• Required Texts
• Course Description and Goals
• Requirements and Grading
• Preliminary Outline

• Greenblat, Stephen, et al. eds.  The Norton Anthology of English Literature.  8th ed.  Vol. 2.  Norton, 2006.
• North, Michael, ed.  The Waste Land.  By T. S. Eliot.  Norton, 2001.

The topic for this year's seminar is poetry, the poetry of the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern Periods. We'll range from the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge through the odes of Shelley and Keats and the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning to the elegiac lyrics of Hardy and the symbolist lyrics of Yeats. We'll also dip into longer works by Wordsworth (The Prelude), Byron (Don Juan), Tennyson (In Memoriam), and Eliot (The Waste Land). Our text will be the second volume of the new eighth edition of The Norton Anthology of English Literature.

The aims of our course are twofold: 

• To acquaint you with a representative selection of poetry from the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern Periods, and
• To further develop your analytical and rhetorical skills.

• Active Participation (20%).  You'll be participating actively in this course if you attend class regularly (missing only for official, College-sponsored activities or for emergencies), meet all deadlines, and demonstrate your engagement in the course by contributing valuably to in-class discussions and by scoring consistently well on reading quizzes.  It is unlikely that you will receive full credit for participation if you miss more than two weeks of class.  It is the Department's policy that anyone missing more than three weeks of class (nine classes) for any reason will fail the course.  Understand that the Department does not distinguish between excused and unexcused absences.  Reading quizzes will come, if they do, at the beginning of the period.  If you are late for class, you will miss the quiz.  You may make up a reading quiz only if you are absent because of required participation in a College-sponsored off-campus event, and then you may submit on the day of your return to class 10 objective questions and answers about the assignment that was due when you were absent.
• Three Essays (45%).  You'll write three essays of at least 800 words apiece.  The first of these essays will focus on the poetry of Wordworth and Coleridge, the second on a poem or poems by the later Romantic poets, and the third on a poem or poems from the Victorian Age.  These essays must draw on the critical introductions in The Norton Anthology.
• An Essay/Annotated Bibliography (15%).  You'll produce, in the form of a coherent essay of at least 1200 words, an annotated bibliography based on "Reviews and First Reactions" to The Waste Land, "The New Criticism," and "Reconsiderations and New Readings" of Eliot's poem.
• Final Exam (20%).  There will be a final exam (date TBA), which will consist of passages for identification and analysis/interpretation and a topic for discussion.

• Active Participation (20%)
• Essay on Wordsworth/Coleridge (15%)
• Essay on Byron/Shelley/Keats (15%)
• Essay on the Poetry of the Victorian Age (15%)
• Essay/Annotated Bibliography (15%)
• Final Exam (20%)

Note:  I will be filling in this schedule of assignments during the weeks ahead.  For now, here is a tentative, weekly outline of the course. 
 

Week 1 (January 9-13) "The Romantic Period: 1785-1830" (1-16) William Wordsworth (243) Wordsworth, "Simon Lee," "We Are Seven," "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey," the "Lucy Poems" ("Strange fits of passion," "She dwelt among the untrodden ways," "Three years she grew," "A slumber did my spirit seal," "I travelled among unknown men" No meeting Friday

Week 2 (January 16-20) No meeting Monday Wordsworth, "Michael," "Resolution and Independence," "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," "Composed upon Westminster Bridge," "It is a beauteous evening," "Surprised by joy"

Week 3 (January 23-27) Wordsworth, from The Prelude: Book First, Book Sixth [Crossing Simplon Pass], Book Twelfth [Spots of Time], Book Fourteenth [The Vision on Mount Snowdon] Samuel Taylor Coleridge (424) Coleridge, "The Eolian Harp," "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," "Frost at Midnight"

Week 4 (January 30-February 3) Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Kubla Khan," "Dejection: An Ode" Essay on Wordsworth/Coleridge due Friday

Week 5 (February 6-10) George Gordon, Lord Byron (607) Byron, Don Juan

Week 6 (February 13-17) Percy Bysshe Shelley (741) Shelley, "Mont Blanc," "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," "Ozymandias," "England in 1819," "Ode to the West Wind," "Adonais" John Keats (878) Keats,  "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," "The Eve of St. Agnes"

Week 7 (February 20-24) Keats, "La Belle Dame sans Merci," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Melancholy," "To Autumn" Essay on Byron/Shelley/Keats due Friday

Mardi Gras Break (February 27-March 3)

Week 8 (March 6-10) The Victorian Age (979-990, 996-997) Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1109) Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott," "Ulysses," "Tithonus," "Tears, Idle Tears," In Memoriam 5, 7, 9-11, 14, 27, 34-35, 54-56, 64, 93, 95, 118, 124, 130, "Crossing the Bar"

Week 9 (March 13-17) Robert Browning (1248) Browning, "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," "My Last Duchess," "The Bishop Orders His Tomb," "'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,'" "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea del Sarto"

Week 10 (March 20-24) Matthew Arnold (1350) Arnold, "To Marguerite--Continued," "The Buried Life," "The Scholar Gypsy," "Dover Beach," "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse" Essay on the Victorian Age due Friday

Week 11 (March 27-31) The Twentieth Century and After (1827-1837) Thomas Hardy (1851) Hardy, "Hap," "Neutral Tones," "I Look into My Glass," "Drummer Hodge," "The Darkling Thrush," "Channel Firing," "The Convergence of the Twain," "The Walk," "The Voice," "During Wind and Rain" William Butler Yeats (2019) Yeats, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "Easter, 1916," "The Wild Swans at Coole," "The Second Coming," "A Prayer for My Daughter," "Leda and the Swan," "Sailing to Byzantium," "Among Schoolchildren"

Week 12 (April 3-7) T. S. Eliot (2286) Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," The Waste Land

Week 13 (April 10-12) Eliot, The Waste Land continued Annotated Bibliography for The Waste Land due Wednesday No meeting Friday (Easter Recess)

Week 14 (April 19-21) No meeting Monday (Easter Recess) W. H. Auden (2421) Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts," "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" Philip Larkin (2565) Larkin, "Church Going," "High Windows," "Aubade"

Week 15 (April 24-26) Preparation Week