ENG 106 Syllabus     ENG 106 Course Outline

Week 1(June 21-25)

Link to PowerPoint notes for week 2 (speaker, situation, diction).

Link to PowerPoint Notes on Plato, Aristotle, Wordsworth & Seferis.

Specialized Terms/Concepts

Mimesis: imitation.   The idea that literature imitates reality (or imitates the ideal).  Plato argued that reality imitated ideal concepts (a real table is an imitation of the concept of table) and that poetry imitates reality.

Choral poetry:   poetry designed to be sung by a group, usually with at least two "parts" that answer each other.

Verse:  means either a single line of poetry or as the equivalent of "poetry".

Iambic verse:  poetry that has as its basic sound pattern (meter) the iamb.   An iamb is a sound unit consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. "Unstressed" means you say that sound a little softer and you hold it a little shorter than normal.  "Stressed" means you say that sound a little louder and you hold it a little longer than normal.  For example, when you say "The cat was black; the pants were white" you say "the" "was" and "were" with a little less emphasis than you use for "cat" "black" "pants" and "white."  So "the" "was" and "were" are unstressed and "cat" "black" "pants" and "white" are stressed.  "The cat" is one iamb; "was black" is an iamb' "the pants" is an iamb, and "was white" is an iamb: four iambs. Each unit is called a "foot".   If a line of verse has five feet, all iambs, it is called iambic pentameter (penta = five).  The example above, if it appeared as a line (verse) of poetry, would be iambic tetrameter (tetra = four).   See also the glossary in the back of your text and the chart and explanation on p. 55 of your text.

Pathetic poetry: from "pathos".  Poetry that stresses the emotions especially calling on sympathy (sym / pathos) or empathy.

Reader Response interpretation: as it applies to Seferis, the idea that the poem's meaning is partially created by the readers' response, primarily in terms of broad cultural shifts rather than individual responses.  For example, a poem that refers to slavery written in Ancient Rome would have evoked a different reaction when it was written than it would today.

For definitions of epic poetry, lyric poetry, narrative poetry, meter, iamb, and "foot" see the glossary near the end of your text.

Primary Epic: one of the first epics; an epic not imitating or influenced by earlier epics.  Examples of primary epic are Homer's The Iliad, and The Odyssey; The Epic of Gilgamesh; and The Descent of Inanna.  The much later epic Beowulf is also arguably a primary epic.  Links to more information:  Homer Iliad and Odyssey Page.   Comments and a summary of Gilgamesh.   Comments and summary of Inanna (warning: for those with good eyesight only!)

Secondary Epic:   epics influenced by the primary epic form.  An example of the secondary epic is Vergil's The Aeneid.

Tertiary Epic: epics influenced by both primary and secondary epics.  Examples of tertiary epics are Dante's The Divine Comedy (The Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradisio) and Milton's Paradise Lost.

Incidental Historical/Biographical Notes:

Sappho:  lyric poet from 5th century B.C.  One of the very few women poets from Classical Greece whose work has survived or been recovered.  Although her work was highly praised during her lifetime and for several hundred years following, the lesbian content of many of her poems later resulted in her work being banned and all known copies destroyed.  For more information go to http://www.sappho.com/poetry/sappho.htm

Eighteenth Century:   The Age of Reason.  European and American poetry stressed thought, reasoned analysis.  Iambic meter dominated the sound pattern preferences.

Nineteenth Century:   Particularly in the first half, emotional response dominated poetry (the second half still favored emotion but had a strong element of domesticity and nationalism).

(Definitions of terms and concepts and poem/poet background information are in your text.)

Links to Information on some of the poets covered in Week 1:

For an interesting take on Browning's "My Last Duchess," link to this background page on Browning and then click on the My Last Duchess button.  Notice how the modern use of spacing, colors and highlighting creates new stresses and new meaning.

For links to all sorts of information on Christopher Marlowe ("The Passionate Shepherd to his Love"), check out http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/marloadd.htm

For links to all sorts of information on Sir Walter Ralegh ("The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd") check out http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/marloadd.htm

For a discussion of the "set" of poetry including "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" and "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" look at http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/marloadd.htm

See this John Donne HomePage ( http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/marloadd.htm )for links to biographical and other information.

For copy of Milton's poem "When I consider how my light is spent" (usually known as "On his blindness") with extra information and notes see http://www.utlink.utoronto.ca/www/utel/RP/poems/milton7.html

For a brief comparison of Buson with the other "big names" in 17th century Japanese Haiku poetry (and links to Buson's poetry) see http://hometown.aol.com/markabird/index.html

For a good biography of Langston Hughes see http://mickey.queens.lib.ny.us/special/langston.bio.html

A "teacher resource file" with links to resources on Langston Hughes (intended for elementary through high school but with some useful elements for college level study as well) is located at http://falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/hughes.htm

You can access a website with a wealth of information on Margaret Atwood (maintained with her permission and input) through the copyright page http://www.web.net/owtoad/copy.html (by accessing the page after reading the copyright notice, you are agreeing to use the information for your personal and/or academic use).

For an easy-to-read biography on Pablo Neruda, see http://www.nobel.se/laureates/literature-1971-1-bio.html

Week 2 (June 28-July 2)

Link to Power Point Notes on Figurative Language

For a brief biograph of Percy Bysshe Shelley see http://www.aligrafix.co.uk/oxford/shelley.html

Yeat's "The Second Coming" can be read simply as his pessimistic view of the world--things are getting so bad, that we should expect the second coming of Christ, including the birth of the anti-Christ (see The Book of Revelation for Yeat's basic allusion).  However, the poem uses some of Yeat's private symbols from his mystical view of the world and of history.  Yeats believed that history falls into 2000 year cycles.  The birth of Christ began a cycle in which the values represented by Christianity gradually grow in importance over 2000 years while the opposite values decline.  He envisions this process as a cone, or spiral (similar to the pattern in which a falcon flies as it rises on air currents--hence the opening of the poem).  At the end of the 2000 years, the force or event that started the cycle cannot "hold,"and a force or event occurs that will start a cycle in which the opposite values begin to dominate.  The private symbols important in this poem are the cone/spiral (look for images that suggest this symbol) and the Spiritus Mundi, which is both an allusion to a medieval text of moral instruction and Yeat's own symbol for a sort of collective unconscious similar to that explained by psychologist Carl Jung (for a definition of Jung's collective unconscious see http://www.sun-angel.com/netforum/cc.html ). For an overview of Yeat's mysticism and more information on his private symbols, see http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8156/yeats.html

For biographical information on Wilfred Owen, a selection of his poetry, and depressing pictures of WWI, see http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/abraham/abraham.html

For background information on 19th century child labor (the subject of Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" poems) see http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/hypertext/landow/victorian/history/hist8.html

For background material on Blake's life, poetry, and art, see http://io.newi.ac.uk/rdover/blake/

For some beautiful pictures of a few of Blake's best known art work, see http://metalab.unc.edu/louvre/paint/auth/blake/

For a biography (with extensive links) on Ginsberg, see http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/People/AllenGinsberg.html

Week 3 (July 6-9)

Link to PowerPoint "Sound Effects" (figures of speech and sound; rhyme)

You can read a good, brief biography of W.H. Auden, with links to poems and other resources, at http://www.poets.org/LIT/POET/Whaudfst.htm

A very scholarly page on Ezra Pound, with a nicely laid out biography, can be found at http://miyamizu.lit.kobe-u.ac.jp/~hishika/pound.htm

For a review of Elizabeth Woody's Luminaries of the Humble, see http://www.speakeasy.org/wfp/20/Books.html

A brief biography with links to various resources for D. H. Lawrence is available at http://www.poets.org/LIT/poet/dhlawfst.htm

A quick overview of what is know of Marie de France and her work: http://www.knight.org/advent/cathen/09667a.htm

A brief biography and discussion of Alexander Pope's development and interests as a poet:

http://222.knight.org/advent/cathem/12258c.htm

For a history of the Haiku and a brief discussion of the form, see http://asnic.utexas.edu/asnic/countries/japan/haiku.html

Week 4 (July 12-16)

Link to Term Paper Assignment

To see reproductions of manuscript pages from the Lindisfarne Gospels, go to http://portico.bl.uk/diblib/treasures/lindisfarne.html

To see information on (and a reproduction of a manuscript page from) The Book of Kells, go to http://www.library.ubc.ca/finearts/KELLS.html

Link to one of my favorite pages from the Book of Kells

To see more painting/poem connections, go to http://www.cc.emory.edu/ENGLISH/classes/Paintings&Poems

For extensive links on Van Gogh, go to http://www.vangoghgallery.com/index.html

To see reproductions of many of Van Gogh's paintings and a good, short biography, go to http://www.metalab.unc.edu/wm/paint/auth/gogh/

Questions?   Write to me at elatham@cocc.edu

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