Hong Kong Shue Yan University
Department of English Language & Literature
1st term, 2015-2016
Course Title : The Language of Poetry
Course Code : ENG 233
Year of Study : 2nd
Number of Credits : 3
Duration in Weeks : 15
Contact Hours Per Week : Lecture (2 Hours)
: Tutorial /Workshop (1 Hour)
Pre-requisite(s) : NIL
Prepared by : Dr. Michelle Chan
Course Aims
This course introduces participants to the language and methods of practical poetry criticism and the art of publicly reading a poem.
Course Outcomes, Teaching Activities and Assessment
Course Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)
Upon completion of this course, successful participants will be able toILO1 / analyse and interpret figurative language
ILO2 / evaluate an unseen poem using a range of criteria
ILO3 / appraise, autonomously, an unseen poem of intermediate difficulty
ILO4 / use their awareness of genre, metre, and form to complement their appraisal
ILO5 / publicly read a self-selected poem in a manner that shows an awareness of the poem’s qualities and the audience’s needs
Teaching and Learning Activities (TLAs)
TLA1 / Textual analysis of poemsTLA2 / Explanation of the social, political and intellectual background of the poems
TLA3 / Intra-group discussion
TLA4 / Critical reading of the texts with relation to the key topics and concepts
TLA 5 / Public reading of poems
TLA 6 / Writing tasks on unseen poems
Assignment Tasks (ATs)
AT1 / 2 In-Class writing tasks / 10%AT2 / Term Paper / 30%
AT3 / Midterm Exam / 20%
AT4 / Final Exam / 40%
Alignment of Course Intended Learning Outcomes, Teaching and Learning Activities and Assessment Tasks
Course Intended Learning Outcomes / Teaching and Learning Activities / Assessment Tasks
ILO1 / TLA1, 2, 4 / AT 1, 2, 3, 4
ILO2 / TLA 6 / AT 1
ILO3 / TLA 6 / AT 1
ILO4 / TLA 1,2,3, 6 / AT 1, 3, 4
ILO5 / TLA 5 / AT 1
Course Outline
1 / Introduction / (1 week)2 / Renaissance Sonnet:
William Shakespeare: Sonnet 18 ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer day’, Sonnet 73 ‘That time of year thou may'st in me behold’, Sonnet 116 ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’ / (1 week)
3 / Romanticism:
William Wordsworth: ‘I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud’, ‘London, 1802’, ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge; September 3, 1802’
P.B. Shelley: ‘Ozymandias’, ‘Ode to the West Wind’
John Keats: ‘La Belle Dame san Merci’, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’
Alfred Tennyson: ‘In Memoriam A. H. H.’, ‘The Lady of Shalott’ / (4 weeks)
4 / Aestheticism:
Dante Rossetti: ‘The Blessed Damozel’, Sonnet 78 from The House of Life / (1 week)
5 / Reading Week / (1 week)
6. / Modern Poetry (British and Irish):
W.B. Yeats: ‘Easter, 1916’, ‘The Countess Kathleen in Paradise’
W.H. Auden: ‘Funeral Blues’, ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’
Philip Larkin: ‘MCMXIV’, ‘An Arundel Tomb’
Dylan Thomas: ‘The Hand That Signed the Paper’, ‘The Conversation of Prayers’ / (4 weeks)
7 / Modern Poetry (American):
Robert Frost: ‘The Road Not Taken’, ‘Acquainted with the Night’, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’
T.S. Eliot: ‘The Wasteland’ / (2 weeks)
8 / Reading Week / (1 week)
15 weeks
Academic Honesty
You are expected to do your own work. Dishonesty in fulfilling any assignment undermines the learning process and the integrity of your college degree. Engaging in dishonest or unethical behavior is forbidden and will result in disciplinary action, specifically a failing grade on the assignment with no opportunity for resubmission. A second infraction will result in an F for the course and a report to College officials. Examples of prohibited behavior are:
· Cheating – an act of deception by which a student misleadingly demonstrates that s/he has mastered information on an academic exercise. Examples include:
· Copying or allowing another to copy a test, quiz, paper, or project
· Submitting a paper or major portions of a paper that has been previously submitted for another class without permission of the current instructor
· Turning in written assignments that are not your own work (including homework)
· Plagiarism – the act of representing the work of another as one’s own without giving credit.
o Failing to give credit for ideas and material taken from others
o Representing another’s artistic or scholarly work as one’s own
· Fabrication – the intentional use of invented information or the falsification of research or other findings with the intent to deceive
Resources
Principal Readings
Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy (ed.), The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th edn., London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005
Supplementary Readings
Arkins, Brian, The Thought of W.B. Yeats, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010
Baldick, Chris, The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008
Bate, Jonathan, Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environment Tradition, London: Routledge, 1991
Brooker, Jewel Spears, T.S. Eliot: the contemporary reviews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004
Chandler, James K and Maureen N. Maureen (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to British romantic poetry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008
Curran, Stuart, Poetic form and British romanticism, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986
Faggen, Robert, The Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost, Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2001
Fenton, James, An introduction to English poetry, New York: Penguin, 2003
Hamilton, Walter, The Aesthetic Movement in England, London: Nabu Press, 2012
Kirszner, Laurie G & Mandell Stephen G., Poetry: Reading Reacting Writing, Orlando: Harcourt Brace, 1994
McRae, John, The Language of Poetry, London: Routledge, 1998
Nally, Claire, Envisioning Ireland W.B. Yeats’s occult nationalism, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010
Pichaske, David R., The Varieties of Poetry, Beowulf to Beatles and Beyond, New York: Macmillan, 1981
Prettejohn, Elizabeth (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Pre-Raphaelites, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012
Spurr, Barry, Studying Poetry (2nd Ed), Basingstoke: Palgrove Macmillan, 2006
Tambling, Jeremy, Re:Verse: Turning Towards Poetry, London: Pearson Education, 2007
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