Early Modern Poetry - Week 2 Notes

Class Logistics and Initial Discussions

The class will officially start at 8:30 AM due to traffic concerns, with a hard stop at 10:00 AM to allow for room transitions. Students needing to leave 5-10 minutes early to catch trains can do so, provided they catch up on any missed material. The professor aims to avoid overtime, but timekeeping can be a challenge. The course will begin by exploring student expectations and motivations for taking the class, regardless of prior knowledge of early modern poetry.

Course Overview and Expectations

The course aims to cover topics on the syllabus and assessment, and then begin a discussion about poetry. Students are encouraged to use the Flinger link on Moodle to share their reasons for choosing the class and their expectations. The intention is to understand student motivations and prior knowledge, even if there is none. The professor acknowledges difficulties with technology early in the morning. The goal is to tailor the course to the students' interests and backgrounds.

Initial Student Input via Flinger

Students share varied interests and expectations for the course, some viewing it as a continuation of early modern drama. Poetry and drama share similarities (both written in verse), but form is more important in poetry. The course balances the assumption that poetry is more difficult than drama. The class will explore the variety and structure of early modern poetry.

Exploring Interest in Poetry

Some students express a love for poetry, particularly Shakespeare. The discussion explores the reasons for this interest, including the musicality and entertainment value of poetry, as well as the challenge of deciphering its meaning. Poetry can be a way to indirectly express and understand feelings. The professor shares a past dislike for poetry, especially in college, but acknowledges the potential for growth and appreciation, even for those who prefer long fiction.

Perspectives on Poetry

Poetry is seen as an aesthetic and intellectual challenge, not always about emotions. The class will address why poetry is often associated with expressing emotions. Some find the class interesting due to the historical period it covers, viewing it as a foundational era for European culture and an opportunity to understand the human experience of that time through poetry. Others were drawn to early modern poetry through prior positive experiences in high school.

Course Content and Structure

The course will examine how poetry contributes to the cultural myths surrounding the early modern age. It will cover a variety of early modern poets, not just Shakespeare, to provide a broad understanding of the era's poetry. Sonnets will be a focus due to their brevity and ability to link content to form, serving as an accessible entry point into longer poems. The approach will be two-tiered, examining both the words on the page and their broader cultural and historical contexts.

Practical Course Information

Changes to the syllabus will be reflected in the weekly Moodle folders, which should be checked regularly. The course will start with early English sonnets and their Italian origins, building on content from the History of English Literature lecture course but going into greater detail. Subsequent weeks will cover the sonnet sequence, Shakespeare, Mary Roth, literature review writing (with and without AI), poetry and religion (Emilia Lanier, John Donne), and epic poetry (excerpts from The Faerie Queen and Paradise Lost).

Assessment Breakdown and AI Integration

Course assessment includes three written assignments and an oral exam. Students will write two literature reviews (one without AI, one with AI) on the topic early modern poetry, to compare and contrast the writing processes of each. The research proposal, is the third written assignment, will build upon the literature reviews and outline a potential research topic. The oral exam will focus on the research proposal's topic.

AI in Academic Work

The course will explore using AI tools like GenAI for academic work. The goal is to understand its capabilities and limitations, particularly in summarizing research papers and aiding literature reviews. The professor is particularly not interested in the end result, rather students reflections. The focus is on ethical use within academic conduct rules - how to use AI without cheating.

Research Proposal Details

The research proposal will include the literature review and a discussion of a potential research topic, serving as a step towards writing a larger paper or thesis. The oral exam will center on the research proposal's topic. While additional bibliographical research will be necessary, the foundation will be laid in the course. Specific guidelines for the research proposal will be provided later.

Holistic Assessment Approach

The course emphasizes a holistic approach to assessment, where effort invested in one assignment (e.g., literature review) benefits subsequent tasks (e.g., research proposal, oral exam). Students are encouraged to focus on the process and connections between assignments, rather than viewing them as isolated components each worth a percentage of final grade. If a student struggles with written assignments for any reason, that can be overcome on the oral exam.

Additional Course Details

Detailed discussion of the research proposal will occur closer to the assignment deadline. Oral exams will likely be held in June. Rescheduling is not possible for personal reasons (e.g., booked holidays), only for emergencies. The class will proceed to discuss the question, what is poetry?

Defining Poetry: Initial Thoughts

The class transitions to discussing "What is Poetry?" using Mentimeter for input. Rhythm is identified as a key element. Rhythm supports memorization and oral tradition. Rhyme, while not strictly necessary, helps maintain rhythm and shape. Someone makes a joke that poetry might be pretentious.

Analyzing Emily Dickinson

An Emily Dickinson poem is shared and read aloud. It has rhythm, but it is uneven, and it lacks rhyme. The class acknowledges that poetry can still be poetry without those elements, it is instead written in verses that display technical devices and imagery.

Genre Overlap and Distinctiveness

Prose can contain poetic elements with cadence, alliteration, and technical devices, but still not be a poem. Poems also have elements of novels. Genres have clear boundaries and also some overlap.

Addressing the Pretentiousness of Poetry

Someone jokes that poetry can seem pretentious, referencing literary snobbery. Some suggest poetry's careful crafting and deliberate language can sound unnatural and pretentious. In addition, there seems to be a elitism attached to poetry, but that is a contrast to popular forms of modern poetry like spoken word, rap, and hip-hop.

Interpretation and Emotional Expression

The challenge of interpreting poetry and that poetry expresses emotion is linked. There might be an expectation verse that emotions are shared between reader and author. Novels inspired from an author's personal experiences evokes the same interpretation as poetry. A common reason for viewing poetry as pretentious is due to negative experiences at school in which opinions were discouraged and a singular interpretation was pushed. Also poems often lack informative sentences after emotional sentences, that novels contain.

Cultural and Historical Context for Poetry

Difficulties in understanding older vocabulary adds to the perceived difficulty or snobbery surrounding poetry. To fully understand a poem, cultural and historical context is needed, beyond just a personal, emotional reading. There is a culturally nurtured that poems are about emotions. Ultimately poetry from the early modern era contains different connotations than from today and for a deeper understanding, research is needed.

The Romantic Influence on Perceptions of Poetry

The idea that poetry is about emotion originates from the late 18th-century Romantics, particularly Wordsworth, who defined poetry as the spontaneous overflow of emotions. But, early-modern poetry often are carefully crafted. There is a disconnect between modern context and historical intent and that is why there is an emotional disconnect.

Analyzing Shakespeare's Sonnet 18

Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") is introduced. The form of a sonnet (14 lines) is a key identifier and the class considers what the sonnet is about. The speaker is someone trying to describe someone he had high regard for. Even in the first line, proximity is expressed, with the speaker referring to himself as "I" and using the term "thee". The question evokes the opinion of the addressee to see if they'd even like to be compared and the speaker did not wait for an answer but made the comparison anyway. It also tells us that a sonnet is very often about the speaker themselves, with most of the speakers in early modern poetry being men.

Deeper Meaning and Interpretation

The poem examines death, beauty, the end of life, and hope. The lines tell us that biological life/beauty ends, but there is a poetic possibility to achieve eternal life. Advice: The form of the sonnet guides interpretation. Shakespearean sonnets have a form of three sets of four lines and one couplet and this can be used to subdivided it and discover it's meaning