Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Studies
- Code
- OT-ANG17-310.a
- Title
- Modern English and American Literature and Culture: Sylvia Plath Poetry Analysis Workshop
- Usual semester
- Autumn
- ECTS
- 3
- Language
- en
- Learning outcomes
- Course objectives Knowledge The student acquires the basic principles and rules of interpreting poems. He or she is aware of the fictional quality of poems and the fact that they are removed from all practical contexts and pragmatic purposes. He or she appreciates the importance of the specific word choice and other rhetorical devices, such as rhyme or alliteration, in terms of the overall meaning of a poem. The student is familiar with and can apply close reading to the literary text. Skills The student shows critical awareness in identifying figurative speech and abstract notions, distinguishing the everyday use of specific words from their metaphorical use in the poem. He or she can recognise the various connotations and ambiguities of particular words and phrases in the literary text. He or she can apply a range of cognitive processes involved in critical thinking (comparison and contrast, identifying cause-and-effect and other logical relationships, making a claim and supporting it). Attitude The student is willing to express his or her ideas about and insights into the literary text. He or she keeps an open mind and maintains a polite attitude when listening to other students’ views even if he or she disagrees with them. The student can give relevant and tactful responses to ideas that oppose his or her own. Autonomy and responsibility The student builds and presents his or her own argument in the in-class essays, drawing on the in-class discussions and the study resources provided. He or she states and defends his or her main point by supporting it with relevant evidence. The student is willing to express, elaborate on, and support his or her own views during in-class discussions.
- Course content
- Each class consists of group discussions as well as pairwork tasks that focus on the interpretation of particular poems from the compulsory literature list. Students, with the help of the instructor, construct thorough and multifaceted analyses of the poems. Short homework assignments, completed and checked throughout the course, encourage and enable students to prepare for their midterm and end-of-term in-class essay, which presents their own interpretation of a Plath poem.
- Assessment method
- The final grade will be based on in-class participation in the discussions and 2 in-class essays. The in-class essay must be a literary analysis of a particular Plath poem and must fully answer the title given. in-class participation (frequent and substantial contribution to the in-class discussions and pairwork activities, preparing the homework): 10% 2 in-class essays (800-1,000 words, in seminar 6 and 12): 45% + 45% = 90%
- Bibliography
- Compulsory literature: By Sylvia Plath: “The Moon and the Yew Tree” ‟Little Fugue” “The Detective” “The Jailer” “Cut” “Letter in November” “Daddy” “Lady Lazarus” “The Munich Mannequins” “Stings” “Kindness” Recommended literature: Annas, Pamela J. A Disturbance in Mirrors. Greenwood Press, 1988. Axelrod, Steven Gould. “Plath and Torture: Cultural Contexts for Plath Imagery of the Holocaust.” Representing Sylvia Plath, edited by Sally Bayley and Tracy Brain, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 67-87. Bassnett, Susan. Sylvia Plath: An Introduction to the Poetry. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Bassnett, Susan. Women Writers: Sylvia Plath. Macmillan, 1987. Brain, Tracy. The Other Sylvia Plath. Routledge, 2001. Britzolakis, Christina. “Ariel and Other Poems.” The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath, edited by Jo Gill, Cambridge UP, 2006, pp. 107-122. Britzolakis, Christina. “Gothic Subjectivity.” Sylvia Plath, edited by Harold Bloom, Infobase Publishing, 2007, pp. 115-146. Bundtzen, Lynda K. Plath’s Incarnations: Woman and the Creative Process. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983. Gilbert, Sandra. “On the Beach with Sylvia Plath.” The Unraveling Archive: Essays on Sylvia Plath, edited by Anita Helle, The University of Michigan Press, 2010, pp. 121-138. Gubar, Susan. “Prosopopeia and Holocaust Poetry in English: Sylvia Plath and Her Contemporaries.” Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Sylvia Plath, edited by Harold Bloom, Infobase Publishing, 2007, pp. 165-191. Kendall, Tim. Sylvia Plath: A Critical Study. Faber and Faber, 2001. Nelson, Deborah. “Plath, History and Politics.” The Cambridge Companion to Sylvia Plath, edited by Jo Gill, Cambridge UP, 2006, pp. 21-35. Oates, Joyce Carol. “The Death Throes of Romanticism.” Sylvia Plath: The Woman and the Work, edited by Edward Butscher, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1977, pp. 206-224. Perloff, Marjorie. “Angst and Animism in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath.” Critical Essays on Sylvia Plath, edited by Linda W. Wagner, G. K. Hall & Company, 1984, pp. 109-123. Plath, Sylvia. The Collected Poems, edited by Ted Hughes. Harper & Row, 1981. Rose, Jacqueline. The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. Harvard UP, 1992. Van Dyne, Susan R. Revising Life: Sylvia Plath’s Ariel Poems. The University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Wagner-Martin, Linda. “Plath’s Triumphant Women Poems.” Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Sylvia Plath, edited by Harold Bloom, Infobase Publishing, 2007, pp. 193-206.