L460 27676 SEMINAR:  LITERARY FORM, MODE AND THEME
Herbert Marks

4:00p-6:30p R (20 students) 3 cr.

TOPIC:  "The Lyric"

This is a practical course with emphasis on strategies of
interpretation.  Our primary concern will be the interplay between
literal and figurative uses of language:  when and how do poems mean
what they say, and when and how do they mean something else?  We
shall be looking at the ways poems are shaped, the ways they begin
and end, their reliance on cliché, their ambiguous status as both
private and public statements, and their relations to their readers,
to tradition, and to one another.  We’ll use a standard anthology of
poems in English (possibly the Norton), supplemented by brief
readings in classical and biblical poetry, in European poetry (with
opposite-face translations), and in such non- canonical forms as
nursery rhymes, national anthems,  hymn, charms and oracles,
epigrams, and song lyrics.  A few essays about poetry, often by well
known poets, will help direct our discussion.  The course will
conclude by surveying the career of a single poet, possibly Hardy or
Bishop.

The course will require brief weekly exercises, two short critical
essays and final paper.