The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.

The sonnet is a short, ubiquitous poetic form of 14 lines that every student will have come across. In this seminar, we will use the history of the sonnet in English to discuss Anglophone literary and cultural history, as well as developments in themes, structure and subjectivity. Although this form has at times been called "a narrow room", "a panic closet", or even "a coffin", we will acquaint ourselves with the productiveness of this formal corset and its rich thematic scope, from Renaissance love sonnets to Victorian science sonnets, from World War I sonnets to contemporary sonnets about the experience of using dating apps. We will frame our study of the sonnet with an explicit interest in the history and productivity of "close reading", a literary studies technique first popularized by the New Critics in the US in the first half of the 20th century, but which has seen a renewed debate in the first decades of the 21st century.