Donne and metaphysical poetry: the art of passion
I Pana
8 points * One 2-hour seminar per week and one 1-hour lecture per fortnight * First semester * Clayton
This subject involves the study of selected seventeenth-century texts composed in the `metaphysical' style, a reference point for English literature and a major influence on modernism. The type of modern artist is later, in effect, prefigured in the dialogue of experience (passions) and cultural conventions (art) in the seventeenth century - an age of crisis, doubt and mutability in which our contemporaries would have felt at home. The emphasis is on the close reading of selected works by Donne and resonant metaphysical voices, including Shakespeare, from a variety of interpretive perspectives on the ways in which a rich repertoire of feelings and states of mind, paradoxes, serious and trivial subjects are articulated and even dramatically `performed' before the reader - with passion, humour, originality and wit. The divergent voices and inner contradictions within texts also come into focus - the ways in which the Renaissance commonwealth of themes, motifs, and cliches are modified and translated into intensely personal, convincing and original literature. The subject also discusses ways in which essentially modern modes of writing and new conventions of artistic sincerity and originality were prefigured and disseminated. The discussion is framed by references to modern and contemporary responses to metaphysical poetry and by some visual material placing it in the context of baroque Europe.
Assessment
Seminar paper (1500 words): 25% * Short essay (1500 words): 25% * Long essay (3000 words): 50% * Examination (3 hours): 50% * Students whose written work and participation in seminars is satisfactory will be excused from the examination
Prescribed texts
Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra Signet
Shakespeare Richard II Signet
Donne Poems Norton
Fowler A (ed.) The new Oxford book of seventeenth century verse OUP, 1992
A course reader is provided by the English department