Great IdeasStories, art and words

How poetry and stories work

Plot, character, verse and the craft of telling.

The question

How do poems and stories work? What makes a story good, and why does poetry matter?

The stops on a time line 9 stops, from 750 BC to 1922. Each number is a stop below, placed at its year.
  1. 1 Homer 750 BC
  2. 2 Plato 375 BC
  3. 3 Aristotle 335 BC
  4. 4 Virgil 29 BC
  5. 5 Dante Alighieri 1310
  6. 6 William Shakespeare 1609
  7. 7 John Milton 1667
  8. 8 Luigi Pirandello 1921
  9. 9 T. S. Eliot 1922

How the books answer

Oldest first. Each stop is our own short summary of what the author argued; follow the link to the rung for the whole lesson.

  1. c. 750 BC (from older oral poetry)

    Homer, The Iliad

    Homer's poems were sung aloud long before they were written down. Bards used repeated phrases, like 'swift-footed Achilles' and 'rosy-fingered dawn,' to help them compose as they sang. The poems open by calling on the Muse, the goddess of song.

    Go to the rung: Homer: The Iliad

  2. c. 375 BC

    Plato, The Republic, Book X

    Plato, himself a gifted writer, worries about poetry. Poems copy appearances, not truth, and they stir up feelings that reason should rule. He would allow only hymns and praise of good people in his ideal city, while admitting he loves Homer.

    Go to the rung: Plato: The Republic, Books VI–X

  3. c. 335–322 BC

    Aristotle, Rhetoric and Poetics

    Aristotle answers Plato. Poetry, he says, imitates life in a way that teaches: it shows what could happen, not just what did. That makes it more philosophical than history. The most important part of a story is its plot, with a beginning, middle and end.

    “Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”

    Aristotle, Poetics 9, 1451b. Translated by Ingram Bywater (The Works of Aristotle, vol. XI, Clarendon Press, 1924). Internet Archive.

    Go to the rung: Aristotle: Rhetoric and Poetics

  4. c. 39–29 BC

    Virgil, Eclogues and Georgics

    Virgil's early poems are about shepherds singing contests and farmers at work. He took old Greek forms and made them Roman. His careful verse became the model of Latin poetry for centuries.

    Go to the rung: Virgil: Eclogues and Georgics

  5. c. 1308–1314

    Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno

    Dante wrote his great poem not in Latin but in the Italian people spoke, in linked three-line stanzas. He chose Virgil as his guide, poet to poet. His choice helped make Italian a language of great literature.

    Go to the rung: Dante: Inferno

  6. published 1609

    William Shakespeare, Sonnets

    A sonnet has fourteen lines with a set rhyme pattern. Shakespeare's sonnets often turn in the last two lines, which sum up or surprise. He shows how strict form can make feelings sharper.

    “O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken;”

    William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116. (Shake-speares Sonnets, London, 1609). Project Gutenberg.

    Go to the rung: Shakespeare: The Sonnets

  7. 1667

    John Milton, Paradise Lost

    Milton wrote his epic in blank verse, without rhyme, which he defended as closer to the great ancient poets. Blind by then, he composed lines in his head and dictated them. His poem aims to do what Homer and Virgil did, for a Christian story.

    Go to the rung: Milton: Paradise Lost

  8. 1921

    Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author

    In Pirandello's play, six characters interrupt a rehearsal, looking for an author to finish their story. They insist they are more real than the actors. The play asks what a character is and who owns a story.

    “Because a character has really a life of his own, marked with his especial characteristics; for which reason he is always “somebody.””

    Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Act III. Translated by Edward Storer (Three Plays (E. P. Dutton & Co., New York), 1922). Project Gutenberg.

    Go to the rung: Pirandello: Six Characters in Search of an Author

  9. 1922

    T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

    Eliot's Waste Land breaks the old rules. It jumps between voices, languages and quotations from older books, like broken pieces of a culture after the First World War. Readers had to learn new ways to read poetry.

    “April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.”

    T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, I. The Burial of the Dead, lines 1–4. (Boni and Liveright, New York, 1922). Project Gutenberg.

    Go to the rung: T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land

For young readers

Poems play with sounds: rhythm, rhyme and repeated words. Stories have characters, a problem and an ending. Aristotle said every good story has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Long ago, poems were sung out loud, and singers repeated phrases like 'rosy-fingered dawn' to help remember. Try making up a short poem with a repeated line, and say it aloud!

Talk about it

  • What is your favorite poem or song? What do you like about its sound?
  • Aristotle says poetry shows what could happen. Why might that teach us more than facts?
  • Plato worried stories could be bad for us. Do you think some stories are? Why?
  • Write a four-line poem together. Rhyme or no rhyme?
  • In Pirandello's play, characters look for an author. If you were a character, what story would you want?

Where else on the site

Every rung tagged with this idea:

These pages are our own short synthesis, written for families. They were inspired by Mortimer J. Adler's Syntopicon, the index of great ideas in volumes 1 and 2 of Great Books of the Western World, but the questions, summaries and groupings are ours, not the Syntopicon's. Short excerpts come from public-domain translations, credited where they appear.

@teddyrookbook GitHub Sources and credits