| ENGLISH564 | form of poetry
SUSAN TICHY / FALL 2002
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| 564 Main
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Week 7: Oct 8: Romanticism II: the post-romantic speaker, what's in it for us? WHAT WE’LL COVER Discussion this week will be divided into four segments, each segment looking at a major post-Romantic poet of the 19th century : Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Walt Whitman & Emily Dickinson. Our focus will be on the fashioning of poetic speaker, and on how each of these poets can be seen to stand... well, if not at the head of a river at least at a fork in the road leading to modern varieties of poetic speaker. POEMS IN NORTON Required:
ROBERT BROWNING: My Last Duchess 911, The Bishop Orders His Tomb 915, Memorabilia 933, Andrea del Sarto 934, Two in the Campagna 939 WHITMAN: When I heard the learn'd Astronomer 969, Vigil Strange 970, By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame 971, Cavalry Crossing a Ford 972, Out of Cradle Endlessly Rocing 973, When lilacs last in the dooryard Bloom'd 978, A Noiseless Patient Spider 984, To a Locomotive in Winter 85 DICKINSON: Poems # 49, 67, 2 versions of 216, 241, 249, 254, 258, 280, 287, 303, 341, 435, 465, 505, 536, 569, 613, 709, 712, 754, 986, 1129, 1463, 1540 Recommended:
PROSE READING: BOOKS & COPIES Raffel: From Stress to Stress, chapter 17 (9 pp.) Whitman: "I celebrate myself" (1855 edition of Leaves of Grass)
I want you to read both versions of the poem we know as "Song of Myself" because I believe part of the muddy water surrounding Whitman's practice comes from the fact that it was not consistent -- his goals, his idea of himself as poet, and, hence, his poetic voice, all changed radically in the nearly forty years he worked on Leaves of Grass. Both versions appear in the Library of America edition, Walt Whitman: Complete Poetry and Collected Prose, which I've put on the Reserve desk. You can also find the later version on line, but I have not been able to find the 1855.C. Carroll Hollis: "Speech Acts in Leaves of Grass: Illocutionary Force in the Early Editions." Language and Style in Leaves of Grass. LSU Press, 1983. 65-88. Purchase from course materials at the book store. READING ON LINE Instructor's annotations, notes, & links Electronic Course Reserves: Herbert Tucker: "Dramatic Monologue and the Overhearing of Lyric." Lyric Poetry: Beyond New Criticism, ed. Chaviva Hosek & Patricia Parker. Cornell UP, 1985. Whitman: Manuscript
pages of "Song of Myself"
ENTRIES IN PRINCETON Vocabulary: catalog, anaphor, cursus, parallelism, diaphoric & epiphoric
metaphor, compression, ellipsis, fascicle, prose rhythm
WHAT WE’LL DO IN CLASS 1) Discuss Elizabeth Barrett Browning's feminist subject position, combining personal and public voice 2) Discuss Robert Browning's dramatic monologues & their impact on 20th c. dramatic lyric 3) Discuss Whitman's oratorical and lyrical impulses & the making of a modern vatic speaker 4) Discuss Dickinson's combination of dramatic speaker & vertical form
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