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Course Description

Summary

This course takes William Butler Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming” as its starting point, launching from this often invoked poem to other poems and writings by Yeats that concern his unusual concepts of time, aging, and apocalypse including his prose work A Vision. We will examine Yeats’s prosodic choices regarding meter, rhyme, and form and how these musical decisions enhance his political messages. We may also read and hear works by other writers and artists that embrace “The Second Coming’s” prophetic warnings such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem, and musical incarnations of the poem’s themes and lines. Corequisites: All students are required to attend readings and events on literature night, typically held every other Wednesday at 7pm.