Course Ouline

Poetry – definition – the poetic language – classification. Chaucerian age – characteristics of poetry -major poets -Elizabethan sonnet. Metaphysical poetry – itscharacteristics -use of conceit, hyperbole -major poets. Restoration Age – Puritanism – characteristics-Jacobean Age.

Unit I: 

Evolution of English poetry from Chaucerian to Jacobean era.

Unit II:

Edmund Spenser: “One day I Wrote her Name” [Detailed]

“Faerie Queene” first 36 lines before Canto 1[Detailed].

Unit III:

William Shakespeare: Sonnet 18 ‘Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day’ [Detailed]. 

Sonnet 127,’In the Old Age Black was not Counted Fair’[Detailed]. 

Sonnet 30 ‘When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought’[Non-Detailed]. 

Sonnet 130 ‘My Mistress’ eyes are Nothing like the Sun’ [Non-Detailed].

Unit IV:

John Donne: “Canonization”,“Sun Rising”[Detailed]. 

Andrew Marvell: “To His Coy Mistress”[Detailed]. 

George Herbert: “The Gifts of God” (The Pulley) [Non-Detailed].

Unit V:

John Milton: “On his Blindness” [Non-Detailed].

“Lycidas” [Detailed].

Paradise Lost Book 1 (Invocation) [Detailed].

To help the students identify forms and types of poetry of the Age; make them familiar with poetic devices and strategies; motivate them to read and appreciate poetry.

1. Nayar. Pramod K. English Poetry from the Elizabethans to the Restoration. Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 2012.
2. Wells, Stanley and Lena Cowen Orlin. Eds. Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide. OUP, New Delhi, 2007.

1. Board of Editors. Poetry Down the Ages. Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 2010.
2. Palgrave, F.T. The Golden Treasury. New Delhi: Rupa Classics, 2006.
3. Barua, D.K. Whispering Reeds. Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1995.
4. Paradise Lost Book 1.