2/4:
Here are some links to glossaries of poetic terms: one from the University
of Toronto, another from Bob's
Byway.
If you're interested in looking up the roots of words, you can use Merriam-Webster's
online dictionary.
3/10:
Two interesting sites for Eliot: on the composition
of The Waste Land, and some criticism
of the poem, too.
Course Prerequisite:
English 110 is a prerequisite for all literature courses in the English
department.
Course Description:
This course will explore the shifting meanings of "modern" and
"British" within poetic practice, charting a literary history from the
late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, which is also a history of the
complex relationship between art and cultural identity in a fractured Great
Britain. The first several weeks of the course will treat some of the currents
that gave rise to modernist poetry in Britain, including the use of vernacular
language, the poetic treatment of the city, the rise of manifestos and
"movements" such as Imagism and Vorticism, and the new kinds of
experience brought about by World War I. The middle part of the course will be
centrally concerned with two major figures of "high" modernism, T.S.
Eliot and W.B. Yeats. As we work to understand their place within modernist
poetry, we will also look carefully at some key contradictions in their work,
particularly between the present and the past, the universal and the particular,
and the culturally marginal position of each and their retrospective centrality
within "British" literature. The final part of the course will deal
largely with responses to and articulations within the terms set out by
modernist poetry: for example, W.H. Auden’s "diagnosis" of English
culture between the wars; Irish, Scots, Welsh poets’ negotiation of minority
cultures within British modernity; and Philip Larkin’s hostility toward
modernism’s experimentalism and cosmopolitanism. We will conclude with the
poetry of several Black British authors, whose use of vernacular and musical
forms speaks not of the purity and authenticity of tradition but of the
inevitable hybridization of the English language and British poetry in an age of
global cultural circulation.
Required Texts:
- Keith Tuma, ed. Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry
- Robert Pinsky, The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide
- Articles and poems on reserve in Burritt Library
Assignments, Dates, and Grade Percentages:
Undergraduate Students:
Short papers: You will complete three brief (absolutely no more than 2
double-spaced pages!) papers on some aspect of one poem on the syllabus. Your
task in these papers is not to come up with a comprehensive reading of an
entire poem, but to tease out one or two specific elements of the poem (imagery,
metaphor, sound, rhythm, etc.) and discuss the ways in which these contribute to
the poem’s overall effect. The due dates for these papers will be dictated by
the poems you choose; you must hand in each paper on the day we cover the
particular poem you’ve written about. You are required to hand in the first
paper by 25 February, the second by 1 April, and the third by 6 May. For
example, if you choose to write about Hopkins’ "God’s Grandeur,"
Macneice’s "Valediction," and Larkin’s "Church Going,"
your due dates would be 4 February, 1 April, and 22 April.
Presentation and summary of critical article: You will sign up for a day
on which you will present a critical article about one of the poets on the
syllabus. Your best bet to find critical, scholarly essays is by searching the
MLA Bibliography (available from the Burritt Library webpage). Your presentation
should be about 5-7 minutes long and should summarize the argument of the
article as fully as possible and present several questions for group discussion.
Please bring both a written summary of your presentation and a copy of
the article to give to me.
Critical bibliography of poet (graduate students only): You will choose
a poet and compile an annotated bibliography of scholarly works on that poet
(8-12 entries). For each article, book chapter, or book, you should cite in
proper MLA bibliographical format and include a brief (1-2 sentence) summary of
each item.
Research paper: Your most important assignment for this course will be a
critical research paper of 10-12 pages (15-18 pages for graduate students). This
paper should present a specific argument about a relevant topic of your choice.
It should also draw on existing scholarly work related to your topic. By 22
April, you will need to hand in a prospectus that outlines your topic in one or
two paragraphs. Your prospectus should also include a preliminary bibliography
of critical works that you will work with in your paper. Your prospectus will
not be graded; however, I will not accept any final papers unless I have already
read and approved your prospectus.
Attendance and Participation:
Attendance in this class is required. If you miss more than two classes, your
course grade will decline for each absence thereafter. If you miss more than
four classes, you will not pass the course. I will take attendance at the
beginning of every class—if you come in late, it is your responsibility to
make sure I have marked you present for the day. Tardiness is both irritating to
me and disruptive to the class—please be on time. Enough said.
Since this course will effectively be a seminar, your regular and meaningful
participation is absolutely essential to its success. Your overall course
grade may be lowered or raised by one-third of a grade based on the frequency
and level of your participation. You should come to each class with something
specific or concrete to say about one or more of the poems on the syllabus. I
will frequently call on one of you to initiate discussion with a question,
observation, or interpretation. Be prepared for this.
Course Schedule (selections indicated with a * will be available in the
Reserve Room at Burritt Library):
1/28 – Course Introduction: Poetry, Englishness, and Culture
- Some keywords: "Modern," "British," "English,"
"poetry," "culture"
- Poetry and culture in nineteenth-century England
- A closer look at Thomas Hardy, "The Darkling Thrush"
2/4 – Vernacular English and Poetic Language
- Thomas Hardy
, "Hap," "Neutral Tones," "The
Subalterns," "The Man He Killed," "The Pity of It"
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
, "God’s Grandeur," "The Windhover,"
"Pied Beauty," "Spring and Fall," "Inversnaid,"
"Justus quidem tu us, Domine"
- W.B. Yeats
, "To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time," "The
Lake Isle of Innisfree," "Who Goes with Fergus?"
- Charlotte Mew
, "The Farmer’s Bride," "Arracombe
Wood"
- Robert Pinsky
, The Sounds of Poetry
2/11 – Symbolism, Decadance, and City Poetry
, from The Prelude, Book Seventh, Residence
in London*
Charles Baudelaire, "Tableaux Parisiens," from Les
Fleurs du Mal *
James Thomson, from City of Dreadful Night*
Oscar Wilde, "Impression du Matin,"* "The Harlot’s
House,"* "Symphony in Yellow"*
Paintings by James McNeill Whistler
2/18 – NO CLASS – PRESIDENT’S HOLIDAY
2/25 – Currents of Modernism: Imagism, Classicism, and Vorticism
- T.E. Hulme
, "Romanticism and Classicism" (essay)*,
"Autumn," "The Embankment," "Conversion," from Fragments,
"As a Fowl"
- Ezra Pound
, "A Retrospect" (essay)*, "In a Station of the
Metro"
- T.S. Eliot
, "Preludes," "The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock"
- Mina Loy
, "Italian Pictures"
- Wyndham Lewis
, from Blast ("Vorticist Manifesto")*
- Paintings by Wyndham Lewis
- SHORT PAPER #1 DUE BY THIS WEEK
3/4 – Masculinity, Violence, and Nationalism: The Poetry of World War I
- Rupert Brooke
, "The Soldier"*
- Edward Thomas
, "Adlestrop"
- Siegfried Sassoon
, "A Working Party," "The
Rear-Guard," "The General"
- Isaac Rosenberg
, "Break of Day in the Trenches"
- Wilfred Owen
, "Dulce et Decorum Est," "Strange
Meeting," "Arms and the Boy," "Disabled"
- David Jones
, from In Parenthesis
3/11 – Eliot, Modernism, and the Problem of Culture
- T.S. Eliot
, "The Burial of the Dead," "A Game of
Chess," "The Fire Sermon," from The Waste Land,
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" (essay)*
3/18 – Beyond the Waste Land: Culture and Tradition
- T.S. Eliot
, "Death by Water," "What the Thunder
Said," from The Waste Land, "Little Gidding" from Four
Quartets
- Mina Loy
, "English Rose"
- Basil Bunting
, all selections from First Book of Odes
3/25 – NO CLASS – SPRING BREAK
4/1 – Yeats, Ireland, and Modernism
- W.B. Yeats
, "September 1913," "The Wild Swans at Coole,"
"Easter 1916," "The Second Coming," "Sailing to
Byzantium," "The Tower," "Leda and the Swan,"
"Among School Children," "Byzantium," "Crazy Jane Talks
with the Bishop," "Lapis Lazuli," "Under Ben Bulben,"
"The Circus Animals’ Desertion," "Politics"
- Louis MacNeice
, "Valediction," "Carrickfergus"
- Patrick Kavanagh
, from The Great Hunger
- Samuel Beckett
, "Enueg I," "Enueg II"
- SHORT PAPER #2 DUE BY THIS WEEK
4/8 – Diagnosing England: Auden, Late Modernism, and Mass Culture
- W.H. Auden
, "Bones wrenched, weak whimper, lids wrinkled . .
.," "The Watershed," "Consider this and in our time,"
"On this island,"* "A Bride in the 30s," "Spain,"
"Musée de Beaux Arts," "September 1, 1939," "In Memory
of W.B. Yeats," "Writing" (essay)*, "Psychology and Art
Today" (essay)*
- Louis MacNeice
, "An Eclogue for Christmas," "Snow"
- Stevie Smith
, "Souvenir de Monsieur Poop," "Not Waving
but Drowning," "My Hat"
4/15 – Other Modernisms: Minority Culture and Scots/Welsh Poetry
- Hugh MacDiarmid
, "Sic Transit Gloria Scotiae"
- Norman MacCaig
, "High Street, Edinburgh," "Celtic
Cross"
- Dylan Thomas
, "The force that through the green fuse drives the
flower," "Our eunuch dreams," "To-day, this insect,"
"Over Sir John’s Hill"
- Lynette Roberts
, from Gods with Stainless Ears: IV, V
4/22 – Larkin, Anti-Modernism, and English Postwar Poetry
- Philip Larkin
, "Church Going," "Nothing to be Said,"
"The Whitsun Weddings," "An Arundel Tomb," "High
Windows," "Going, Going" "Homage to a Government,"
"This Be The Verse," "The Explosion," "Statement"
(essay)*, "The Pleasure Principle" (essay)*, "Writing Poems"
(essay)*
- Ted Hughes
, "View of a Pig," "Pike,"
"Out," "Pibroch," "Wodwo," "Crow Hears Fate
Knock on the Door," all selections from Gaudete
- Tony Harrison
, from v.
- PROSPECTUS FOR FINAL PROJECT DUE
- CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF POET DUE (graduate students only)
4/29 – Writing a Divided Island: Contemporary Irish Poetry
- Seamus Heaney
, "Digging,"* "Bogland,"
"North," "Oysters," "The Toome Road," "from Station
Island, VII, XII
- Eavan Boland
, "The Woman Turns Herself into a Fish,"
"Listen. This is the Noise of Myth," "That the Science of
Cartography is Limited,"* "The Dolls Museum in Dublin,"* from Outside
History, "In Exile"
- Medbh McGuckian
, "Tulips," "The Seed-Picture,"
"Slips," "Aviary," "The War Ending," "The
Albert Chain"
- Paul Muldoon
, "Incantata"
5/6 – Migrancy, Hybridity, and Globalization: Black British Poetry
- Edward Kamau Braithwaite
, "History of the Voice: The Development of
Nation Language in Anglophone Caribbean Poetry" (essay)*
- Derek Walcott
, "Midsummer"*
- Linton Kwesi Johnson
, "Mi Revalushenary Fren"
- David Dabydeen
, "Coolie Odyssey"
- Jean "Binta" Breeze
, "Riddym Ravings," "Cherry
Tree Garden"
- Benjamin Zephaniah
, "Money," "The SUN"
- SHORT PAPER #3 DUE BY THIS WEEK
5/13 – Project Presentations
