Gnomic poetry consists of meaningful sayings put into verse to aid the memory. They were known by the Greeks as gnomes, from the Greek word for "an opinion".
A gnome was defined by the Elizabethan critic Henry Peacham (1576?–1643?) as
- "a saying pertaining to the manners and common practices of men, which declareth, with an apt brevity, what in this our life ought to be done, or not done".
It belongs to the broad family of wisdom literature, which expresses general truths about the world. Topics range over the Divine and Secular, to hierarchical social relationships.
Read more about Gnomic Poetry: Ancient Greek Gnomic Literature, Medieval and Early Modern Gnomic Literature
Famous quotes containing the words gnomic and/or poetry:
“Narrowed-down by her early editors and anthologists, reduced to quaintness or spinsterish oddity by many of her commentators, sentimentalized, fallen-in-love with like some gnomic Garbo, still unread in the breadth and depth of her full range of work, she was, and is, a wonder to me when I try to imagine myself into that mind.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Thus all probable reasoning is nothing but a species of sensation. ‘Tis not solely in poetry and music, we must follow our taste and sentiment, but likewise in philosophy, When I am convinc’d of any principle, ‘tis only an idea which strikes more strongly upon me. When I give the preference to one set of arguments above another, I do nothing but decide from my feeling concerning the superiority of their influence.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)