Department of English

Why are most autobiographies and memoirs written in prose? And what happens when they aren’t? Book-length poems like William Wordsworth’s The Prelude, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Derek Walcott’s Another Life, and Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely are just some of the major verse-autobiographies that will help us explore fundamental questions of selfhood, experience, and expressivity, as well as some foundational concepts for literary studies, such as “genre,” “author,” “voice,” “persona,” and “address.” Readings will include autobiographical poems by both British and American authors, chiefly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We’ll also study these works in relation to some shorter “lyric” poems, as well as some examples of “life writing” in prose genres. And we’ll spend some time reading selections from relevant literary biography, criticism, and theory. The weekly reading assignments will be substantial, but manageable, and what will matter most is the quality of attention students bring to their preparation of the assigned readings for each class meeting. Other course requirements will include multiple in-class writing assignments, a mid-term exam, and one in-class presentation based on independent research.