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English160: Poetry and Poetics

Winter 2014–2015

T, Th 2:15–3:45; Room 200-303

Professor Denise Gigante

office: 460-329; phone 725–7080)

This class features some of the greatpoems of the English language. We will study a range of formal techniques and styles in the broader context of literary tradition. Read the poems slowly. If you can, read themmore than once. Above all, enjoy!

Required texts:

The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th ed. (all page numbers refer to this edition)

(2) John Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason

Week 1

1/6Introduction

Wallace Stevens, “The Emperor of Ice Cream” (1256–57)

1/8Anglo-Saxon Verse

Caedmon’s Hymn (1); Beowulf (2-9); The Seafarer, tr. Ezra Pound (12-15)

Jon Stallworthy, Versification: Rhythm, Meter (2027-2036)

Week 2

Sonnets: Renaissance

1/13Thomas Wyatt: The Long Love; Whoso List to Hunt; My Galley (126–127)

Edmund Spenser, Amoretti# 1, 15, 23, 54, 67, 71, 75, 79, 81, 89 (190–95)

Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella# 1, 21, 31, 39, 47, 48, 63, 71, 72, 90 (213–220)

William Shakespeare, Sonnets# 2, 3, 12, 15, 18, 29, 30, 35, 55, 65, 71, 73, 76, 87, 97, 107, 116, 129, 130, 138, 144, 146 (257–269)

John Milton, When I Consider How My Light is Spent; On the Late Massacre in Piedmont; Methought I Saw (418–420)

1/15Sonnets Romantic

William Wordsworth: It is a Beauteous Evening; London, 1802; Composed Upon Westminster Bridge; Nuns Fret Not (794–796)

Percy Shelley, To Wordsworth (863); Ozymandias (870); England in 1819 (871)

John Keats: Chapman’s Homer; On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again; When I have Fears (905–906); Bright Star (940

Jon Stallworthy, Rhyme, Forms (2036-2045)

Week 3

1/20Metaphysical Poetry

John Donne: Holy Sonnets # 1, 5, 7, 10, 14 (318–321)

The Good Morrow; The Sun Rising; The Canonization; The Anniversary; A Valediction of Weeping; A Valediction Forbidding Mourning; The Ecstasy; The Funeral; The Flee; The Relic; Elegy XIX (293–313)

George Herbert, The Temple: The Altar, Easter Wings; Sin; The Pulley; The Forerunners; Discipline; Love (367–369)

Henry Vaughn, The Retreat (490-491)

1/22Cavalier Poetry

Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (256)

Ben Jonson, To Celia (331); Sweetest Love I do not Go (298); On My First Daughter; On My First Son; Inviting a Friend to Supper; To Penshurst; To the Memory of…Shakespeare (298-342)

Robert Herrick: The Argument of his Book; The Vine; The Sour Reader; Corinna’s Going a-Maying; To the Virgins; Upon Julia’s Breasts; Upon a Child that Died; His Prayer to Ben Jonson; The Night-Piece to Julia (354–359)

Edmund Waller, Go, lovely Rose (393)

John Suckling, Why So Pale and Wan (452)

Richard Lovelace, To Althea; To Lucasta; To Amarantha (472–474)

Andrew Marvell, To his Coy Mistress (478); Mower poems and The Garden (482-86)

Margaret Ferguson, Poetic Syntax, Moves in the Game (2053-2065)

Week 4

Illuminated Songs

1/27WilliamBlake, from Songs of Innocence and Experience (733–44)

1/29An AlmostMidterm

Open-book on Sonnets and Metaphysical/Cavalier Poetry

Week 5

Augustan Verse: Didactic

2/3Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism; An Essay on Man (596–626)

Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes (656–664)

Jonathan Swift, Stella’s Birthday

2/5Augustan Verse:Satiric

Swift: A Description of the Morning; A Description of a City Shower; The

Lady’s Dressing Room; A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed; Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift (568-577)

John Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason, 1-16

Week 6

Odes: Horatian andPindaric

2/10John Milton, On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity (394–401)

Ann Finch, Countess of Winchelsea, The Spleen (558–562)

Thomas Gray: Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College; Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat (666–668)

William Collins: Ode on the Poetical Character (673–675)

2/12Odes: Romantic

S.T. Coleridge, Dejection (828–831)

William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality (796-800)

John Keats,Ode to Psyche; Ode on Melancholy; Ode on a Grecian Urn; To Autumn (933-939)

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode on the West Wind (872–874)

Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason, 33-36

Week 7

Birds LyricI

2/17Percy Bysshe Shelley, To a Skylark (876)

Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven (977)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Eagle (1004)

Walt Whitman, The Dalliance of the Eagles (1078)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Woodspurge

Emily Dickinson, ‘Hope’ (1114); A Bird came down the walk (116); Split the Lark (1124)

Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush (1155)

2/19Birds & Lyric II

John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale (935–937)

Gerard Manley Hopkins; The Windhover

W.B. Yeats, Leda and the Swan (1200)

Robert Frost, The Oven Bird (1233)

Edward Thomas, The Owl (1254)

Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (1260)

Margaret Ferguson, The Game of Interpretation (2069-73)

Week 8

Conversation Poetry: Romantic

2/24Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey (765–768); The

Prelude, Book I (781–789)

Coleridge, Aeolian Harp; This Lime-Tree Bower; Frost at Midnight (805-812)

2/26Conversation Poetry: Victorian and Modern

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach (1101)

W.H. Auden, In Praise of Limestone (1477–1479)

Wallace Stevens, Idea of Order at Key West (1264–1265)

Week 9

3/3Dramatic Monologue: Victorian

Tennyson, Lotos Eaters (988-991); Ulysses (992-993); Tithonous, 1006-1007

Robert Browning: Porphyria's Lover 1009; My Last Duchess, 1012; Bishop Orders his Tomb, 1014-16; Fra Lippo Lippi, 1026; Andrea del Sarto, 1034

3/5Dramatic Monologue: Modern

T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1340)

Sylvia Plath: Daddy (1840–1842), Lady Lazarus (1843–1845)

Robert Lowell, Mr. Edwards and the Spider (1596–1597)

Week 10

3/10Elegy: 17th–19th Century

John Milton, Lycidas (410–415)

Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard; Sonnet on the Death of Richard West (669–673)

Shelley, Adonais (879-91)

Matthew Arnold, Thrysis (1095–1101)

Tennyson, In Memoriam (996-1004)

3/12Elegy: 20th Century

W.B. Yeats, Under Ben bulben (1208–1210)

Auden, In Memory of W. B. Yeats(1472-73); September 1, 1939 (1747)

John Berryman, Elegy for W[illiam].C[arlos].W[illiams], The Lovely Man (1551)

T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men; Journey of the Magi (1356–1360)

Frank O’Hara; The Day Lady Died

Course Requirements:

  1. Participation in lecture and section. No unexcused absences! (25%)
  2. In class, open-book Midterm (30%)
  3. Final Exam, to be scheduled (by registrar) during finals week. (45%)