20th Century Irish Poetry: The Shadow of W. B. Yeats
This MIT OpenCourseWare seminar traces how Irish poets after William Butler Yeats grappled with his towering influence, with particular attention to women poets negotiating or resisting that legacy. The course materials include a full syllabus and reading list of assigned poems, structured around weekly seminar sessions rather than lectures. Students take turns as "leadoff person," selecting a poem from that week's readings and posing a provocative claim or question for the group to work through. Written work includes two five-page essays and one longer ten-to-twelve page essay. The emphasis throughout is on close reading and discussion rather than survey coverage, tracking specific poets' strategies for writing in or against Yeats's shadow. Materials are freely available through MIT OpenCourseWare under a Creative Commons license, with no certificate offered.