This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Narrative Poem: From YKTTW
O.S.I: "Narrative poems started to decline in popularity with the advent of writing, as it was not quite so necessary to learn stories off by heart when they are written down. However, they persisted in popularity for several hundred years, as the majority of people were illiterate for much of human history. Nowadays, narrative poems are almost forgotten, as most people are able to read books."
Really? Most of the example poems were written and read by educated people, and poetry's last modern stronghold is the postgraduate MFA program, so I can't really agree with your causal link between literacy and a lack of interest in poetry. While it's true that the form may have began as an aid to memory, that hardly means that its eclipse had to do with the obsolescence of the same function. Simple shifts in cultural fashion and the rise of more immediate narrative alternatives (movies, pop music, TV) are more adequate explanations.
