Prof. Laura Quinney Eng 11A
Rabb 131 TF 11-12:20
Olin-Sang 116
Office hrs: T 12:30-1:30, F 10-11 and by appt.
CLOSE READING: THEORY AND PRACTICE
Required books: Norton Anthology of Poetry, 6th edition. (NA)
Note: Other readings will be provided on LATTE.
Books on library reserve:
Booth, Stephen. Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
Vendler, Helen. The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
Vendler, Helen. Dickinson: Selected poems and commentaries.
Syllabus:
F 1/12 Introduction
Merwin, “The Vixen”
T 1/16 Part I: Words
Merwin, “Forgotten Streams”
Shakespeare, Sonnet 60 (“Like as the waves”) (262)
Wordsworth, “Mutability” (804)
F 1/19 Blake, “The Angel” (LATTE)
Whitman, “Of The Terrible Doubt of Appearances” (LATTE)
Carol Ann Duffy, “Words, Wide Night” (LATTE)
Margaret Atwood, “You” (LATTE)
T 1/23 Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz” (1494)
Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” (1533)
Sylvia Plath, “Daddy” (1840)
F 1/26 Bishop, “Sestina” (1520)
Blake, “The Chimney Sweep” (2 poems) (LATTE)
Rita Dove, “Adolescence II” (LATTE) DUE: 2-3pp. paper
T 1/30 Part II: Emily Dickinson
NA pp. 1110-1128 plus LATTE supplement
F 2/2 “ “
T 2/6 “ “
F 2/9 “I Heard a Fly Buzz” (1121)
Readings of “I heard a Fly buzz”:
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/dickinson/465.htm
T 2/13 “ “ DUE: 5-7pp. Dickinson paper
F 2/16 “ “
Winter Break
T 2/27 Part III: Sonnets
Renaissance sonnets:
Wyatt, “”The Long Love, That in My Thought Doth Harbor” (126), “Whoso List to Hunt” (126), “My Galley” (127)
Surrey, “The Soote Season” (137), “Love, That Doth Reign and Live within My Thought” (137)
Donne, from Holy Sonnets (318-321)
Milton, “How Soon Hath Time” (410), “When I Consider How My Light is Spent (418), “Methought I Saw” (419)
F 3/2 Presentation by Brandeis University librarian Zoe Weinstein
Romantic sonnets:
Blake, “To the Evening Star” (733)
Wordsworth, sonnets (794-796), “The World Is Too Much with Us” (802), sonnets (804)
Shelley, “To Wordsworth” (863), “Ozymandias” (870)
Keats, sonnets (905-6), “On the Sonnet” (916), “When I Have Fears” (906), “To Autumn” (939)
T 3/6 Victorian sonnets:
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnets from the Portuguese” (947)
Longfellow, “The Cross of Snow” (956)
George Meredith, “By this he knew she wept with waking eyes” (1107)
Christina Rossetti, “Remember” (1128), “In An Artist’s Studio” (1129)
Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur” (1166), “[No Worst. There is None]” (1169), “[I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day]” (1170)
F 3/9 Twentieth-century sonnets:
Robert Frost, “The Oven Bird” (1233), “Acquainted with the Night” (1237), “Design” (1240)
Edna St. Vincent Millay, “[I Being Born a Woman and Distressed]” (1383), “I Dreamed I Moved Among the Elysian Fields” (1384)
Gwendolyn Brooks, “my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell,”
“the rites for Cousin Vit” (1586-7)
Seamus Heaney, from Glanmore Revisited (1908)
George Starbuck, “Sonnet with a Different Letter at the End of Every Line” (LATTE)
T 3/13 Part IV: Shakespeare Sonnets
NA pp. 257-270 plus LATTE supplement
F 3/16 “ “ DUE: 5-7pp. Dickinson revision
T 3/20 “ “
F 3/23 “ “
T 3/27 “ “
George Starbuck, “Space Saver Sonnets” (LATTE)
Spring Break
T 4/10 Part V: Prose (LATTE) DUE: 5-7pp. Shakespeare paper
Hurston, “The Gilded Six-Bits”
F 4/13 Faulkner, “Barn Burning”
T 4/17 Joyce, “The Dead”
F 4/20 Ellison, “Battle Royal”
T 4/24 O’Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”
T 5/1 DUE: 5-7pp. Shakespeare revision
Course Requirements:
1) Attendance and participation. Occasional short writing assignments. (20%)
2) One 2-3pp. paper. (10%)
2) Two 5-7pp. papers, and a revision of each. (Revised paper 35%).
5) Extra Credit: attend one or both of this spring’s Creative Writing readings: Oliver Paz, W 2/28@5:30 and Akhil Sharma, T 3/27@5:30.
Course Rules:
1) No laptops in class. No iphones, ipads or other electronic devices.
2) Please bring a printed text of the work under discussion to class.
3) No plagiarizing. No cheating.
4) Inform me the first week of class if you have a documented disability.
Credit Hours
For this 4credithourcourse, the expectation is that students will spend a minimum of 9hoursof study time per week in preparation for class.
Learning Goals
To learn to close read and to write a compelling interpretation of a poem which takes the view of other scholars into account.