Information Package
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Program of American Culture and Literature (English)

ACL348

DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN POETRY

Course Code
ACL348
Semester
Sixth Term (Spring)
Theory+Practice
3 + 0
ECTS
5
Course TypeCompulsory Course
Course LevelBachelor's Degree
Year of Study3
SemesterSixth Term (Spring)
ECTS5
Name of Lecturer(s)
Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course, the students;

  1. Acquire full theoretical and critical knowledge on modern American poetry and pre-1970s poetical movements.
  2. Criitically analyze and discuss the development of American poetry from the early twentieth century to the 1960s.
  3. Become fully familiar with the social, cultural, political, intellectual, historical, and literary context of modern American poetry.
  4. Are able to conduct further academic research on modern American poetry from multiple perspectives as well as on individual poets themselves.
Mode of DeliveryFace to face
PrerequisitesNo
Recommended Optional Programme Components
Course DescriptionThis course aims to teach students modern American poetry produced between the early twentieth century and the 1960s with an emphasis on its formal and aesthetic concerns. By focusing on particular poetic movements such as Modernist Poetry,Confessional Poetry,Beat Generation,New York School, and Language Poets, as well as on critical and theoretical works on modern American poetry, this course enables students to approach the linguistic and textual experimentation observed in modern American poetry critically. It also traces crucial issues such as gender, race, ethnicity and identity represented in major poetical works.
Course Contents
WEEK TOPICS
1st Week Introduction to the Course and Overview of the Syllabus: Introductory Lecture on Poetry after Romanticism and Genteel Tradition in Poetry and Early Experimentation: Edwin Arlington Robinson "Richard Cory" "Miniver Cheevy", Carl Sandburg "Chicago" "Fog"
2nd Week Imagism: Amy Lowell "Some Imagist Poets" "Madonna of the Evening Flowers", H.D. "Fragment 113" "Leda", William Carlos Williams "The Red Wheelbarrow"
3rd Week Modernisms, an Introduction: Ezra Pound: "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter" "In a Station of the Metro" "To Whistler, American"
4th Week Ezra Pound: Canto I, Canto XVI
5th Week Ramadan Feast Eve
6th Week T.S.Eliot: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
7th Week T.S.Eliot: The Waste Land
8th Week Midterm Exam
9th Week William Carlos Williams "This Is Just to Say" "Spring and All", Mina Loy "Lunar Baedeker"
10th Week National Sovereignity and Children's Day
11th Week E.E. Cummings "I sing of Olaf, glad and big", "in Just?", "Grasshopper" "a(l"
12th Week Robert Frost "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening? "Mending Wall" "Nothing Gold Can Stay"
13th Week Langston Hughes "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" Countee Cullen "Heritage", Claude McKay "Harlem Shadows"
14th Week Wallace Stevens "The Snow Man" "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" "Of Modern Poetry" "The Ultimate Poem Is Abstract"
15th Week Sacrifice Feast
16th Week Wrap-Up
Recommended or Required ReadingThe Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym et al. 8th edn. New York: Norton, 2012.Vols.D and E.
Shucard, Alan, Modern American Poetry, 1865-1950. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
DiYanni, Robert. Modern American Poets: Their Voices and Visions. New York: Random House, 1987.
Nelson, Cary. Repression and Recovery: Modern American Poetry and the Politics of Cultural Memory 1910-1945. Wisconsin: U of Wisconsin P, 1989.
Staufer, Donald Barlow. A Short History of American Poetry. New York: Dutton, 1974.
Myers, Jack, and David Wojan, eds. A Profile of Twentieth-Century Americasn Poetry. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1991.
Rotella, Guy. Reading and Writing Nature: The Poetry of Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and Elizabeth Bishop. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1991.
Bawer, Bruce. The Middle Generation: The Lives and Poetry of Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman, and Robert Lowell. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1986.
Ingersoll, Earl G. The Post-Confessionals: Conversations with American Poets of the Eighties. London: Associated UPs, 1989.

Planned Learning Activities and Teaching Methods
  • Lecture
  • Discussion
  • Questions/Answers
  • Other
Assessment Methods and Criteria
Quantity Percentage (%)
Mid-term 1 40
Quiz 2 20
Total(%) 60
Contribution of In-term Studies to Overall Grade(%) 60
Contribution of Final Examination to Overall Grade(%) 40
Total(%) 100
ECTS Allocated Based on Student Workload
Activities Quantity Duration (Hour) Total Workload (Hour)
Midterm exam 2 2 4
Preparation for Quiz 2 2 4
Individual or group work 14 6 84
Preparation for Final exam 1 10 10
Course hours 14 3 42
Preparation for Midterm exam
Laboratory (including preparation)
Final exam 1 6 6
Homework
Quiz 2 1 2
Total Work Load152
Total Work Load / 30 (h)5.06
ECTS Credit of the Course5
Language of InstructionEnglish
Work Placement(s)No

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