Approaches to the Lyric
Instructor: Li-Chun Hsiao
National Taiwan University
Spring 2008

Course Description:

The objective of this course is to guide undergraduate students who are interested in poetry to more in-depth understanding of the English lyric, demonstrating a variety of available approaches that may help them further explore the lyric poetry. The term “lyric” here can first be loosely defined as any fairly short poem, though we will certainly arrive at a more rigorous and clear definition of the lyric as the semester progresses. As participants of an elective course, we’d like to aim higher than learning the basics in an introductory class. Through readings of an assortment of poems in English, students are expected to ask themselves such questions as “What constitutes a lyric (and more broadly, a poem)?” In other words, our hope is that by the end of the semester everyone can form a certain idea of poetry (particularly the lyric), which doesn’t have to be original or comprehensive but which will likely help you understand and enjoy numerous poems. In this sense, this course can be considered an undergraduate seminar on the poetics of the lyric poetry.

To some extent, it is also an open course: apart from the selected works we read and discuss together in the first half of the semester, students are expected to pick a few English lyrics they find most appealing in the second half and present to the class their interpretations of the chosen poems. Our common reading list, as well as your own list, doesn’t have to be based on the chronological order of the poets’ years of birth; in fact, they can be categorized along the line of theme (love, nature, art, etc.), poetic form (blank verse, couplet, ottava rima, etc.) or sub-genre (ode, sonnet, elegy, etc.), schools or periods (metaphysical poets, Romanticism, modernism, etc.), and other conceivable categories. Whatever our lists may be, we’ll approach the lyrics with “close reading,” leaving no word—not even punctuation—unnoticed, while different frameworks of interpretation are welcome after we gain familiarity with the texts.

For more details:
Approaches to the Lyric syllabus.doc