Modern Poetry: 1922-1927

This course examines key publications from the golden age of High Modernist poetry. We will look at individual collections by key British and American poets of the time. Though scanning only five years, from 1922 to 1927, the course includes some of the most renowned and influential poets and poetry books of the twentieth century. In the shadow of the catastrophic First World War, all the poets were seeking an apt response to the combustible context of modernity, and the course will explore the differing ways in which the poets challenged conventional ideas of poetry in an attempt to meet the changes of the modern world. We will focus on close readings and individual poems, looking at the differing formal and stylistic innovations of each poet, examining how they represented intimations of chaos on the one hand, but also ideas of order and tradition on the other. We will explore key poetic debates of the era: the nature of the poetic image; free verse; authorial ¿impersonality¿ and the poem¿s relationship with the reader; themes of gender and sexuality; of history and temporality; of class, cultural inequality and diversity; and of the convulsive politics of the time.   Credit level: 10 Year taken: Year 4 Undergraduate SCQF credits: 20

Not running in 2025/26