Forms: Victorian and Modern Poetry

This course surveys major poetic genres in 19th century British and early 20th-century transatlantic Anglophone literature, exploring the characteristics of Victorian and Modernist writing in these genres (i.e. ballad, dramatic monologue, portrait, ekphrasis, song, elegy, sonnet, epigram, and varieties of long poem). Course goals include: 

• Develop familiarity and fluency with Victorian and Modern(ist) poetry from the 1830's to the 1940's, recognizing and interrogating critical categories of periodization and genre.
• Practice literary analysis through discussion, oral presentation, critical writing, and scholarly annotation, working towards individual research project through a series of pre-writing tasks