English R1A

Other Readings and Media

A course reader of elegies and essays; Diana Hacker, Rules for Writers; Jeffrey A. Hammond, The American Puritan Elegy: A Literary and Cultural Study; Mary Louise Kete, Sentimental Collaborations: Mourning and Middle-Class Identity in Nineteenth-Century America; Jahan Ramazani, Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney; Melissa F. Zeiger, Beyond Consolation: Death, Sexuality, and the Changing Shapes of Elegy.

Description

In this class, we will study the American elegy, following its development from the 17^th-century to the present.  Reading poems in conjunction with essays in literary criticism and cultural history, we will ask the following question:  How did elegiac conventions both reflect and create the conceptual meaning and psychological experience of death and grief in America?

Students will pursue this line of inquiry while learning how to write clearly, read critically, and argue persuasively. Emphasizing the development of these skills, this course will teach students how to evaluate authors’ theses, formulate their own positions, and express them in clear sentences, paragraphs, and essays. Over the course of the semester, students will produce approximately 32 pages of writing which will be broken down into 4 essays of equal length.