ENGL357

Our focus will be upon the shorter poems of several English writers – Donne, Jonson, Lanyer, Wroth, Herbert, Pulter, Marvell, and Milton, to name a few. Close formal analysis of selected poems and their literary models will be coupled with careful study of the cultural and historical contexts in which these poets wrote. We will consider, among other things, how in the seventeenth century civil war displaced some priorities and sharpened others; how both prayer and poetry led to powerful introspection and writing of the self; how women poets made an English literary tradition their own. We will also consider the critical reception of these poets and how that history illuminates key facets of an English literary tradition. This course is research intensive.

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