N is for Narrative Poetry

Narrative poetry tells a story. It is usually written in metered verse and is dramatic with objectives and diverse characters. It often focuses on the pros and cons of life. Such as the great epic poems listed below.

• Beowulf, oldest known English poem
• The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
• The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
• The Divine Comedy by Dante
• Don Juan by Lord Byron
• The Iliad, and  the Odyssey
• The Epic of Gilgamesh,
• “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes
• The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Paradise Lost by John Milton
• The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll

If you were lucky and received a good education, then like myself many of you have had the gift of reading these great epic poems. In this list, my favorite has to be Canterbury Tales. It is so raucous and bawdy to use the language of the day. If you haven’t read these please do. Share them with your children and then some of them you can watch as a movie. But read the book first. It’s always much better than the movie.

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