Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Studies
- Code
- OT-ANG17-310/Y
- Title
- Modern English and American Literature and Culture: The poetry of W. B. Yeats
- Usual semester
- Autumn
- ECTS
- 3
- Language
- en
- Learning outcomes
- Aims: The purpose of this course – in keeping with the subject “Modern English and American Literature and Art”, to which it belongs – is to acquaint students with the oeuvre of an author or with aspects of a literary, artistic or cultural phenomenon from the field designated by the subject’s title. This particular course is concerned with the work of the Noble laurate Irish author W, B, Yeats, focusing on his poetical works and on the cultural, historical and theoretical contexts of the changes of his poetic style throughout his career. Beyond the work of Yeats, the course thus also offers an introduction to postcolonial readings of 20th-century Anglo-Irish literature. Knowledge: Students obtain fundamental knowledge about the contexts of 20th-century Anglo-Irish literature, an understanding of Yeats’s role in the shaping of modernist poetry and the nature of the Irish Literary Revival, and his thinking about the cultural processes of forming identity. Skills: Obtains adequate knowledge of, and entry-level practical skills in understanding and evaluating the cognitive and emotional patterns of modernist poetical texts and in absorbing and evaluating source material and critical responses Acquires knowledge of the advanced level professional terminology related to the field; acquires the habit of refreshing this knowledge base from time to time. Attitudes: Accepts the cultural, social, and political contexts, paradigms and attitudes that are similar to, as well as those that are different from, their own. Is generally inquisitive and open-minded, seeks connections with cultural, social, and political contexts that are similar to, as well as those that are different from, their own. Acquires the ability to associate, compare, successfully mobilize and apply the contexts connected via the process described above. Autonomy and responsibility: Able to make independent decisions in the artistic, social (including group dynamics) and political environments, contexts and situations that may be associated with the knowledge and skills acquired by studying this subject area. Makes independent decisions in connection with the subject areas outlined above in situations where mediation is required between the scholarly world and daily human environments. Takes an active part in resolving disputes and contradictory situations arising in such contexts. Can express articulated, independent, balanced and well-informed views and arguments reflecting a progressive and ethically responsible value system.
- Course content
- The content of the individual courses belonging to the subject “Modern English and American literature and art” depends on the architecture and syllabus of each given seminar. This particular course acquaints students with the changes in style and in the intellectual / poetical convictions shaping them throughout Yeats’s career. This is done, on the one hand, by students reading pre-assigned poems and discussing them together in class, and on the other hand by interpreting and then giving an oral presentation to other students of their understanding of essays by Yeats that explain the shifts in Yeats’s poetics in the context of early 20th-century British and Irish history.
- Assessment method
- Criteria for grading include week-by-week preparation for classes by coming to terms with the assigned poems on their own, active participation in class discussions of the assigned texts, and either an oral presentation of an essay by Yeats, or an end-term home-essay on a chosen work that puts to use the knowledge acquired throughout the course. The mark given for the end of semester home essay or for the oral presentation normally contributes more than 50% to the calculation of the final result.
- Bibliography
- -- Poems: “The Song of the Happy Shepherd,” “The Song of the Sad Shepherd,” “Down by the Sally Gardens,” “Ephemera,” “The Madness of King Goll,” “The Stolen Child”; “The Lake Isle of Innisfre,” “To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time,” “The Two Trees,” “To Ireland in the Coming Times”; “Fergus and the Druid,” “Who Goes with Fergus?”; “The Moods,” “The Hosting of the Sidhe”, “The Song of Wandering Aengus”, “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” “He tells of Perfect Beauty,” “Adam’s Curse”, “No Second Troy,” “Reconciliation,” “Upon a House Shaken by the Land Agitation”; “To a Wealthy Man”, “The Wild Swans at Coole,” “In Memory of Major Robert Gregory,” “An Irish Airman Forsees his Death,” “The Fisherman,” “Easter 1916”; “The Second Coming,” “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen”; “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Byzantium,” “Leda and the Swan,” “Among School Children,”; “Meditations in Time of Civil War” “Under Ben Bulben,” -- Essays: “The Symbolism of Poetry,” “The Autumn of the Body”; “What is ‘Popular Poetry’” “The Celtic Element in Literature,” “Ireland and the Arts”; “Poetry and Tradition”