ENGL364A 002 The Lyric Self from Romanticism to Modernism
Fall, 2015
T/Th 11-12:30, West Mall Swing Space 407
Instructor: Dr. Bo Earle
Email: bo.earle@gmail.com
Office Hours: T/Th 10-11 & by appointment, Buchanan 625
This course charts the evolution of English poetry over “the long 19th century” (i.e. from
the late 18th C. to the mid 20th C.), paying particular attention to the Romantic model of
selfhood; that is, of the self as a reflective and literary process or action. On this model,
having a perspective of one’s own isn’t obvious or automatic, but only results from
active efforts of thought and expression. Lyric poetry has been the signature means by
which this model of subject is explored, expressed and communicated, from its origins
in Romanticism through the Victorian and Modernist periods to more contemporary art
forms such as the music of singer-songwriters and ‘auteur’ cinema which we will also
periodically have occasion to consider.
Optional Texts:
Romantic Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Wiley-Blackwell), ed. Michael
O'Neill, Charles Mahoney
Victorian Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Wiley-Blackwell), ed. Francis
O’Gorman
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 1: Modern
Poetry, ed. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, Robert O'Clair
Many of the readings for this course are not in these anthologies; all of these readings
can be accessed online through links in this syllabus.
COURSEWORK REQUIREMENTS
COURSE INFO
Your final grade will be determined using the following formula. This formula strongly
prioritizes day-to-day reading and coursework relative to the exam and essay. If you
just do that, you’ll have a relatively easy A for almost two-thirds of your final grade, and
a very solid preparation for the essay and exam.
Participation (in class & on line)
25%
3p close reading exercise
7p. Take-Home Essay
Final Examination
20%
30%
25%
In-Class Participation
Every student will be called upon to engage in class discussion. I know this can be
painful but it is the best way to insure that you get as much as you can from this class.
The aim of this policy is that you read and think critically about each day’s reading
assignment, and bring to class interpretative hypotheses about the reading, or, even
better, questions about interpretative difficulties presented by the reading. Keeping up
to date with the Online Conversation and Reading Journal should make it easy to come
up with theses and questions to contribute to class discussion.
Online Conversation
On the course website-- http://engl364.wordpress.com/--I will post study questions for
each day’s reading assignment. For each week of class, every student is required to
add a question of their own (or to modify a question of mine) about the day’s reading
or to respond to a question posted by another student or by me. No posts required
during weeks we don’t meet, so that means you should make 12 postings during the
term. No credit if your posting for a given week is made after the beginning of Friday’s
class that week. Also no credit for postings that merely repeat the postings of others: if
your questions or answers have already been posted then you must try to elaborate
upon, add nuance or complexity to, the work of others.
COURSE POLICIES
1. Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined as using the ideas, organization, or words of another from a book,
article, paper, computer file, or other source in any assignment without giving proper
credit following accepted citation rules. This includes anonymous internet and web
sites. REMEMBER: You do not have to copy the exact words of another source to be
guilty of plagiarism; using another’s ideas, even if you rewrite them in your own words,
is still plagiarism. If it is determined that you have plagiarized an assignment or any part
of an assignment, or engaged in any other type of academic misconduct in this class, the
penalty will range from a zero on the assignment to an “F” in the course; the University
may also take disciplinary action ranging from suspension to expulsion. Please see
http://www.arts.ubc.ca/Plagiarism_Avoided.373.0.html for more details; there is a
printed version of this guide available in the UBC bookstore. In order to protect you and
your fellow students from any whiff of plagiarism, you are required to submit your takehome essay to TurnItIn, a commercial plagiarism detection site to which UBC subscribes:
http://www.vpacademic.ubc.ca/integrity/turnitin/index.htm. You will be provided
with more detailed instructions for submitting your papers electronically when the essay
is assigned.
2. Late and Missing Work
Take-home essays. Late work is not acceptable unless you have written documentation
of an impediment to your completing the assignment on time. In this case, you must
ask for an extension in advance. If you have not arranged for an extension in advance
and turn your essay in late, the following penalty will apply: 10 points grade deduction
per day (or portion of a day); if the paper is more than four full days late, you will
receive an automatic zero for the assignment.
Final examination. You must take the exam during the scheduled period in order to
pass the course. Alternate arrangements will not be made in any circumstances unless a
request for academic concession has been approved in advance by the Dean of your
faculty. If you have not received a concession and are not present for the exam, you will
fail the course.
3. Attendance
Attendance is mandatory. There will be a sign-up sheet at the beginning of each lecture.
Frequent unexcused absences will result in exclusion from the final examination and
failure of the course. Please see http://www.english.ubc.ca/attendance.htm for the
English Department policy on attendance.
4. Assigned Reading.
Lectures will not cover all of the assigned reading; the exam will.
Th, Sept. 10. Intro: Romantic Selfhood, its pre-history and legacy: William
Wordsworth: “Song: She dwelt among th’untrodden ways,” Robert Frost, “The Road
not Taken”; Billy Collins, "Introduction to Poetry"
T, Sept. 15. William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience (Focus especially
on: “Introduction,” “The Lamb,” “The Little Black Boy,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” “The
Sick Rose,” “The Fly,” “The Tyger,” “Ah, Sun-flower,” “London,” “The Human Abstract”),
Wordsworth, “We are Seven”
Th, Sept. 17. Wordsworth, “Simon Lee,” “The world is too much with us,” “The Tables
Turned,” “Animal Tranquility and Decay” [three versions: 1798, 1800, 1815]”
T. Sept. 22. Wordsworth, “There was a Boy”, “Nutting,” “Lines Written a Few Miles
above Tintern Abbey,” “Composed on Westminster Bridge”
Th. Sept. 24. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Eolian Harp,” “Kubla Kahn”
T, Sept. 29. Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Frost at Midnight”
Th, Oct. 1. George Gordon Byron, “Darkness”
T, Oct.6. Percy Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind,” “Ozymandias”
Th, Oct. 8. John Keats, ”On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”; ”The Eve of St.
Agnes,” ”La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” ”Ode to Psyche,” ”On Seeing the Elgin Marbles”
T, Oct. 13. Keats ”Ode to a Nightingale,” ”Ode on a Grecian Urn,” ”Ode on
Melancholy,” ”To Autumn,” ”Bright Star”
Th, Oct. 15. John Clare “A Vision,” “‘I Am,’” “An Invite to Eternity,” “The Shepherd Boy,”
“Sonnet: ‘I Am,’” “Stanzas [‘The passing of a dream’]”, “Badger” “The Mouse's Nest”
T. Oct. 20. Close Reading Essay Due
Alfred Tennyson, “Ulysses,” “Morte d’Arthur,” from “In Memoriam A.H.H.”: 2, 3, 5, 7,
27, 54, 55, 56, 95, 96, 116”
Th. Oct. 22. Elizabeth Browning, from Sonnets from the Portuguese; Robert Browning
“My Last Duchess,” “The Bishop orders His Tomb…”
T. Oct. 27. Christina Rossetti, “Goblin’s Market”; Matthew Arnold “Dover Beach,”
Gerard Manley Hopkins “God’s Grandeur,” “The Windhover,” “Pied Beauty,” “No worst,
there is none...“
Th. Oct. 29. Thomas Hardy “Her Dilemma,” “At an Inn,” “Drummer Hodge,” “The
Darkling Thrush,” “The Self-Unseeing;” “Hap,” “Your Last Drive,” “Nobody Comes,” “The
Convergence of the Twain”
T. Nov 3. Charles Baudelaire, “To the Reader,” “To a Woman Passer-By,” Emily
Dickinson, “I reason earth is short,” "Tell all the truth", “A narrow Fellow in the Grass,”
“To make a prairie,” "Success is counted sweetest", “Wild Nights-Wild Nights!,” “I'm
Nobody! Who are you?” "Bee! I'm expecting you!"
Th. Nov 5. Dickinson, “I heard a fly buzz,” “There’s a certain slant of light”, “Of bronze
and blaze”, A bird came down the walk,” “Because I could not stop for death”, "After
great pain, a formal feeling comes", "The difference between despair and fear”,
T. Nov 10. Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself:” 1, 2, 6, 51, 52; “O Pioneers!” (levi's ad
version), "To a Stranger", Classic photo of Whitman & Butterfly; Frost, "Dust of Snow"
"The Oven Bird"; “Mending Wall”, Amy Lowell, "A Lover"
Th. Nov 12. T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” William Butler Yeats, “Leda
and the Swan”, “Who goes with Fergus?,” “Dialogue of Self and Soul”, W.H. Auden,
"Musee des Beaux Arts", "As I walked out one evening", (clip from Before Sunrise)
T. Nov 17. Yeats, “The Second Coming,” “Sailing to Byzantium,” Edgar Allan Poe, “The
Raven”; William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” (image) (video), “Spring and
All”, "Poem", "Portrait of a Lady" (Fragonard's painting, "The Swing"), "This is just to
say", "Danse Russe", Ezra Pound, "Alba", "In a station of the metro"
Th. Nov. 19. Wallace Stevens “Anecdote of the Jar,” “The Snowman,” "The Plain Sense
of Things", "the Emperor of Ice-Cream", "Not Ideas about the Thing but the Thing itself",
from Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction: “It must change”, sections VI, VIII & X , "Tea at
the Palaz of Hoon"
T. Nov 24. Edna St. Vincent Millay, “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,”
“Spring”, “"First Fig", "If I should learn in some quite casual way"; Elizabeth Bishop “The
Fish”, “The Moose,” "At the Fishhouses"
Th. Nov. 26. A.R. Ammons, “Corsons Inlet” “Expressions of Sea Level,” “Small Song,”
“Weathering”; Denise Levertov, “In California”; Shirley Kaufman, “Jacaranda”; Allen
Ginsberg, “Sunflower Sutra”
T. Dec. 1 Philip Larkin, “An Arundel Tomb;” “Home is So Sad,” Theodore Roethke, "Root
Cellar", “The Waking”; Frank O’Hara, “Lana Turner has collapsed”; Mark Strand,
"Reading in Place", "Keeping Things Whole", "Eating Poetry", "The Idea"
Th. Dec. 3. Wrap-up
Th. Dec. 10. Take Home Essay Due