Course Objectives

1. To learn to read the full complexity of Modernist poetry;
2. To become familiar with the literary figure of the Modernist period;
3. To become familiar with the literary themes and techniques associated with the Modernist period;
4. To come to a greater understanding of early twentieth-century history;
5. To hone your research tools, and critical writing and speaking skills.

Let's get this straight, right at the start of class:

I love modernist poetry.

I say this because very soon your reading and intellectual skills, as well as your patience, are likely to be tested in the extreme and you're going to ask yourselves:  what in the hell does Willhardt think he's doing inflicting such torture upon undergraduates?

I'll tell you what I think I'm doing:  I think I'm making you smarter, better English majors.  That's what I think I'm doing.  Modernism makes you work at reading, and I think that's a valuable thing to be forced to do, since it's only by working at your skills that you get better.  Modernism, taken seriously and diligently, will make you better.

Yeah, but what is Modernism?

Modernism, for those of you who don't know, is a literary period, which means that we generally distinguish it from the historical period, The Modern.  The latter can be traced back to the sixteenth century while the former really denotes a period ranging from approximately 1910 to 1930 or so.  (The dates for "Modernism" are notoriously slippery, the reasons for which we'll address during the course of this class.)  In any case, what we all ought to be thinking about at the outset is that we're not addressing a time period, but rather that we're thinking about a set of works which address related themes in some related ways.

As part of our "what" discussion, we ought to lay out some of the themes which authors were reacting to during this literary outpouring.  I'm going to detail some here and the rest we can add in as the semester wears on.

This will be our starting point, or points.  Now let's get digging into the fertile dirt of the poetry and see what we come up with on our own, huh?

But first, a couple of useful reminders...

The Mellinger Learning Center

Instructors will return papers, final papers will be reduced by one letter, and students will have forty-eight hours to revise and re-submit papers. In many cases, instructors will not have read the entire paper once they have determined that an essay fails to meet the minimum requirements; consequently, students will need to review and revise essays from beginning to end to make corrections. If essays fail to meet these minimum standards after re-submission, students will earn Fs for those assignments.

With such emphasis upon the quality and care that you ought to take with your writing, the following about PLAGIARISM ought not have to be said, but I will include it anyway. It is really simple:  if you copy someone else's direct words or exact ideas -- intentionally or not -- without giving them credit you fail the class.  Universities and colleges are built upon the notion that ideas matter; if you plagiarize someone else's ideas, you're denying that fundamental tenet.  Thus there will be zero tolerance for plagiarism in here.  If you do it, you will fail the course, period. (Please see also p. 24 "Academic Dishonesty" in the college's  2004-05 catalog and Section 54 of Hacker's Bedford Handbook.)

Calendar