Department of English

Fulfills Arts & Letters Sector (All Classes)

In this course we will study the development of poetic forms and subjects in British and American poetry. Beginning with the poems of the Renaissance, we will chart a course through the 17th and 18th centuries, through the enlightenment, into Romanticism, across the ocean to read abolitionist poetry and the transcendentalists, jumping back to the Victorians, and straddling the continents to finish with Modernism and contemporary poetry. The poets we'll read include: Donne, Pope, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Wheatley, Dickenson, Whitman, the Rossettis, Hardy, Eliot, Williams, H.D., O'Hara and Stein. As this is an introductory course, it is designed to fulfill the General requirement and is ideal for students wishing to take an English course but not necessarily intending to major. Students can expect take-home exams, a few short writing assignments, and two papers.