UH 300 Section 005: Honors Spec Topics Sem
Fall 2010
3 Credit Hours
Primary Instructor: Dr. Dwight Eddins
Core Designation: University Honors, Writing
This course explores the various ways in which modern poetry has undertaken to reinterpret the New Testament proposition that the Word (“Logos,” in Greek), which is identified with God, “was made flesh and dwelt among us.” These new versions of the Word offer competing modes of ordering existence. At the microcosmic level we have the words of the individual lyric poem, which undertakes to embody in concrete imagery (the word made flesh) a personal structuring of experience according to the inner lights of the private imagination. A vivid thematic evolution unfolds here as we trace modern poetry from Emily Dickinson’s heretical variations on Christianity through the agnosticism of Thomas Hardy, and on into the universe of Wallace Stevens, where the human imagination is the ultimate creator and orderer of existence. Along the way, the relation of human beings to nature, and thus, to the presence or absence of God in nature, provides an intriguing sub-theme. In addition to the poets listed above, we will read G.M. Hopkins, Walt Whitman, D.H. Lawrence, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, and others.
At the conclusion of this course, students will understand exactly how the dialectic between the unique imaginations of particular poets and the “raw materials” of existence—nature, history, human behavior, etc.—functions to produce unique world-orderings that, in effect, challenge existing orderings either through modification or outright rejection and substitution. As a valuable side-effect of this study, students will learn the mechanics of explicating poetry.
1. Poetry that accepts the Logos as presented in the Bible.
2. Poetry that presents heretical versions of the Christian Logos.
3. Poetry that questions the existence of a God.
4. Poetry that locates the Logos in Nature.
5. Poetry that locates the Logos solely in the human imagination.
Short response papers, term paper, midterm examination, and final examination.
Response papers and class discussion = 10% of final grade; term paper =30%; take-home midterm = 30%; final examination = 30%.
Examinations and response papers may be made up if missed for a valid reason.
Students are expected to attend classes regularly. If exigencies arise that make this impossible, they should inform the instructor beforehand. Unless their reasons for missing class are cogent, they will be penalized for repeated absences.
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The Academic Misconduct Disciplinary Policy will be followed in the event of academic misconduct.
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