ENG121P

This course explores the formal constraints, thematic conventions, historical contexts, and aesthetic and philosophical adaptations and reimaginations of a single poetic form: the sonnet. Beginning with the Italian Renaissance, students follow the form’s movement to Tudor England; its transformation during the sonnet "vogue" of the 1590s; its recuperation by the Romantics; its cooptation during the Harlem Renaissance; its tactical exploitation in feminist and queer poetry; and, its radical, digital, avant-garde, and political remediations by contemporary poets. In addition to writing and thinking critically about sonnet culture(s), students compose their own.