8:121 Victorian Poetry Syllabus, Fall 2008

October  •  November  •  December

August 26th Tuesday Introduction, metrics

August 28th Thursday some background on period, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "The Cry of the Children," compared with Eliza Cook, "Our Father"

September 2nd Tuesday EBB, "Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point," "A Curse for a Nation"

September 4th Thursday Robert Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"

September 9th Tuesday Robert Browning, "Fra Lippo Lippi"

September 11th Thursday D. G. Rossetti, "Jenny"

September 16th Tuesday Augusta Webster, "The Castaway"

September 18th Thursday Pre-Raphaelite slides

September 23rd Tuesday Tennyson, "Ulysses," "Morte d'Arthur"

September 25th Thursday "In Memoriam," opening sections

September 30th Tuesday Tennyson, "In Memoriam"

October 2nd Thursday Tennyson, "In Memoriam," "Break, Break, Break," "Crossing the Bar"

October 7th Tuesday Christina Rossetti, "In an Artist's Studio" (handout), "After Death," "Echo," "An Apple Gathering", "The Iniquity of the Fathers Upon the Children," "Goblin Market"

October 9th Thursday slides William Morris and the decorative arts; bibliography and paper topic for first paper due

October 14th Tuesday William Morris, "The Defence of Guenevere"

October 16th Thursday Eliza Cook, W. J. Linton (handout); outline or draft of first paper due

October 21st Tuesday working-class and dialect poets: Hamilton and Laycock (handout)

October 23rd Thursday Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach," "Isolation: To Marguerite,"A Summer Night"

first paper due

October 28th Arnold, "Tristram and Iseult"

October 30th Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Windhover," "As Kingfishers Catch Fire," "Carrion Comfort," "Felix Randal"

November 4th Tuesday Hopkins, "Binsey Poplars," "Spring and Fall," "No Worst There Is None," "Carrion Comfort"

November 6th Thursday Swinburne, "The Triumph of Time," "Hymn to Proserpine," "Ave Atque Vale"

November 11th Tuesday Rosamond Marriott Watson, "A Ballad of the Were-Wolf," "In a London Garden," "In the Rain," "Of the Earth, Earthy," "The Quern of the Giants," "Vespertilia," "An Enchanted Princess," "The Open Door" (handout)

November 13th Thursday Oscar Wilde, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"

November 18th Tuesday Michael Field, "La Gioconda," "The Birth of Venus," "Your Rose is Dead" (handout)

November 20th Thursday Lionel Johnson, "The Dark Angel," Rudyard Kipling, "The Recessional," A. E. Housman, "The Shropshire Lad" (handout)

Thanksgiving break week of November 24th - 30th

December 2nd Tuesday August Webster, Mother and Daughter sonnets, Alice Meynell, "The Threshing Machine," "Letter from a Girl to Her Own Old Age," "A Father of Women," "Reflections"

December 4th Thomas Hardy, "Drummer Hodge," "In Time of the Breaking of Nations," "Neutral Tones," "The Darkling Thrush," "In Tenebris," "Night in the Old Home," "Snow in the Suburbs," "In a Wood"

December 9th William Butler Yeats, early poems; "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "The Second Coming," "The Magi," "Wild Swans at Coole" (handout); suggested submission of draft for final essay

December 11th Charlotte Mew, "The Trees are Down"; brief discussion of poetic modernism

Final exam week: students will present their final papers briefly; our exam slot is scheduled for December 19th at 7 p. m.; if another time is possible, we will change this.

Your exam/essay should be handed in before December 19th.