FOUNDATIONS OF ENGLISH POETRY, WEEKS 2-5

PROSE READING: BOOKS & PHOTOCOPIES:

Fussell: Part Two: Stanza Form
Bookstore photocopies: Wimsatt: One Relation of Rhyme to Reason
Rhyme tables (distributed in class)

READING ON LINE : Notes on Classical Poetics, Imitation, Affective & Formalist Theories

VOCABULARY / ENTRIES IN PRINCETON

masculine/feminine rhyme, slant (or half or near) rhyme, internal rhyme, eye rhyme, broken rhyme, alliteration, consonance, assonance; antithesis; stanza, strophe; metaphor, simile, trope, conceit, personification, apostrophe, metonymy, synecdoche, analogy, irony;

*Dramatic poetry, Lyric, Narrative poetry, Satire, Genre, 
*Classicism, Figure - scheme – trope
*Classical poetics, Imitation
*Renaissance poetics, Neoclassical poetics

Optional: Metaphysical poetry, love poetry 

POEMS IN NORTON

For this week, get your reading off the “Form & Genre Lists.”

Sonnets: Read a generous selection from the sonnets listed, including several at the beginning of the tradition. Be sure to include all types: Petrarchan, Shakespearean, Spenserian, Miltonic, & curtal

Other stanza forms: Again, read widely in the forms listed below. I recommend you read several poems in each form before switching to another form, in order to get the sound and shape of each one in your ear.

Heroic couplet
Short couplet
Tercets/Triplets
Ottava Rima
Heroic (iambic pentameter) quatrain
4x4: Ballad/Common Measure/Hymnal/Quintets
Other Quatrains
Sestets
Octaves
Rime royal
Burns stanza
Stanzas with uneven line lengths
Other stanza forms

WHAT WE’LL DO IN CLASS

1) Discuss stichic & stanza forms, including heroic & short couplets, blank verse, quatrain. Come armed with poems you want to talk about.
2) Discuss sonnet types as a model for how stanza organization relates to rhetoric & thought
3) Compare function of rhyme in Pope, Byron, Blake, Donne, Dickinson, Jarrell &/or poets you want to discuss
4) Briefly review the reading on Classical Poetics & Imitation
5) Start workshop in small groups, if time allows.