Prizewinners

This 6-unit subject gives students the opportunity to immerse themselves in the poetry of two living Nobel Laureates: the Caribbean poet, Derek Walcott, and the Northern-Irish poet, Seamus Heaney. We will begin and end the semester with their magnificent epic works: Heaney’s translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, and Walcott’s Omeros (a modern epic set in the West Indies). Between these major narrative poems, we will read a rich selection of their shorter poems, as well as some of their r…

The syllabus, on MIT OpenCourseWare

The full course — syllabus, assigned readings, problem sets, exams, and lecture notes — lives on OCW. These open the real thing: