Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Studies
- Code
- BBI-ANG-227E.03
- Title
- Reading Literary Texts: Close-reading Wordsworth
- Usual semester
- Both
- ECTS
- 3
- Language
- Learning outcomes
- The aim of the course is to acquiant students with some of the characteristics of Wordsworth’s poetry. Through a close reading of poems, and occasionally critical texts it aims to introduce students tot he historical contexts of the formal / technical features of Wordsworth’s writing and to thus explore some characteristic features of Romantic poetics.
- Course content
- Throughout the course, we will be reading some of Wordsworth’s best known lyric and narravtive poems, with a view to stanza structures, metrical features, voice, imagery and diction. Through observing such his poetic techniques, we will seek to grasp why in the given historical context Wordsworth could be seen as an innovator.
- Assessment method
- Attendance and active participation in class discussions, as well as acquaintance with the texts assigned week by week are all parts of the assessment. Students will have to submit a home essay of cc. 6 pages at the end of the term, which offers a close-reading of a poem by Wordsworth.
- Bibliography
- Primary sources: “The Ruined Cottage”; The Excursion, Book I: “The Wanderer”; “The Thorn”; „Expostulation and Reply”; „The Tables Turned”; “Tintern Abbey”; The Prelude, from Book I, The Glad Preamble, from Book VI, The Simplon Pass; “Lucy poems”; “Resolution and Independence”; „The Solitary Reaper”; “Ode: Intimations of Immortality …” selections from the „Preface to the Lyrical Ballads”; selections from Wordsworth’s essay on the beautiful and the sublime. Secondary sources (recommended, not compulsory): - Brennan O’Donnell, The Passion of Metre. A Study of Wordsworth’s Metrical Art (Kent State, 1995) - Ruth Abbot, „Wordsworth’s Prosody” in: Richard Gravil and Daniel Robinson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Willaim Wordsworth (Oxford, 2015), 516-532 - Charles Mahoney, „Wordsworth’s Experiments with Form and Genre” in: Richard Gravil and Daniel Robinson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Willaim Wordsworth (Oxford, 2015), 532-547 - Don Bialostosky, „Wordsworth’s Communicative Strategies in his Experimental Poems” in: Richard Gravil and Daniel Robinson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Willaim Wordsworth (Oxford, 2015), 547-563 - Jonathan Wordsworth, William Wordsworth. The Borders of Vision (Oxford, 1982) - Geoffrey Hartman, Wordsworth’s Poetry1787-1814 (Yale, 1964) - Stephen Gill, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Wordsworth (Cambridge, 2003)