English Moern Poetry & the French Symbolists

Module 8/ Semester 2
MA in Comparative Studies, Ibn Zohr University
Spring 2018
Prof: Driss BAKKA

Course Description:

This module introduces the students to the French symbolist movement and its influence on
English modern poetry. The French poets will be considered both in French and in English
translation. This module also covers the body of English modern poetry, its characteristic
techniques, concerns and major practitioners. The authors discussed in this module range from
Beaudelaire, Laforgue, Mallarmé to Eliot, Pound, Stevens, and Auden. Diverse methods of
literary criticism are employed. This module looks at the major methods of writing poetry in
this period, as well as the established frameworks of critical discussion which accompany these
works. We learn to read this poetry on its own terms and in relation to a variety of discourses
and contexts. We relate the poetry to its early modernist forbears, to its immediate social and
critical situation, and to modern critical and cultural debate.

Teaching Methodology: A combination of lectures and interactive teaching: Attendance and

active participation are required.

Written Work and Assessment:

Students are required to write a seminar midterm paper (2000 words)
Final in-class exam paper (1000 words)

Bibliography:

Balakian, Anna. The Symbolist Movement: A Critical Appraisal. New York: Random House, 1967.
Baudelaire, Charles. Œuvres Complètes. Ed., Claude Pichois. Paris : Bibliothèque la Pléiade,
Gallimard, 1975.

Bowra, C.M. The Heritage of Symbolism. London: Macmillan, 1943.

Corbière Tristan. Les Amours jaunes. Paris :1873

Eliot, T.S. Collected Poems 1909-1962. London: Faber, 1963.

Houston ,John Porter. French Symobolism and the Modernist Movement: A Study of Poetic
Structures. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UniversityPress,1980. Xv,298p.

Lunn-Rockeliffe. Tristan Corbière and the Poetics of Irony. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006.

Peyre Henri. Qu’est ce que le symbolisme ? Paris : Presses Universitaires de France, 1975.

__________.La littérature symboliste. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France 1976.

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 Pinto, Vivian de Sola. Crisis in English Poetry 1880-1940. London: Hutchinson University Library,
1899.

Pound, Ezra. Personae. London: Faber, 1952.

__________. The Cantos of Ezra Pound. London: Faber, 1964

Poems of Jules Laforgue. Trans. By Patricia Terry. Berkeley and los Angeles : Univ. of California
Press, 1958.

Rimbaud, Arthur. Œuvres Complètes. Ed., Antoine Adam. Paris : Bibliothèque la Pléiade,
Gallimard, 1972.

Symons, Arthur. The Symbolist Movement in Literature. London : Heinemann, 1899.

Taupin, René. The Influence of French Symbolism on Modern American Poetry .Translated by
William Pratt. Ams Studies in Modern ,1986.

Verlaine, Paul. Œuvres Poétiques Complètes. Ed., Yves Gérard le Dantec. Paris : Bibliothèque la
Pléiade, Gallimard, 1962.

Wallace, Stevens. Collected Poetry and Prose. New York: The Library of America, 1997.
Yeats, W.B. Collected Poems. London: Macmillan, 1961.

Course Plan:

Week 1

1. The French Symbolist Poets

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

A selection from Les Fleurs du Mal.

Spleen
L’Albatros
Correspondances
Une charogne
Le chat
Une Saison en Enfer

Week 2
Jules Laforgue (1860- 1887)

A selection from Les complaints.

Week 3
Tristan Corbière (1845-1875)

A selection from Les Amours jaunes

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Week 4
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842- 1898)

L’aprés Midi d’Un Faune

Le Cygne
Brise Marine
Crise de Vers
Un coup de Dés

2. English Modernist Poets

Week 5
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

The Wild Swan at Coole

The Second Coming
Sailing to Byzantium
Leda and the Swan
Among School Children
Byzantium

Week 6
Ezra Pound (1885- 1972)

Portrait d’Une femme

The Return
In a staion of the Metro
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

Week 7-8
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Portrait of a Lady
Preludes
Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Gerontion
The waste Land

Week 9
Wallace Stevens (1879- 1955)

Sunday Morning
Peter Quince at the Clavier
Anecdote of a Jar
Of Modern Poetry
To an Old Philosopher in Rome

Week 10: Recap