The term “didactic” poetry or literature refers to a range of literary forms and genres concerned with conveying theoretical or practical knowledge through the medium of poetic writing. Since the early 18th century, the forms of didactic literature in the strict sense have been the fable and the didactic poem.
In Antiquity, the Tractatus Coislinianus (1st century BCE?) refers to instructive poetry and the grammarian Diomedes (4th century CE) to didactic poetry (Latin didascalice), but in neither case…