Literary Interpretation: Beyond the Limits of the Lyric
MIT OpenCourseWare seminar on the moral and political position of poetry across different cultures. Close readings move through Whitman, Williams, Lowell, Plath, and Bishop in North America, Neruda in South America, Yeats in Western Europe, and Akhmatova and Szymborska in Eastern Europe, before spending a final month on Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish poet who won the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature while in exile. Discussion questions ask how each culture experienced modernism and how attitudes toward traditional form shaped the social standing of poetry and of intellectuals more broadly. Materials include the syllabus, reading list, and assignment prompts as posted by MIT; there is no certificate, and the course is free to access through MIT OpenCourseWare.