This seminar introduces students to fundamental works, terms, and concepts in poetics. Readings are drawn from literature, linguistics and philosophy from the ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary periods. Subjects to be discussed include the senses of mimesis as imitation, representation and performance; the differences between verse and prose; theories of metaphor and poetic reasoning; diglossia and the vernacular; consciousness in modernist fiction; poetic form and formlessness; art and the inhuman.