Wilson Hall 524, New College: T9-11, R9-10

Professor Carol Percy, Wetmore Hall 125, New College, 978-4287, cpercy@chass.utoronto.ca

Calendar description:

An introduction to poetry through a close reading of texts, focusing on its traditional forms, themes, techniques, and uses of language; its historical and geographical range; and its twentieth-century diversity.

The first term’s poems are arranged in more or less chronological order, from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. They’re also grouped in units, each unit focussing on a literary or poetic concept (vocabulary, metaphor, rhythm, stan za form, etc.). You’re responsible for reading everything on the syllabus, although some of the poems will be covered in less detail than others. A test in January will cover the first-term material.

In the second term, we’ll read poems written in the twentieth century by poets from England, North America, and beyond—lots of diversity. (You’ll get the syllabus in January.) The units in second term will apply some common issues and debates in li terary theory to the poems on the syllabus. A test in April will cover the second-term material.

Course objectives:

My aims are for you

• to read a variety of short poems in English, from medieval to modern, from England, North America, and beyond.
• to learn concepts and terms appropriate to the study of literature and of poetry, to examine the interrelation of poetic techniques and poetic content.

• appropriately to analyze the relationship between a text and its biographical and cultural contexts
• to study some authors, and some forms & genres, in depth.
• to become acquainted with and to use basic reference works.
• to discuss and to write about poetry fully and articulately.
• to expand your understanding and love of poetry.
• to refine your academic writing skills generally. For some of you, this is a core course in your English degree; for others, it may be a breadth course, the only English course you may take at U of T. So, in each case, I feel that it's particular ly appropriate for me to help you with your writing. I keep copies of my comments in order to chart your progress through the year.

Two shorter (1250 word) essays (26 October and 30 November, 2000: 30%), contribution to second-term group seminar presentation (10%), one 2000-word paper (22 March, 2001: 20%), one in-class essay (1 March 2001: 10% ), two tests (18 January and 12 April, 2001: 20%), informed participation (in class, on the electronic bulletin board/discussion group) (10%).

Poems will be taken from The Broadview Anthology of Poetry, ed. Herbert Rosengarten and Amanda Goldrick-Jones (Broadview Press, 1993), and from Representative poetry online)

Required readings for each unit in first term will be taken from Stephen Adams, Poetic Designs: an Introduction to Meters, Verse Forms and Figures of Speech (Broadview Press, 1997), and from books on short-term reserve at the main library. Requi red readings for each unit in second term will be taken from Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 1997).

You must also have access to a good dictionary, to a handbook of literary terms (e.g. M.H. Abrams), and to a style manual (e.g. The St. Martin’s Handbook for Canadians).

Online resources

Representative poetry online
Timeline of English poetry
Glossary of Poetic Terms
Canadian Poetry
Modern American Poetry
Literature Online

ENG201Y: First term schedule (weeks are approximate) and texts:

Course administration.

Video, Using blank verse (V002525): please focus on William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29 ("When in disgrace with Fortune and mens eyes"(31)

I Syng of a Mayden

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), "Leda and the Swan" (401)

Foweles in the Frith

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c1517-1547), "The Soote Season" (14)

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), "Spring and Fall" (350)

William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sonnet 73 (32)

John Keats (1795-1821), "To Autumn" (228)

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), "Queen-Anne’s-Lace" (432)

Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), Sonnet 81 (18)

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 (31)

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 55 (32)

Edmund Spenser, Prothalamion (19)

Sir Philip Sydney (1554-1586), Astrophil and Stella 1 (27)

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130 (34)

George Herbert (1593-1633), Jordan I (55)

John Donne (1572-1631), "The Good-Morrow" (39)

John Donne, "The Sun Rising" (39)

John Donne, "The Canonization" (41)

John Donne, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (42)

Anne Bradstreet (1613?-1672), "A Letter to her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment" (76)

John Donne, "Good Friday. 1613. Riding Westward" (46)

George Herbert, "The Pulley" (61)

John Donne, Holy Sonnet X (45)

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1624?-1674), "Natures Cook" (86)

John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV (45)

[Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" (631)]

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), "The Garden" (83)

John Milton (1608-1674).

Paradise Lost, Book I

Anne Bradstreet (1613?-1672), "The Prologue" (73)

Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea (1661-1720), "The Introduction" (109)

Alexander Pope (1688-1744), Epistles to several persons. II. To a lady, on the characters of women

Point-form notes: C18th satire (background); some thematic structures of the poem

Nov 13th

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), from Verses addressed to the Imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace. [A reply to Alexander Pope] (128)

Mary Leapor, "The Epistle of Deborah Dough" (141)

Anna Letitia Barbauld, "Washing-Day" (152)

Thomas Gray (1716-1771), "Elegy written in a country church-yard" (131)

John Keats (1795-1821), "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (226)

Thomas Gray, "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat" (130)

William Blake (1757-1827), "The Tyger" (157)

William Blake, "London" (157)

William Wordsworth (1770-1850), "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802" (172)

William Wordsworth, from The Prelude, book 2

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), from Don Juan (202)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), from Aurora Leigh: Book 1 (236)

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), from Song of Myself (298)