ENGLISH POETRY

Fall 2011
Dr. E. Mitsi
Office hours: Wed. & Friday 12:00-13:00
Office 703, 7th Floor
eclass:http://eclass.uoa.gr/courses/ENL232/
email: emitsi@enl.uoa.gr
SYLLABUS
The course is divided in two parts: the first part briefly introduces students to the
elements of poetry, while the second is a survey of English poetry from the early
modern period (16th century) to the late 20th century, stressing the evolution of
literary conventions, as well as connecting the representative poems chosen for study
to specific cultural and sociopolitical events. We will study shifts in poetic form and
how forms like the epic, ode, elegy, lyric, and sonnet are reinvented over the course of
the centuries. Key themes include nature, love, death, sex, war, and revolution as they
map onto particular historical and political moments.
The course aims at providing students with skills in the experience, analysis and
criticism of poetry and acquainting them with the major types, forms and periods of
English poetry. At the conclusion of this course, students should be able to:
demonstrate the ability to read poetry with understanding and perception; develop a
sense of the historical evolution of English and Irish poetry; communicate literary
analyses of poems with clarity and effectiveness. The course depends on student
participation; students are responsible for keeping up with the syllabus and being
prepared to discuss the poems assigned for each session.
PART I. Elements of Poetry (Weeks 1 & 2)
1. What is Poetry?
Lyric poetry/Narrative poetry
2. Speaker/Tone/Dramatic Situation
3. Imagery
4. Word Choice (Diction) and Word Order (Syntax)
Denotation and Connotation
5. Figures of Speech
Simile/Metaphor and Conceit/Allusion/Personification
6. The Music of Poetry
Rhythm and Meter
Rime, Alliteration, Assonance
7. Structure
Closed form/Open form
Sonnet/Blank verse/Elegy/Ode
8. Symbol and Allegory
PART 2. A Survey of English Poetry
Sixteenth Century (Week 3 & 4)
Sir Thomas Wyatt: Whoso list to Hunt

 Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey: Soote Season

Sir Philip Sidney: Astrophil and Stella 1
William Shakespeare: Sonnets 18, 73, 138
Seventeenth Century (Week 5 & 6)
John Donne: A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
Ben Jonson: On My First Son
Lady Mary Wroth: Pamphilia to Amphilanthus 1
Andrew Marvell: To His Coy Mistress
John Milton: Paradise Lost, Book 1 (lines 1-26)
Eighteenth Century (Week 7)
Alexander Pope: The Rape of the Lock (Canto 1)
Romantic Period (Week 8 & 9)
William Blake: The Chimney Sweeper, London
William Wordsworth: Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
Percy Bushe Shelley: Ode to the West Wind
George Gordon, Lord Byron: January 22nd Missolonghi
Victorian Period (Week 10)
Alfred Tennyson: Ulysses
Robert Browning: My Last Duchess
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Sonnets from the Portuguese 43
Twentieth Century (Week 11- 3)
Thomas Hardy: The Darkling Thrush
Wilfred Owen Dulce et Decorum Est
W. B. Yeats: Leda and the Swan
W. H. Auden: Muse des Beaux Arts
Philip Larkin: Sad Steps
Seamus Heaney: Digging
Tony Harrison: Marked with D
REQUIRED MATERIAL:
The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 1 & 2.
X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, An Introduction to Poetry
**Register on e-class for updates to syllabus, class lecture notes, and handouts
ASSESSMENT
The final exam will examine the students understanding and interpretation of the
texts studied in class.
NOTE:
Students who wish to write a short term paper (2,500-3,000 words) for extra credit
may do so only after submitting a proposal. The instructor will supervise the writing
process from the proposal and outline to the final draft (unsupervised or plagiarized
final drafts will not be accepted).