ENGL 6415

Victorian Poetry and Poetics

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2017-2018.

Both a general introduction to poetic theory and a close study of Victorian poetry in its immense variety. We'll draw on Culler's Theory of the Lyric and other texts not only to interpret poems but also to consider their conditions of possibility of meaning. Topics will include: the relationship of lyric to dramatic, or performative, speakers; the absorption of aesthetics into poetics through the trope of "art"; shifting conceptions of poetic genius, gender, and personality; theories of the grotesque; and experiments in poetic narrative. We'll bring these topics to bear on a shared experience of poetry itself—rhythm and movement, sound patterns, lines vs syntax, and the interplay of stylistic levels. Poets will include Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Christina Rossetti, Swinburne, and Hardy.

When Offered Spring.

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