We’re doing something a bit different today! Some conversations have popped up in various comment sections about why Uncle Jerry prefers specific types of poetry, and which lenses we use to dissect those poems, whether we’re talking about Charles Dickens, Emily Dickenson, or Taylor Swift. So Uncle Jerry put together a lecture explaining how and why he views certain poetic styles the way he does, and explains the different criticism styles and theories we use to understand a poem’s meaning and impact.

Hope you enjoy! Please leave any questions in the comments that he can answer either here or in a later episode. 

Works Cited:

Marxist Literary Criticism

Post-Colonial Criticism

Reader-response theory

Key Theories of Wolfgang Iser

Is There a Text in This Class? – Stanley Fish – Aff Link

Psychological Criticism

Feminist Theory

New Criticism

Felicia Dorothea Hemans

On the Intentional Fallacy

Hyperion – John Keats

Affective Fallacy

Queer Theory

Deconstruction

Semiotics

Critical Race Theory

New Historicism

Stephen Greenblatt and New Historicism

Sketches by Boz – Charles Dickens – Aff Link

Sonnets

Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems – William Shakespeare – Aff Link

Limerick

Haiku

Ballad Meter (or Common Measure)

Villanelle

Concrete Poetry

Life Studies – Robert Lowell – Aff Link 

The Collected Poems – Sylvia Plath – Aff Link

My Papa’s Waltz – Theodore Roethke

The Real Slim Shady – Eminem

Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture Paperback – Dana Gioia – Aff Link

A Bit Much – Lyndsay Rush – Aff Link

Lyndsay Rush – Instagram

Amanda Gorman

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

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