Suggested Topics for First Paper:

“The Ballad of Reading Gaol” as Social Critique

Form and Content in “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”

Wilde’s De Profundis and “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”

Yeats and the Reworking of Myth Yeats’ Autobiography and the Magi Cycle

Yeats’ Byzantium Poems and the Representation of Art

Yeats’ Songs and Sonnets on Love

Sexuality and the Body in Yeats’ Later Poems (“Crazy Jane” poems)

Early and Late Poems: The Shift from Romanticism to Modernism in Yeats’ Work

The Form of the Sonnet: Wilde, Yeats, Frost, McKay

Sitwell and Eliot: The Use of Reversal and Parody

“Facade” as Social Critique

Language and Image in “Facade”

Musical Themes in the Poetry of Yeats/Sitwell/Wallace Stevens/Langston Hughes

Sassoon/Owen/Rosenberg/Masters and the Ironies of War

Psychological Themes in Sassoon/Rosenberg/T. S. Eliot

Anti-Romanticism in the Poetry of Wilfred Owen/Siegfried Sassoon Religious/Anti-Religious Themes in T. S. Eliot, Yeats, Rosenberg,

Hughes The Limits of Description: Language and the War Poets

Frost and the Inner Self

Irony in the Poetry of Robert Frost

Frost and the Wasteland Within

Form and Content in Frost’s Poetry

The Social World of The Spoon River Anthology

The Greek Anthology and Spoon River

The Use of Irony in Masters’ Spoon River

Political Themes in Masters/Frost/Yeats (Irish Nationalism), Hughes

Organization of the Long Poem: Eliot/Sitwell/Hughes/H. D. Langston Hughes and the Poetry of Harlem

Vernacular Themes and Language in Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes and the (Mis)uses of African-American Culture

McKay, Hughes and the Dream Deferred Stylistic Shifts in the Poetry of Claude McKay

H. D. and T. S. Eliot: The Uses of Myth

Form and Sound in the Poetry of T. S. Eliot and H. D.

H. D. and the Uses of Classicism

“Imagism”: The Function of Symbols in the Poetry of H. D.

H. D. and the Representation of Women

Marianne Moore/William Carlos Williams and the Poetics of Ordinary Speech

The Animal World in the Poetry of Sitwell/Yeats/Frost