ENGLISH 90QM: Metaphysical Poetry: The Seventeenth-Century Lyric and Beyond

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 NOTE ON REGISTRATION:

1). This course is limited to 15 students. For those who need the course to fulfill requirements, please petition asap.

2). Once the instructor has approved an enrollment petition, the student has 48 hours to enroll in the course, otherwise their enrollment petition will be cancelled.

3). If an enrolled student does not attend the first meeting of the course, the spot will be given to a student on the waiting list who attends the first meeting.

4). No student will be added after the first class meeting.

 

English 90qm

Metaphysical Poetry:

The Seventeenth-Century Lyric and Beyond

Mondays 3:45-5:45pm

Barker Center 269

Professor Gordon Teskey

Department of English, Barker Center

Email: gteskey@fas.harvard.edu

Office Hours: Tuesdays 2-3pm and by appointment

Course Description

In an age of scientific and political revolution, how do poets respond when common beliefs about God, humans, cosmic and social order, consciousness, and gender have been taken away? Modern poetry starts in the seventeenth century when poets, notably women poets, sought new grounds for poetic expression.

Course Texts (Harvard Coop)

The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Edited by George Logan, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Barbara K. Lewalski. Vol. 1B of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9^th edition, 2012.

Metaphysical Poetry. Edited by Colin Burrow. Penguin, 2006.

Course Policies

1. Civility and respect are essential to productive academic discussion. Seminar discussions should be conducted civilly, respectfully, and constructively. Please remember:

• Differences in beliefs, opinions, and approaches are to be expected.
• We value diversity in all aspects of life, such as backgrounds, abilities, and experiences.
• Aways be respectful of others and their opinions. Achieve excellence through an inclusive understanding of the world.

2. Being present is No smart phones are allowed in the seminar. You may use laptops or tablets only for class-related activities (such as reading texts or note-taking). Checking emails, social media, or any other digital materials unrelated to the class is prohibited. Violation of this policy will lower one’s participation grade.
3. You are not allowed to use any form of AI (such a ChatGPT) for any work or activities related to the class. You must complete all work for this course without any AI assistance. Violation of this policy may result in a Fail grade.

Course Requirements and Evaluation

Attendance and Participation

You are required to attend every seminar meeting and to participate actively in seminar discussions. You may be asked to do informal presentations throughout the term.

Each unexcused absence (such as without official permission from your house dean) may take 10% off your attendance and participation grade. 

Weekly Writing Assignments

You will have weekly short writing assignments throughout the term. The assignments are given in seminar and must be posted on Canvas by 9am on Monday (the day of the seminar meeting), so your classmates can read them before seminar. Be sure to number each of your writing assignments.

Some assignments will be responses to the readings (around 300-500 words), and some will be poems of your own creation in the style of the poets studied. Please think of the writing assignments as your “Metaphysical Poetry Journal.”

You will receive full marks on the weekly writing assignments portion of your grade if all are submitted in time. Each missing assignment takes 10% off your weekly assignment grade. No late submission is accepted.

Final Project

Your final project can be a short paper (2,500 words, or 10 double-spaced pages), or a group of poems (no less than 100 lines in total), or a group of translations of poems (no less than 100 lines in total). Translations must be accompanied by an account of the original texts and of the principles that guided you in translation (1,000 words).

Essays are evaluated for quality of writing, command of the text, cogency of argument, and familiarity with other writings on the subject (include bibliography).

Creative and translation projects are evaluated for originality of conception, skill of execution, intensity of effort, and broad relevance to the seminar.

Evaluation

40%     Attendance and participations at seminar meetings.

30%     Weekly writing assignments.

30%     Final project.

For general evaluation guidelines please consult the Harvard College Handbook for Students.

Accessibility

If you have an accessibility issue, please contact Harvard’s Accessibility Services. Accommodation will be made according to instructions from Accessibility Services.

Academic Integrity

You are responsible for reviewing the Harvard Guide to Using Sources (http://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu). In short: you must not present under your name any writing that was not done by you. You must give your sources for unusual facts and original thoughts that are not your own. You must not cite others’ work verbatim without quotation marks around the cited passages and proper citation of your source. Also, you must not present for this course work that you have already presented in another course. You are not allowed to use any form of AI (such a ChatGPT) for any work or activities related to the class.

The Harvard College Honor Code

A SIGNED AND DATED copy of this code must be attached to your final essay or project.

Members of the Harvard College community commit themselves to producing academic work of integrity – that is, work that adheres to the scholarly and intellectual standards of accurate attribution of sources, appropriate collection and use of data, and transparent acknowledgement of the contribution of others to their ideas, discoveries, interpretations, and conclusions. Cheating on exams or problem sets, plagiarizing or misrepresenting the ideas or language of someone else as one’s own, falsifying data, or any other instance of academic dishonesty violates the standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of learning and affairs.

I have read this statement and pledge to honor all its provisions.

Signed, ­­­­­­­­­­­­______________________________

Date ­____________________