Lecture Description
Overview: Yeats's late poetry is discussed and interpreted. The poet's interest in human knowledge and its relationship to the body, particularly the aging body, is traced from "Leda and the Swan" to "Sailing to Byzantium," "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz," "Two Songs from a Play," and "Vacillation." Yeats's late interest in the experiences of joy, madness, and "gaiety" is examined in "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop." Yeats's de-mystifying attitude toward art in "The Circus Animals' Destruction" is contrasted with his celebration of art in "Lapis Lazuli."
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.