Transcultural forms of the poetics

Transcultural forms of the poetic: American poetry
The issues of definition of a specific American poetics become decisive in the 19th century, with the
import of German romanticism, or of Eastern culture. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the circulation
of poetic forms entails the major formal evolutions from the invention of free verse to procedural
poetry. The seminar will outline the construction of an American poetics as a process of transcultural
construction rather than a national project of self-definition.

This is both a survey course, that does not demand previous knowledge of American poetry, and a hands-on class that will entail close reading of a number of poems. The objective is to develop some confidence in front of difficult texts and learn about the freedom of literary interpretation. The requested work for evaluation implies personal research skills, thought organization, and the
capability to produce an essay that conforms with MLA conventions.

Contrôle dérogatoire de session 1
Une épreuve écrite sur table de 3h (commentaire d'un ou de plusieurs poèmes d’auteurs étudiés
pendant le séminaire)
Examen de session 2
Une épreuve écrite sur table de 3h (commentaire d'un ou de plusieurs poèmes d’auteurs étudiés
pendant le séminaire)

anglais C1, français B2/C1

- BLAU DUPLESSIS, Rachel and Peter Quatermain, eds. The Objectivist Nexus: Essays in Cultural Poetics.
Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1999.
- DAVIDSON, Michael. Ghostlier Demarcations: Modern Poetry and the Material Word. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997.
- DWORKIN, Craig. Reading the Illegible. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003.
- FREDMAN, Stephen. A Concise Companion to Twentieth-Century American Poetry. London:
Blackwell, 2005.
- PERLOFF, Marjorie. Radical Artifice: Writing in the Age of Media. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991.