century. From 1558 to 1603 England was ruled by Queen Elizabeth I. This period is named as Elizabethan period after her name. This is known as the golden age of prosperity in commerce, art and national-ism of the English. It is the greatest age of English drama. Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson are the great dramatists of this period. Plays were written in verse. The age is also famous for its poetry. Edmund Spenser, the poet of the poets, wrote in this period. This age was deeply influenced by the Renaissance that liberalized under-standing, created interest in enlightenment, made people humanistic and liberal. Consequently, the literature of this period is characterized by a tendency of breaking away from the Greek and Roman literary tradition. For this reason, this period is also considered as the birth time of English romanticism. Elizabethan period is marked by the profundity of thought, idealism in philosophical choice, lucidity in language and excellence in poetry.
In the beginning of the seventeenth century, a new school of
poetry started surfacing in reaction to the Elizabethan poetic convention. This kind of poetry is known as the Metaphysical School of Poetry. It emerged in the periods known as Jacobean Age (1603-1625) and Caroline Age (1625-1649). The metaphysical poetry deals with philosophical ideas. In dealing with abstract ideas or concepts, metaphysical poetry uses logic as it is done in philosophy. It mainly deals with the concept of love, faith, soul, death and God, which do not have concrete existence. It profusely uses logical arguments instead of only emotion or passion. Even in using passion, metaphysical poets used arguments. In addition, these poets used very frequently in their poems, with the effect of surprise. They preferred conversational tone to the formal one, and they often ignored the formal use of meters and rhymes. The major poets of this school of poetry were Donne, Andrew Marvel, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, and Richard Crashaw.
A marked reaction against the peculiar poetry of the Metaphysical School began in the age that followed it. This age was dominated by John Milton. For this reason, it is called the Age of Milton. It is also called the Puritan Age. In this period efforts were made to regain the grandeur of English verse. A small group of poets called Cavalier Poets wrote in this period. However, this age is famous for the epics written by Milton who wrote Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. He dealt with grand subjects in grand language using heroic verse form, maintaining classical restraint.
Milton’s age was followed by the Neoclassical Age that began
to-wards the end of the seventeenth century and ended in the mid-eighties of the eighteenth century. The poets of this age made all efforts to imitate the Roman classical poets but they did not have the originality of Virgil and Dante. Consequently, their writings became mechanical. For this reason, they are called the neoclassical or pseudo classical poets. Alexander Pope and John Dryden were the major poets of this age. They wrote in grand language using heroic verse form. Their subjects were urban sophisticated people and satire was their main mode of writing.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century the neoclassical
mode of writing was worn out and a new trend in literature became imminent. When the French Revolution took place in 1789, the ground of the new kind of creative writing had already been prepared in the United Kingdom. William Blake published two volumes of this new kind of poetry.In 1798, William Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge published a collection of poems entitled as Lyrical Ballads and with it began the new age known as the Romantic Age. The other famous poets of this age were P.B. Shelley, John Keats and Lord Byron. Writers of this period preferred common people and common language to sophisticated urban people and their grand language. A strong desire for improving the conditions of man was a driving force of the literature of this age. High imagination, subjectivism, liberalism, love of nature, Hellenism, and the use of supernatural powers characterized the literature of this period.
In English literature, the period from 1832 to 1901 is known
as the Victorian period. It is named after Queen Victoria who reigned the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901. The age was marked by the Reformation Bill, Charles Darwin’s evolution theory, Karl Marx’s concept of socialism, the Industrial Revolution, philosophical positivism, the inception of feminism and the middle class respectability. Disbelief, hypocrisy, affluence, prudery and complacency were the main features of this age. However, it was a period of prolific literary production. Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, E. B. Browning, Matthew Arnold and Thomas Herdy were the famous poets of this age. Attitudes of compromise, moral earnestness, purity both religious and secular, didacticism, and social equity determined the mode of the Victorian poetry.
With the beginning of the First World War in 1914, another
trend became obvious. It continued till 1939 when the Second World War began. The First World War caused massive destruction to the European belief, tradition and values. After the War, the capacity of Christianity and traditional values was questioned as they utterly failed to uphold peace. People broke away from the traditional modes of life. In literature new tendencies replaced the old, established rules. A visible change in the selection of subject, form and style became evident. Literary experiments and movements marked the age. Symbolism, imagism, existentialism, expressionism, surrealism, stream of consciousness theory and psychoanalysis, were some of the new trends that gave shape to the literature of this period. Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas and W. H.
Auden were the leading poets of this age.
– Characteristics
The poets of modern period ignored everything that was
mechanical and conventional. As much as possible, they tried to go near to real life. They neglected all set rules of meters, stanza forms or genres. As a result modern poetry is almost formless just like modern paintings.
