The Grub Street Web:

Experiments in Neoclassical Poetry
by the Students of English 234E.

Students of English 234E (and others) have the opportunity to contribute to two ongoing poetic projects, which mimic some of the more popular and important forms for verse in the Restoration and eighteenth-century. Contributions should be consistent with the style, language, meter, and rhyme scheme of the "parent" poem, and should, as well, move the poem's thematic or narrative "business" along. Those who seek guidance on the construction of a late seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century poem should consult Bysshe's The Art of English Poetry (1702).

All contributions will be screened, and, where appropriate, lightly edited. Please note that racist or misogynist themes, language, or images, while not at all unusual in the verse of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, are not appropriate in the context of these poems.

Contributions should be e-mailed to Mark McDayter, at mmcdayte@uwo.ca.

This is a collection of short poems and prose pieces by the students of English 234E, past and present.

Go to "Diluvia poetica"

This poem is a satirical ballad, loosely based upon one with the same title, probably authored in the 1670s by the Earl of Dorset. As a kind of "shotgun" satire, "Colin" takes apparently random shots at a broad range of targets, linked only by the fact that all of the "victims" are students identified with a particular academic discipline or department (e.g., Chemistry, Psychology, Visual Arts, English, etc.).

The poem's loose and accretive catalogue of knavery and foolishness highlights its affinity with the thousands of manuscript lampoons that circulated through the court and beau monde in the Restoration and early eighteenth century, with the difference that this poem eschews obscenity, and does not "name names." The satire's focus upon academic disciplines is somewhat analogous to the thematic structures of ballad "medleys," which satirize a number of nationalities, each in turn, or comic ballads that lampoon various trades (e.g., butchers, bakers, chandlers, etc.).

Requirements: This poem is in ballad stanzas, with a rhyme scheme of abcbdede. The lines of the body of the stanzas are all iambic tetrameter, with variations; the chorus employs alternating seven- and six-syllable lines. The chorus repeats with every stanza:

Contributions should target a group of students associated with some particular discipline, professional programme, department, or faculty, and highlight some "flaw" or "knavery" that "characterizes" that discipline. You may choose a discipline as yet unsatirized, or add to an existing satirical portrait.

Go to "Colin."

Disclaimer

"The Westerniad: A Heroi-Tragical Poem in Twelve Very Short Books."

The "Westerniad" is a mock-epic, very loosely modeled on Alexander Pope's Dunciad Variorum (1729 with later revisions and additions), and eighteenth-century imitations of that poem. The poem is in traditional "heroic couplets," i.e., rhyming iambic pentameter couplets. The narrative employs mock-heroic language to characterize the adventures of its hero Peleus at the University of Western Ontario. At the same time, the poem is "annotated" by a learned pedant, Marcus Scriblerus (modelled on the Scriblerian creation, Martinus Scriblerus) and others.

Requirements: The poem is in reasonably tight heroic couplets, which are generally end-stopped, with a medial caesura.

Contributions should recount the adventures of the poem's hero, Peleus. Learned "Annotations" by Scriblerus or others may or may not be included.

Go to "The Westerniad."