Poetry: Expanding the Literary Canon
Focusing specifically on non-western poetry and the literary canon, this course will raise questions about what a ‘literary canon’ is. The course will take you through the poetry as diverse as Chinese poet Li Bai's, Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō's and Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore's. The lives and writings of these authors deserve to be shared with the world! After all, in a world with so many languages, it serves to reason that some of the most beautiful pieces of literature in the world are not written in English. Imparting crucial skills in approaching and understanding different poetic forms, the course will also discuss the structure of language and the influence of global history.