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English 219: Principles of Literary Study


Professor: E. Bartels
Class Meetings: MW 4 D/C

Office Hours: Drop-in M 11-12:00 050 MU (2-7679)
  By Appt. MW 2:50-4:10 D/C

"Poetry is the way we help give names to the nameless so it can be thought."
--Audre Lorde

"Poetry . . . begins in this way: the crossing of trajectories of two (or more) elements that might not otherwise have known simultaneity. When this happens, a piece of the universe is revealed as if for the first time."
--Adrienne Rich

SYLLABUS

Sept. 7 W Introduction

Part I. INTERPRETATION

Sept.12 M

What's in a poem?
MEMORIZE: Robert Frost, "Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same"

 
Sept.14 W

Asking questions about poems
George Herbert, "Jordan I"
William Blake, "Holy Thursday" (I&II)
John Berryman, "The Ball Poem"
Tennessee Williams, "Life Story" (GL)

 
Sept. 19 M

Asking questions about words: the OED
Edmund Spenser, Sonnet 75 ("One day I wrote her name . . . ")
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee . . .")
Howard Moss, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" (handout)
John Donne, "The Good Morrow"
Robert Herrick, "The Vine"
Percy Shelley, "To a Skylark"

 
Sept. 21 W

Asking questions about images
Sir Philip Sidney, Sonnet 49 ("I on my horse . . . ")
Ben Jonson, "On My First Son"
W.B. Yeats, "The Scholars"
William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow" & "Between Walls"
D.H. Lawrence, "Snake"
Archibald MacLeish, "Ars Poetica"
A.R. Ammons, "Small Song"
Langston Hughes, "Harlem"
Alan Ginsberg, "Howl"

 
Sept. 26 M

Reading in (a bad thing)
Thomas Wyatt, "They Flee From Me"
John Donne, "The Flea"
Emily Dickinson, 49: "I never lost as much but twice"
258: "There's a certain Slant of light"

 
Sept. 28 W

Finding ambiguities (a good thing)
Joy Harjo, "The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window" (GL)
Langston Hughes, "Cafe: 3 A.M." (GL)

 
Oct. 3 M

FROST-FEST I: Questions and answers
Robert Frost, "Mending Wall" "The Road Not Taken" "In Neglect" "Birches" "Christmas Trees" "Blueberries" "Revelation"

 
Oct. 5 W

Articulating an argument
PAPER I DUE: Edward Field, "World War II" (GL)

 

Part II. VOICE

Oct. 10 M

Diction & Attitude
Jewelle Gomez, "My Chakabuku Mana" (GL)
Susan Griffin, "An Answer to a Man's Question: 'What Can I Do About Women's Liberation?'" (GL)
Harold Norse, "I'm Not a Man" (GL)
Thomas Gunn, "As Expected" (GL)
Michael Lassell, "How to Watch Your Brother Die" (GL)
D.H. Lawrence, "The English Are So Nice!"

 
Oct. 12 W

The poet, speaker and "I"
Sir Philip Sidney, Sonnet 47 ("What, have I thus . . .")
George Herbert, "The Collar"
Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"
William Wordsworth, "Lines: Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey"
Walt Whitman, "To a Locomotive in Winter"
"Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night"
W.B. Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium"
Salih Michael Fisher, "Assumption About the Harlem Brown Baby" (GL)

 
Oct. 17 M

Personas
William Blake, "The Little Black Boy"
Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess"
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses" & "Tithonus"
W.B. Yeats, "Crazy Jane Talks to the Bishop"

 
Oct. 19 W

Audience
MEMORIZE: Alexander Pope, From "Essay on Man: Epistle II" (handout)
John Donne, "The Good Morrow"
"The Sun Rising"
"The Canonization"
Samuel Johnson, "The Vanity of Human Wishes"
Harold Norse, "We Bumped Off Your Friend the Poet" (GL)
Pat Parker, "'Where Will You Be?'" (GL)
Kate Rushin, "The Bridge Poem" (GL)

 
Oct. 24 M

FROST-FEST II: Voice
Robert Frost, "The Vantage Point" "The Gift Outright" "Directive"
"The Most of It" "'Out, Out--'" "The Telephone"
"Home Burial" "The Death of the Hired Man"

 
Oct. 26 W Matters of Style
PAPER II DUE: Rewrite of Paper I

Part III. STRUCTURES

Oct. 31 M

Ordering Words (syntax)
Sir Philip Sidney, Sonnet I ("Loving in truth . . . ")
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29 ("When, in disgrace . . .")
Sonnet 55 ("Not marble . . .")
Ben Jonson, "To John Donne"
George Herbert, "Redemption" "Affliction: I"
Walt Whitman, "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"
W.H. Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts"

 
Nov. 2 W

Ordering Information
William Wordsworth, "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways"
John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
Ellen Marie Bissert, "The Most Beautiful Woman at my Highschool Reunion"
Jim Everhard, "Curing Homosexuality" (GL)
Essex Hemphill, "Cordon Negro" (GL)

 
Nov. 7 M

Rhythms
John Hollander, Rhyme's Reason, pp. 5-13, 50-51
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130 ("My mistress' eyes . . .")
John Donne, Holy Sonnet 10 ("Death be not proud . . . ")
John Milton, Paradise Lost: Book I Invocation
Samuel Coleridge, "Kubla Khan"

 
Nov. 9 W

Rhymes & Repetitions
MEMORIZE: Maya Angelou, "Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens and Mayfield"
Hollander, Rhyme's Reason, pp 13-19, 54-67
Langston Hughes, "Theme for English B" "Requiem"
Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"
Philip Larkin, "Church Going"
Jane Chambers, "Why Are Daddies So Mean" (GL)
Jan Clausen, "After Touch" (GL)
Judy Grahn, "A History of Lesbianism" (GL)
Robert Frost, "The Objection to Being Stepped On"

 
Nov. 14 M

Free Verse
Hollander, Rhyme's Reason, pp. 12-, 26-30
Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool"
Adrienne Rich, "The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven Understood at Last as SexualMessage"
Margaret Atwood, "This is a Photograph of Me"
James Tate, "The Lost Pilot"
Charles Ortleb, "Metaphor as Illness" (GL)
"On Finding Out That the One You Slept with the Night Before
Was Murdered the Next Day" (GL)
Susan Saxe, "Questionnaire from 'Notes from the First Year'"
Ron Schreiber, "'an alarming new development'" (GL)

 
Nov.16 W

Sonnets
Hollander, Rhyme's Reason, pp19-21, 74-77
Thomas Wyatt, "Whoso List to Hunt"
Edmund Spenser, Sonnet 67 ("Lyke as a huntsman . . . ")
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 30 ("When to the sessions . . . ")

 
Nov. 21 M

FROST-FEST III: Sonnets
Robert Frost, "The Oven Bird" "The Silken Tent" "The Investment"
"A Dream Pang" "Unharvested" "Design"
PAPER III due: Robert Frost, "Design" OR
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 73 ("That time . . .")

 
Nov. 23 W NO CLASS: Friday Classes

Part IV. CONTEXTS

Nov. 28 M

Anthologies
The Norton Anthology of Poetry
Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time

 
Nov. 30 W

Themes
Adrienne Rich, "Rape" (handout)
Tommi Avicolli, "The Rape Poem" (GL)
Joan Larkin, "Rape" (GL)
Minnie Bruce Pratt, "Waulking Song: Two" (GL)
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock

 
Dec. 5 M

Literary Traditions
Ben Jonson "To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William
Shakespeare"
John Milton, "On Shakespeare"
John Keats, "On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again"
Matthew Arnold, "Shakespeare"
Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
William Blake, From Milton ("And Did Those Feet")
William Wordsworth, "London, 1802"

 
Dec. 7 W

Poetic Dialogues
Petrarch, Sonnet 140 ("Love, who lives") (handout)
Thomas Wyatt, "The Long Love That In My Thought Doth Harbor"
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, "Love, That Doth Reign & Live Within MyThought"
Christopher Marlowe, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love"
Sir Walter Ralegh, "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd"
John Donne, "The Bait"
C. Day Lewis, "Song"
William Carlos Williams, "This is Just to Say"
Kenneth Koch, "Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams"

 
Dec. 9 F

FROST-FEST IV: Contexts
Robert Frost, "The Tuft of Flowers" "Mowing" "The Cow in Apple Time"
Andrew Marvell, "The Garden"
T.S. Eliot, "Preludes" & "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Marianne Moore, "Poetry" & "Peter"
Elizabeth Bishop, "The Fish" & "At the Fishhouses"
JOURNAL on POET due

 
Dec. 12 M CONCLUSION
PAPER IV due: Rewrite of Paper III

COURSE INFORMATION

TEXTS. The Norton Anthology of Poetry (Shorter/ 3rd edition)
Gay & Lesbian Poetry in Our Time: An Anthology, ed. Carl Morse and Joan Larkin (GL on syllabus)
The Poetry of Robert Frost
John Hollander, Rhyme's Reason: A Guide to English Verse
M.H. Abrams, Glossary of Literary Terms
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 3rd edition

 

REQUIREMENTS. Class attendance, participation, exercises, memorizations, reports
Journal & Reports on Assigned Poet
Papers
 20%

20%
60%

ATTENDANCE & PARTICIPATION. Vital and non-negotiable. More than 5 absences (unless accompanied by a dean's excuse) may mean a failing course grade.

JOURNAL. Each student will choose a single poet (from a select list) to become an expert on. You will then explore that poet's works and criticism on them on your own THROUGHOUT THE TERM, and will keep a journal (at least on substantial entry per week) on your findings. Due as noted on the syllabus; NO EXTENSIONS. Entries should include:

1.

NOTES FROM SECONDARY SOURCES on the poet and his/her poetry, with full documentation of each source given as a footnote (following MLA form)
2. Informal ANALYSES of particular poems or parts or poems: Your analyses need not be polished, but they chould be supported. ("I like this poem; it reminds me of my mother" is NOT analysis.)
3. A LIST OF WORKS CITED (at the end) of all sources used in the journal (following MLA form-and notice that footnotes and bibliographies differ in form)

REPORTS. You will be expected to give oral reports to the class throughout the term on your poet/poems and on other poems from the class readings.

MEMORIZATIONS. Each student is expected to memorize the THREE poems listed on the syllabus; copies attached.

PAPERS. You will write TWO original 5-7 page (typed, double-spaced) papers on the poems noted on the syllabus; specific topics TBA. Any paper that does not receive a B+ or better MUST BE REWRITTEN and must be handed in WITH THE ORIGINAL VERSION on the date specified. Grades on the rewritten versions will replace the grades on the original submissions.
--DUE DATES (for papers & rewrites) ARE NOT FLEXIBLE. Late papers will received no comments & may lose grade points.
--REVISION means substantial reworking and rethinking of the paper's argument