The purpose of this course is to enable students to read various kinds of English poetry with understanding and appreciation. The course is not primarily historical, though poems from the 16th into the 20th century will be sampled. We shall do a lot of close readings of poetry in the lectures with emphasis on both the poetic language and poetic forms. Representative British and American poets like William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Donne, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Frost will be focused respectively in each lecture. Such poetic forms as lyric, epic, and dramatic poetry will be discussed, while such poetic elements as rhythm and meter, figurative language, stanzaic forms will be carefully explored in poetry analysis in the lectures. Students are encouraged to practice reading aloud or even to learn by heart all the poems discussed in the course.
Overview
Syllabus
- Week 1 Poetry Delights and Instructs
- Poetry Recitation: Robert Browning’s “Meeting at Night”& Robert Frost’s “The Pasture”
- Lecture 1: Poetry Delights and Instructs
- Lecture 2: Poetry Communicates Experience
- Lecture 3: Poetry Says Much in Little
- Lecture 4: A Course Description with a Syllabus
- Lecture 5: Why Do We Read All These Masterpieces?
- Week 2 William Shakespeare：“Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day”
- Poetry Recitation: William Shakespeare's Sonnets (18 & 73)
- Lecture 1: Poetry Reading-aloud Exercise
- Lecture 2: Sonnet 18: An Explanation
- Lecture 3: Devices and Techniques
- Lecture 4: Immortality through Literature
- Lecture 5: Structure of English Sonnets
- Lecture 6: Why Should We Read Shakespeare?
- Week 3 John Milton: “Doth God Exact Day-labor, Light Denied?”
- Poetry Recitation: Milton’s Sonnet 19 & Paradise Lost (Invocation, lines 1-16)
- Lecture 1: Poetry Reading-aloud Exercise
- Lecture 2: John Milton's Life and Works
- Lecture 3: Miltonic Sonnet
- Lecture 4: Milton’s Sonnet 19: An Explanation
- Lecture 5: Commentary on Milton's Sonnet 19
- Lecture 6: The Invocation of Paradise Lost
- Week 4 John Donne: “But We by a Love So Much Refined”
- Poetry Recitation: John Donne's “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”
- Lecture 1: Poetry Reading-aloud Exercise
- Lecture 2: Life of John Donne
- Lecture 3: Metaphysical Poetry
- Lecture 4: Donne's “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”
- Lecture 5: Themes: Death, Love, Faith, and Science
- Week 5 William Wordsworth: “Emotion Recollected in Tranquility”
- Poetry Recitation: Wordsworth's “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
- Lecture 1: Poetry Reading-aloud Exercise
- Lecture 2: Life of William Wordsworth
- Lecture 3: Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800)
- Lecture 4: Wordsworth's Definition of Poetry
- Lecture 5: Characteristics of Romanticism
- Lecture 6: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”: An Explanation
- Week 6 John Keats: “Much Have I Traveled in the Realms of Gold”
- Poetry Recitation: John Keats's Poems
- Lecture 1: Poetry Reading-aloud Exercise
- Lecture 2: Life of John Keats
- Lecture 3: “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer”: An Explanation
- Lecture 4: “Negative Capability”
- Lecture 5: “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty”
- Week 7 Walt Whitman: “I Celebrate Myself”
- Poetry Recitation: Walt Whitman's Poems
- Lecture 1: Poetry Reading-aloud Exercise
- Lecture 2: “I am Large, I Contain Multitudes”
- Lecture 3: “Walt Whitman, an American”
- Lecture 4: “One's Self I Sing”
- Lecture 5: “Song of Myself” (Sections I & II)
- Week 8 Emily Dickinson: “I'm Nobody, Who are You?”
- Poetry Recitation: Emily Dickinson's Poems
- Lecture 1: Poetry Reading-aloud Exercise
- Lecture 2: “The Mother of Modern American Poetry”
- Lecture 3: Life of Emily Dickinson
- Lecture 4: “I'm Nobody, Who Are You?”
- Lecture 5: “The Soul Selects Her Own Society”
- Lecture 6: “This Is My Letter to the World”
- Lecture 7: “I Heard a Fly Buzz-When I Died”
- Lecture 8: “Tell All the Truth Bu Tell It Slant -”
- Week 9 Robert Frost: “A Road Less Traveled By”
- Poetry Recitation: Robert Frost's Poems
- Lecture 1: Poetry Reading-aloud Exercise
- Lecture 2: Life of Robert Frost
- Lecture 3: “The Sound of Sense”
- Lecture 4: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
- Lecture 5: “The Road Not Taken”
- Lecture 6: “Mowing”
- Lecture 7: “Mending Wall”
- Final Examination for British and American Poetry
Taught by
Huang Zongying
