English 551 A: Studies in Poetry

This seminar will focus on metaphor, as both a theoretical problem and as an element in questions of reading and interpretation. While the overall design of the course is addressed to the theory of metaphor, work for the seminar will draw upon a wide range of examples from the poetry of John Donne, Shakespeare, William Blake, Wordsworth, Whitman, Rilke, Mallarme, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and others. We will also examine how metphor functions in fiction as well, with attention to James Joyce's Dubliners and John Hawkes Second Skin. The theoretical readings will include both familiar treatments of the topic in literary criticism as well as logical and philosophical studies of metaphor.