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Browse materialsMIT 21L.701 · Fall 2003

Literary Interpretation: Interpreting Poetry

Subject: Language

Art: Gustave Doré, Gustav Doré, Satan Confronting Sin and Death at the Gates of Hell, c…, 2023 · Public domain

Instructor: Prof. Alvin Kibel
Term: Fall 2003
Level: Undergraduate
What's inside: 1 reading · 46 other files · 3 web pages
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Source: MIT OpenCourseWare 21L.701 Literary Interpretation: Interpreting Poetry, Fall 2003, Prof. Alvin Kibel — original course page on ocw.mit.edu ↗. License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Study order: MIT's own listing order, section by section. Taken from MIT's published course files, downloaded from ocw.mit.edu on September 23, 2026. How RedLectern is built.

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MIT OpenCourseWare, Prof. Alvin Kibel, 21L.701 Literary Interpretation: Interpreting Poetry, Fall 2003.

License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Edition: Fall 2003 · Open the original course on OCW ↗

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Literary Interpretation: Interpreting Poetry

Before you start

What's here, and what isn't

Not included here

Materials by section

Readings

Assignments

Other materials from this course

Lecture 1: Introduction: Dickinson, Emily. My Life had Stood . Plath, Sylvia. Metaphors . Voigt, Ellen. Sweet Everlasting . Initial distribution: List of Tropes.

Lecture 2: Shakespeare, William. Selected sonnets.

Lecture 3: Shakespeare, William. Selected sonnets (continued). Aristotle. Poetics. Richards, I. A. The Philosophy of Rhetoric.

Lecture 4: Shakespeare, William. Selected sonnets (continued). Donne, John. Selected poems.

Lecture 5: Donne, John. Selected poems (continued). Todorov, Tzvetan. “The End of Rhetoric.” In Theories of the Symbol .

Lecture 6: Donne, John. Selected poems (continued). Brooks, Cleanth. “The Language of Paradox.” In The Well-Wrought Urn .

Lecture 8: Campion, Johnson, Herrick, Herbert, Carew, Waller and Larkin (continued)

Lecture 10: Marvell (continued)

Lecture 11: Milton, John. Lycidas . ———. How Soon Hath Time . ——— When I consider how my light is spent . ———. Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint . Lakoff, George. “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor.”

Lecture 12: Milton (continued)

Lecture 13: Wordsworth. Tintern Abbey . Coleridge. Frost at Midnight . Lakoff and Turner. “The Power of Poetic Metaphor.”

Lecture 14: Wordsworth and Coleridge (continued)

Lecture 15: Wordsworth and Coleridge (continued) Lakoff and Turner. “Image Schemas in Poetry.”

Lecture 17: Keats (continued)

Lecture 19: Yeats (continued)

Lecture 21: Stevens (continued)

Lecture 22: Eliot, T. S. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock . ———. The Waste Land .

Lecture 24: Frost (continued) Auden, W. H. As I Walked Out One Evening . ———. Funeral Blues . ———. Lullaby . ———. Musée des Beaux Arts . ———. In Memory of W. B. Yeats .

Lecture 25: Auden (continued)

Lecture 26: Larkin, Philip. Church Going . ———. An Arundel Tomb . ———. The Whitsun Weddings . ———. Talking in Bed . ———. Aubade . ———. I Remember . ———. High Windows .

Lecture 27: None