Lecture Description
Overview: The early poetry of Elizabeth Bishop is discussed. The poet is positioned as an endpoint to modernism, and in her essay "Dimensions for a Novel," a response to Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent," Bishop is shown to transfer Eliot's concept of "tradition" to the construction of literary works. The poem "The Map" is presented as an expression of Bishop's early thinking about geography and world-making. "The Gentleman of Shalott" is considered as a contemplation of the process of perception. Finally, "Sandpiper" is read as a meditation on the challenges of locating coherence in a shifting world.
Course Index
- Introduction to Modern English Poetry
- The Poetry and Life of Robert Frost
- Robert Frost: Birches, Home Burial, "Provide, Provide" and DIrective
- William Butler Yeats' Early Poetry
- William Butler Yeats' Middle Period
- William Butler Yeats' Late Poetry
- World War I Poetry in England
- Imagism: Doolittle and Pound
- The Poetry of Ezra Pound
- T.S. Eliot's Early Poetry
- T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
- T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land
- Hart Crane's Early Poetry
- Hart Crane's "The Bridge"
- Langston Hughes
- William Carlos Williams
- Marianne Moore
- Analysis of Marianne Moore's poems
- Wallace Stevens' works
- Wallace Stevens' "The Auroras of Autumn"
- Wallace Stevens' Late Poetry
- W.H. Auden's Early Poetry
- Analysis of W.H. Auden's poems
- Elizabeth Bishop's early poetry
- Elizabeth Bishop's modernist work
Course Description
This course covers the body of modern poetry, its characteristic techniques, concerns, and major practitioners. The authors discussed range from Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, to Stevens, Moore, Bishop, and Frost with additional lectures on the poetry of World War One, Imagism, and the Harlem Renaissance. Diverse methods of literary criticism are employed, such as historical, biographical, and gender criticism.