Fall, 2000	Professor John Olmsted
English 155	Rice 108, (440) 775-8582
-01: TTh, 9:35-10:50, King 241 -02: TTh, 11:00-12:15, King 241	Office Hours: M, 3:00-4:00Th, 12:30-1:30 & by appt
	E-mail: John.Olmsted@oberlin.edu

W. B. Yeats and the Irish Renaissance

The aim of this course is to make you a more alert and engaged reader of poetry and drama by studying the works of William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).

My responsibility in this course is to provide some guidance with interpretive method, some biographical and historical context to the works we read, and help in focusing and sustaining discussion.

The responsibility of each member of the class is to do the assigned reading, to take an active part in class discussion and in individual group meetings, and to prepare and hand in all written work on time.

Students are expected to attend all classes and to arrive on time.

After the first few weeks we will divide the class into discussion groups. The chair of each group will arrange for one or more meetings of the group each week outside normal class times. In these group meetings you will read the assigned texts aloud, discuss them, and prepare your presentations for regular class meetings.

Groups should prepare each week to read and discuss all the assigned poems and topics. On Thursdays beginning September 21 each member of the class will hand in a two- to three-page journal/paper in which you mention when and where you met with your group, who attended, and what was discussed. Then treat some aspect of the texts assigned which interested you.

The final Yeats paper, due on December 14, will be twelve to fourteen pages in length and will deal with some important aspect of Yeats' work. Ideally, the topic will arise from your weekly journal papers.

Evaluation in the course will be based on class participation and on all the weekly papers and the long final paper. Students who do not attend all classes and group discussion meetings will not receive credit for the course.

Texts:

W. B. Yeats, Yeats's Poetry, Drama, and Prose, ed. James Pethica. Norton Critical Edition.

W. B. Yeats, The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. A new Edition, ed. Richard J. Finneran. Macmillan.

Class Schedule:

Note: A more detailed syllabus with group assignments will be available once the discussion groups are formed.

Week of:
September 4	Introduction, "Sailing to Byzantium", Crossways (1889)
September 11	The Rose (1893), The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)
September 18	In the Seven Woods (1903), The Green Helmet (1910) First journal paper due September 21
September 25	Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), On Baile's Strand (1903), Responsibilities (1914)
October 2	The Wild Swans at Coole (1917)
October 9	Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921)
October 16	FALL BREAK
October 23	The Tower (1928)
October 30	The Tower (1928)
November 6	The Winding Stair (1933)
November 13	The Winding Stair (1933)
November 20	The Winding Stair (1933)
November 27	Tower and Winding Stair compared
December 4	Purgatory (1939), Last Poems (1938-39)
December 11	"What then?" Concluding discussions of W. B. Yeats
December 14	final paper due