Modern Poetry: A Free Course with Certificate

Course: Modern Poetry
Level: BS 6th
Course Code: ELL 305

Course Description: This course aims at teaching critical analysis of modern poetry and, thus, developing an understanding of the aesthetic and intellectual contexts in which it was produced. The beginning and ending of modernist period are arbitrary, however, it is generally agreed that works written between 1890 and 1950 in North America and Western Europe follow the modernist tradition. The course will examine the roles of poets like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, who are credited with radical shifts in style and content from their predecessors, to introduce modernist aesthetics in poetry. The students will do close reading of poems to discern differences in poetic style and idiom of authors.

T.S. Eliot

1. The Literary Legacy of T.S. Eliot
2. The Wasteland: Original Text
3. The Wasteland: Analysis
4. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
5. The Hollow Men: Original Text
6. The Hollow Men: Analysis

Ezra Pound

1. Ezra Pound: The Poet and Literary Critic Who Changed Modernism
2. In a Station of the Metro
3. A Girl
4. An Immorality

W.B. Yeats

1. The Role of Myth and Symbolism in Yeats' Poetry
2. Among School Children
3. Second Coming

W.H. Auden

1. Auden's Poetry and the Modern World
2. As I Walked Out One Morning
3. The Unknown Citizen

Ted Hughes

1. Ted Hughes: Poet, Environmentalist, and Cultural Icon
2. That Morning
3. Hawk Roosting
4. Thought Fox

Philip Larkin

1. Themes of Isolation and Alienation in Philip Larkin's Work
2. Mr. Bleaney
3. Church Going

Extra Lectures

1. The Four Fathers of Modernism
2. What is Modern Poetry?
3. Anti-Romanticism of W.H. Auden

Course Objectives

● to identify and critically examine form, style and themes in modernist poetry.
● to study historical and cultural developments in which modernist poetry evolved and later gave way to confessional and other forms of poetry.

Course Outcomes

Students are expected
● to demonstrate understanding of aesthetics of modernist poetry.
● to do a critical analysis of poems through close reading of the text.

Further Readings

1. Blair, John G. The Poetic Art of W.H. Auden (n.p., n.d.).
2. Drew, Elizabeth T.S. Eliot: The Design of his Poetry.(London, 1950)
3. Gardener, Helen. The Art of T.S. Eliot. (London, 1968)
4. Jeffares, A.N. W.B. Yeats, Man and Poet.(London, 1949)
5. Leavis, F.R. New Bearings in English Poetry. (London 1961 ed)
6. Macneice, Louis The Poetry of W.B. Yeats.( London, 1967)
7. Spears, Monroe K. The Poetry of W.H. Auden. (New Jersey, 1981)
8. Unterecker, J. W.B. Yeats: A Reader’s Guide (London, 1988).
9. Ferguson, M. Salter, M. J., Stallworthy, J. (2005). The Norton Anthology of Poetry. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
10. Untermeyer, L. (2011). Modern British Poetry. Whitefish, MT: Literary Licensing

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