Winter 2014–2015
T, Th 2:15–3:45; Room 200-303
Professor Denise Gigante office: 460-329; phone 725–7080) dgigante@stanford.edu
This class features some of the great poems of the English language. We will study a range of formal techniques and styles in the broader context of literary tradition. Read the poems slowly. If you can, read them more than once. Above all, enjoy!
Required texts:
The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5 th ed. (all page numbers refer to this edition)
(2) John Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason
Week 1
1/6 Introduction
Wallace Stevens, “The Emperor of Ice Cream” (1256–57)
1/8 Anglo-Saxon Verse
Caedmon’s Hymn (1); Beowulf (2-9); The Seafarer, tr. Ezra Pound (12-15)
Jon Stallworthy, Versification: Rhythm, Meter (2027-2036)
Week 2
1/13
Sonnets: Renaissance
Thomas Wyatt: The Long Love; Whoso List to Hunt; My Galley (126–127)
Edmund Spenser, Amoretti # 1, 15, 23, 54, 67, 71, 75, 79, 81, 89 (190–95)
Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella # 1, 21, 31, 39, 47, 48, 63, 71, 72, 90 (213–220)
William Shakespeare, Sonnets # 2, 3, 12, 15, 18, 29, 30, 35, 55, 65, 71, 73, 76, 87,
97, 107, 116, 129, 130, 138, 144, 146 (257–269)
John Milton, When I Consider How My Light is Spent; On the Late Massacre in
Piedmont; Methought I Saw (418–420)
1/15 Sonnets Romantic
William Wordsworth: It is a Beauteous Evening; London, 1802; Composed
Upon Westminster Bridge; Nuns Fret Not (794–796)
Percy Shelley, To Wordsworth (863); Ozymandias (870); England in 1819 (871)
John Keats: Chapman’s Homer; On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once
Again; When I have Fears (905–906); Bright Star (940
Jon Stallworthy, Rhyme, Forms (2036-2045)
Week 3

1/20
1/22
1/27
1/29
2/3
2/5
2
Metaphysical Poetry
John Donne: Holy Sonnets # 1, 5, 7, 10, 14 (318–321)
The Good Morrow; The Sun Rising; The Canonization; The Anniversary; A
Valediction of Weeping; A Valediction Forbidding Mourning; The Ecstasy; The
Funeral; The Flee; The Relic; Elegy XIX (293–313)
George Herbert, The Temple: The Altar, Easter Wings; Sin; The Pulley; The
Forerunners; Discipline; Love (367–369)
Henry Vaughn, The Retreat (490-491)
Cavalier Poetry
Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (256)
Ben Jonson, To Celia (331); Sweetest Love I do not Go (298); On My First
Daughter; On My First Son; Inviting a Friend to Supper; To Penshurst; To the
Memory of…Shakespeare (298-342)
Robert Herrick: The Argument of his Book; The Vine; The Sour Reader;
Corinna’s Going a-Maying; To the Virgins; Upon Julia’s Breasts; Upon a Child that Died; His Prayer to Ben Jonson; The Night-Piece to Julia (354–359)
Edmund Waller, Go, lovely Rose (393)
John Suckling, Why So Pale and Wan (452)
Richard Lovelace, To Althea; To Lucasta; To Amarantha (472–474)
Andrew Marvell, To his Coy Mistress (478); Mower poems and The Garden (482-86)
Margaret Ferguson, Poetic Syntax, Moves in the Game (2053-2065)
Week 4
Illuminated Songs
William Blake, from Songs of Innocence and Experience (733–44)
An Almost Midterm
Open-book on Sonnets and Metaphysical/Cavalier Poetry
Week 5
Augustan Verse: Didactic
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism; An Essay on Man (596–626)
Samuel Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes (656–664)
Jonathan Swift, Stella’s Birthday
Augustan Verse: Satiric
Swift: A Description of the Morning; A Description of a City Shower; The
Lady’s Dressing Room; A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed; Verses on the
Death of Dr. Swift (568-577)
John Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason, 1-16

2/10
2/12
2/17
2/19
2/24
2/26
3
Week 6
Odes: Horatian and Pindaric
John Milton, On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity (394–401)
Ann Finch, Countess of Winchelsea, The Spleen (558–562)
Thomas Gray: Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College; Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat (666–668)
William Collins: Ode on the Poetical Character (673–675)
Odes: Romantic
S.T. Coleridge, Dejection (828–831)
William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality (796-800)
John Keats, Ode to Psyche; Ode on Melancholy; Ode on a Grecian Urn; To
Autumn (933-939)
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ode on the West Wind (872–874)
Hollander, Rhyme’s Reason, 33-36
Week 7
Birds & Lyric I
Percy Bysshe Shelley, To a Skylark (876)
Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven (977)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Eagle (1004)
Walt Whitman, The Dalliance of the Eagles (1078)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Woodspurge
Emily Dickinson, ‘Hope’ (1114); A Bird came down the walk (116); Split the Lark (1124)
Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush (1155)
Birds & Lyric II
John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale (935–937)
Gerard Manley Hopkins; The Windhover
W.B. Yeats, Leda and the Swan (1200)
Robert Frost, The Oven Bird (1233)
Edward Thomas, The Owl (1254)
Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (1260)
Margaret Ferguson, The Game of Interpretation (2069-73)
Week 8
Conversation Poetry: Romantic
Wordsworth, Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey (765–768); The
Prelude, Book I (781–789)
Coleridge, Aeolian Harp; This Lime-Tree Bower; Frost at Midnight (805-812)
Conversation Poetry: Victorian and Modern

4
3/3
3/5
3/10
3/12
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach (1101)
W.H. Auden, In Praise of Limestone (1477–1479)
Wallace Stevens, Idea of Order at Key West (1264–1265)
Week 9
Dramatic Monologue: Victorian
Tennyson, Lotos Eaters (988-991); Ulysses (992-993); Tithonous, 1006-1007
Robert Browning: Porphyria's Lover 1009; My Last Duchess, 1012; Bishop
Orders his Tomb, 1014-16; Fra Lippo Lippi, 1026; Andrea del Sarto, 1034
Dramatic Monologue: Modern
T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1340)
Sylvia Plath: Daddy (1840–1842), Lady Lazarus (1843–1845)
Robert Lowell, Mr. Edwards and the Spider (1596–1597)
Week 10
Elegy: 17 th –19 th Century
John Milton, Lycidas (410–415)
Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard; Sonnet on the Death of
Richard West (669–673)
Shelley, Adonais (879-91)
Matthew Arnold, Thrysis (1095–1101)
Tennyson, In Memoriam (996-1004)
Elegy: 20th Century
W.B. Yeats, Under Ben bulben (1208–1210)
Auden, In Memory of W. B. Yeats (1472-73); September 1, 1939 (1747)
John Berryman, Elegy for W[illiam].C[arlos].W[illiams], The Lovely Man (1551)
T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men; Journey of the Magi (1356–1360)
Frank O’Hara; The Day Lady Died
Course Requirements:
1.
Participation in lecture and section. No unexcused absences! (25%)
2.
In class, open-book Midterm (30%)
3.
Final Exam, to be scheduled (by registrar) during finals week. (45%)