production
Skip to Content

Log In

  1. University Home
  2. Catalogue of Courses
  3. Postgraduate
  4. 2014-2015
  5. English
  6. EL5588: Poetry: Tradition and Innovation

EL5588: POETRY: TRADITION AND INNOVATION (2014-2015)

Last modified: 28 Jun 2018 10:27


Course Overview

The main focus of this course will be on poems and on the occasions of ‘aesthetic bliss’ (Vladimir Nabokov’s term) they offer the reader. Some of the poems will be from earlier times and some from the last hundred years. All will be presented in a fully contextualised and historicised manner and the question of how modern and contemporary poets use work by earlier writers will be pursued in relation to such issues as the changing of critical interpretation and of value judgements over time.

Course Details

Study Type Postgraduate Level 5
Term Second Term Credit Points 30 credits (15 ECTS credits)
Campus None. Sustained Study No
Co-ordinators

Sorry, we don't have a record of any course coordinators.

What courses & programmes must have been taken before this course?

None.

What other courses must be taken with this course?

None.

What courses cannot be taken with this course?

None.

Are there a limited number of places available?

No

Course Description

Poetry is a self-conscious art that develops by way of departure from previous practice. Aesthetic departures are most successful when made on the basis of a thorough appreciation of what is being departed from. One of the supporting texts on this course will be T.S. Eliot’s 1921 essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, a work in which a major modernist innovator offers a strikingly conservative and authoritarian view of continuity and canonicity. The main focus of the course, however, will be on poems and on the occasions of ‘aesthetic bliss’ (Vladimir Nabokov’s term) they offer the reader. Some of the poems will be from earlier times and some from the last hundred years. All will be presented in a fully contextualised and historicised manner and the question of how modern and contemporary poets use work by earlier writers will be pursued in relation to such issues as the changing of critical interpretation and of value judgements over time. The course will be organised thematically. Though details of themes and texts will vary from year to year in response to the exigencies of staffing, sample themes will include the Poetry of Political Crisis; Modernists and the Early Moderns; the Persistence of Romanticism; Tradition and Innovation in Poetry by Women.

Contact Teaching Time

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

Teaching Breakdown

More Information about Week Numbers


Details, including assessments, may be subject to change until 30 August 2024 for 1st term courses and 20 December 2024 for 2nd term courses.

Summative Assessments

2x1000-word response papers (10% each), 1 4,500-word essay (70%), presentation (10%).

Formative Assessment

There are no assessments for this course.

Feedback

None.

Course Learning Outcomes

None.
 

Compatibility Mode

We have detected that you are have compatibility mode enabled or are using an old version of Internet Explorer. You either need to switch off compatibility mode for this site or upgrade your browser.