We will read a number of the major poems in the British tradition from the Marvell and Pope, through the Romantics and Victorians, the first explosion of Modernism in London, and beyond the near-present. We will look at a range of formal and historical issues involved in the variety of poems: meters, genres, approaches to audience, modes of production, conceptions of the poet, nationalism, relations to the capital.

Requirements: three papers; email responses; quizzes; a midterm; a final