Poetry and Poetics

Poetry, the most ancient of the language arts, presents itself as narrative, dramatic, or lyric. As it develops in the tradition of English literature, these three fundamental Aristotelian categories sometime combine or blend, achieving new ends through hybrid means. This course provides an overview of the rich tradition of English-language poetry with an emphasis on how meaning is shaped through form. It surveys the development of verse forms in English and the formal experimentation of poets beginning in the age of Neoclassicism. The arc is historical, moving from Anglo Saxon verse - lyric and epic - through Modern poetry and its signature "free verse." Students will gain a basic knowledge of meter and scansion, of major stanzaic patterns, of the logic of line break, and of poetic devices like diction, caesura, personification, alliteration, assonance, personification, and imagery. The end result should be a greater capacity to appreciate poetry. English majors must take this course for 5 units.