Department of English

This is an introduction to and survey of British poetry in the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While modern forms of entertainment are rarely social in nature, poetry is an oral form, meant to be read aloud amongst friends and in groups. To that end, we will perform the history of poetry together. If you can muster up the lung-capacity to do justice to Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth and Hardy, we'll study meter, form, theme, and performance together. Poets we will read include: Milton, Finch, Swift, Pope, Duck, Gray, Goldsmith, Crabbe, Burns, Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, Clare, Hardy, Browning, and the Rossettis. Coursework will include informal email postings, one short paper, one longer paper, a midterm, and a take-home final.