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COURSE DESCRIPTION
This seminar will consider the main writings of two major American poets, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. It will also consider popular poetry from diverse traditions, including: Native American songs and chants; African American spirituals; the songs and ballads of white working people; the songs of Anglo and Mexican-American cowboys; African American poets (like Paul Laurence Dunbar), sentimental poets (like Lydia Sigourney), American Romantic poets (like William Cullen Bryant and Maria Gowen Brooks), Transcendentalist poets (like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller), the so-called Fireside Poets (like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), abolitionist poets (like John Greenleaf Whittier and Frances E.W. Harper), as well as writers like Edgar Allan Poe who set the standards in the literary marketplace. The seminar emphasizes critical approaches that explain the meaning, form, and practices of canonical poets in terms of popular authority and popular conventions.
Dickinson and Popular Poetic Traditions
January 17: Introduction
January 20: Dickinson's Poetic Form: Reference, Syntax, Prosody
I: 341, 291, 425, 1063, 614, 772, 284, 681, 1067, 355: Poetic form I
January 24: Dickinson's Poetic Form: Reference, Syntax, Prosody
II: 409, 348, 243, 329, 283, 554, 319, 294, 415, 522, 698, 527. 538, 454, 782, 796, 194, 1163, 764: Poetic form II
Poetic Form: Scenelessness, Temporality
January 27: Scenelessness
Scenelessness: 359, 633, 544, 708, 693, 656, 629, 515, 760, 926, 890, 1735, 1692, 508, 824, 355, 340, 870, 124, 453, 479, 401
January 31: Temporality
Temporality: 336, 696, 372, 637, 664, 416, 360, 683, 488, 706, 867, 833, 1010, 1187, 1166, 337, 411, 269, 648, 132, 320, 259, 536, 446, 591, 962, 830, 1020, 1099, 935, 895, 1100, 536
Contexts: Domestication of Death
February 3: Domestication
Ann Douglas, "The Domestication of Death: The Posthumous Congregation"
Dickinson-Domestication of Death: 1784, 479, 199, 762, 605, 117, 114, 138, 240, 154, 159, 547, 471, 413, 431 [with alternate endings]
February 6: Death in the Victorian Era
Death-Dickinson: 965, 1069, 1032, 817, 354, 556, 346, 392, 477, 1470, 357, 682, 395, 385, 1708, 336, 1708, 336, 1682, 1683, 706
Compilation of 19th c Death poems
Wm Cullen Bryant, "Thanatopsis"; Edgar Allen Poe, "For Annie"; Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Last Leaf"; Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Threnody"
Contexts: Domestication of Nature
February 10: Nature - Dickinson
Nature-Dickinson: 22, 1458, 1498, 85, 177, 843, 402, 1488, 48, 210, 1099, 905, 901
Bryant, "To The Fringed Gentian"; Sigourney, The Voice of Flowers (select three sample poems); John Whittier, "My Playmate,"; Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Living Temple"; Christopher Cranch, "The Evening Primrose," "Bird Language"; Edgar Allen Poe, "Fairy Land," "The Haunted Palace"; Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Rhodora"; assorted images from flowers/sentiments genre
February 14: Dickinson and Agriculture
Dickinson and agriculture: 1036, 101, 92, 226, 1256, 1549, 681, 379, 85, 843, 177
Slideshow Agriculture Handout
Contexts: Sentimentality/Domesticity
February 17: Sentimentality/Domesticity
Sentimentality-Dickinson: 579, 445, 772, 862, 857, 1174
Sampling of sentimental poetry from Sarah Piatt; Julia Ward Howe; Phoebe Cary; Frances Sargent Locke Osgood; Lydia Sigourney; Ella Wheeler Wilcox; Alice Cary;
Joanne Dobson, "Reclaiming Sentimental Literature" (r)
June Howard, "What is Sentimentality?" (r)
February 21: No Class
Contexts: Authorship and Publication
February 24: Fascicle Groupings
Authorship: 187, 205, 675, 591, 788
Read Sharon Cameron on Fascicles
February 27: Groupings, Continued
Sharon Cameron on the Fascicles (r)
Whitman and Popular Culture
March 5: Transcendentalism, Romanticism, and the Lyric
Sample of Transcendentalist poems: William Ellery Channing; Jones Very; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Margaret Fuller; Henry David Thoreau
Lawrence Buell, "The Transcendentalists," The Columbia Literary History of the United States, ed. Emory Elliott (New York: Columbia UP, 1988) 364-378 (r)
March 13: Poetic Form
Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
Whitman, Preface 1855 Leaves of Grass
March 21: Decomposing City
Dead horses were very common in the city; "the close of a career"
Manure was another big problem. There were 3-4 MILLION pounds of manure EACH DAY in Manhattan. Artists have not left a record of this, but there were many manure blocks in the city.
Night Soil: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/when-american-cities-were-full-of-crap
https://www.6sqft.com/life-in-new-york-city-before-indoor-toilets/
March 24: Whitman & Sexuality
Reread sections 1-34, "Song of Myself", especially sections 5, 11, 22, 28, 32, "From Pent-up Aching Rivers," "I Saw in Louisiana"
Whitman and Sexuality response; see "Whitman" tab at top
Michael Moon, "Introduction," and "Fluidity and Specularity" (r)
March 28: Sexuality Beyond "Song of Myself"
"Children of Adam"; "Calamus" both in the Norton edition Whitman
March 31: Secondary Readings on Whitman & Sexuality:
There is a bibliography assignment this week; you will be writing a one-page summary of one of the following:
Contexts: Civil War
April 4: Civil War and Whitman
Whitman and Civil War Response
Civil War Setting: Photograph; Hospital Photo; Barn Hospital
Civil War Medical Treatments; casualties
April 14: Civil War and Whitman, Cont.
Dulce et Decorum est: reading by Jake Gyllenhaal; reading by Christopher Hitchens
Vigil Strange, reading
April 18: Poetry and the Civil War
Contexts: Slavery and the African American Poetic Tradition
Packet of African American tradition poems, George Moses Horton; Slavery Poems
April 21: African American Tradition Continued & Death of Lincoln
Death of Abraham Lincoln: "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" (p276)
Whitman's elegy to President Lincoln.
Whitman & Intertextuality: Other poems Influenced by Whitman
April 25: Whitman & Intertextuality
“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” in Leaves of Grass (Oxford) (also R33-R39)
Hart Crane, The Bridge, Proem (The "proem" is the first poem & is on p. 1)
Whitman/Intertextuality response; see "Whitman" tab at top
Jack Kerouac, "Bridge"; Miscellaneous Bridge poems
April 28: Whitman, "Beat" Literature, and Allen Ginsberg
Whitman: possibly reading "America"
Ginsberg: "Howl"; Ginsberg reading Howl; Ginsberg, "America" by Allen Ginsberg
Langston Hughes, "Let America Be America Again";
Handout of Ginsberg/Hughes Americas
Danny Glover reading "Let America be America"
Response question: Select one of the following: Ginsberg's "Howl"; Ginsberg "America"; Hughes "Let America Be America Again". Select 3-4 formal features of the poem you have selected that clearly borrow from Whitman, and develop them in relationship to the way the content of the poem also owes a debt to Whitman's experimentation and formal innovations.
Rob Falcone's Band: Do I Know Any More
May 2: Leaves of Grass
Compare 1855 edition and 1891 editions
Wrap up
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