Poetic Language

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Write clear and convincing explications of poetry
• Appreciate the effects of historical and social context in the creation and reception of poetry
• Read poetry critically and with increased pleasure
• Recognize and analyse poetic forms and effects

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• Write short essays that aim for clarity and correctness
• Use the Oxford English Dictionary
• Read and analyse texts that sometimes operate illogically and non-discursively
• Express your views in a small-group setting
• Scan poetry
• Work with others to examine textual meanings

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Significant differences among poetic practices in select periods of literary history, such as the Renaissance, Romanticism and Modernism
• The vocabulary for the study of poetry, such as metres, figures of language, lineation and aural devices
• Strategies for reading, understanding and writing about poetry

The first section of the module will focus on the building blocks of poetic language; sound figure, metre and voice. The second section will explore how close attention to a poem’s tonal shifts, rhetorical ambiguities, allusions and critical reception can help enrich your reading. Each week, we will consider the topic with reference to a particular form or genre; in this way, your understanding of allusion will also introduce you to epic poetry, and your navigation of voice can help you explore the lyric. Short preparation tasks for each seminar and group discussion will help develop your confidence in reading poetry.

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching methods include

• Lectures
• Seminars
• Individual tutorials, as needed

Learning activities include

• Careful, repeated reading of poems as assigned
• Reading of supplementary materials
• Participating in seminar discussion
• Writing essays
• Making individual and small-group presentations

This module includes a Learning Support Hour. This is a flexible weekly contact hour, designed to support and respond to the particular cohort taking the module from year to year. This hour will include (but not be limited to) activities such as language, theory and research skills classes; group work supervisions; assignment preparation and essay writing guidance; assignment consultations; feedback and feed-forward sessions.

Resources & Reading list

Textbooks

John Strachan and Richard Terry (2011). Poetry. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

(2005). The Norton Anthology of Poetry. New York: W. W. Norton.

Formative

This is how we’ll give you feedback as you are learning. It is not a formal test or exam.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External