Literary Interpretation: Interpreting Poetry

Calendar

LEC #	TOPICS	KEY DATES
1	Introduction: Dickinson, Emily. My Life had Stood. Plath, Sylvia. Metaphors. Voigt, Ellen. Sweet Everlasting. Initial distribution: List of Tropes.
2	Shakespeare, William. Selected sonnets.
3	Shakespeare, William. Selected sonnets (continued). Aristotle. Poetics. Richards, I. A. The Philosophy of Rhetoric.
4	Shakespeare, William. Selected sonnets (continued). Donne, John. Selected poems.
5	Donne, John. Selected poems (continued). Todorov, Tzvetan. “The End of Rhetoric.” In Theories of the Symbol.
6	Donne, John. Selected poems (continued). Brooks, Cleanth. “The Language of Paradox.” In The Well-Wrought Urn.
7	Campion, Thomas. My Sweetest Lesbia. Johnson, Ben. To Penshurst. ———. Two Songs to Celia.  ———. Inviting a Friend to Supper.   ———. Still to be Neat. Herrick, Robert. Delight in Disorder.   ———. Corinna’s Going A-Maying.   ———. To the Virgins.   ———. A Night Piece to Julia.   ———. Julia’s Clothes.   ———. The White Island. Herbert, George. The Collar.  ———. The Pulley.  ———. The Forerunners. Carew, Thomas. A Song. Waller, Edmund. Go Lovely Rose. Larkin, Philip. Vers de Societé.   Empson, William. Seven Types of Ambiguity.
8	Campion, Johnson, Herrick, Herbert, Carew, Waller and Larkin (continued)
9	Marvell, Andrew. The Coronet.   ———. Bermudas.   ———. Body and Soul.   ———. Coy Mistress.   ———. The Gallery.   ———. Definition of Love.   ———. The Mower Against Gardens.   ———. The Garden.   ———. On Appleton House. Davidson, Donald. “What Metaphors Mean.” Gibbs, R. W., Jr. The Poetics of Mind. Chap. 1.
10	Marvell (continued)	First paper due
11	Milton, John. Lycidas.   ———. How Soon Hath Time.   ——— When I consider how my light is spent.   ———. Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint. Lakoff, George. “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor.”
12	Milton (continued)
13	Wordsworth. Tintern Abbey. Coleridge. Frost at Midnight. Lakoff and Turner. “The Power of Poetic Metaphor.”
14	Wordsworth and Coleridge (continued)
15	Wordsworth and Coleridge (continued) Lakoff and Turner. “Image Schemas in Poetry.”
16	Keats, John. In Drear-Nighted December.   ———. What the Thrush Said.   ———. When I Have Fears.   ———. La Belle Dame sans Merci.   ———. Ode to a Nightingale.   ———. Ode on Melancholy.   ———. Ode on a Grecian Urn.   ———. To Autumn.   ———. Bright Star.
17	Keats (continued)
18	Yeats, William Butler. The Coat.   ———. The Choice.   ———. Politics.   ———. Adam’s Curse.   ———. Wild Swans at Coole.   ———. Easter 1916.   ———. The Second Coming.   ———. A Prayer for my Daughter.   ———. Sailing to Byzantium.   ———. Leda and the Swan.
19	Yeats (continued)
20	Arnold, Matthew. Dover Beach. Stevens, Wallace. The Snow Man.  ———. The Emperor of Ice-Cream.  ———. Sunday Morning.  ———. Anecdote of the Jar.  ———. Peter Quince at the Clavier.  ———. The Idea of Order at Key West.  ———. The Poems of our Climate.  ———. Of Mere Being.  ———. Tea at the Palaz of Hoon.  ———. On the Manner of Addressing Clouds.  ———. Of Heaven considered as a Tomb.  ———. The Death of a Soldier.  ———. Poem with Rhythms.	Second paper due
21	Stevens (continued)
22	Eliot, T. S. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.   ———. The Waste Land.
23	Frost, Robert. The Oven Bird.   ———. Birches.   ———. Stopping by Woods.   ———. Acquainted with the Night.   ———. Neither Far Out nor In Deep.   ———. Design.   ———. The Silken Tent.   ———. Come In.   ———. Never Again Would Birds.   ———. The Most of It.   ———. Directive.
24	Frost (continued) Auden, W. H. As I Walked Out One Evening.   ———. Funeral Blues.   ———. Lullaby.   ———. Musée des Beaux Arts.   ———. In Memory of W. B. Yeats.
25	Auden (continued)
26	Larkin, Philip. Church Going.   ———. An Arundel Tomb.   ———. The Whitsun Weddings.   ———. Talking in Bed.   ———. Aubade.   ———. I Remember.   ———. High Windows.
27	None	Third paper due

This course does not have a final exam.