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LIT 205:
Introduction to Poetry Summer II, 2003 Section 01: Tue. & Thu. 8:00-11:30, ACADEMIC 108 ![]() |
Brian T. Murphy Parker 319-V Ext. 1318 Office Hours e-mail: bmurphy@Brian-T-Murphy.com |
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. |
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Other printable
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Rubric
for Essay Grading Standards
Revision and Editing Checklist
Essay Outline
"C'mon, people, this poetry isn't going to appreciate itself!"Bart Simpson
DESCRIPTION:
This course will be
divided into four parts: What poetry is and how it differs from other literary
forms; how it evolved (the tradition of poetry); what special skills are needed
to understand it; and what purpose it serves in a utilitarian culture. Students
in this course will read, analyze and discuss poems.
This is an introductory course in poetry and poetic expressions; however, it is assumed that students have successfully completed the prerequisites for this course, English 101 and English 102, or their equivalent. Therefore, students are expected to have the necessary background and experience in analyzing, discussing, and responding to literature, as well as the ability to conduct independent research and to write correctly documented research essays using MLA format.
OBJECTIVES
At the conclusion of this course,
students will be able to:
TEXTS:
Required:
Hunter, J. Paul.
and Alison Booth, eds.
The Norton
Introduction to Poetry, Eighth Edition. New York: W. W.
Norton, 2002.*
(Students may instead utilize The Norton
Introduction to Literature, 8 ed. Eds. Jerome
Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. New York: W. W. Norton,
2002.)
Recommended:
Hult, Christine A. and Thomas N. Huckin. The New
Century Handbook, 2 ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2002; or
Hult, Christine A. and Thomas N. Huckin.The New
Century Handbook, Brief Edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001; or
Any college-level English handbook covering grammar, research writing, and
documentation using MLA format.
Supplemental readings and materials may be assigned at the instructors discretion.
Recommended
additional texts:**
Ackroyd, Peter. Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination. New York:
Nan A. Talese, 2002 (Available
used starting at $9.49 at Amazon.com***).
Baugh, Albert C. and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language, 3 ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978.
Bloom, Harold. How to Read and Why. New York: Scribner, 2000. (Available starting at $1.00 at Amazon.com***)
---., ed. Romanticism and Consciousneess: Essays in Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton, 1970.
Casagrande, June. Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite. New York: Penguin, 2006. (Available starting at $4.27 at Amazon.com***)
Chandler, Alice. A Dream of Order: The Medieval Ideal in Nineteenth-Century Literature. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971.
Chevalier, Tracy. Burning Bright. New York: Dutton, 2007.
Crystal, David. The Stories of English. New York: Overlook Press, 2004.
---. Words, Words, Words.
New York: Oxford U P, 2006. (Available used starting at $9.28 at Amazon.com***)
Dirda, Michael. Classics for Pleasure. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2007.
Fulghum, W. B. A Dictionary of Biblical Allusions in English Literature. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965. (Available used, starting at $3.99, at Amazon.com ***).
Gaul, Marilyn. English Romanticism: The Human Context. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.
Houghton, Walter E. The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1837-1870. New Haven and London: Yale U. P., 1985.
*Note that all poems for the semester are available online, as indicated by links (see Schedule, below). However, students must have a copy of the appropriate text(s) with them for each class session, whether they have purchased the textbook or printed out hardcopy from the Internet; no excuses about computer or printer problems will be accepted. In addition, a large number of recommended readings are available in the textbook, but not readily available online.
** Recommended additional texts are not required purchases, and have not been ordered for the course; however, they provide alternative readings, historical and cultural backgrounds, criticism, personal literary responses, or entertaining (irreverent, possibly sacrilegious) revisions. Students who find themselves becoming deeply interested in one or more of the required readings may find these interesting and/or useful. When indicated with a dagger (), texts are only provisionally recommended, as I have not read these works yet, although they have received excellent reviews or recommendations.
*** Prices listed at Amazon.com do not include shipping, and are accurate as of posting date only; no guarantees of prices or availability are express or implied§.
Attendance and
Participation:
According to the College Catalog,
"Students are expected to attend all class, clinical, laboratory, and studio
sessions for the full duration of each instructional session." Students
must not only attend every class, but also be on time, be prepared, and take an
active part in class discussions. Students will be required to sign in each
class session, to verify their attendance. Students who end the semester with
Perfect Attendance (never absent, never late) will receive an additional 5
points (Extra Credit!!!) on their final grades.
Students unable to attend class should contact the instructor regarding missed work as soon as they return to school. Excessive absences or repeated tardiness will result in a lowered grade and may result in failure of the course at the instructor's discretion.
Plagiarism:
Plagiarism includes copying or paraphrasing another's words, ideas, or facts
without crediting the source; submitting a paper written by someone else, either
in whole or in part, as one's own work; or submitting work previously submitted
for another course or instructor. Plagiarism on any assignment will result in
failure for that assignment and may result in further disciplinary action,
including but not limited to failure for the course. Plagiarism on a second
assignment will result in failure for the course and further disciplinary
action, up to and including expulsion from the College. Please refer to the
Student Handbook for additional information regarding plagiarism and College
regulations.
Homework/Essay Submission:
All writing assignments must be
submitted on or before the due date indicated on the schedule (below).
Late work will not be accepted except under extraordinary circumstances;
work submitted after deadlines will result in reduction of the grade for that
assignment by 10% for each day it is late.
ATTENDANCE AND
PARTICIPATION (10%):
As this class will combine both lecture
and discussion, students are expected to take an active part in classjoining
in discussions and raising questions. Discussion is one of the best ways to
clarify your understandings and to test your conclusions. Stanley Fish maintains
that a text's meaning is determined by consensus among a community of readers;
therefore, it is imperative that all students participate regularly in order
that we may together discover what each selection "means".
Open discussion always involves personal exposure, and thus the taking of
risks: your ideas may not be the same as your fellow students or even the
instructors. Yet as long as your points are honest and supportable, they need
to be respected by all of us in the classroom. Questions, discussion,
disagreement, and laughter are all encouraged in this class (However, ridicule
or scoffing is never tolerated).
QUIZZES (10%):
With the exception of the first
day, class may begin with a short (five- to ten-minute) quiz or writing
assignment on the reading(s) for the day, at the instructor's discretion. Quizzes or response papers missed due
to tardiness may not be made up.
PRESENTATIONS (20%):
At the beginning of the semester, all students
will select at least one of the works from the list provided (see
Presentation Topics, below) to present
to the class; each presentation must be ten to fifteen minutes long, and
demonstrate familiarity with the selection, its context, and its significance.
Ideally, presentations will also be open-ended, leading into class discussions
with questions, major themes or topics for further thought.
ESSAYS (2 @ 15%):
Students will complete at least two essays during the semester, on topics to
be assigned (see Essay Topics, below).
Essays must be at
least 5 pages long (1250-1500 words), typed, double-spaced, grammatically correct,
and submitted on or before the due date indicated on the
schedule, below. In
addition, essays must include a cover page and Works Cited page (at least three
sources), and use
MLA
format for documentation.
Essays will be evaluated according to the
Rubric
for Essay Grading Standards.
Please refer to
the Essay Outline and
Revision and Editing Checklist.
EXAMS (2 @ 15%):
Students will complete two ninety-minute exams: an in-class midterm during
the sixth class, and a final during the the
last class. These exams will each evaluate students' recognition and
comprehension of material studied during the previous weeks, covering specific
texts, literary themes, and cultural and historical backgrounds. The exams will
combine objective questions and short essay answers. Students may be
entitled to use notes or textbooks for the essay portion of the exams only.
GRADING:
Final average for the course will be determined as
follows:
|
Attendance/Class Participation |
10% |
|
Quizzes/Response Papers |
10% |
|
Presentation |
15% |
| Essays (2 @ 15%) |
30% |
|
Midterm Exam |
20% |
|
Final Exam |
20% |
|
Extra Credit (if any) will be added to the final total. |
|
Final average will determine the grade received for the course, as follows:
|
Final Percentage |
Final Grade |
|
90-100 |
A |
| 85-89 | B+ |
| 80-84 | B |
| 75-79 | C+ |
| 70-74 | C |
| 60-69 | D |
| 0-59 | F |
OUTLINE:
Projected Schedule of Readings and Assignments
(This schedule is subject to revision)
Note: All readings below are required, and must be completed by the day
indicated; the only exceptions are those indicated with an asterisk (*), which
are recommended additional readings.
Tuesday, July 8: Introduction
What is Poetry?
Introduction to Poetic Analysis
Selections for Class Presentations
Introductory Poems:
William Shakespeare,
"[Shall
I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?]" (22)
anonymous, "[There
was a young lady of Riga]" (198)
Hashin, "[No sky and no earth]" (350)
William Carlos Williams,
The
Red Wheelbarrow (135)
e.e. cummings,
[l(a] (271)
Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky"
and "Humpty Dumpty Explicates 'Jabberwocky'" (handout)
*Carol Lin, "Language and Structure in Sharon Olds's 'The Victims'"
(247-249)
*"Writing about Poetry" (A1-A46)
Thursday, July 10: Poems About Art and
Poetry
John Keats, "On
the Sonnet" (256)
John Keats, "Ode
on a Grecian Urn" (303)
Archibald Macleish, "Ars
Poetica" (270)
Marianne Moore, ""Poetry" (266-7) [* see also 1925 & 1967 versions
(451-2)]
Ishmael Reed, "beware:
do not read this poem" (268-269)
Adrienne Rich, "Diving
Into The Wreck" (184-186)
Wallace Stevens, Anecdote
Of The Jar (464-465)
*Christine Woodside,
"Metrical Variation and Meaning in 'To the Memory of Mr. Oldham'" (220-222)
Tuesday, July 15: Love Poetry
Thomas Wyatt, "They
Flee from Me" (77)
Christopher Marlowe,
"The
Passionate Shepherd to his Love" (345-346)
Sir Walter Ralegh,
"The
Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" (354)
William Shakespeare, [Let
me not to the marriage of true minds]
(17)
John Donne, "The
Sun Rising" (481-482)
John Donne, "A
Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (482)
Robert Herrick,
"Delight in
Disorder" (143)
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, Of
the Theme of Love (136)
*Meaghan E. Parker, "Tragedy in Five Stanzas: 'Woodchucks'" (290-294)
John Donne,
"The
Flea" (89-90)
Andrew Marvell,
"To
His Coy Mistress"
(100-101)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
"How
Do I Love Thee?" (2)
Denise Levertov, "Wedding-Ring" (7)
Sharon Olds, "Sex
Without Love" (133)
Linda Pastan,
"love
poem" (4-5)
Adrienne Rich, [My
mouth hovers across your breasts]
(323)
William Shakespeare,
"[That
Time of Year thou mayst in me Behold]" (159)
Edna St. Vincent Millay,
"[What
lips my lips have kissed] (Sonnet XIX)" (18)
Roger McCough, Here
I Am (509)
Ben Jonson, "On
My First Son" (9)
John Donne, Death,
be not proud (481)
Henry King, "Sic
Vita" (170)
Emily Dickinson, "[Because
I could not stop for Death, ]" (477)
Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Spring
and Fall (205-206)
Dylan Thomas, "Do
Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" (266)
Walt Whitman, "When
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" (540-547)
W. H. Auden, "In
Memory of W. B. Yeats"
(244-245)
W. H. Auden,
"Funeral Blues [Stop all
the clocks, cut off the telephone]" (16)
Seamus Heaney, "Mid-Term
Break" (11)
Margaret Atwood, "Death of a Young Son by Drowning" (65)
John Donne, "Batter
my heart, three-person'd God" (167-168)
George Herbert, "The
Collar" (285)
George Herbert, "Easter
Wings" (274)
William Cowper, Light
Shining out of Darkness (476-477)
Matthew Arnold, "Dover
Beach" (96-97)
Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The
Windhover" (500)
Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's
Grandeur" (500)
Wallace Stevens, "Sunday
Morning" (527-530)
Howard Nemerov, Boom! (340-342)
Thursday, July 31: Poems About Identity
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses" (534-535)
Walt Whitman, [I
celebrate myself, and sing myself] (83)
Walt Whitman, "I Hear America Singing" (540)
Walt Whitman, "A Noiseless Patient Spider" (546)
Robert Frost, "The
Road Not Taken" (489)
Langston Hughes, "Theme
For English B" (502-503)
Audre Lorde, "Hanging Fire" (76)
Tuesday, August 5: War Poetry
Richard Lovelace, Song:
To Lucasta, Going to the Wars (392)
Thomas Hardy, "Channel
Firing" (375-376)
Wilfred Owen, "Dulce
et Decorum Est" (386)
Wilfred Owen, "Disabled
" (392-3)
Randall Jarrell, "The
Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner" (169)
Richard Eberhart, "The
Fury of Aerial Bombardment" (387)
Seamus Heaney, "Punishment" (388-389)
Sharon Olds, Leningrad
Cemetery, Winter of 1941 (174-5)
Mary Jo Salter, "Welcome
to Hiroshima" (381-2)
T. S. Eliot, "The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (485-489)
W. B. Yeats, "The
Second Coming" (556)
W. B. Yeats,
"Leda And The
Swan " (557)
e. e. cummings, [in
Just-] (138-139)
William Carlos Williams, "This
Is Just To Say" (135)
Robert Frost, "Design" (286)
Margaret Atwood, "Siren
Song" (99-100)
Billy Collins, Taking Off Emily
Dickinsons Clothes (475-476)
Tuesday, August 12: Race and Gender
Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sympathy (483)
Claude McKay, America (382)
Countee Cullen, Yet
Do I Marvel (263)
Langston Hughes, "I,
Too, Sing America" (502)
Claude McKay, The
White House (382)
Langston Hughes, "Harlem
(A Dream Deferred)" (383)
James Emanuel, Emmett
Till (374)
Dudley Randall, Ballad
of Birmingham (387-388)
Gwendolyn Brooks, To
the Diaspora (472-473)
Pat Mora, La Migra (80-81)
Thursday, August
14:
Race and Gender continued
Final Exam
Mary, Lady Chudleigh, To
the Ladies (21)
Edna St. Vincent Millay, "[I,
being born a woman...]" (403)
Dorothy Livesay, Other (171-2)
Sylvia Plath, "Lady
Lazarus" (519-521)
Paulette Jiles, Paper
Matches (400)
Marge Piercy, Barbie
Doll (26)
*"Critical Contexts: A Poetry Casebook" (411-442)
Select one of the following poems to present to the class; you must be present on the day of your assigned reading and present the material thoroughly and coherently, demonstrating familiarity with the selection, its context, and its significance. Each presentation must be ten to fifteen minutes long, and, ideally, presentations will also be open-ended, leading into class discussions with questions, major themes, or topics for further thought. The following points may be covered, but do not feel constrained by these suggestions; be creative and have fun.
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The Author...(click for details)
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The Text...(click for details)
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Connections...(click for details) |
Presentation schedule:
Tuesday, July 15: Love Poetry
Thomas Wyatt, "They
Flee from Me" (77)
William Shakespeare, [Let
me not to the marriage of true minds]
(17)
John Donne, "The
Sun Rising" (481-482)
John Donne, "A
Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" (482)
Robert Herrick,
"Delight in
Disorder" (143)
Denise Levertov, "Wedding-Ring" (7)
Sharon Olds, "Sex
Without Love" (133)
Adrienne Rich, [My mouth hovers across your breasts] (323)
Roger McCough, Here I Am (509)
Ben Jonson, "On
My First Son" (9)
John Donne, Death,
be not proud (481)
Henry King, "Sic
Vita" (170)
Walt Whitman, "When
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" (540-547)
W. H. Auden, "In
Memory of W. B. Yeats"
(244-245)
W. H. Auden,
"Funeral Blues [Stop all
the clocks, cut off the telephone]" (16)
Seamus Heaney, "Mid-Term
Break" (11)
Margaret Atwood, "Death of a Young Son by Drowning" (65)
George Herbert, "The
Collar" (285)
William Cowper, Light
Shining out of Darkness (476-477)
Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The
Windhover" (500)
Wallace Stevens, "Sunday
Morning" (527-530)
Howard Nemerov, Boom! (340-342)
Thursday, July 31: Poems About Identity
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses" (534-535)
Walt Whitman, [I
celebrate myself, and sing myself] (83)
Walt Whitman, "I Hear America Singing" (540)
Langston Hughes, "Theme For English B" (502-503)
Audre Lorde, "Hanging Fire" (76)
Tuesday, August 5: War Poetry
Thomas Hardy, "Channel
Firing" (375-376)
Wilfred Owen, "Disabled
" (392-3)
Richard Eberhart, "The
Fury of Aerial Bombardment" (387)
Seamus Heaney, "Punishment" (388-389)
Mary Jo Salter, "Welcome
to Hiroshima" (381-2)
T. S. Eliot, "The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (485-489)
e. e. cummings, [in
Just-] (138-139)
William Carlos Williams, "This
Is Just To Say" (135)
Margaret Atwood, "Siren
Song" (99-100)
Billy Collins, Taking Off Emily
Dickinsons Clothes (475-476)
Tuesday, August 12: Race and Gender
Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sympathy (483)
Claude McKay, America (382)
Langston Hughes, "I,
Too, Sing America" (502)
Claude McKay, The
White House (382)
Gwendolyn Brooks, To
the Diaspora (472-473)
Thursday, August
14:
Race and Gender continued
Edna St. Vincent Millay, "[I,
being born a woman...]" (403)
Dorothy Livesay, Other (171-2)
Sylvia Plath, "Lady
Lazarus" (519-521)
Paulette Jiles, Paper
Matches (400)
Marge Piercy, Barbie
Doll (26)
ESSAY
TOPICS:
For each of the assigned essays, a list of topic choices is provided.
Your essay must be on one of the assigned topics for that assignment, or it
will receive a zero (0).
Essays must be typed, double-spaced, and grammatically correct; essays will be evaluated according to the rubric for Essay Grading Standards. In addition, essays must use a minimum of three authoritative sources (primary and/or secondary), properly documented (utilizing MLA-Style Citations for documentation), with a cover page and Works Cited page (cover page and Works Cited do not count toward the five-page requirement).
Please read the Appendix to your textbook, "Writing about Poetry" (A1-A46) or "Writing about Literature", before beginning your essays, and also read the sample student essays: Christine Woodside, "Metrical Variation and Meaning in 'To the Memory of Mr. Oldham'" (220-222), Carol Lin, "Language and Structure in Sharon Olds's 'The Victims'" (247-249), and Meaghan E. Parker, "Tragedy in Five Stanzas: 'Woodchucks'" (290-294). "Critical Contexts: A Poetry Casebook" (411-442) also provides useful examples of literary criticism to utilize as models.
Remember that these are formal essays: in your analyses, do not attempt to address all aspects of the poem, but carefully focus your topic; avoid merely paraphrasing the poem or covering each of the elements of the poem in the order presented by the assignment, below; formulate a clear, explicit, assertive (persuasive), objectively-worded thesis statement; and avoid use of "I" or "you" throughout.
All essays must be submitted on or before the due date, by the beginning of the class period. Late work will not be accepted.
Essay 1: Due
Thursday, 17 July
Answer one of the following questions in a well-developed,
coherent, and thoughtful essay of
at least 5 pages (1250-1500 words). Your essay
should not be limited to repetition of class discussion, but should include independent
research (both primary and secondary sources) and analysis and demonstrate
careful thought.
Your essay should explore the work's (or works')
tone,
speaker, language (including
figurative
language or
imagery,
diction, and
allusions)
and
structure (including
meter
and rhyme scheme, or the lack of them), and explain how these are interrelated
and how they shape or influence meaning. Support your answers with specific references to the work(s).
Select two of the poems from the syllabus about Love, Age, Death, or Mourning, written or published at least fifty years apart, and compare and contrast the way the two treat the same theme. Your analysis should establish a clear connection between the two poems, beyond merely "They both discuss love" or "both refer to death"; rather, the connection should be based on similarities in situation, structure, language, imagery, et cetera.
Select one of the poems from the syllabus about Love, or about Age, Death, and Mourning, and a set of lyrics from a song (ca. 1960-2000) on the same theme, and compare and contrast the way the two treat the same theme. Your analysis should establish a clear connection between the poem and the song you choose, beyond merely "They both discuss love" or "both refer to death"; rather, the connection should be based on similarities in situation, structure, language, imagery, et cetera.
Select one of the poems from the syllabus and analyze how it challenges or calls into question our culture's beliefs or myths about "Art" or poetry, love, marriage or relationships between men and women, or death. If the poem you select had already been discussed in class, be sure to present original analysis and ideas, supported by your research, rather than merely paraphrasing class discussions.
Essay 2:
Due Thursday, 7 August
Answer one of the following questions in a well-developed,
coherent, and thoughtful essay of
at least 5 pages (1250-1500 words). Your essay
should not be limited to repetition of class discussion, but should include independent
research (both primary and secondary sources) and analysis and demonstrate
careful thought.
Your essay should explore the work's (or works')
tone,
speaker, language (including
figurative
language or
imagery,
diction, and
allusions)
and
structure (including
meter and
rhyme scheme, or the lack of them), and explain how these are interrelated and
how they shape or influence meaning. Support your answers with specific references to the work(s).
Select two of the poems from the syllabus about about War, Race, or Gender, written or published at least fifty years apart, and compare and contrast the way the two treat the same theme. Your analysis should establish a clear connection between the two poems, beyond merely "They both discuss love" or "both refer to death"; rather, the connection should be based on similarities in situation, structure, language, imagery, et cetera.
Select one of the poems from the syllabus about War, Race, or Gender, and a set of lyrics from a song (ca. 1960-2000) on the same theme, and compare and contrast the two. Your analysis should establish a clear connection between the poem and the song you choose, beyond merely "They both discuss war" of "both refer to gender"; rather, the connection should be based on similarities in situation, structure, language, imagery, et cetera.
Select one of the poems from the syllabus and analyze how it challenges or calls into question our culture's beliefs or myths about the nature of religious experience, the nature and causes of war, race and culture, or gender roles. If the poem you select had already been discussed in class, be sure to present original analysis and ideas, supported by your research, rather than merely paraphrasing class discussions.
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Last Revised: Friday,
28 March 2008
Site maintained by Brian T. Murphy
Main page: www.Brian-T-Murphy.com