W403 10169 ADVANCED POETRY WRITING
Maurice Manning

11:15a-12:30p TR (15 students) 3 cr.

PREREQUISITE: W301 or permission of instructor, plus submission of acceptable manuscript to instructor in advance of registration.

TOPIC: “Fables and Fabliaux”

This will be a standard poetry writing workshop, but we will focus on two ancient literary modes, fables and fabliaux. A fable is a brief tale which features unusual events; often the characters in a fable are animals which are given human qualities. A fabliau is a humorous tale which satirizes human behavior. Both modes ask us to think about allegory, symbolism, and metaphor—how these rhetorical figures are related or not. We’ll read Ovid’s Metamorphoses (probably an abridged translation), a bit of Chaucer, Marianne Moore’s translations of La Fontaine, some Kipling, and some Ted Hughes, and probably more. You’ll write your own fables and fabliaux, as you see fit, of course.

To apply for the course, please submit a list of previous creative writing courses that you have completed, along with three of your poems to the instructor at maumanni@indiana.edu.