Hong Kong Shue Yan University

Department of English Language & Literature

1st term, 2016-2017

Course Title : The Language of Poetry

Course Code : ENG 233

Year of Study : 2nd

Number of Credits : 3

Duration in Weeks : 15

Contact Hours Per Week : Lecture (2 Hours)

: Tutorial /Workshop (1 Hour)

Pre-requisite(s) : NIL

Prepared by : Dr. Michelle Chan

Course Aims

This course introduces participants to the language and methods of practical poetry criticism and the art of publicly reading a poem.

Course Outcomes, Teaching Activities and Assessment

Course Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

Upon completion of this course, successful participants will be able to
ILO1 / analyse and interpret figurative language
ILO2 / evaluate an unseen poem using a range of criteria
ILO3 / appraise, autonomously, an unseen poem of intermediate difficulty
ILO4 / use their awareness of genre, metre, and form to complement their appraisal
ILO5 / publicly read a self-selected poem in a manner that shows an awareness of the poem’s qualities and the audience’s needs

Teaching and Learning Activities (TLAs)

TLA1 / Textual analysis of poems
TLA2 / Explanation of the social, political and intellectual background of the poems
TLA3 / Intra-group discussion
TLA4 / Critical reading of the texts with relation to the key topics and concepts
TLA 5 / Public reading of poems
TLA 6 / Writing tasks on unseen poems

Assignment Tasks (ATs)

AT1 / In-Class writing assignment / 10%
AT2 / Term Paper / 30%
AT3 / Midterm Exam / 20%
AT4 / Final Exam / 40%
Alignment of Course Intended Learning Outcomes, Teaching and Learning Activities and Assessment Tasks
Course Intended Learning Outcomes / Teaching and Learning Activities / Assessment Tasks
ILO1 / TLA1, 2, 4 / AT 1, 2, 3, 4
ILO2 / TLA 6 / AT 1
ILO3 / TLA 6 / AT 1
ILO4 / TLA 1,2,3, 6 / AT 1, 3, 4
ILO5 / TLA 5 / AT 1

Course Outline

1 / Introduction / (1 week)
2. / William Shakespeare: Sonnet 18 ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer day’, Sonnet 73 ‘That time of year thou may'st in me behold’, Sonnet 116 ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’ / (1 week)
3 / The Metaphysicals
John Donne: ‘Death, Be Not Proud’
George Herbert: ‘Easter Wings’, ‘Altar’ / (1 week)
4. / William Wordsworth: ‘I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud’, ‘London, 1802’ ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge; September 3, 1802’
/ (1 week)
5 / P.B. Shelley: ‘Ozymandias’, ‘Ode to the West Wind’ / (1 week)
6 / John Keats: ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ / (1 week)
7 / Alfred Tennyson: ‘The Lady of Shalott’ / (1 week)
8 / Reading Week / (1 week)
9 / Dante Rossetti: Sonnet 77, 78 from The House of Life / (1 week)
10 / W.B. Yeats: ‘Easter, 1916’, ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ / (1 week)
11 / W.H. Auden, ‘Funeral Blue’, ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’ / (1 week)
12 / Philip Larkin: ‘Church Going’ / (1 week)
13 / Sylvia Plath: ‘Daddy’, ‘Metaphors’ / (1 week)
14 / Robert Frost: ‘The Road Not Taken’, ‘Acquainted with the Night’, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ / (1 week)
15 / Reading Week / (1 week)

15 weeks

Academic Honesty

You are expected to do your own work. Dishonesty in fulfilling any assignment undermines the learning process and the integrity of your college degree. Engaging in dishonest or unethical behavior is forbidden and will result in disciplinary action, specifically a failing grade on the assignment with no opportunity for resubmission. A second infraction will result in an F for the course and a report to College officials. Examples of prohibited behavior are:

·  Cheating – an act of deception by which a student misleadingly demonstrates that s/he has mastered information on an academic exercise. Examples include:

·  Copying or allowing another to copy a test, quiz, paper, or project

·  Submitting a paper or major portions of a paper that has been previously submitted for another class without permission of the current instructor

·  Turning in written assignments that are not your own work (including homework)

·  Plagiarism – the act of representing the work of another as one’s own without giving credit.

o  Failing to give credit for ideas and material taken from others

o  Representing another’s artistic or scholarly work as one’s own

·  Fabrication – the intentional use of invented information or the falsification of research or other findings with the intent to deceive

Resources

Principal Readings

Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy (ed.), The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th edn., London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005

Supplementary Readings

Arkins, Brian, The Thought of W.B. Yeats, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010

Baldick, Chris, The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008

Bate, Jonathan, Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environment Tradition, London: Routledge, 1991

Chandler, James K and Maureen N. Maureen (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to British romantic poetry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008

Curran, Stuart, Poetic form and British romanticism, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986

Faggen, Robert, The Cambridge Companion to Robert Frost, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001

Fenton, James, An introduction to English poetry, New York: Penguin, 2003

Hamilton, Walter, The Aesthetic Movement in England, London: Nabu Press, 2012

Kirszner, Laurie G & Mandell Stephen G., Poetry: Reading Reacting Writing, Orlando: Harcourt Brace, 1994

McRae, John, The Language of Poetry, London: Routledge, 1998

Nally, Claire, Envisioning Ireland W.B. Yeats’s occult nationalism, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010

Pichaske, David R., The Varieties of Poetry, Beowulf to Beatles and Beyond, New York: Macmillan, 1981

Prettejohn, Elizabeth (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Pre-Raphaelites, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012

Spurr, Barry, Studying Poetry (2nd Ed), Basingstoke: Palgrove Macmillan, 2006

Tambling, Jeremy, Re:Verse: Turning Towards Poetry, London: Pearson Education, 2007

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