This course will teach the close reading of poems. We will read and study about two poems per session. Each day will begin with the poems set for that day being read aloud. Giving this reading and listening to it will be essential parts of the course. We shall then discuss the poems – and open discussion will also be an essential part of the course. (Students selecting this course must be prepared to contribute to classroom discussion.) Our aim will be to reach as full an understanding and appreciation of each poem as possible.
The course is not primarily historical, though there will be a historical dimension to it. The poems we shall read and discuss all belong to the same period of English literature: roughly 1870 to the end of the First World War, so extending a little beyond 1915 in some cases. The poems are all by pre-Modernist poets, though some of them may be thought to anticipate the Modernists in various ways. The poets concerned include Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Mew, Edward Thomas and (in his early work only) W B Yeats. A few other poets may come up as well. Each poet will be briefly contextualised, but the main focus will be on reading and discussing the words on the page and the sounds and rhythms we hear when the words are recited. Participants will be expected to take part in the discussions.
The period in question is often thought of as transitional. None of the poets is obviously Victorian or Edwardian and, on the face of it, they have very little in common with one another. Yet they all belong to a period of rapid change, particularly technological and social change. A recognisably modern society is coming about, and the poets respond to it – or sometimes fail to respond to it – in very different ways.
Despite this emphasis on the period, however, this will not be primarily an historical course. On the contrary, it will be a course in literary appreciation in the Cambridge tradition of Practical Criticism.
