Revolutionary Poetics

Catalog description

The 19th and 20th centuries were marked by widespread social and political unrest. Yet during this period, a revolution of the mind also took place. Marx envisions the end of class struggle through the awakening of consciousness, and Freud proposes that understanding unconscious thought can unlock inner desires. Both theorists share a radical awareness of oppression and a drive to expose hidden powers?our own and those which challenge us. In this course, we will try to link the revolutions of modernity (sociopolitical, technological, and intellectual) with the transformations happening simultaneously within the world of poetry (formal, linguistic, and conceptual): the democratization of poetic language; the break from traditional literary conventions; the mixing of genres and blending of different speech types. We will consider how poetic reflection might be turned into practical action, and if there?s a relationship between emerging genres of ?free verse? and the prose poem and the growth of the industrial working class. We will also explore the ways art succeeds or fails in shaping the tenets of revolutionary thinking.