Gnomic poetry consists of meaningful sayings put into verse to aid the memory, expressing universal truths about human conduct drawn from wisdom literature. The term comes from ancient Greece, where such poetry flourished in the sixth century BC and the Greeks called these sayings gnomes; major practitioners included Theognis, Solon and Phocylides, with Hesiod's Works and Days an early example, and the tradition later extended into Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, German and Renaissance French verse.
Facts
Place of Origin Notable ExampleHesiod's Works and Days 1 Defining TraitMeaningful sayings put into verse to aid the memory 1 FAQs
Was gnomic poetry made up entirely of proverbs?
Probably not; the title gnomic came to cover any verse that treated ethics in a sententious way.
Probably not. Theognis set his moral precepts inside his elegies, and this was probably the custom of the other gnomic poets too. It is improbable that a kind of poetry made up entirely of successive gnomes ever existed, and the title gnomic came to cover all poetry that dealt in a sententious way with questions of ethics.
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Sources
1. Wikipedia: Gnomic poetry
Origins, Greek gnomic poets
The gnomic poets of Greece, who flourished in the 6th century BC, were those who arranged series of sententious maxims in verse.
Greek gnomic poetry, Hesiod
Hesiod's Works and Days is considered to be one of the earliest works of this genre.
Lead paragraph
Gnomic poetry consists of meaningful sayings put into verse to aid the memory.
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