electiveHQ

This Level 1 seminar-style course aims to introduce beginning students to the mechanics of reading poetry. It is unashamedly rooted in close reading, and each session will be focused on two or three key poems. In each class, we will develop a full, detailed, analysis of the chosen texts, attending to how a wide variety of formal elements generate their multi-layered meanings. By the end of the module, the aim is that you will bring all the elements of analysis together with confidence as you develop ways of writing intelligently about poems. Students will be expected to read more widely around a given genre, type or form - for example, in order to start to understand the power of allusion, and the various levels at which this might work. You will be encouraged to consider historical and material contexts as key determinants of meaning. The module will aim to teach across a broad historical range, and will focus both on canonical and less well-known poems, as well as asking questions about canon formation, aesthetics, and so on.