ENGD13H3

Rap Poetics

An intensive study of rhetoric, genre, meaning, and form in rap lyrics. The three-decade-plus recorded history of this popular poetry will be discussed in rough chronological order. Aspects of African-American poetics, as well as folk and popular song, germane to the development of rap will be considered, as will narrative and vernacular strategies in lyric more generally; poetry's role in responding to personal need and to social reality will also prove relevant.