Seventeenth-Century English Lyric Poetry

Catalog description

This seminar examines in depth four poets—Donne, Jonson, Herbert, and Crashaw—from one of the richest and most daringly experimental periods of English poetry. We will also consider poems by other important seventeenth-century authors, including Herrick, Suckling, the Earl of Rochester, Katherine Philips, and Aphra Behn. Our discussions will treat these poets in various early modern literary and cultural contexts. Since much of the period’s most famous lyric poetry is love poetry, the course will be particularly concerned with literary expressions of erotic desire. We'll also consider the affective cross-affiliations between amorous and religious devotion in the period. Other topics include: the history of the lyric; libertinism; ecstatic experience and expression; the relations between body and soul; Renaissance notions of authorship and the literary career; and the “metaphysical conceit,” in both the age of Donne and our own.