Εxpatriation and the Sense of Home in the Poetry of Hilda Doolittle
Instructor: Professor Liana Sakelliou-Shultz
The American poet Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961) was one of the most important poets of the 20th century. She belonged to the Imagist group and followed Pound and T.S. Eliot to the road of the American self-exiled poets inEurope where modernity was already a state of being in the arts. For the rest of her life she remained self-exiled, a person in constant spiritual quest. She published poetry and prose, translated Euripides and the Ancient Greek lyrical poets into English, had psychoanalytic sessions with Sigmund Freud and traveled toGreece andEgypt in 1920 and 1922.
In this class we will trace H.D.’s connections of a developing autobiography with poetic metaphoricity and archetypal manifestations, and we will examine the sense of birth place and exile through an analysis of her most important works—The Trilogy, Helen in Egypt and Sea Garden— through her short stories, narratives and translations.
The class will be formed by a lecture, seminar and workshop. The evaluation of student performance will be by a presentation, a project, and an exam.