(Major Field) 20th-century Poetry: Interdependent Modernisms

RATIONALE Each of the authors on this list has made a fundamental contribution to 20th century poetry, modernism in the comprehensive, inwardly conflicted sense. To understand the meaning of this claim, we should view these figures and their most important works in juxtaposition with one other. This topic entails a "comparative" perspective, but "contrastive" may be the more appropriate term. Some relevant questions might be: — How can we speak fruitfully of "modernism" in a comprehensive sense? To what extent must we think in terms of distinct and conflicting modernisms? What, for example, do figures as different as W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, and Derek Walcott have in common, and what are the rationales for the different kinds of work they do, the positions they take? — To what should we attribute the allusiveness (and anti-allusiveness) of modern poetry? What is or should be the relation between the Modern, the Romantic, and the Classic traditions, according to Lawrence, Yeats, Eliot, Williams, Auden, Heaney, or Walcott? In what sense do the Romantics remain the first moderns, despite the efforts of most moderns to define their work in contradistinction to that of the Romantics? How, moreover, might we define the influences that the Romantics and the earlier moderns (Wordsworth, Hopkins, Hardy, and Yeats) had on later modern and "post-modern" figures, such as Auden, Heaney, and Walcott? In what ways have 20th century poets also been influenced by the work of thinkers such as Kant, Rousseau, Darwin , Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Freud? — How have social realities (such as urbanization), and political/historical events (such as the two World Wars) impacted on or defined the concerns of 20th century poetry? — What should we make of the religious or visionary claims of poets such as Lawrence ("star-polarity") , Yeats (gyres, images), Eliot (the still point), and Auden (agape, etc.), especially in light of their more materialist and political themes? — What is the relationship between formal methodology (metric strutures, Aristotelian and anti-Aristotelian structures) and moral, aesthetic, or political statement in the work of Yeats, Eliot,Williams, Auden, Heaney or Walcott? How does this relationship evolve in the course of a given poet's career? — How do we account for the genres adopted by a given poet? In the twentieth century, to what do terms such as "drama" and "epic" refer? What are the generic characteristics of longer works, such as The Wasteland, Ulysses, The Sea and the Mirror, and Omeros, or are these elaborate lyric works, in a sense? — How does the work of a given modern poet define significant tensions between abstract social or political statements and more personal concerns?

PRIMARY READINGS HOPKINS — Collected Poems YEATS — Crossways — The Rose — The Wind Among the Reeds — The Green Helmet — Responsibilities — The Wild Swans at Coole — Michael Robartes and the Dancer — The Tower — The Winkling Stair New Poems — Last Poems — Autobiographies: Memories and Refelections (London: Bracken, 1995) — A Vision (London: Arena, 1990) — Collected Plays (London: Macmillan. 1966) — Essays and Introductions (New York: Collier Books, 1968) LAWRENCE — The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence (New York: Viking Penguin, 1988) — Selected Letters (New York: Penguin, 1978) — Essays and Critical Writing (New York: Viking, 1966) ELIOT — Prufrock and Other Observations — Poems 1920 — The Waste Land, 1922 — The Hollow Men, 1925 — Ash Wednesday, 1930 — Unfinished Poems — The Four Quartets — Tbe Waste Land. Facsimile Edition (London: Faber and Faber, 1971) — Letters (London: Faber and Faber, 1988) — Selected Prose (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1975) — Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot, ed. Frank Kermode (London: Faber and Faber, 1988) STEVENS — Harmonium — The Man with the Blue Guitar — Parts of a World — Transports of Summer — The Auroras of Autumn — Opus Posthumous (New York: Knopf, 1990) — The Necessary Angel WILLIAMS — Collected Poems (New York: New Directions, 1986) AUDEN — Collected Poems — The Dyer's Hand — Forewards and Afterwards HEANEY — New Selected Poems, 1966-87 (London: Faber and Faber, 1987). Includes texts from Death of a Naturalist to North — Preoccupations: Selected Prose WALCOTT — Collected Poems (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1990) — Omeros — Plays

SECONDARY READINGS Paul de Man — Blindness and Insight — The Rhetoric of Romanticism Harold Bloom — The Visionary Company Paul Fussel — The Great War and Modern Memory Hugh Kenner — The Pound Era Frank Kermode — The Romantic Image — The Sense of an Ending Jean-François Lyotard — The Unpresentable Perry Meisel — The Myth of the Modern Georg Simmel — The Metropolis and Modern Life Bannerjee, A., ed. — D. H. Lawrence's Poetry Benamou, Michel — Wallace Stevens and the Symbolist Imagination Blamires, Harry — Word Unheard: A Guide through T.S. Eliot's 'Four Ouartets' Bloom, Harold, ed. — William Butler Yeats — Seamus Heaney: Modem Critical Views Brown, Stewart, ed. — The Art of Derek Walcott Cullingford, Elizabeth B. — Gender and History in Yeats's Love Poetry Draper, R.P. — Twentieth Century Poetry in English — The Literature of Region and Nation Ellman, Richard — Yeats: The Man and The Masks Fraser, G.S. — Essays on Twentieth Century Poets Friedman, Barton — Adventures in the Deeps of the Mind Hynes, Samuel — The Pattern of Hardy's Poetry. Jeffares, Norman — Yeats's Poems — A New Commentary on the Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Lucas, John — Modem English Poetry from Hardy to Yeats Jain, Manju — A Critical Reading of The Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot Kiely, Benedict — Yeats's Ireland Mariani, Paul — William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked Marshall, Tom — The Psychic Mariner: A Reading of the Poems of D.H. Lawrence Markos, Donald W. — Ideas in Things: The Poems of William Carlos Williams Mendelson, Edward — Early Auden — Later Auden Stallworthy, Jon — Vision and Revision in Yeats's 'Last Poems' Tamplin, Ronald — A Preface to T.S. Eliot Terada, Rei — Derek Walcott's Poetry: American Mimicry Vendler, Helen — Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen out of Desire Williamson George — A Reader's Guide to T.S. Eliot