Milton (ENGL 220)
by John Rogers · Open Yale Courses
Yale lecture course by John Rogers, 24 recorded sessions with transcripts. Most of it is close reading of Paradise Lost, covering its blank verse, epic conventions, narrative voice and characterization, plus Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. It includes some lyric and prose, but Paradise Lost dominates the lectures.
More resources on Narrative Poetry
Poetry Off the Shelf
Producer Helena de Groot talks to poets about language, dreams, love and loss, identity, connection, anger, discomfort, the creative process, the state of the world and the world of the soul. Hard conversations are welcomed—laughter is, too.
poets.org
Poets.org is the official site of the Academy of American Poets. It features a large collection of poems and poet bios, plus audio readings, essays, and classroom resources for readers and educators.
Poetry Foundation - Narrative Poetry
Collection of narrative poems and essays, free resource linked in Reddit discussions.
Traditional Ballads: Structure
Poet Susan Tichy's study page on how traditional ballads are built. It covers couplet-and-refrain ballads, four-beat lines and the rule of three, with a stanza-by-stanza analysis of Child 14, 'Babylon'. It ends with a taxonomy of ballad repetition, including incremental repetition. It shows how repetition and refrain drive the plot of a Child ballad instead of just defining the term.
The Odyssey (translated by Emily Wilson)
This is the best entry text for epic: a readable, line-matched metrical translation whose introduction explicitly analyzes narrative and meter. Emily Wilson's verse translation of Homer's Odyssey, written in iambic pentameter with the same number of lines as the Greek. Her long introduction and translator's note discuss Homeric narrative technique, oral composition, formulaic epithets and why she chose English meter.
The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours
Gregory Nagy's Harvard course in book form: close readings of the Iliad, Odyssey, Hesiod, lyric and tragedy, explaining how oral-formulaic epic builds story through traditional diction, epithets and recurring themes. The full text is free on the Center for Hellenic Studies site.