English 203

Book List

Ashbery, John: Collected Poetry; Hegel, F.: Phenomenology of Spirit; Pound, Ezra: Gaudier-Brzska; Stevens, Wallace: Collected Poetry and Prose; Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Culture and Value; Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Major Works

Other Readings and Media

  There will be texts on bspace.

Description

This course will be devoted to how specific philosophical texts can help us think about models of authorship and reading typified by Pound, Yeats,  Stevens, and Ashbery, but with I hope significant implications for most recent poetry.  We will read Nietzsche on knowledge, value, and morality in relation to Pound (his work from 1912-25); Hegel on concepts of expression and perhaps ethics in relation to selections from Yeats; and Wittgenstein on expression, confession, display, and aspect seeing in relation to Stevens and to Ashbery (primarily to imagine how indeterminacy can be a valued state).  Participants will be expected to produce one class project and review one as well as a twenty-page paper.

This course satisfies the 20th-century historical breadth requirement.