Exploring Poetry
Prerequisites: UCLR 100, UCLR 100C, UCLR 100E, UCLR 100M, or equivalent; please check requirements for declared majors/minors for exceptions.
The course will survey British and American poetry, especially from the Romantic movement on, especially of lyric kinds. Class discussion will generally focus on the form and sense of individual poems, and will in general be about poetic ways of meaning, and individual poets' understandings of what poetry is and what it is to do.
Outcomes: Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of significant poems by selected British and American poets, demonstrate an understanding of basic critical terminology, and demonstrate an understanding of relevant critical perspectives on poetry.
Prerequisites: UCLR 100, UCLR 100C, UCLR 100E, UCLR 100M, or equivalent; please check requirements for declared majors/minors for exceptions.
The course will survey British and American poetry, especially from the Romantic movement on, especially of lyric kinds. Class discussion will generally focus on the form and sense of individual poems, and will in general be about poetic ways of meaning, and individual poets' understandings of what poetry is and what it is to do.
Outcomes: Students will be able to demonstrate an understanding of significant poems by selected British and American poets, demonstrate an understanding of basic critical terminology, and demonstrate an understanding of relevant critical perspectives on poetry.
Pre-requisites: UCWR 110, C- or higher
Tier 2 Literary Knowledge
This is a writing intensive class. A grade of C- or better in UCWR 110 is required to enroll.
Why should we care about poetry¿and how should we care about it? We¿ll start historically¿who before us cared about poetry, and why? We¿ll study the pressure poems put on their historical moment, and how they¿re shaped by it in surprising ways: for example, our discussion of Shakespeare will start with the formation of ¿Shakespeare¿ as a figure, often at odds with the ¿evidence¿ of the poems, of canonical standards throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a program that affected even the spelling of his poems. Many of the authors we¿ll read were white, male, and rich¿how has literature been used to promote a series of questions and assumptions that they may have shared (sometimes called ¿the canon¿), and how has it, even in some of these same authors, blown apart (some of) the stereotypes and orthodoxies we¿d expect to find? We¿ll watch the invention not only of English-speaking cultures, but of the English language itself, its twists and triumphs, detours and degenerations¿and most importantly, we¿ll watch as language, especially literary language, is fashioned into a vehicle of social (as well as aesthetic) contest. Readings in genres epic, lyric, dramatic, and pornographic, from many hundreds of years. We (well, you) will also write papers, take exams, and mix metaphors¿the entire range of academic abjection, in one convenient course.
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