WHAT WE’LL COVER

Discourse theory, poetry as discourse
Vertical vs. horizontal axes in language and in poetic form
Iambic pentameter as a form strengthening the horizontal axis
Devices of vertical form (parataxis & devices that foreground the signifier)

Review differences between 4-beat verse & pentameter
Take a brief excursion into the ballad as a literary category & ballad as a living form

POEMS IN NORTON

Ballads: Edward 84, The Three Ravens 86, Sir Patrick Spens 87, Mary Hamilton both versions, 91 & 94

PROSE READING: PHOTOCOPIED BOOK: 

Antony Easthope: Poetry as Discourse, Chapters1-7

READING ON LINE

Annotation to Easthope & more on the ballad, + links to more (strictly optional) reading on the ballad. Also a 20th century preview of Lorine Niedecker as a literary poet working the ballad tradition.

VOCABULARY/ENTRIES IN PRINCETON 

Parataxis & hypotaxis, syntaxis, devices of parataxis such as refrain, repetend, anaphora, epiphor
Devices that foreground the signifier: sound, rhyme, pun, rhythm, alliteration, etc.
Terms relating to the shaping of syntax: parallelism, antithesis, syllepsis, ellipsis, etc.
Ballad, ballad meter, fourteener

+ terms specified in Easthope and in my annotations to Easthope

Read these Princeton entries in this order:
*Poetics
*Russian Formalism
*Linguistics & Poetics
OPTIONAL: *Marxist Criticism, *2Oth c. Poetics 

WHAT WE’LL DO IN CLASS

1) Review concepts in Easthope, w/ emphasis on the descriptive models made available by these modes of analysis: the materiality of the word (precedence of the signifier), the historically specific ideology of a poem or a poetic form at its creation, and the historically specific subjectivity produced when a poem is read.

2) Contrast the discourse of 4x4 & pentameter, by discussing (& possibly listening to) ballads and other 4x4 poems vs. blank verse and the heroic couplet. Please print out and bring to class the text & notes for "Babylon" on the Ballads page.

(We'll discuss Modern and Postmodern techniques to foreground the signifier and disrupt the unified voice later in the semester.)