ENGL 071B. The Lyric Poem in English

English 071B is a survey of the lyric poetry in English from the Middle Ages up to the present, along with a few works read in translation. Students will learn the basics in understanding and enjoying the music of poetry, including scansion and prosody (beats and sounds). They will also learn to appreciate the basic forms of lyric poetry, including ballads and sonnets and many other forms, as well as “free” verse; they will also receive instruction on how to appreciate metaphors, irony, and the many other figures of speech and rhetorical techniques poems employ. They will also gain appreciation of poetic history and the many ways in which poets and their work have historically interacted with their eras, while also creating work that can powerfully speak to us in our present moment.

We’ll use The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (Ed. Mark Strand and Eavon Boland) and Camille Paglia’s Break, Blow, Burn, a collection of essays on some of the most famous poems in English. Other course materials will be posted as needed on the English 71B Moodle site.

This course is focused on great poems from the past (from the medieval era to the twentieth century), but both Making of a Poem and Paglia treat us to some very contemporary poems and poets as well.
For majors and minors, this course can count either as a Med/Ren, 18th/19th, or 20th/21st century course, depending on the topics of the majority of the student’s written work. Discuss your options with the professor.
GATEWAY English Literature.
Humanities.
Writing course.
1 credit.
Spring 2025. Staff.
Catalog chapter: English Literature
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

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