PRINCIPLES OF LITERARY STUDY: INTRODUCTION TO POETRY SYLLABUS Course Code: 01:350:219 Instructor: Amy Cooper (amy.cooper@rutgers.edu) Office Hours: Tu/Th 3:00 PM 5:00 PM and By Appointment @ 36 Union Street, Room 206 Spring 2014 Class times: M/W 1:10-2:30 PM @ MU 211 COURSE DESCRIPTION This course is designed to teach the basic skills and critical vocabulary necessary to the analysis of poetry. The course will teach you how to read poetry closely: the act of reading will be a constant topic for us, since we ll be focusing on how to read slowly, how to read dreamily, how to read with purpose and intensity. But the course will also teach you how to think about, write about, and talk about poetry, not just read it. We will do our work by studying a wide range of poems written in English, and we will take our examples from all periods of English literature, from the medieval and Renaissance periods to the 18th and 19th centuries to the 20th century through to today. We will read individual poems carefully in order to understand what they say, how they say it, and what their place is in a larger history of forms and genres. And of course we ll discuss the ideas that the poems present to us, and we ll ask ourselves how to define poetry and where else, besides in books, that it might be found. The course will be in a lecture format, with weekly exercises, two papers, a midterm, and a final exam. Every Tuesday, I will give a lecture on the assigned readings and every Thursday, will be a seminar-style discussion of the key ideas, terms, and poems assigned for Tuesdays. This course meets several learning goals for students in English Department classes, especially #2 (relating to strategies of interpretation) and #4 (relating to the ability to write persuasively and precisely in a scholarly form). It is also part of the Rutgers SAS Core (meeting learning goal AHp, analyze arts and/or literatures in themselves and in relation to specific histories, values, languages, cultures, and technologies and WCD, communicate effectively in modes appropriate to a discipline or area of inquiry ). By the end of the course, students will also have developed: Mastery of basic skills and critical vocabulary for the analysis of poetry Familiarity with a broad swath of canonical poems written in English Deeper knowledge and experience of selected poetic forms and genres Ability to gather and synthesize insights about a poem into a cogently-written analytic essay Ability to evaluate poems relations to one another within a particular poetic tradition Ability to discuss the broader implications of poetic style and to ask intelligent questions about the relations of poems to the cultures in which they circulate. COURSE REQUIREMENTS One 5 page essay due March 3rd, via Sakai and in lecture (20%) One 5 page essay due April 21st, via Sakai and in lecture (20%) Midterm Exam on Monday, March 26th, in lecture (20%) Final Exam on a date and location TBA by the University (20%) Attendance, punctuality, and class participation, including weekly writing assignments and quizzes (20%) WEEKLY PREPARATION
For every class, you should come prepared with lines, images, or other moments in the text that strike you as significant, telling, exciting, frustrating, ambiguous, or unexpected. If you don t notice any of these moments while you read, you probably aren t reading closely enough. Reading closely means re-reading, writing on the page, circling words that repeat, stopping to think and write something down. Each week, you will need to write a reading response and post it to the class blog. These exercises are a required part of the course work. They will be given informal grade and will contribute to the 20% of your grade that comes from your participation. Course Blogs (for announcements, assignments, supplementary section materials) Section 1: http://e219sec1cooper.wordpress.com/ (Cooper) Section 3: http://e219sec3cooper.wordpress.com/ (Cooper) REQUIRED BOOKS There are two required books for this course, which you may purchase at the Rutgers University Bookstore under my name and course number or online at Amazon or elsewhere: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Shorter (Fifth Edition), ed. Ferguson, Salter, and Stallworthy. (New York: Norton, 2005). ISBN 9780393979213. Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook (New York: Harcourt, 1994). ISBN 9780156724005.Additional assigned readings will occasionally be made available on the course Sakai page (sakai.rutgers.edu). ATTENDANCE POLICY If you have a personal emergency: please talk to me immediately so that I can put you in touch with the Deans office. The Deans office has the power to grant special privileges to students in crisis and I am happy to work with you to help you through class during difficult times. Otherwise, I take very seriously the principle that students should attend every class meeting. You are in college to learn; because so much of your intellectual work happens in class, attendance at each lecture and section is mandatory. Over the course of the entire session, you are allowed one absence for any reason, and you do not need to submit a note for this absence. This will cover religious holidays, deaths in the family, major illness, loss or damage to physical property, traffic and other transportation delays, colds, hangovers, desultory moods, break-ups, defective alarm clocks, sudden naps brought on by a second (or missing) lunch, misplaced assignments, unread texts, and foggy absentmindedness. If you are absent from class, you are responsible for any assignments you miss and any material discussed. I strongly suggest that you photocopy the notes for that day from a colleague: be sure to ask someone who seems to take good (complete, detailed, clear) notes. Finally, a word about attendance during class. I don t simply expect you to come to class I expect you to sit through it attentively for the duration, to take careful notes, and to ask any questions that you may have. It is disruptive and mildly disrespectful to get up in the middle of class and disappear for several minutes. To receive credit for attendance, you must bring the assigned readings with you to class. You should turn off your electronic devices during class, unless you are using a laptop to take notes. Texting, emailing, and the use of the internet for non-course related reasons are prohibited. If you are doing this and I become aware of it, I will ask you to leave. PAPER GUIDELINES All papers should be double-spaced (no space added between paragraphs), 1-inch margins, and be in 12- point Times or Times New Roman font. Follow MLA guidelines for formatting the heading and title,
including your last name and page number in the upper right-hand corner. Please give your papers a title. Be sure to proofread your work carefully. It is essential that you hand in all papers on time; late papers will be marked down 1/2 of a grade for each class meeting that they are late. Papers more than one week late will receive a zero and will not receive any comments. You must submit your papers BOTH electronically to Sakai by 6PM on the day that it is due AND as a hardcopy in class to receive full credit. To submit your paper to Sakai, go to Assignments and upload a.doc or.docx file. Do not upload a Pages document you can convert Pages files to.docx format by going to File, Export to, Word Sakai automatically runs papers through Turnitin.com but also provides both of us with a time-stamp, which guarantees that you receive full credit for submitting your paper on time. PLAGIARISM In all of your academic work, you are responsible for adhering to the Rutgers University Policy on Academic Integrity for Undergraduate and Graduate Students. The text of the policy is available at: http://teachx.rutgers.edu/integrity/policy.html. If you have questions, contact me before you turn in your paper. ACCESSABILITY STATEMENT Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey abides by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments (ADAA) of 2008, and Sections 504 and 508 that mandate that reasonable accommodations be provided for qualified students with disabilities. If you have a disability and may require some type of instructional and/or examination accommodation, please register with the Office of Disability Services for Students, which is dedicated to providing services and administering exams with accommodations for students with disabilities. The Office of Disability Services for Students can be contacted by calling 848.445.6800 and is located on the Livingston campus at the following address: 54 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Suite A145, Piscataway, NJ 08854. DIVERSITY STATEMENT Our classroom community includes individuals of different races, ages, national origins, ethnicities, backgrounds, religions, genders, gender identities, gender expressions, sexual orientations, incomes, and abilities. I commit to making this classroom a place where every student will be respected, and discrimination or harassment in any form will not be tolerated. CONTENT NOTE In this course, we will discuss texts and topics that may be disturbing. We will discuss how to navigate this material together as a community, and I expect that all students will display sensitivity and respect to others in the classroom. If the classroom discussion becomes distressing, you may leave the classroom at any time with no academic penalty. I welcome discussion of your personal reactions to course texts after class or during office hours. SCHEDULE OF CLASS MEETINGS Check your Rutgers email account frequently because I may provide reading guides or make changes to the assigned readings. 1/27 Lecture: Introduction to the course Emily Dickinson, 533 (569) [ I reckon - When I count at all- ] (727)
Emily Dickinson, 445 (613) [ They shut me up in Prose (725) Emily Dickinson, 1262 (1129) [ Tell all the truth but tell it slant ] (731) Marianne Moore, Poetry (856) Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica (885-86) Wallace Stevens, Of Modern Poetry (Sakai) Adrienne Rich, Diving Into the Wreck (1119) Exercise One (via Sakai and section): John Ashbery, Paradoxes and Oxymorons (1083-84) 1/29 Discussion 2/3 Lecture: Words I: Diction, Semantics Meaning Reading Quiz 1 Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, pp. 19-34, 76-80, 87-91 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The General Prologue, ll. 1-162 (15-19) John Milton, L Allegro and Il Penseroso (260-68) Emily Dickinson, 320 (258) [ There s a certain Slant of light] (723) Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky (736) D. H. Lawrence, The English are So Nice! (843) Elizabeth Bishop, At the Fishhouses (Sakai) Exercise Three due (via Sakai and section): John Milton, L Allegro and Il Penseroso (260-68) 2/5 Discussion 2/10 Lecture: Words II: Metaphor, Simile, Analogy John Donne, A Valediction Forbidding Mourning (198) Emily Dickinson, 1788 (1763) [ Fame is a bee. ] (732) Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush (746) William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming (774) Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (820-22) Marianne Moore, The Mind is an Enchanting Thing (861) Exercise Four due (via Sakai and Section): John Donne, The Flea (202) 2/12 Discussion 2/17 Lecture: Words III: Metonymy, Syntax Reading Quiz 2 Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, The General Prologue, ll. 1-162 (15-19) E. E. Cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town (896-97) Langston Hughes, Harlem (915) W. S. Merwin, Separation (1086) Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit (Sakai)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4zyuuly9zs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=web007rzsoi Exercise Five due (via Sakai and section): Craig Raine, A Martian Writes a Postcard Home (1207-8) 2/19 Discussion 2/24 Lecture: Words III: The Poetic Image Reading Quiz 3 Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, 92-108 Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella 9, 15, 20, 28, 71 (Sakai) Edmund Spenser, Amoretti 15 (139-40) John Donne, The Canonization (194-95), A Valediction of Weeping (197), The Flea (202), Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward (205) Gerald Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty (756) William Butler Yeats, The Circus Animals Desertion (782-784) William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow (829-30) Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro (846) Richard Wright, Haiku: This Other World (958) Louise Erdrich, Birth (1242) Exercise Six due (via Sakai and section): Emily Dickinson, 124 (216) [ Safe in their Alabaster Chambers ] (720) 2/26 Discussion 3/3 Lecture: The Line: Meter, Syntax, Enjambmennt, Caesura PAPER ONE DUE VIA SAKAI AND IN LECTURE (5 pages) Reading Quiz 4 The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Versification, 1251-1260. Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, pp. 14-18, 35-57. Robert Pinsky, The Pursuit of Form (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/article/246226) John Donne, The Sun Rising (193-4) William Shakespeare, Sonnets, 129 (177) Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth (889-90) Robert Frost, Mending Wall (795) Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and Fall (757) William Butler Yeats, When You Are Old (769) William Butler Yeats The Wild Swans at Coole (771) Dylan Thomas, The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower (986-87) D. H. Lawrence, Snake (840-42) Robert Frost, Never Again Would Birds Song Be the Same (807) Amy Clampitt, Syrinx (1011-12)
Exercise Seven due (via Sakai and section): Scansion of three poems on For Better For Verse (http://prosody.lib.virginia.edu) 3/5 Discussion: Paper Writing 3/10 Lecture: Space and Sound: Stanza, Rhyme, Free Verse Reading Quiz 5 The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Versification, 1260-75 Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, pp. 58-75, 84-87 Thomas Wyatt, Whoso List to Hunt (103) Edmund Spenser, selections from The Faerie Queene, Book I, Proem, Stanzas 1-4 (125-126) William Shakespeare, Sonnets 73 (173) William Wordsworth, Nuns Fret Not... (478) Christina Rossetti, Remember (733) Dylan Thomas, In My Craft or Sullen Art (990-91) William Carlos Williams, Poem (830) George Herbert, The Altar (235), Easter Wings, (236) John Hollander, Swan and Shadow (1104) Marianne Moore, Nevertheless (860-61) May Swenson, Goodbye, Goldeneye (973-74) Seamus Heaney, Digging (1179-80) Ben Jonson, A Fit of Rhyme against Rhyme (215) John Milton, preface to second edition of Paradise Lost (1674) (276-77) John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, ll. 1-26; Book IV, ll. 1-113 (277-80) Exercise Eight due (via Sakai and section): Midterm review via Jonson, To Penshurst 3/12 Discussion 3/17 SPRING BREAK: NO CLASS 3/19 SPRING BREAK: NO CLASS 3/24 Midterm Prep Exercise Eight due (via Sakai and section): Robert Browning, My Last Duchess (643-44) 3/26 MIDTERM EXAM 3/31 Lecture: Speaker and Voice I: Tone, Attitude, Affect Reading Quiz 6 Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, pp. 76-84 Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress (293-94) John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IX, ll. 192-411 (Sakai) Thomas Hardy, A Broken Appointment (745) William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium (774-75) Robert Frost, The Wood-Pile (800-801)
T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (862-86) E. E. Cummings, since feeling is first (894-95) Langston Hughes, Theme for English B (915-16) Exercise Nine due (via Sakai and section): John Keats, Ode on Grecian Urn (585-586) 4/2 Discussion 4/7 Lecture: Speaker and Voice II: Self, Other, Medium, Object Reading Quiz 7 Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella 1 (157-58) Anne Bradstreet, The Author to Her Book (285-86) Emily Dickinson, 788 (709) [ Publication - is the Auction ] (730) William Wordsworth, Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey (458-462) Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself (679-684), Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (684-689) Elizabeth Bishop, In the Waiting Room (964-66) Judith Wright, Eve to Her Daughters (992-94) Gwendolyn Brooks, kitchenette building (998) Audre Lourde, Coal (1156-57) Wole Soyinka, Telephone Conversation (1159-60) Exercise Ten due (via Sakai and section): Sylvia Plath, Daddy (1145-47) 4/9 Discussion 4/14 Lecture: From Across History I: the Sonnet Reading Quiz 8 Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella, 1, 21, 31, 48, 49, 52, 63, 71, 90 (157-162) Edmund Spenser, Amoretti 15, 54, 67, 71, 75 (139-42) Michael Drayton, Idea, To the Reader of these Sonnets, 6, 61 (166-68) William Shakespeare, Sonnets, 1, 15, 18, 20, 29, 30, 55, 71, 106, 130, 138 (169-178) Lady Mary Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus 1, 21, 22, 28, 35, 39, 40 (Sakai) John Donne, Holy Sonnets 1, 5, 7, 10, 14 (206-8) William Wordsworth, Surprised by Joy (485), Mutability (485), Scorn not the Sonnet (486) John Keats, On The Sonnet (579) Elizabeth Barrett Browning, From Sonnets from the Portuguese, sonnet 1 (593) George Meredith, Modern Love 1 (716) William Butler Yeats, Leda and the Swan (776) Exercise Eleven due (via Sakai and section): The Sonnet 4/16 Discussion: Paper Writing 4/21 Lecture: Form Across History II: The Elegy PAPER TWO DUE VIA SAKAI AND IN LECTURE (5 pages)
Reading Quiz 9 John Donne, A Nocturnal Upon Saint Lucy s Day, Being the Shortest Day (Sakai) Ben Jonson, On My First Daughter, On My First Son (208-9) Thomas Carew, An Elegy Upon the Death of the Dean of Paul s Dr. John Donne (247-50) John Milton, On Shakespeare (260) John Milton, Lycidas (269-73) Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (410-13) Emily Dickinson, 68 (89) [ Some things that fly there be - ] (719) W. H. Auden, In Memory of W.B. Yeats (939) Dylan Thomas, A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London (988) Simon Armitage, from Killing Time (1247-49) Exercise Twelve due (via Sakai and section): Imitation and Response 4/23 Discussion 4/28 Lecture: Poetry and Politics Reading Quiz 10 Andrew Marvell, An Horatian Ode (Sakai) William Butler Yeats, Easter 1916 (772-773) W. H. Auden, September 1, 1939 (941-944) Wilfred Owen, Dulce Et Decorum Est (890) Exercise Thirteen due (via Sakai and section): Brooks and / or Walcott 4/30 Discussion 5/5 Lecture: Poetry and Nature Reading Quiz 11 Percy Bysshe Shelley, To a Skylark (547-49) John Keats, To Autumn (587) Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Snow-Storm (589) Edgar Allen Poe, Sonnet To Science (614) Walt Whitman, When I Heard the Learn d Astronomer (689) Emily Dickinson, 359 (328) [ A Bird, came down the Walk - ] (724) Emily Dickinson, 1096 (986) [ A narrow Fellow in the Grass ] (730-31) Robert Frost, Design (805) Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man (816) Marianne Moore, The Fish (855-56) Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish (960-962) W. H. Auden, In Praise of Limestone (944-46) FINAL EXAM: The Final Exam will be given during Exam week, at a day, time, and location to be determined by the University.