{{Short description|Form of poetry that tells a story}} {{Globalize|1=article|2=Western Europe|date=March 2022}} {{Literature}}
'''Narrative poetry''' is a form of poetry that tells a story, often using the voices of both a narrator and characters; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. Narrative poems do not need to rhyme. The poems that make up this genre may be short or long, and the story it relates to may be complex. It is normally dramatic, with various characters.<ref>Michael Meyer, ''The Bedford Introduction to Literature'', Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005, p2134.</ref> Narrative poems include all epic poetry, and the various types of "lay",<ref>Mainly medieval, these include the Germanic Heroic lay, the Breton lai and Lai</ref> most ballads, and some idylls, as well as many poems not falling into a distinct type.
Some narrative poetry takes the form of a novel in verse. An example of this is ''The Ring and the Book'' by Robert Browning. In terms of narrative poetry, romance is a narrative poem that tells a story of chivalry. Examples include the ''Romance of the Rose'' or Tennyson's ''Idylls of the King''. Although those examples use medieval and Arthurian materials, romances may also tell stories from classical mythology. Sometimes, these short narratives are collected into interrelated groups, as with Chaucer's ''The Canterbury Tales''. So sagas include both incidental poetry and the biographies of poets.
==Oral traditions== The oral tradition is the predecessor of essentially all other modern forms of communication. For thousands of years, cultures passed on their history through oral tradition from generation to generation. Historically, much of poetry has its source in an oral tradition: in more recent times the Scots and English ballads, the tales of Robin Hood poems all were originally intended for recitation, rather than reading. In many cultures, there remains a lively tradition of the recitation of traditional tales in verse format. It has been suggested that some of the distinctive features that distinguish poetry from prose, such as metre, alliteration, and kennings, at one time served as memory aids that allowed the bards who recited traditional tales to reconstruct them from memory.<ref>David C. Rubin, ''Memory in Oral Traditions. The Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballads, and Counting-out Rhymes'' (Taco University Press, 1991)</ref>
A narrative poem usually tells a story using a poetic theme. Epics are very vital to narrative poems, although it is thought those narrative poems were created to explain oral traditions. The focus of narrative poetry is often the pros and cons of life.
==List of narrative poems== {{See also|List of epic poems|Verse novel|Romance (prose fiction)}} <!-- Chronological order by author's date of birth, with approximate composition date used for anonymous works --> <!-- This list uses WP:CSC for notability of both author AND work --> <!-- Please don't add any verse romances, verse novels, or epic poems - they will drown out the far fewer works that do NOT fit one of those three categories already -->
All epic poems, verse romances and verse novels can also be thought of as extended narrative poems. Other notable examples of narrative poems include:
* The anonymous ''Homeric Hymns'' to Demeter, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hermes, Dionysus, and Pan * ''Metamorphoses'' by Ovid * The anonymous ''Poetic Edda'' * ''Piers Plowman'' by William Langland * ''The Book of the Duchess'' and ''The Canterbury Tales'' by Geoffrey Chaucer * ''The Assembly of Gods'' (anonymous) * ''The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian'' by Robert Henryson * ''Tam Lin'' (anonymous) * ''Hero and Leander'' by Christopher Marlowe * ''The Rape of Lucrece'', ''Venus and Adonis'', ''The Lover's Complaint'', ''The Phoenix and the Turtle'' by William Shakespeare * ''Hudibras'' by Samuel Butler * ''The Dunciad'' and ''The Rape of the Lock'' by Alexander Pope * "Halloween" by Robert Burns * ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' by Samuel Taylor Coleridge * Mattie the Goose-boy by Mihály Fazekas * ''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'' and ''Lara, A Tale'' by Lord Byron * ''The Eve of St. Agnes'' and ''Lamia'' by John Keats * ''The Prisoner of the Caucasus'' by Alexander Pushkin * ''Lays of Ancient Rome'' by Thomas Babington Macaulay * ''Paul Revere's Ride'', ''The Courtship of Miles Standish'' and ''The Wreck of the Hesperus'' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow * ''The Battle of Marathon: A Poem'' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning * János Vitéz by Sándor Petőfi * ''The Raven'' by Edgar Allan Poe * ''Snow-Bound'' by John Greenleaf Whittier * ''Idylls of the King'', and many other works by Alfred, Lord Tennyson * ''The Fakeer of Jungheera'' by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio * ''Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came'' and ''Red Cotton Night-Cap Country'' by Robert Browning * ''Sohrab and Rustum'' by Matthew Arnold * ''Terje Vigen'' by Henrik Ibsen * ''The Hunting of the Snark'' and ''The Walrus and the Carpenter'' by Lewis Carroll * ''Martín Fierro'' by José Hernández * ''Eros and Psyche'' by Robert Bridges * ''Luceafărul'' by Mihai Eminescu * ''The Highwayman'' by Alfred Noyes * ''The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun'' by J. R. R. Tolkien * ''The Road Not Taken'' by Robert Frost * ''The Wild Party'' and ''The Set-Up'' by Joseph Moncure March * ''Dymer'' and ''The Queen of Drum'' by C. S. Lewis * ''The Ship's Cat'' by Richard Adams * ''Lost in Translation'' by James Merrill
==See also== * {{Portal inline|Poetry}}
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== * {{Commonscatinline|Narrative poems}}
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Category:Narrative poems Category:Narratology