Module ENGL3251: Elizabeth Bishop and Twentieth-Century Verse

Department: English Studies

ENGL3251: Elizabeth Bishop and Twentieth-Century Verse

Prerequisites

• Successful completion of either ENGL2011 Theory and Practice of Literary Criticism or ENGL2021 Shakespeare.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To introduce students to the poetry, prose and artful correspondence of one of the major poets of the twentieth century, and consider her complex formal innovations in all these genres.
• To cultivate a critical understanding of a selection of twentieth-century American and British poets who influenced or were influenced by Bishop’s work, and to explore their various historical, intellectual and cultural contexts.

Content

• Focusing on the American poet Elizabeth Bishop, this module will consider her unique importance to other writers both of her generation and afterwards, American and British. It will look at her writing in multiple genres alongside the mid-century shift from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ verse forms, and relate stylistic issues to the intellectual and social changes, and political and historical developments of the period. Examples of these may include: the impact of World War 2; the culture of paranoia inculcated by the Cold War; Bishop’s relationship to feminist writing of the period; and her cultural critique of received ideas about nationality, race, power, gender, sexual orientation, and the overlap between culture and nature – spurred, in part, by her cosmopolitanism as a poet with connections to Canada, the U.S. and Brazil. This module also relates to her work that of her precursors and peers – Moore, Lowell, Stevens, Woolf, Flannery O’Connor, etc – as well as later writers who, in attesting to her impact, have positioned her as, globally, one of the most important poets of the twentieth or any century.

Learning Outcomes

• Students will be expected to demonstrate a close knowledge and understanding of Bishop’s work, and also that of a range of other twentieth-century poets. They will look closely at Bishop’s aesthetic textures in multiple genres, both poetry and prose, and find, at this advanced level, a way of getting inside and talking about the pleasures of her work, using an extensive toolkit of stylistic terms. Finally, issues of style (in Bishop, and other poets) will be connected with the literary and intellectual concepts and movements of the period.

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts; also the ability, at this advanced level, to make stylistic connections and comparisons between a range of poets and poems
• an ability to connect the formal dimensions of texts with a variety of novel and complex contexts within this historical period, discussing both verse and prose with a strong sense of the cultural field in which technical choices have been made – with attention to intellectual, historical and cultural contexts
• advanced skills in critical reasoning, including the ability to assess other critical readings and to engage with (and critique) the political and philosophical coding of ‘closed’ and ‘open’ literary forms in the mid-to-late twentieth century
• a sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances; attention, also, to the affective power of language o an ability to articulate and substantiate an imaginative response to literature
• an ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to this literary period
• advanced skills of effective communication and argument
• a sophisticated awareness of literature as a medium through which values are affirmed and debated

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a capacity to analyse critically
• an ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way, involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject
• a competence in the planning and execution of essays
• an advanced capacity for independent thought and judgement, and the ability to assess the critical ideas of others
• advanced skills in critical reasoning; the ability to handle information and argument in a critical manner
• organisation and time-management skills

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Seminars: will provide the opportunity for sustained attention to literary specificities in an environment promotive of high-level technical discussion of both verse and prose, which still touches on the pleasures of deeply reading one poet in particular – beyond the usual survey context of modules at a lower level. These seminars will be structured around the close reading of poems / extended passages, and will feature active participation by the whole group, and a developing understanding of how evaluative opinion passes into critical knowledge.
• Summative essays: these test the student's ability to present subject-specific knowledge, to select appropriate materials, and to construct and manage clear and effective arguments; to demonstrate both time-management and independent thinking in the achievement of stated learning outcomes.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Before the first essay, students will have an individual consultation in which they are entitled to show their seminar leader a list of points relevant to the essay and receive oral comment on these points. Students may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University