ENGL 353(F) Modern Poetry

In this course we will explore the tangled and controversial means by which poets writing chiefly between the two World Wars tied the political, social, and intellectual ferment of the era to the fate of poetry. Both dire and admiring accounts of these poets' work point to a central impulse to aestheticize political and philosophical problems. Considering issues such as occultism, Irish nationalism and unrequited love in the poetry of W. B. Yeats; pedantry, religious conversion and baby-talk in that of T. S. Eliot; and cosmopolitanism, isolationism and insurance in that of Wallace Stevens, we will consider the ways in which these poets' work both plays out and eludes accusations of self-reflexive lyricizing. We will examine the roles of aristocratic bias, abstruse erudition, and proto-fascism in their work, as well as critics' tendencies to equate these impulses. Although we will focus chiefly on the work of these three poets, we will also refer to the poetry of Williams Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore and Langston Hughes, considering whether the populism and comparative stylistic accessibility of some of these poets is an antidote to, or another means to formulate, the concerns of so-called "high modernism."
Requirements: one short and one long paper.
Prerequisite: English 101. Enrollment limited to 25.