Romanticism is a historical movement that still hugely colours how we tend to feel and look at the world: it's responsible for the way we approach love, nature, business and children. This is its history.

romanticism 7 2/13, 2/18

Shelley, “Ozymandias” and Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind”

romanticism 8 2/18, 2/19

Keats, “To Autumn” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

romanticism 9 2/20, 2/21

Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Bright Star”

romanticism 10 2/21, 2/24

Romantic Poetry Quest

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romanticism 1 1/27, 1/30

Introduction to Romanticism

Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”

romanticism 2 1/29, 1/30

Wordsworth, “We are Seven” and “The World is too Much with Us”

Coleridge, “The Aeolian Harp” and “Kubla Khan”

Homework: Read Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

romanticism 3 1/30, 1/31

Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Set Poetry Analysis

romanticism 4 2/4, 2/5

Section 2:

While I am out today, please be attentive to the following assignment that you can complete in the library or somewhere on campus where your presence is permitted:

Read the following poems in your poetry packet that we’ll discuss on Thursday:

Byron, “She Walks in Beauty” (page 77)

Byron, “So We’ll Go No More a Roving” (page 78)

Shelley, “Ozymandias” (page 79)

When you are finished, turn to the poetry assignment I handed out to you (I also posted a copy under What’s Due). Begin this assignment by choosing a poem to analyze and beginning to work through it. I think it’d be a good idea for you to have 200 words written by Thursday. We can put some up on the board to look at as a class.

romanticism 5 2/6, 2/7

Today we’ll work through a practice poetry explication before returning to the poetry packet. We’ll read Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty”.

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introduction to Poetry 1/9, 1/10

Welcome back, men. Let’s begin by setting new rules. Then I’ll set your only outside reading of the semester, Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, what some describe as the greatest crime novel ever written.

BOT OR NOT

Introduction to Poetry and English Renaissance Poetry

English Renaissance Poetry 1 1/10, 1/14

New rules!

Today we’ll finish and review the instruction from yesterday’s lecture before moving on to study the form of the sonnet.

Raine, “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home”

Introduction to Common Figures of Speech

We’ll look at three Sidney Sonnets from his sequence “Astrophil and Stella”.

HOMEWORK: Remember that a poem often says something differently to make us see something differently. It often makes strange everyday things in our lives that are important to us. So, by our next class, write a poem of at least 5 lines that says something differently to make me see that thing or those things differently. Make strange to me an everyday thing I take for granted. And type it, please.

English Renaissance Poetry 2 1/14, 1/15

Section 08:

Today, if I were there, I would’ve introduced rhythm and meter to you using pages 3-10 of the poetry packet. That requires great explanation, so we’ll push that to our next meeting on Friday. We’ll then apply that knowledge to three of Shakespeare’s sonnets. For now, however, while I’m out, do the following three things for me:

(1) Make sure your poem of at least 5 lines is complete. Type and print it. Bring it with you to our next class.

(2) Read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (page 25), Sonnet 73 (page 27), and Sonnet 138 (page 31). The first thing you’ll notice is that these are much more intricately designed than the Sidney Sonnets, which were a little easier to get after a first read. Come to class having paraphrased each of those three poems in one sentence each. This may take more than just one reading. Remember that while poetry is often more complex than prose because of how condensed it is, you’re still relying first on basic reading comprehension more than any knowledge of poetic or literary devices. You should be able to get close to a cursory understanding of the situation of the poem. We’ll expand more in class.

(3) Choose one of those three that you’re most comfortable with, and, in the margin, perform a more specific, line-by-line paraphrase, putting each of the 14 lines of verse into more understandable, modern language that you might use. It’s okay to make an educated guess whenever you’re stumped.

English Renaissance Poetry 3 1/16, 1/17

Donne’s Holy Sonnets: 10, 14, and 18

One way poems are different from prose is that they have a unit of measurement prose does not: the LINE. Both prose and poetry have the WORD, the SENTENCE, and the STANZA/PARAGRAPH. But poetry also has the LINE, which is not always used to convey meaning but to call attention to something else, quite often RHYTHM, which can also convey emotion. We’ll use this idea in relation to Donne’s Sonnets.

English Renaissance Poetry 4 1/17, 1/21

Section 08:

Thank you for your attentiveness to your work and your respect of the sub’s time while I am out today. Please complete the following two tasks for us to use when I return:

(1) In your packet, read Donne, “The Sun Rising” and Stephanie Burt’s Poem Guide to “The Sun Rising”, both found in your course reader. This is a very challenging poem, which is why I give you the poem guide. Notice Ms. Burt’s writing style in addition to what she has to say about the poem. It’s possible some of you have completed this already, in which case I’d ask you to go through one more time to make sure it really sunk in.

(2) Read Donne’s “The Flea”, also in your poetry packet. Here is another example of a metaphysical conceit, which Stephanie Burt helps us understand to be an extended metaphor using something simple to understand something highly abstract like the nature of God or love or the afterlife. It’s very hard, but give it a shot. We’ll begin with “The Flea” when I return. If you finish early, please work silently on other homework you may have.

English Renaissance Poetry 5 1/22, 1/23

Introduction to the metaphysical conceit

Donne, “The Flea”, “The Sun Rising”, and “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”

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Carpe Diem Poetry:

Herrick, “To the Virgins to Make Much of Time” and “Corinna’s Going a-Maying”

Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress”

Today I’ll set your first poetry analysis.

English Renaissance Poetry 6 1/23, 1/27

The Shepherd and the Nymph Dialogue: Marlowe, Raleigh, and Donne

QUEST #1: English Renaissance Poetry

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new rules

Gentlemen: I’m instituting new policies in my courses, amending last semester’s syllabus. Please pay close attention to the following four changes. Know I’ve been thinking about these for years and thinking about them in earnest over the past few months. Also know that I truly believe these rules are for your benefit as fledgling adults.

(1) No more rewrites. I know, I know. This is what allows you to succeed the most in this class. Well, it became a crutch for far too many of you, and I no longer think it demonstrates the mastery of content I assumed it would demonstrate when I implemented the policy. Rather, I see students submitting mediocre work, intending to rewrite after the fact, which puts an unbelievable burden on my time. What I thought would be an effective way for students to learn has morphed into what education has really become about: grades, grades, grades rather than learning, learning, learning.

(2) No more extra credit. See above. Also, students aren’t actually doing the reading required to earn the extra credit. You’ll still have bonuses on quizzes, but nothing major. Do the course work; that’s credit enough.

(3) No more questions during assessments. You need to learn to struggle; you need to learn to figure things out and use a little bit of common sense. Students ask too many obvious questions during assessments. My dear students, you’re unnecessarily nervous about everything because you’re not asked to struggle enough and to be okay with that struggle. I wrote you instructions on the assessment or the assignment. I was thoughtful about those instructions. That’s what you get, and it’s enough. Have a question? Figure it out. Don’t understand a word? Intuit it. Don’t know where your response should go? Use your ingenuity. You don’t need help with everything. Be a person. Be logical. My dear boy, figure it out.

(4) No more e-mails.What?! This is an outrage! Well, no actually, it’s not. My students have lost their e-mail privileges for the remainder of the year after the barrage of unaddressed, unsigned e-mails to me at the end of the semester as though I were not an adult in your life to be treated with respect. More than that, as I consistently said all semester, you need not send me an e-mail to request a meeting or to tell me you’re going to be absent or to ask me a last-minute question about an assignment or to request an extension. I said these things can and should be done in person. You are always welcome to come into my office to make up a quiz, to discuss a paper, to go over a quiz. You need not schedule. And if you are going to be out due to sickness, it’s your responsibility to find out what you missed from a classmate. It’s on you, young man, not me. It’s your responsibility. It’s for you to handle. So handle it.

You may, however, send me an e-mail only if you are going to be out for an extended absence and need written clarification on assignments. Beyond that, for any other reason, come talk to me in person. That has always been and will continue to be enough time between student and teacher.

On a related note, if you are trying to see me and have been waiting outside my office, unfortunately there’s not much I can do about that. You’ll just have to sit on the couch or in a chair in the department offices, do some work, and wait until I’m free. It’s a no-schedule, first come-first served system.