Studies in Symbolist and Modern Literatures

Readings in modern (especially lyric) poetry in relation to major Frankfurt-School texts on aesthetics, criticism, and social theory in relation to literature (as well as the other arts) in general and poetry above all; special concentration on the writings of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, and on their development of Kantian, Hegelian, and Marxian traditions of aesthetics and critical theory; sustained attention to how and why poetry turns out to be so crucial to the Frankfurters’ (and, in particular, to Benjamin’s and Adorno’s) overall analyses of modernity, mechanical/technical/technological reproduction (in both the economic and artistic-aesthetic spheres), and critical agency; consideration of how Frankfurt-School concerns and legacies might engage the changed sociopolitical circumstances and artistic-aesthetic tendencies–and, above all, the poetry–of the last three decades; overarching analysis of modern poetry itself may challenge Frankfurt analyses of and assumptions about poetry, aesthetic experience, and critical agency.  Some treatment of Romantic and nineteenth-century poetry, but the course will focus primarily on twentieth-century, modernist poetry (including modernist poetry written and published during the apparently postmodern period).  As a shared project throughout the semester, the class will all read and continue discussing together one volume of poetry (Michael Palmer’s 1988 Sun), while for each week’s class, students and the instructor will have distributed ahead of time xeroxed texts of work by other poets (whom they have chosen to present to, discuss with, and work on with the rest of  the class).

Format: Discussion; some lecturing

Required Texts:

Instructor will distribute numerous xeroxed handouts of required texts that will include work by Kant, Marx, Vallejo, Duncan, Marcuse, De Beauvoir, Brecht, Mayakovsky, Neruda, Rich, and many others.

In addition, students will need the following books:

Michael Palmer, Sun (North Point Press, 1988); paper.  ISBN: 0-86547-345-5. [Note: This book of poetry is sometimes hard to get; but shipments of it can always be obtained from (the non-profit) Small Press Distribution, which can be reached at 1341 Seventh Street, Berkeley, CA 94710, tel (510)524-1668 or (800)869-7553, fax (510)524-0852, orders@spdbooks.org, <http://www.spdbooks.org>.] Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (Shocken, 1968); paper; latest edition; Walter Benjamin, Reflections (Schocken, 1978); paper; latest edition; Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, The Complete Correspondence: 1928-1940  (translation copyright Polity Press, 1999; first Harvard UP paper edition, 2001); paper. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (Continuum; 1987); paper. Theodor Adorno, Notes to Literature  volume one.  (Columbia University Press; 1991); paper. Theodor Adorno,  Notes to Literature volume two.  (Columbia University Press; 1992); paper. Theodor Adorno,  Aesthetic Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 1997); paper.

Suggested Optional Texts: Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, Rev’d edition (University of California Press, 1996); paper. Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project.  (Harvard UP; 1999; 1st Harvard UP paper edition, 2002); paper; latest edition. Theodor Adorno,  Minima Moralia (Verso, 1974); paper.