Problems in the Interpretation of Poetry

FAIN: FF-10338-74

Helen H. Vendler
President and Fellows of Harvard College (Cambridge, MA 02138-3800)

To examine the varieties of "ways into" a lyric poem, through its inception, structure, generic, historic, and archetypal affinities, subject matter, and context in the poet's work. We will consider the variations of interpretation to which these approaches give rise. A range of materials (letters and essays which were transformed into poems, early manuscript versions, comparison poems, translations, poets' own commentaries) will be used to suggest means by which the relation of poetry to lived experience can be explored with undergraduate students.