Using Poetry to Teach History: E. E. Cummings Makes an Interdisciplinary Return to the English Classroom

Abstract

In this thesis I try to show that using poetry, especially E. E. Cummings’ poetry, to provide interdisciplinary value to classes on historical events, such as the World Wars, is productive. To support this claim I collected data from two groups of participants in lower secondary school. After two sessions, one for each World War, I distributed a questionnaire to gather their opinions on the sessions, the selected poetry, and the approach used in said sessions. To guide my method and approach I utilize theoretical support from different articles that argue for the use of poetry in the English Classroom. The results from the questionnaire, limited as they may be, are discussed in light of the theoretical support and research question. Along with these data, I provide my own close reading of the same poetry; to showcase the possible literary conventions that can be taught and the depth of material present in each poem. The material is here: everything that is not covered by the English Curriculum or counts as interdisciplinary, e.g. the historical contextualization, which is imperative to understand the background for Cummings’ perspective on war.