English 401, Section 001

Modern British Poetry

Lectures MWF 9:30-10:20 in BuD324

This course examines the work of a selection of poets working in Britain between 1900 and 1950, including W. B. Yeats, Charlotte Mew, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and a selection of women poets of the 1930s. Ezra Pound declared that it was the modern poet's imperative to "make it new." We will chart the ways in which the major poets of the first half of the twentieth century responded to such demands for innovation, demands which arose largely in reaction to a pervasive sense of historical and cultural crisis in Western Europe; things, as Yeats put it, were falling apart, and poetry, as an increasingly marginalized and socially alienated form, could respond either by negotiating with anarchy or by shoring up the ruins of tradition. The rise of technocracy and mass culture, the modernization of everyday life, led to radical revisions of the frameworks of nation, class and gender. Poetry, though it "makes nothing happen," became the crucial testing grounds for renovations of self, language and culture.

  Primary Texts:

Course Requirements:

Short Essay, 1500-2000 words, Due October 20 (30%)
This essay topic description can be found here.
Major Paper, 3000-3500 words, Due November 27 (40%)
This essay topic description can be found here.
Examination (30%)

Please note: All essays and assignments are due in class on the assigned dates. In the interest of fairness to all members of the class, late penalties will be deducted from work handed in after the due date at a rate of 5% per weekday late, to a maximum of 50%. Extensions must be arranged in advance, with a valid excuse.

Essays should conform to the guidelines for presentation and documentation in the current MLA Handbook.

Click here for a short discussion of accentual-syllabic scansion.

Seminar Schedule

Please note that most material on the schedule will be linked to other relevant sites. (Not all of these sites are reliable, either: be critical of the material you find there.) See also my own "links" page for other connections.

Sept. 6-8 I will be away. Please come to the first class. Friday's class is cancelled.
Sept. 11-15 Yeats
Please read: "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (30), "The Sorrow of Love" (30), "The Two Trees" (34), "The Stolen Child" (27).
I have also referred in class to Yeats's essays, "William Blake and the Imagination" (353) and "Ireland and the Arts" (364).
Click here for a segment from Yeats's Autobiographies describing "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (including a photo of the actual island).
Click here to access an on-line version of the Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats.
Click here for an essay on Walter Pater's aestheticism, including commentary on his "Mona Lisa."
Here is a reproduction of the painting, along with the text re-arranged by Yeats at the beginning of the Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936).
Here is a page from which you can connect to many examples of and criticism of Pater's work.
Click here for a brief introduction, by Yeats, to The Celtic Twilight, a collection of folklore and tales first published in 1893.
Click here for a Loreena McKennitt version of "The Two Trees." Click here for her version of "The Stolen Child."
Click here to connect to the William Blake Archive.
You may also want to click here to connect to the "William Blake Page."
Sept. 18-22 Yeats
Please read: "September 1913" (48), "The Magi" (52), "A Coat" (53), "The Wild Swans at Coole" (54), "On Being Asked for a War Poem" (61), "Easter 1916" (64), "The Second Coming" (68),"Sailing to Byzantium" (72), "Leda and the Swan" (89)
Click here to go to "Critically Yeats," a source site for information on Yeats's work.
Click here for information on Charles Stewart Parnell and Ireland.
Click here for a student essay on James Joyce, Charles Parnell and Ireland.
Click here for a note on Yeats, Wilfred Owen and War Poetry.
Click here for an article "defending" phenomenology as a critical/philosophical practice.
Click here for an entry on Edmund Husserl from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, defining phenomenology.
Click here for "The Experience of Poetry," an article, by Kevin Hart, on poetry and phenomenology.
Click here to go to a site with a "huge list" of links related to phenomenology.
Click here for a bibliography of work by Paul de Man, including material on Yeats.
Click here for a review essay on Running to Paradise: Yeats's Poetic Art by M.L. Rosenthal.
Click here for a bibliography of journal articles on Yeats (to 1997).
Click here for information on Lady Augusta Gregory.
Click here for text excerpted from the work of Lady Gregory, Yeats and others on Druidism and Celtic mysticism.
"Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses."
--W. B. Yeats, Collected Letters
Sept. 25-29 Yeats
Please read: "Among School Children" (91), "Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931" (100), "Vacillation" (104), "Under Ben Bulben" (124), "The Circus Animals Desertion" (133).
Click here for a student essay on Yeats, W. H. Auden and Wallace Stevens.
Click here for a precis of "Among School Children"
Click here for a precis of "Sailing to Byzantium"
Click here for a review of Yeats's Political Identities: Selected Essays edited by Jonathan Allison, which contains material on Yeats and fascism.
Probably the best book (still) on Yeats and fascism is by Elizabeth Butler Cullingford: Yeats, Ireland, and Fascism (New York University Press, 1981).
Click here for a good "Student Resources" page on Yeats (for a class at another university), which contains a good basic bibliography of Yeats criticism.
The text by Maurice Blanchot that I quoted in class was from Writing the Disaster (trans. Ann Smock, 1995). This book deals in theories of rhythm and crisis, and I will come back to it, briefly, in the remaining lectures on Yeats.
Click here for a page, in French, on Maurice Blanchot.
Oct. 2-6 Eliot
Please read: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (13), "Preludes" (23), "Hysteria" (34), "Gerontion" (39)
Click here for critical resources on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
Click here for critical resources on "Gerontion."
Click here to read "Tradition and the Individual Talent," the complete essay on-line.
Oct. 9 THANKSGIVING: NO CLASS
Oct. 11-13 Eliot
Please read: The Waste Land (61), The Hollow Men (87)
Click here for another on-line version of The Waste Land, with additional footnotes and translations of foreign-language text in the poem.
Click here for a hypertext edition of The Waste Land.
Click here or here for critical resources on The Waste Land.
Click here to connect to "Exploring The Waste Land."
Click here for a web page focusing on mythical and textual sources for The Waste Land, in connection with the music of Richard Wagner.
Click here for "Pound in The Waste Land Eliot in The Cantos," a set of notes on Eliot and Pound by Peter Dale Scott.
Click here for "T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land," a page of links and resources.
Click here for critical resources on The Hollow Men.
Click here to connect to "T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men: a Hypertextual Study of Allusion," an honours thesis by a student at Oberlin College.
Click here for "Pun and Games: A New Approach to Five Early Poems by T. S. Eliot," an article from The Yeats Eliot Review by Patricia Sloane.
Oct. 16-20 Eliot
Please read: Burnt Norton (189), Little Gidding (214)
Click here for a set of excerpts from well-known critical essays on Burnt Norton.
Click here for a website called "Little Gidding," which has information on the location for which Eliot's poem is named, and has links to work on religion and literature.
Click here for information on the Parish of Little Gidding.
Click here for "Time, Eternity, and Immortality in T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets," an essay by Terry L. Fairchild containing some basic explication of the poems.
Click here for a photograph of the manor house at Burnt Norton.
Oct. 23-27 Mew
Please read all of her poems, focusing especially on the following: "The Farmer's Bride" (1), "Fame" (3), "The Changeling" (14), "Ken" (16), "A Quoi Bon Dire" (19), "Madeleine in Church" (25), "Saturday Market" (37), "Sea Love" (39), "The Call" (55).
Please also read Mew's short story "Elinor" (70-89).
Have a look at the Introduction to the anthology of Mew by Val Warner.
A biography, and samples of Mew's work.
Poems by and links on Mew.
An Extensive Mew Bibliography.
Poems by Mew at "The Poets' Corner."
The text of "THE SHADE-CATCHERS," along with a short bio of Mew.
The topic description for the major paper can be found here.
Oct. 30-Nov. 3 Auden
Please read: "Musée des Beaux Arts" (179), "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" (247), "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" (273), "The Shield of Achilles" (596), "The Cave of Making" (691)
Nov. 6-10 Auden
Click here to connect to the Auden page of the Academy of American Poets (with interesting links, including some sound files of Auden reading).
Nov. 13 REMEMBRANCE DAY HOLIDAY: NO CLASS
Nov. 15-17 Auden
Click here for "Modernizing the Elegy: A Look at Auden's Memorial Poem to Yeats" by Mark Telloyan, a graduate student.
Click here for "The Permanent Auden," an essay by Roger Kimball published in The New Criterion.
Nov. 20-24 Auden and Dowson (selections)
For Monday, November 20, please read Auden's "The Shield of Achilles" and the poems by Naomi Mitchison in the Dowson anthology.
For Wednesday, November 22, please read Auden's "In Praise of Limestone" (540) and the poems by Vita Sackville-West in the Dowson anthology.
For Friday, November 24, please read Auden's "The Cave Of Making" (691) and the poems by Stevie Smith in the Dowson anthology.
Nov. 27-Dec. 1 Thomas
For Monday, November 27, please read Auden's "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" (273) and the poems by Edith Sitwell in the Dowson anthology. I will also have a handout of excerpts from Facade by Sitwell and William Walton.
Click here to connect to "Alcaics In Exile: W. H. Auden's 'In Memory Of Sigmund Freud'" by Rosanna Warren.
Click here for a page on Edith Sitwell.
Click here for the complete texts, with descriptions of William Walton's music, to Facade. (The margins and indentations of Sitwell's originals have been altered, because of the inadequacies of html.) Please read, in particular, "Fox Trot."
Click here for texts from Facade. (The margins and indentations of Sitwell's originals have been altered, because of the inadequacies of html.) The text labelled "III. Old Sir Faulk. Allegro" is actually "Fox Trot."
Please read, by Thomas, "The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower," "The Hand that Signed the Paper," "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London," "Fern Hill," "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night."
 
Major essay due in class on Monday, November 27.