219 and 220 home page


 

Principles of Literary Study
English 219:13
HCK 131; MW 5


Virginia Hoy  
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 1:30-2:30 & by appointment
035 Murray Hall, CAC
e-mail: hoyv@rci.rutgres.edu


Required Texts: M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms
Tom Furniss and Michael Bath, Reading Poetry
Ferguson, Salter, Stallworthy, The Norton Anthology of Poetry (4th ed)
Gibaldi, MLA Handbook
The Inferno of Dante, trans. Robert Pinksky


Nota Bene: *Assignments are due for the dates listed at the BEGINNING of the period, not later in the day.
*Late papers will be penalized one-half a letter grade if you have failed to ask for an extension (repeated requests for extensions are NOT advised).
*You can't pass this course unless ALL work has been turned in.
*This syllabus is a guide only and is subject to change as the direction of the class discussions and interests warrant. If you must miss a class, call a classmate or e-mail me to see if the assignments for next meeting have been changed. ALWAYS come to class prepared to talk about the readings.
*I am not asking you to keep a journal for this class, but I do expect you to read the poems at least twice and to look up words and allusions you don't know.
*Students who want comments on their final papers must submit a stamped, self-addressed envelope with the last paper (due the last day of class).

 

Jan. 20

Introduction

 
Jan. 25

I. Interpretation and Evaluation
Read Furniss & Bath, pp. 3-12
John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"
S.T. Coleridge, "Kubla Khan"
Langston Hughes, "Harlem
Adrienne Rich, "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers"
Wordsworth, "Lines: Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"

 
Jan. 27

Read Furniss & Bath, pp. 12-22
Abrams, "Poetic Diction," "New Criticism"
John Donne, "The Canonization"
Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess"
Emily Dickinson, numbers 49, 216, 280, 435, 569, 709, 712, 754 (begins p. 629)

 
Feb. 1

II. Figurative Language
FIRST SHORT PAPER DUE
F & B pp. 105-117
Blake, "The Tyger"
Burns, "A Red, Red Rose"
Wyatt, "Whoso List to Hunt"

 
Feb. 3

Read F & B, pp. 118-128, then write out answers to questions 1 & 2, pp. 129-30 and bring to class.
Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"
Chaucer, "Complaint to His Purse"
John Donne, "Death be not proud . . ." (#10, p. 192)

 
Feb. 8

WORKSHOP FOR DRAFT OF PAPER #1
Bring 2 photocopies of your draft!

 
Feb. 10

PAPER #1 DUE
Ambiguity, Tone, Irony
(no reading - in-class work)

 
Feb. 15

III. Hearing Voices in Poetry
F & B, pp. 159-72
Abrams, "Personna . . . " "Point of View"
Tichborne, "Tichborne's Elegy"
Aphra Behn, "Song"
Wordsworth, "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal"
Browning, "My Last Duchess"
Dickinson, "I heard a fly buzz . . . " (634)

 
Feb. 17

IV. Rhythm & Meter
F & B, pp. 25-44
Plath, "Daddy"
Langston Hughes, "The Negro speaks of rivers"

 
Feb. 22

Read pp. 1103-1113 in the Norton Anthology
Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
Donne, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"
Rich, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (photocopy)
Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

 
Feb. 24

SECOND SHORT PAPER DUE
V. Verse Forms: The Sonnet
Abrams, "sonnet," "couplet," Spenserian Sonnet," "Italian sonnet," "quatrain," "sestet"
F & B, pp. 280-90
Hardy, "Hap"
Wordsworth, "Scorn Not the Sonnet"
Keats, "On the Sonnet"
Shakespeare, Sonnet #30

 
March 1

F & B, pp. 290-301
Yeats, "Leda and the Swan"
Poe, "Sonnet - to Science"
Frost, "Acquainted with the Night"
Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43

 
March 3

The Ode
Read Abrams, "Ode"
Keats, "Ode on A Grecian Urn"
Stevens, "The Idea of Order at Key West"
Coleridge, "Dejection: An Ode"
Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
Tate, "Ode to the Confederate Dead"

 
March 8

The Elegy
Abrams, "Elegy"
"The Wife's Lament" (photocopy)
"The Wanderer" (photocopy)
"The Seafarer"
Pound, "The Seafarer"
Roethke, "Elegy for Jane"
Milton, "Lycidas"

 
March 10

PAPER #2 DUE
Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
Sexton, "The Truth the Dead Know"
Whitman, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed"

 
March 15 & 17

SPRING BREAK - NO CLASS

 
March 22

Blank Verse, Free Verse
Abrams, "Blank Verse" "Free Verse"
Eliot, "The Waste Land"
Brooks, "We Real Cool"
Ginsberg, "Howl"

 
March 24

Finish blank, free verse.

 
March 29

March 29- April 14
VI. Major Author: Dante
Readings TBA
Materials will be distributed

 
April 19

VII. Parody/Satire
Abrams, "Satire"
Pope, "The Rape of the Lock"
Lawrence, "The English Are So Nice"
Parker, "One Perfect Rose"

 
April 21

Chaucer, General Prologue (sections to be announced)

 
April 26

TBA

 
April 28 Paper #3 Due