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In this class, we will read a variety of American poems from different literary epochs including works by Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Muriel Rukeyser, Sylvia Plath, John Updike, Charles Simic, and Edward Hirsch. What all these poems have in common is their thematic focus on sleep phenomena: deep sleep, insomnia, and sleepwalking.
Some of the questions we will be asking ourselves during the course of this seminar are: In which ways do our poems portray and ‘use’ sleep? What do they tell us about sleep? Which images and metaphors are used in connection to sleep? In a first step, we will discuss what it means to read poetry and we will examine some introductory texts on ‘how to read poetry.’ We will further make ourselves familiar with the field of ‘critical sleep studies’ and see what contemporary literary critics have written on the relation between sleep and poetry/ sleep and the poet.
This class features a guest lecture by Dr. René Dietrich (Mainz), author of a book-length study on American post-apocalyptic poetry since 1945.
Readings:
A course reader including the poems and theoretical texts which we will read in class will be made available for purchase.
Course requirements: Regular attendance, active participation, reading and writing assignments, short oral presentation, graded term paper/ final written exam (depending on your Studienordnung). |
