Contents of Syllabus
Texts (To be read in this order)
Course Description and Goals The Lyric in English is a new course for English majors, one of the requisite "genre studies." First, we'll do a chronological survey of the short poem (as opposed to the epic poem and dramatic poem) from Tutor England to contemporary America. We'll then examine closely the products of three schools or movements: the metaphysical poetry of the 17th century, the Romantic lyric and "lyrical ballads" of the early 19th century, and the Imagist poetry of the early 20th century. The exemplary career of Robert Lowell, an American poet of the mid-20th century, will be our focus as the semester concludes. Along the way we'll read important statements by Samuel Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Pound, and T. S. Eliot. Computer-mediated discussions will enhance our inquiry. Apply yourself even modestly to the demands of the course and you will
gain some critical appreciation of the lyric as it has developed in English
since the 1500s. That "critical appreciation" includes a vocabulary
of terms peculiar to the subject. Apply yourself conscientiously
and you should become a more attentive reader, who delights in language--who
derives as much pleasure from words as from ideas--and a more discerning
critic able to communicate ever more subtle and complex notions with ever
greater clarity and grace of style. Finally, your engagement with
the texts should excite your creative imagination and make you a more observant
and sensitive human being.
Requirements and Grading
Grading scale:
Calendar of Assignments (Updated January 6) Weeks 1-4, January 6-27 (Monday's dates) Selections as follow from The Seagull Reader (including Biographical Sketches of the poets, beginning on page 209)
Anon, "Western Wind" (3), "Sir Patrick Spens" (3) Wyatt, "My Galley" (201), "They Flee from Me" (202) Shakespeare, "Shall I compare thee" (166), "That time of year" (168), "Let me not to the marriage" (169) Donne, "The Flea" (54), "Batter my heart" (57) Jonson, "Song: To Celia" (114), "On My First Daughter" (115), "On My First Son" (115) Herrick, "Delight in Disorder" (97), "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" (98), "Upon Julia's Clothes" (99) Milton, "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent" (144) Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress" (141) Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (83) Blake, "The Lamb" (23), "The Chimney Sweeper" (24), "The Sick Rose" (25), "The Tyger" (25), "London" (26), "The Chimney Sweeper" (27)
Wordsworth, "The Tables Turned" (196), "Nutting" (198), "The World Is Too Much with Us" (200) Coleridge, "Kubla Khan" (38) Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind" (171) Keats, Six Poems 116-124 Tennyson, "Ulysses" (184) Browning, "My Last Duchess" (33) Whitman, "A Noiseless Patient Spider" (190), "When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer" (191) Arnold, "Dover Beach" (12)
Dickinson, "After great pain" (47), "I heard a Fly buzz" (48), "Because I could not stop for Death" (48), "A narrow Fellow in the Grass" (49) Hardy, "The Convergence of the Twain" (89), "Channel Firing" (91) Hopkins, "God's Grandeur" (99), "The Windhover" (100) Housman, "To an Athlete Dying Young" (104), "Terrence, this is stupid stuff" (107) Yeats, "The Second Coming" (205), "Leda and the Swan" (206), "Sailing to Byzantium" (207) Frost, "Mending Wall" (75), "The Road Not Taken" (77), "Birches" (78), "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (80), "Acquainted with the Night" (80), "Design" (81) Stevens, "Anecdote of the Jar" (177), "Sunday Morning" (178) Williams, "Spring and All" (193), "The Red Wheelbarrow" (195), "This Is Just to Say" (195) Pound, "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" (160), "In a Station of the Metro" (161)
Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (59) Ransom, "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter" (161) MacLeish, "Ars Poetica" (138) Millay, "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" (142), "Love Is Not All" (143) Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (110), "Harlem" (111) Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts" (14), "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" (15) Roethke, "Root Cellar" (164), "My Papa's Waltz" (165), "I Knew a Woman" (165) Bishop, "The Fish" (18), "Sestina" (21), "One Art" (22) Thomas, "Fern Hill" (187), "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" (190) Lowell, "Skunk Hour" (135) Larkin, "Aubade" (130) Ginsberg, "A Supermarket in California" (82) Plath, "Daddy" (152)
Reprise Week 4 Review Test Selections as follow from Metaphysical Poetry (including biographical headnotes)
Donne, "Song" (2), "The Sun Rising" (4), "The Canonization" (5), "The Anniversary" (11), "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (20) Donne, "The Ecstasy" (21), "The Relic" (25), "Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed" (33) Donne, "Holy Sonnets I, V, X, XIV" (46), "Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward" (53), "Hymn to God My God, in My Sickness" (55) First Paper due
Marvell, "The Mower Against the Gardens" (59), "The Garden" (77) Herbert, "The Altar" (113), "Easter Wings" (114), "Affliction" (120), "Love" (128), "The Collar" (133) Vaughan, "The Night" (166), "Regeneration" (169), "The Retreat" (172), "The World" (176), "They Are All Gone Into the World of Light" (179) Chrashaw, "A Hymn to the Name and Honor of the Admirable Saint Teresa" (137) Traherne, "Wonder" (181), "Eden" (183) Samuel Johnson, from “The Life of Cowley” T. S. Eliot, "The Metaphysical Poets" Selections as follow from Lyrical Ballads and Related Writings
Herbert (reprise) Introduction (1), Part One: Lyrical Ballads (13-19), Advertisement (21) Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" (23) Wordsworth, "Simon Lee" (64) "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" (reprise) "Simon Lee" (reprise) and "Simon Lee" (442) Coleridge, "The Nightingale" (47) Wordsworth, "Goody Blake and Harry Gill" (59) Wordsworth, "Lines Written at a Small Distance from My House" (63), "Anecdote for Fathers" (68), "We Are Seven" (70), "Lines Written in Early Spring" (72)
Wordsworth, "The Thorn" (73), "Note to 'The Thorn'" (387), "The Last of the Flock" (81), "The Mad Mother" (85), "The Idiot Boy" (88) Wordsworth, "Lines Written near Richmond" (101), "Expostulation and Reply" (103), "The Tables Turned" (104), "Old Man Travelling: Animal Tranquillity and Decay" (105) Wordsworth, "Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" (110) Wordsworth, "Preface [to Lyrical Ballads (1802)]" (390) Coleridge, From Biographia Literaria (416) Selections as follow (unless otherwise noted) from Imagist Poetry: An Anthology
Pandaemonium Pandaemonium Ezra Pound, "A Retrospect"--Including "A Few Don'ts" MacLeish, "Ars Poetica" (The Seagull Reader 138) T. E. Hulme, "Autumn," "Above the Dock," "The Embankment," "Conversion" (65-66) Pound, "In a Station of the Metro" (103),"The Jewel Stairs' Grievance" (105) Aldington, "Summer," "Evening" (2) Crapsey, "November Night," "The Guarded Wound," "The Warning," "Niagara" (19-20) H.D., "Hermes of the Ways" (22), "Priapus" (24), "Oread" (28), "Song" (35), "At Baia" (36)
Reprise Friday's assignment Fletcher, "Irradiations" (37), "Mexican Quarter" (39), "Rain in the Desert" (41) Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" (120), "The Bird with the Coppery, Keen Claws" (125), "O, Florida, Venereal Soil" (126) Williams, "The Young Housewife" (129), "Pastoral" (130), "Tract" (131), "To a Solitary Disciple" (137) Test (quotations) Williams, "Good Night" (135), "To Waken an Old Lady" (140), "The Thinker" (142), "The Disputants" (142), "Blueflags" (143), "The Widow's Lament in Springtime" (144), "The Great Figure" (146) Selections as follow (unless otherwise noted) from Robert Lowell, Selected Poems
Imagism--wrap-up Robert Lowell: Biographical Note (Modern American Poetry) Robert Lowell (The Academy of American Poets) To be read aloud in class: "Turtle" (handout), "Bringing a Turtle Home" (217), "Returning Turtle" (218), "The Neo-Classical Urn" (125) Test on Metaphysical poetry, Lyrical Ballads, Imagist poetry
"Turtle," "Bringing a Turtle Home," "Returning Turtle," "The Neo-Classical Urn" (reprise from Wednesday) "Mr. Edwards and the Spider" (27), "Jonathan Edwards in Western Massachusetts" (120) from Lord Weary's Castle: "The Holy Innocents" (4), "The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket" (6) from Life Studies: "Beyond the Alps" (55), "To Delmore Schwartz" (63), "Grandparents" (74), "Commander Lowell" (76), "Terminal Days at Beverly Farms" (79)
"Waking in the Blue" (87), "Home after Three Months Away" (89), "Memories of West Street and Lepke" (91), "Skunk Hour" (95) "The Mad Poets Society," by Alex Beam (The Atlantic Online) "The Armadillo," by Elizabeth Bishop from For the Union Dead: "The Old Flame" (101), "The Mouth of the Hudson" (104), "Eye and Tooth" (108), "Night Sweat" (134), "For the Union Dead" (135) Second paper due Spring Break
Spring Break from Near the Ocean: "Waking Early Sunday Morning" (141), "Fourth of July in Maine" (145) from History: "The March" I and II (180-181) from For Lizzie and Harriet: "Harriet" (209), "Harriet" (210), "Elizabeth" (210), "Obit" (223) from The Dolphin: "Fall Weekend at Milgate" (131) Review |