Department of English and Literary Studies

First Semester 2018/2019 Academic Session

Course Description for “Understanding Poetry”
Course Name: “Understanding Poetry”
Course Code: ELS 205
Course Instructor: Mrs. Akinwumi O. O and Mrs. Okafor A.

Course Description: The course is specifically designed to help students understand

the fundamentals of poetry by teaching them basic elements of the literary genre as
well as its types and perspectives that shape poetic compositions. Students, at the end
of the course, are expected to understand rudiments of poetry and apply the cognate
experience or skills garnered during the lessons to interpret poetic compositions.

1. Poetry
 Definition
 Forms of poetry

2. Characteristics/Elements of Poetry (speaker, setting, subject and theme)

 Speaker
 Setting
 Subject
 Theme
 Tone and Attitude
 Structure

3. Prosody/Versification in Poetry
 Metrics (Metre: Monometre, Dimetre, Trimetre, Tetrametre, Pentametre,
Hexametre/Alexandrine, Heptametre/Fourteener, Octametre)
 Rhyme
 Rhythm (Phrasal and Sprung Rhythms)
 Foot (Iambic, Anapestic, Trochaic, Dactylic, Spondaic, Pyrrhic)
 Scansion
 Feminine/Masculine Ending
 End-Stopped Lines
 Run-On Lines/Enjambment
 Caesura
 Stanza (Couplet, Triplet, Quatrain, Quintet, Sestet, Seotet, Octave/Octet,
the Spenserian Stanza, the Keatsian Sonnet, the Rondeaux, the Sonnet
– Petrarchan Sonnet, Shakespearian Sonnet
 4. Genre
 Narrative Poetry (Ballads)
 Dramatic Poetry (Soliloquies? Dramatic Monologues?)
 Lyric Poetry (the Sonnet, Elegy and Ode – Pindaric/regular,
Cowleyan/irregular, Horatian)
 Epic/Heroic Poetry (What are Epic Conventions? – argument, epic
question, in medias res)
 Conceptualising “Melopoeia”, “Phanopoeia”, “Logopoeia” in Poetry

5. Language of Poetry
 Figurative Language and Imagery (Literary tropes: Kenneth Burke’s four
master tropes – metaphor, irony, synecdoche, metonymy – allegory,
pun, simile, oxymoron, litotes, hyperbole, etc)
 Symbols and Allegory

6. Words and Word Order in Poetry

7. Tone and Attitude in Poetry
8. Perspectives in Poetry
 Poetry and Society
 Poetry and Religion
 Poetry and Philosophy
 Poetry and Biography
 Poetry and History
9. Evaluation of Select Poems (African- Nigerian/Ghanaian, Kenyan/Ugandan,
South African, North African, and Western poems)
10. Revision
11. Examination

Reading List

1. Walter Kalaidjian, Understanding Poetry. Houghton and Mifflin, 2005.

2. Miller, Ruth and Greenberg, Robert A. Poetry: An Introduction. London:
Macmillan, 1981.
3. Mendelson, Edward. W.H Auden: Selected Poems. New York: Vintage Press,
1989.
4. Nwoga, DonatusIbe. West African Verse: An Anthology. Longman, 1967,
1973.
5. Kennedy, X. J. and Giola, Dana. An Introduction to Poetry. Longman, 2009.
6. The Norton Anthology of World Literature, 2012.