The Art of Poetry

It is usually assumed that poetry, as a genre, presents the most intensely charged form of literary language. Extending this premise, the Art of Poetry offers an introduction to advanced literary study through a directed series of close readings. To give students a critical vocabulary for analysis, an instinct for discovering and evaluating literary problems, and a sense of different historical periods of poetic production, we study the formal and conventional aspects of verse, taking the major elements of poetic craft-the line, the stanza, rhythm and meter, metaphor and simile, symbolism, etc.-as our main categories of analysis. In doing so, we establish a basis of intellectual understanding for the special, often powerful effect that poems can produce in us. Whether or not the student becomes an English Major, however, the course is designed to provide the reader (or writer) of poetry with an experience and a set of skills that will inform and foster this enthusiasm. This 300-level course can count as an upper-level elective for the English major.
Course Attributes: EN H; BU Hum; AS HUM; FA HUM; AR HUM

The Art of Poetry

ENGLISH LITERATURE 357

Section 01