Training in writing expository prose. Further instruction in expository writing in conjunction with reading literature. Satisfies the second half of the Reading and Composition requirement.

This course revolves around a riddle: how is a poem like a letter? Together, we’ll sound out some possible answers to this question, delving into the surprisingly hardy genre of the verse letter as well as semi- or non-epistolary poems and prose correspondence written by poets. We’ll be spending most of our time in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but we’ll sprinkle in both older and more contemporary points of comparison throughout the semester. Our early modern readings include poems and letters by four authors with outsized personalities and poetic personas: Philip Sidney, John Donne, Katherine Philips, and Margaret Cavendish. We’ll supplement these texts with excerpts from writings as different as Margaret Atwood’s late poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnets, E. E. Cummings’s experimental verse, and Amal El-Mohtar’s and Max Gladstone’s sci-fi romance This Is How You Lose the Time War—but we’ll also learn to read for the at-times uncanny resonances between Renaissance epistolary culture and these modern works. We’ll wrap up the semester by juxtaposing Jane Austen’s early epistolary novel Lady Susan with Whit Stillman’s loose film adaptation, Love and Friendship, splitting the difference between the 17th and 21st centuries by closing somewhere in the middle. All texts will be made available online. This is a writing-intensive course, so we will pay special attention to moments when letter-writers and poets winkingly comment on their own craftsmanship—and you’ll have a chance to bring their observations to bear on your own writing process as you hone your academic voice through composing close readings, engaging with literary criticism, and elaborating research questions. You’ll also have the opportunity to pursue more creative assignments over the course of the semester by putting our central riddle to inventive uses.

Requisites

• Previously passed an R_A course with a letter grade of C- or better. Previously passed an articulated R_A course with a letter grade of C- or better. Score a 4 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Literature and Composition. Score a 4 or 5 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Language and Composition. Score of 5, 6, or 7 on the International Baccalaureate Higher Level Examination in English.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills