ENGLISH 472
Course schedule MWF 2-3
Location: Buch B228
2003-04 (Term 1)
Instructor: Mary Chapman
marychap@interchange.ubc.ca
604 822 5120
BuTo 510
Office hours: Fridays 3-5 or by appointment
Required Text:
Norton Anthology of Modern American Poetry, ed. Ellmann.
2nd ed.
Packet available from me
Assignments:
Participation (on basis of attendance, contribution to class
discussion, generosity with research sources, etc.)
With 4 other students you will prepare a 20-minute
presentation and a one-page single-spaced handout on your
topic (meet with me as group to map out presentation and get
bibliographic ideas)
300-word Proposal/ annotated bibliography (4 entries) for
final paper Friday Nov. 14
Essay draft exchange Friday Nov. 21
12-page typed research essay plus Works Cited
Monday Nov. 24
Final exam TBA
10%
10%
15%
5%
30%
30%
Participation: Attendance and Participation in Lectures and Discussion Groups are mandatory. Absences
will be noted and excessive absences (i.e., more than two or three) will result in penalty to the final grade. In
extreme cases, students may be excluded from the final examination.
Disability Services: The University accommodates students with disabilities who have registered with the
Disability Resource Centre.
Absences: The University accommodates students whose religious obligations conflict with attendance,
submitting assignments, or completing scheduled tests and examinations. A list of religious holidays
involving fasting, abstention from work or study, or participation in all-day or fixed-time activities is
available at http://students.ubc.ca/publications/multifaith/. Please let your instructor know in advance,
preferably in the first week of class, if you will require any accommodation on these grounds. Students who
plan to be absent for varsity athletics, family obligations, or other similar commitments, cannot assume they
will be accommodated, and should discuss their commitments with the instructor before the drop date.
Assignment Submission: Students absent for an in-class assignment because of illness can make
arrangements with their TA to write the assignment at an alternate time. Late papers will be penalized 2% per
day unless professor or discussion group leader has given prior permission. Students should retain a copy of
all submitted assignments (in case of loss) and should also retain all their marked assignments in case they
wish to apply for a Review of Assigned Standing. Students have the right to view their marked examinations
with their instructor, providing they apply to do so within a month of receiving their final grades. This
review is for pedagogic purposes. The examination remains the property of the university.
Academic Dishonesty: Please review the UBC Calendar “Academic regulations” for the university policy on
cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of academic dishonesty. Also visit www.arts.ubc.ca and go to the
students’ section for useful information on avoiding plagiarism and on correct documentation.
Note: A paper that does not give complete and accurate credit for directly quoted material or for ideas and
arguments that the student has summarized or paraphrased from another source must receive a grade of zero.
A paper edited or revised by a so-called “tutoring service” must also receive a failing grade of zero for it does
not constitute a student’s own work or best efforts.
Where Can I read about UBC’s plagiarism policy?
UBC Faculty of Arts: http://www.arts.ubc.ca/FOA/students/plagiarism.htm
Criteria for Evaluating Internet Resources: http://www.library.ubc.ca/home/evaluating/
Policy #69 Student Discipline: http://www.policy.ubc.ca/policy69.htm
English Department Grading Standards
An “A” paper: [an outstanding paper] (80-100%)
This paper must be fully focused on the topic and consistently strong in structure, content, expression,
mechanics, and presentation. If the paper is based on a text or if it draws material from other primary or
secondary sources, it must include full documentation in the MLA style. An “A” paper should contain an
original and credible argument in response to the topic. Any significant errors of expression that detract from
the paper’s effectiveness would mean that the paper could not earn an “A” level mark.
A “B” paper: [a competent paper] (68-79%)
This paper must be well-focused on the topic; its thesis must be well-supported by convincing evidence and
explanations. The structure of a “B” paper must be strong and clear; its thesis must be specific and significant.
If this paper contains errors of expression, they must be occasional rather than chronic, and they must not
obscure meaning. A “B” paper based on research must be accurately documented in the MLA style. The
principal difference between an “A” paper and a “B” paper is in the quality and level of the argument. A “B”
paper is less adventurous than an “A”; it may tend to rely more heavily on materials and arguments raised in
lectures and discussions than an “A” paper would.
A “C-D” paper: [an adequate paper] (50-67%)
A paper at this level is generally clear in its expression, but it is weaker in content and/or structure than a “B”
paper. Its thesis may be vague (but still on topic); its transitions may be inconsistent; its evidence may be
occasionally unconvincing or incomplete. Language errors in this category will be more frequent than those at
the “A” or the “B” level, but they will not be so serious or so chronic that they make a paper difficult or
impossible to understand.
An “F” paper: [an inadequate paper] (0-49%)
A paper at this level will suffer from one or more of the following serious flaws: it may be off topic; it may
lack a thesis; it may lack clear and adequate development and paragraphing; it may be deficient in the
presentation of evidence; it may contain serious and repeated errors in sentence structure, diction, and
grammar—errors that obscure meaning.
SYLLABUS
Wednesday Sept 3
Introduction to Modernism and American poetic modernism; discussion of syllabus,
course materials, assignments, etc.
Friday Sept 5
The vocabulary of poetry: meter, form, diction, imagery, figures
What sorts of aesthetics inform our appreciation of (modern) poetry?
READ: Stanley Fish, “How to Recognize a poem when you see one” (packet)
Monday Sept 8
“Making It New”: I will sample pre-modern poems, genteel poems,
“Virginal”, Frost, Miller on an overhead
READ: Harrington, “Poetry and the Reading Public” (packet)
Wed Sept 10
Starting points for modernism
READ: Green on The Armory Show (packet)
and URL on Armory Show
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MUSEUM/Armory/entrance.html
Friday Sept 12
Presentation on Armory Show
READ: Nochlin on the Paterson Strike;
Chapman, "Suffrage Parade" (packet)
Monday Sept 15
Little Magazines
READ: Morrison, “Introduction” (packet) AND
http://www.davidson.edu/academic/english/Modernism/
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/ent/A0859314.html
http://digital.lib.msu.edu/exhibits/themasses/
http://as3.lib.byu.edu/~english/WWI/anthologies/manifesto.html
Presentations on Blast, The Masses, The Little Review, Poetry or Contact
Wed Sept 17
Imagism
READ: Pound, “In A Station of the Metro”, “The River Merchant’s
Wife”, “Pact”, “Cantos 1 and 81” (in Nelson); “A Few Don’ts” (in packet)
Fri Sept 19
“
Presentations on Blast, The Masses, The Little Review, Poetry or Contact
Monday Sept 22
Amy Lowell and Orientalism
READ: Lowell, “Patterns”, “A Japanese Wood Carving”, “Free Fantasia”
Vachel Lindsay, “The Congo” AND
http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/orient/intro.htm
Presentation on Orientalism
Class will be in Nitobe Gardens (Marine Dr. and West Mall) unless it rains.
Wed. Sept. 24
T. S. Eliot
READ The Wasteland
Friday Sept 26
The Wasteland
READ: “Hamlet and His Problems” (Packet)
Note: please make an effort to attend Yurisanke Tea ceremony at Nitobe Gardens
on Sunday September 27 (every 50 minutes starting 1pm) (reserve 224-1560) $5
Monday Sept. 29
The Wasteland continued
Presentation on New Criticism
Wednesday Oct. 1
READ “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” and
“Tradition and the Individual Talent”; “The Music of Poetry” (packet)
Friday Oct. 3
H.D.
READ “Sea Rose”, “Garden”, “Oread”, “Helen”
Monday Oct. 6
Borderline screening (location TBA) Film is 70 minutes. Please be on
time.
Wednesday Oct. 8
Presentation: Modernism and Cinema
Friday Oct. 10
Williams
READ: “Spring and All”, “this is just to say”, “The Red
Wheelbarrow”, “a New Measure” and “on Measure” (packet)
Wednesday Oct. 15 Web research workshop (Koerner 217)
Friday Oct. 17
Objectivist poetics: Zukofsky, Niedecker, Reznikoff
READ selections by these poets in your anthology
Mon. Oct 20
Presentation on modernist manifestoes (choose from T.S. Eliot,
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" Pound, Lewis, Gaudier-Brzeska, et
al., "Vorticist Manifesto"; F.T. Marinetti, "Futurist Manifesto", Mina Loy,
“Feminist Manifesto” & “Aphorisms on Futurism”; Ezra Pound, "A
Retrospect"; Gertrude Stein, “Poetry and Grammar”; Louis Zukofsky,
"Objectivism"
Wednesday Oct. 22
Wallace Stevens
READ: “Sunday Morning”, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a
Blackbird”, “Anecdote of the Jar”
Friday Oct. 24
e. e. cummings
READ: “in Just-““l(a”, “I sing of Olaf”, “the Cambridge ladies who
live in furnished souls”
Monday Oct. 27
cummings cont’d
Presentation on cummings
Wednesday Oct. 29 Revising modernism; Multiple modernisms
Van Wienen, Harrington, Nelson
Race, Gender, and Class in Modernism
Friday Oct. 31
The Harlem Renaissance
READ: Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel”, “Heritage”
Hughes, “The Weary Blues”, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”,
McKay, “America”, “the Harlem Dancer”
Monday Nov.3
presentation on Harlem Renaissance
Wednesday Nov. 5
Gender: Suffrage poets and print culture
Citationality
READ: Alice Duer Miller (packet)
Andreas Huyssen, “Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism’s Other”
Banners, slogans, signs
Friday Nov. 7
Marianne Moore
READ: “Poetry”, “The Fish”, “The Pangolin”,
“An Octopus”, “A Grave”, “Silence”
Monday Nov. 10
“The Paper Nautilus”, “An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle”
Wednesday Nov. 12 presentation on Moore/ The Dial
Friday Nov. 14
Annotated Bibliography exchange
Monday Nov. 17
Sentimental Modernism
Edna St. Vincent Millay selections
READ: “First Fig”, “I, being born woman”,
“Sonnet for Inez Milholland”
Clark, “Unwarranted Discourse” (packet)
Wednesday Nov. 19 Class
READ: Poems by Taggard, Ridge, and Anise in anthology
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/taggard/maydays.htm
Friday Nov. 21
Essay exchange (bring a completed draft of your essay and one copy of
the introduction)
Monday Nov. 24
Screening: Poetry in Motion
Revised essays due
Wednesday Nov. 26 Class continued
Presentation on class
Frost: Is Frost a Modern Poet? “Mending Wall”, “The Road Not
Taken”, “Fire and Ice”
Friday Nov. 28
Exam review (exam date TBA)
Bibliography (please email me or come talk to me in person to get bibliographic suggestions for your
presentations and research. Below are some books that have inspired my “take” on modernism which
you may find helpful:
Bennett, Paula Bernat. Poets in the Public Sphere: The Emancipatory Project of
American Women’s Poetry 1800-1900 (coda on poetry of the “new” after 1910).
Diepeveen, Leonard. Changing Voices: The Modern Quoting Poem
Nelson, Cary. Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and the Politics of
Cultural memory 1910-1945.(On class and canon)
Harrington, Joseph. Poetry and the Public: The social Form of Modern U.S. Poetics. (on
canon)
Reed Way Dasenbrock, The Literary Vorticism of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis
(1985) (on avant-garde)
Van Wienen, Mark. Partisans and Poets. (On poetry and canon-making)
Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide
Francis, Elizabeth. The Secret Treachery of Words
Glenn Hughes, Imagism and the Imagists
Paul Mariani, William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked (1981)
J. Hillis Miller, on William Carlos Williams, Daedalus 99 (1970): 405-435.
Hugh Witemeyer, The Poetry of Ezra Pound
G. Hull, Color, Sex, and Poetry: 3 Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance
Shari Benstock, Women of the Left Bank
Frederick Hoffman ed. The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography
Mark Morrison, Public Face of Modernism (On little magazines)
Clark, Suzanne. Sentimental Modernism: Women Writers and the Revolution of the Word.
Lyon, Janet. Manifestoes: Provocations of the Modern.
Websites and discussion lists:
www.uncg.edu/eng/pound/canto.htm (marked up Pound Canto)
www.english.upenn.edu:0090/~afilreis/88/home.html (on poetry in general)
www.eng.fju.edu.tw (on Williams)
listproc@lists.missouri.edu (discussion list on Eliot)
www.wel.com/user/heddy/ (on H.D.)
http://208.249.120.62/lc/lc1.cfm (libraries on the web)
http://www.poets.org/lit/exh/ex001fst.htm (Modern Revolution)
http://shoga.wwa.com/%Ergs/glossary.html (poetic terms)
http://www.georgetown.edu/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/edliot.html (on Eliot)
http://www.learner.org/collections/multimedia/literature/vvseries/vvspot/Eliot.html (on Eliot and
Frost)
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/5616/prufrock.html (on Eliot’s “Prufrock”)
http://www.deathclock.com/thunder/res/html (Eliot resources)
http://world/std/com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/explore.html (Eliot’s “The Wasteland”)
http://www.cwru/edu/artsci/engl/VSALM/mod/hallman/frameset/html (on Amy Lowell)
http://www.nhmccd.edu/contracts/lrc/kc/decade20.html (on the 1920’s)
http://www.psu.edu/dept/english/MSA/msa.htm