FOUNDATIONS OF ENGLISH POETRY, WEEKS 2-5

PROSE READING: BOOKS:

Attridge: Chapter 6 & Appendix 1
Fussell: Part One: Meter
Finch & Varnes: Iambic Meter, Blank Verse, Trochaic Meter
If you have Raffel, read chapters 10-12

READING ON LINE:  On this page you will find:

1) My annotations for: Fussell, Raffel, Gross & McDowell
2) Everything under the heading “Scansion”, including links to poems discussed on the page called “Scansions"

Vocabulary: meter, rhythm, accentual (strong-stress) meter, syllabic meter, syllable-stress meter, Chaucerian compromise; scansion, caesura, (initial, medial, terminal caesura); foot, iambic/iamb, trochaic/trochee, anapestic/anapest, dactylic/dactyl, phyrric/phyrrus, spondaic/spondee, headless iamb, reversed foot, double iamb; elision (or syncope); enjambed (or run-on) line, end-stopped line, catalexis, stichic form, distich.

Princeton: * Renaissance Poetry (here and hereafter, be careful to distinguish between the words "poetics" and "poetry" in the Princeton headings)

* English Poetry III A: Renaissance (p.338), III C: The Seventeenth Century (p343), III D: The Augustans (p345).

POEMS:
This short selection emphasizes early poems + a few later poems on which we can practice scansion. We will deal with the complex historical evolution of iambic meter in subsequent weeks. Feel free to range ahead, by using the poem lists.

WYATT: They flee from me 115 (R), They flee from me (bowdlerized by Tottel) 115, Who so list to hunt (R)

RALEGH: Nymph’s reply to the shepherd (R) 140 (read Marlowe first)

SIDNEY: fr Astrophil & Stella: Sonnet 1: Loving in truth 192

MARLOWE: Passionate shepherd to his love (R) 233

SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets 20, 30, 73, 116, 129, start p. 236

JONSON: On my first daughter 291, On my first son (R) 291, Epitaph on Elizabeth LH (R) 296

DONNE: Go and catch a falling star 264, The sun rising 265 , The canonization

HERRICK: Delight in disorder (R) 318

WORDSWORTH: She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways 721, A Slumber Did My Spirit Steal 722

FROST: The Road Not Taken 1127, Stopping by Woods 1131, Birches 1128, After Apple Picking MAP 88