Elective Seminar: History of Western Poetry

The seminar is broad-based. Emphasis is placed on lyric poetry, but it involves at the same time the other two literary genres, since most Western poetry, including epic and dramatic poetry, up to the Romanticism, is written in verse. The broad outline of the seminar allows for the treatment of poetry from Greek archaic lyric and classical tragedy to modern poetry. The seminar focuses on the establishment and construction of formal poetic structures and their dissolution in modernism and the avant-gardes of the twentieth century. In terms of content, given that, alongside thinkers, it is poets who have throughout history articulated the human condition in a pregnant way, it deals with the poetic thematisation of the human relationship to love, death, the sacred and the divine, etc. From the point of view of intra-poetic or intertextual relationships, it takes into account in particular the relationship of later poets to the two fundamental paradigms of Western literature, the Bible and classical myth. In doing so, the seminar introduces also to the basics of interpreting and translating poetry.

- Hugo Friedrich, Struktura moderne lirike. Od srede devetnajstega do srede dvajsetega stoletja. Ljubljana 1972. 380 str. COBISS.SI-ID - 7428865
- M. L. Gasparov, A History of European Versification. Oxford 1996. 334 str. COBISS.SI-ID - 2040162
- Edward Hirsch, How to Read a Poem. And Fall in Love with Poetry. San Diego, New York in London 1999. 354 str. COBISS.SI-ID - 36819715
- Janko Kos, Lirika. Ljubljana 1993. 124 str. COBISS.SI-ID - 34503936
- Nina Kossman (ur.), Gods and Mortals. Modern Poems on Classical Myths. Oxford 2001. 295 str. https://plus.cobiss.net/cobiss/si/sl/bib/1000000000552659#full
- Vid Snoj, Vezava pesništva: ritem, metrum, ritem. V: Vrhovi v globini I. Prolegomena. Ljubljana 2021. Str. 106–126. COBISS.SI-ID - 43833859
- George Steiner, After Babel. Aspects of Language and Translation. New York in London 1998. 53807 str. COBISS.SI-ID - 79914496
- Shira Wolosky, The Art of Poetry. How to Read a Poem. Oxford 2008. 230 str. COBISS.SI-ID – 39094882

Priporočena literatura
- Erik Gray, The Art of Love Poetry. Oxford 2018. 210 str.
- Adam Potkay in Monica Brzezinski Potkay, Bible as the Root of Western Literature. Stories, Poems, and Parables. Prince Frederick, Maryland, 2003. 112 str.