Winter 2014

ENG 661: E. E. Cummings
T 6:00-8:50

Michael Webster

The poetry and prose of E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) is both a part of and apart from modernist and avant-garde trends in Anglo-American literature of the first half of the twentieth century. This course will explore how Cummings came to write his funny, lyrical, tender, satirical, idiosyncratic, genre-bending, and typographically-challenging works, placing them in the context of avant-garde and modernist experiments of the time. Close reading of Cummings’ prose and poetry will be supplemented with examples of analogous or influential avant-garde and modernist texts from authors like Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Marianne Moore.

Texts

Cummings, E. E. Complete Poems, 1904-1962. Ed George J. Firmage. New York: Liveright, 1994.
---. The Enormous Room: A typescript edition with drawings by the author. 1922. Ed. George James Firmage. New York: Liveright, 1978.
—. The Theatre of E. E. Cummings. Ed. George J. Firmage. Afterword Norman Friedman. New York: Liveright, 2013. [Contains the plays Him, Anthropos, Santa Claus, and the ballet Tom.]
---. EIMI. 1933. Ed. George James Firmage. New York: Liveright, 2007.
---. i: six nonlectures. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1953.
Friedman, Norman. (Re) Valuing Cummings: further essays on the poet, 1962-1993. Gainesville: University P of Florida, 1996. [Recommended only]
Kennedy, Richard S. Dreams in the Mirror: A Biography of E. E. Cummings. New York: Liveright, 1980.