Course Syllabus--Fall 1998
Eng 241: Survey of the Literature of England
-----Poetry in an Age of Prose
Professor: D. F.
Felluga
Office Hours: T, Th 3:00-4:30
HEAV 430; telephone: 43770
Class: T, Th 1:30-2:45; HEAV 111
E-mail: felluga@omni.cc.purdue.edu
Course Description
Is life worth living without an appreciation of that within life that is poetry? This is one insistent question that will pursue us throughout the semester. Others include: can poetry survive in our modern age? What are the generic parameters of poetry as a form of expression? What debt do we owe to the poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? In the course of responding to such questions, this class will come to understand the development of literature through the last two centuries. The class will also seek to understand and appreciate poetry: how does one read poetry? How does one analyze verse form? How does one make sense of poetic "license"? As a result, a significant part of each class will be spent analyzing individual poems, particularly shorter lyrics. We will also be examining a good deal of prose, two short stories, and a film; the emphasis, however, will be on poetry: the prose is about poetry and one might characterize the two short stories and the film we will discuss as themselves "poetic" in some way.
In addition, by the end of the semester, we will have, as a class, constructed a Web page that will serve as a studying resource; it will include a list of definitions for terms that we discuss in class. The Web page will grow from week to week depending on what we choose to discuss in each class. It can be found at the following URL:
http://omni.cc.purdue.edu/~felluga/guide241.html.
WEEK ONE:
Thus piteously Love closed what he begat:
Thursday, August 27
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
WEEK TWO:
The union of this ever diverse pair!
Thursday, September 3
WEEK THREE:
These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
Thursday, September 10
WEEK FOUR:
Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.
Thursday, September 17
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
WEEK FIVE:
Lovers beneath the singing sky of May,
Thursday, September 24
WEEK SIX:
They wandered once; clear as the dew on
flowers:
Thursday, October 1
WEEK SEVEN:
But they fed not on the advancing hours:
Thursday, October 8
NOTE: FIRST ESSAY DUE
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
WEEK EIGHT:
Their hearts held cravings for the buried
day.
Thursday, October 15
WEEK NINE:
Then each applied to each that fatal
knife,
Thursday, October 22
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
WEEK TEN:
Deep questioning, which probes to endless
dole.
Thursday, October 29
WEEK ELEVEN:
Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul
Thursday, November 5
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
WEEK TWELVE:
When hot for certainties in this our
life!--
Wednesday, November 11
Thursday, November 12
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
WEEK THIRTEEN:
In tragic hints here see what evermore
Thursday, November 19
WEEK FOURTEEN:
Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's
force,
Thursday, November 26
WEEK FIFTEEN:
Thundering like ramping hosts of warrior
horse,
Thursday, December 3
WEEK SIXTEEN:
To throw that faint thin line upon the
shore!
Thursday, December 10
Undergraduate Guide to Critical Theory
Last Revised: December 18, 1998
Paintings courtesy of
Carol L.
Gerten
Morris prints courtesy of
The William Morris
Gallery