Course details

Name: ENGL - 541

Title: MODERN BRITISH AND IRISH POETRY

Section: 01

Semester: Fall - 2021

Credits: 3

Description:
Fall 2021
English 541: Modern British and Irish Poetry
Professor Lucy McDiarmid

Students in Modern British and Irish Poetry will read work by W. B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Stevie (aka Florence Margaret) Smith, W. H. Auden, and one or two other British or Irish poets, such as Sylvia Townsend Warner, Philip Larkin, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Seamus Heaney, and Paul Muldoon. We'll consider stylistic issues (the multi-part long poem, the very short [two-line] poem, "fragments," allusiveness, revisions of 19th century poems), thematic issues (politics, sex, politics-and-sex, nationality, transnationality, oblique, ambiguous, & direct comments on class & gender), biographical background, and manuscript drafts of the poems we read. Students will be required to contribute to discussion as together we do close readings of major twentieth century poems. Assignments will include weekly discussion questions, an oral report, a short paper, and a long final paper. Computers, laptops,  kindles, iPads, and iPhones may not be used during class. Two outside scholars will visit our seminar to lecture on their specialties, and (public health permitting) there will also be a field trip to the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library (the one with the lions at 42nd Street) to view the original manuscripts of The Waste Land and of poems by Yeats. The plan (as of the time of registration) is for all class meetings to be held on campus.

Last updated on By Lykidis Alexios (lykidisa)

Schedule: Wednesday From 5:30 pm To 8:00 pm

Graduation requirements:

• Graduate (BA/MA)

Teaching Faculty: McDiarmid Lucy (mcdiarmidl)

Is course canceled: No