Major British Poetry 1660-Present
Michael Gamer profile
MWF 1
Back in the early nineteenth century, the famous reviewer and critic
Francis Jeffrey wrote in The Edinburgh Review that there were "not thirty
[poets] whose works are to be found in the hands of ordinary readers --
in the shops of ordinary booksellers -- or in the press for
republication" (Contributions to the Edinburgh Review). At that time,
Jeffrey joked about wanting to stop the production of the poets and the
presses, if only for a decade, so that he could direct his readers to the
vast amount of good poetry, either neglected or forgotten, that he did
not want to see die. Therefore, in this course, we will do our best to
do the impossible: sample British poetry from 1660 to 1945 in such a way
that we will achieve an understanding even about the authors that we will
not have time to read. Furthermore, we will conduct this Grand Tour
with coherence and (yes) dignity. As we conduct our own survey of
Britain's poetry, we will also examine how some of these same poets have
defined poetry by creating the same kind of surveys that we will be doing
in this class. We will even take a class period for a field trip to the
special collections division of the library to look at collections of
British poetry made over the centuries. We will also ask ourselves what
is missing from these collections of poets, and spend a good amount of
time filling in these gaps. The required work for this course will be
several shorter papers, a group response paper, a set of final
examination questions, and a comprehensive final.
updated 2006-11-03
