Syllabus
Wednesday, from 14,10 (Main Building, room no 18) 3. 10. Josef Hrdlička
Introduction: What is Modern Poetry?
Introductory lecture dealing with basic questions: How to define and delimit modern poetry historically, thematically, structurally. Fundamental characteristics of modern poetry and some principal poets. Examples of poems.
Selected Bibliography:
Culler, Jonathan D. Theory of the lyric. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015.
Greene, Roland et. al. (eds.). The Princeton Encyclopedia of poetry and poetics. 4th ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012 (accessible via ebrary).
Hamburger, Michael. The Truth of Poetry: tensions in modernist poetry from Baudelaire to the 1960s. New York: Helen and Kurt Wolff Book, 1970 (several editions).
Read, please, before this lecture:
Charles Baudelaire: Correspondances / Correspondences (French - http://www.baudelaire.cz/works.html?aID=100&artID=6 / English - http://www.baudelaire.cz/works.html?aID=200&artID=6)
J. A. Rimbaud: Voyelles / Vowels (http://www.doctorhugo.org/synaesthesia/rimbaud.html)
Ivan Blatný: Stará bydliště / Old Addresses; Slavnost / Festivity - in attached file. 10. 10. Justin Quinn - CHANGE
W. B. Yeats and Form in Modern Poetry
Many critical narratives of early 20th century poetry have emphasized the formal experiments of modernism, often occluding the persistence of conventional form in the work of poets as various as Paul Valery, Rainer Maria Rilke, Bohuslav Reynek, Robert Frost among many others. This lecture will concentrate on the example of W. B. Yeats and explore what his formal choices can tell us about modern poetry, its traditions and its innovations.
Read, please, poem "The Tower" before this lecture: http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/782/.
Bibliography
Brown, Terence. The Life of W.B. Yeats. 1999.Ellmann, Richard. The Identity of Yeats. 1964. ----. Yeats: The Man and the Masks. 1979.Foster, R.F. W.B. Yeats: A Life. 2 vols. 1997, 2003.Kermode, Frank. Romantic Image. 1957. 17. 10. Záviš Šuman
Mallarmé's Un coup de dés
In my lecture I shall focus on some of the essential features of French Symbolist poetry such as musicality of the verse, autonomy of poetic image and its impersonality. A careful examination of two Mallarmé’s poems (Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard / A Throw of the Dice Never Will Abolish Chance and Epilogue, later titled Las de l’amer repos / Tired of bitter rest) will help us to sketch why and by what shifts it has been so influential to later generations of poets. It would be helpful if you read these two poems before the lecture.
Texts on-line: http://jimhanson.org/documents/Athrowofthedicetypographicallycorrect02-18-09.pdf http://jimhanson.org/tiredofbitterrest.html
Suggested readings:
Barbara Johnson: "The Dream of Stone". In D. Hollier (ed.), A New History of French Literature, Harvard University Press, 2001, p. 743-748. (A survey of Parnasse movement.)
Patrick McGuinness: "Symbolism". In W. Burgwinkle, N. Hammond, E. Wilson (ed.), The Cambridge History of French Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 479-487. (A very good introduction to Symbolism in France where you will find solid recommendations how to read Symbolist poems.) 24. 10. Záviš Šuman
Apollinaire's Alcools
In my lecture I will try to summarize Apollinaire’s impact on avant-garde poetry. I shall focus on Alcools (1913), and especially on the first poem of this collection, called Zone. By comparison of this poem with its first draft I will point out to the main characteristic features of Apollinaire’s poetry such as free association and the role of the poetic "I" in his poetry.
Readings: http://www.parisdigest.com/monument/eiffel_tower_poem_zone_guillaume_apollinaire.pdf 31. 10. Martin Pokorný
Ezra Pound's Personae
Ezra Pound’s early poetry is self-defined by the concept of persona: a theatre mask, or - with a reference to Robert Browning - a dramatic voice. The programmatic style is based on a historically minded concept of the poet’s task.
Bibliography:
Hugh Kenner: The Poetry of Ezra Pound, London 1951.
Donald Davie: Ezra Pound: Poet as Sculptor, New York 1964.
Hugh Kenner: The Pound Era, Los Angeles 1973. 7. 11. Daniel Soukup
Playful Transience in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens and Vítězslav Nezval
The lecture will explore correspondences between Wallace Stevens first book of poetry (Harmonium, 1923), and "Poetism", a Czech literary movement which flourished in the interwar era. The lecture will offer a close reading of selected poems, as well as a more general comparison of two kinds of modernism, and an existential perspective on how creative playfulness finds both its limit and meaning in transience.
Primary sources
Nezval, Vítězslav: Básně I, ed. Milan Blahynka, Brno: Host 201.
Stevens, Wallace: Collected Poetry & Prose, New York: Library of America, 1997.
Secondary sources
Cook, Eleanor: A Reader’s Guide to Wallace Stevens, Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007.
Teaching Wallace Stevens, ed. by John Serio and B. J. Leggett, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994.
Vendler, Helen: Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen Out of Desire, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984. 14. 11. Martin Pokorný
T. S. Eliot's Observations
T. S. Eliot’s poetry before the publication of The Waste Land has its own specific style, characterized by formal rigour and a unique emotive modulation. The concept of observation, used by Eliot himself in the title of his first collection, will be employed and developed in order to capture this group of texts.
A. O. Matthiessen: The Achievement of T. S. Eliot, New York 1935.
Hugh Kenner: The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot, New York 1959.
Northrop Frye: T. S. Eliot: An Introduction, New York 1963. 21. 11. Mariana Machová
Elegy as an Essential Lyric Genre
Elegy can be seen as one of the basic lyric genres, acquiring particular importance in the 20th century. The lecture will briefly touch on the history of elegy (its classic roots, its importance in Anglo-Saxon poetry), while the main focus will be on the role of elegy in modern lyric and the varied ways the genre has been handled by modern poets writing in English.
Selected Bibliography:
Weisman, Karen. The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Ramazani, Jahan. Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Fuss, Diana. Dying Modern: A Meditation on Elegy. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.
Sacks, Peter M. The English Elegy: Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. 28. 11. Mariana Machová
Objects, Landscapes, People: Description in Modern Lyric
The lecture will discuss the ways modern lyric poets approach descriptions of landscapes, objects (including animals), and people, drawing attention to the fact that the very act of describing, of putting things into words is seen as potentially problematic, or even impossible. Examples of poems which focus on description will be taken from poets ranging from Marianne Moore, through Seamus Heaney, to Thom Gunn.
Selected Bibliography:
Costello, Bonnie. Planets on Tables: Poetry, Still Life, and the Turning World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008.
Costello, Bonnie. Shifting Ground: Reinventing Landscape in Modern
Annotation
The course is dedicated to modern poetry. Scholars from different departments will present several topics concerning modern poetry generally from the end of 19th century to the present. The aim of lectures is to explore fundamental aspects of the modern lyric from a comparative point of view.
The lecture will be accompanied by a brief discussion of 1-2 poems.