The Sonnet: Forms of Love, Death, and Beyond
COL 271
Fall 2025
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01
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This course explores motifs of love, death, and beyond through a single poetic form: the sonnet. We will read transhistorically from the 'invention' of the sonnet in the 13th century Sicilian School to its use in contemporary American poetry, touching on poets in a variety of languages and time periods. From individual poems to sonnet sequences, we will explore the way in which lyric poetry engages non-narrative modes of meaning-making within the formal expectations of the sonnet. Are sonnets uniquely adapted to types of experience which defy easy articulation? In what ways does the form of the sonnet make it possible to give literary representation to the ineffable? This course pays close attention to the relationship between form and content in a variety of poetic works. Poets to be read include Dante, Labé, Shakespeare, Inés de la Cruz, Barrett Browning, Yeats, Millay, Rilke, and Stallings. Writing assignments will include both creative and analytic writing. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA COL |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 90% or above |
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