Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Intro to Invisible Man

Image result for invisible man coverImage result for invisible man cover ellisonImage result for invisible man cover ellisonRelated image

Please watch these videos to get a glimpse of Invisible Man's key concerns:
Ralph Ellison: An American Story (video 1)
Ralph Ellison: An American Story (video 2)
The Invisible Man and its Impact on the American Lexicon

Please also read and take notes on this PowerPoint (you may print it if that helps). Thanks!

The poem we will discuss in class tomorrow is below, fyi:



Dinner Guest: Me


I know I am
The Negro Problem
Being wined and dined,
Answering the usual questions
That come to white mind
Which seeks demurely
To Probe in polite way
The why and wherewithal
Of darkness U.S.A.--
Wondering how things got this way
In current democratic night,
Murmuring gently
Over fraises du bois,
"I'm so ashamed of being white."

The lobster is delicious,
The wine divine,
And center of attention
At the damask table, mine.
To be a Problem on
Park Avenue at eight
Is not so bad.
Solutions to the Problem,
Of course, wait.

Langston Hughes, 1965

  • "demurely" means modestly or in a reserved way
  • "damask" refers to a fine, rich table cloth
  • "fraises du bois" are tiny, wild strawberries, literally "strawberries of the woods."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/art/common/blank.gif

 

Thursday, March 9, 2017

Instead of Ashland

For those of you not coming to Ashland, please watch a film version of either Shakespeare's Julius Caesar or Henry IV, Part I. It must be a Shakepearean version.

After watching the play, please write a 350 word blog post reflecting on the play (like you would do for MOR). What do Shakespeare's themes (deeper meanings) seem to be? How does he show these through character and other elements?

Due Monday with a regular journal. Thanks!

Best option (most modern film)-- Julius Caesar (by the BBC) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X2l1YFuM-w
 
Older Julius Caesar 1969 version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JInTNKLaEI4

Henry IV Part 1 (pretty old version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ8dAvTGGyw&t=1751s

If you have access to the recent The Hollow Crown PBS movie series, you may watch Henry IV Part I in that set.

Email if you have questions! You may start watching one of the films in class Friday, if you have time and the internet works for YouTube.

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

AP Exam Score Calculator

If you want to play with your possible scores, the AP English Literature score calculator can be found here: http://appass.com/calculators/englishliterature


Friday, December 23, 2016

Jan. MOR: Victorian Novels, due Feb. 1

(Inspired by Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities)
Consider reading your Jan. MOR book over break and writing your 4 full-page reflections—remember to analyze, include quotations and lit devices, and deal with the ending.  Thanks! I love seeing your brilliant brains go head-to-head in these discussions on paper.

The first couple dozen of this Goodreads list of Victorian novels are good choices for your MOR.  Please remember to pick one that is of sufficient literary merit to be potentially used on the AP Exam (so, not too short or originally written for children--Alice in Wonderland and A Christmas Carol are too short).
Some useful reviews are also on this list of "10 Classic Victorian Novels Everyone Should Read."

FYI, on the list of texts actually suggested on the exam so far, the Victorian novels that have been suggested most often are these:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (I once had a student title his review of this book "Rabid Love.")
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (don't choose this one if you read it as a freshman!)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (very popular, romantic, a touch of the gothic)
Bleak House by Charles Dickens (long, but intricately interesting)
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens ("It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done." If you want Dickens, go with this one, probably.)

And others on that list:
Emma (Jane Austen)
Persuasion (Austen)
Pride and Prejudice (Austen--we will read this one in February)
Mansfield Park (Austen)
Hard Times (Dickens)
Oliver Twist (Dickens)
Our Mutual Friend (Dickens)
Middlemarch (George Eliot--a refreshing change from Dickens, Austen, and the Brontës?)

Since a brief overview of Victorian England might be useful as you read, here you go:
Victorian Fashion through the Years


The Victorian Age (1837-1901)
The general reaction of the Victorian Age against the previous Romantic period was summed up nicely in 1833 by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, saying, “When Byron passed away [in 1824], the feeling he had represented craved utterance no more.  With a sigh we turned to the actual and practical career of life: we awoke from the morbid, the passionate, the dreaming.”  In other words, goodbye Romantics!
            The reign of Queen Victoria lasted sixty-three years, the longest so far (Queen Elizabeth II has reigned fifty-four years as of 2006 [Elizabeth II has surpassed Victoria as of 2015]) and saw her nation reach the height of its imperial power.  In 1890, England’s colonies “comprised more than a quarter of all the territory on the face of the earth [and] one in four people was a subject of Queen Victoria” (Greenblatt 980). Despite the unrest of the early Victorian period, the economic and political climate of the country had settled down enough by the middle of the 1800s to be readily recognizable as the prosperous, highly respectable, and sentimental Victorian England we all think we know and love.  One odd thing about the Victorians is that despite their high morals and great respect for family values, they were going through a general crisis of faith.  The industrial and continuing scientific revolutions were playing havoc with the religion of the previous centuries.  Even before Charles Darwin’s 1859 publication of The Origin of Species, John Ruskin explained that his faith was “being beaten into mere gold leaf…If only the geologists would leave me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers!”  Because of the questions geology and the theory of evolution raised about the creation of the earth, many Victorians converted to Catholicism.  They reasoned that the Roman Catholic Church didn’t care how much thinking they did as long as they believed.  Thinking was too hard and too dangerous.
            During this period of empire, democratic reform, compulsory education, and rapidly growing industry, the middle class dominated England.  They upheld the typically Victorian values of “earnestness, moral responsibility, [and] domestic propriety.”  Victorian social consciousness and hyper respectability led to a series of political reforms (in 1882, finally giving married women the right to own property) and social reconsiderations.  The Victorian “Woman Question” found a brilliant voice in the Victorian novel.  Novels were all the rage and thankfully, somewhere between Defoe and Charlotte Brontë, Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding had redeemed the form from the shady topics of the Restoration and helped make it socially acceptable, even among men, to read and enjoy them.  The readership for and production of novels skyrocketed—fostering such masters of the form as Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters.  The novel was bottom-up literature to the Victorians.  Easily and cheaply available, novels addressed an aspect of reality not adequately treated in poetry—the day-to-day life and emotions of real people. 
            Despite the growing decadence and decay of the last decade of Victoria’s reign, the work of her era still rings true. Matthew Arnold’s “The Study of Poetry” brilliantly critiques the current literature, bringing all the redolent waftings of the previous centuries to bear and figuring out what literature and especially poetry have to do with his age.  His observations and conclusions, so apt when he wrote them, can still helps us to day as we study the literature of our past and create the literature of our future.

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Hamlet 5.1

Please watch 5.1 and answer the questions just for that scene. Thanks!
Part 1
Part 2

And if you care to watch other portions of the movie, here's the whole playlist.


http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01218/David_Tennant_1218307c.jpg

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Et Tu, Brute?

We wondered whether "brutal" came from Brutus, of Julius Caesar fame. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (which you can access with your KCLS library cards here!), "brutal" comes from the Latin brutus and was first used in English around 1500, but the noun and adjective "brute" shows up earlier, in 1475.  I can't find any evidence that English uses brutal because of Brutus's name, but the connection is exactly the sort of meaningful connotative observation that AP scholars should make. ;-)

And be careful! The OED is a very dangerous place for a logophile to get lost.


Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Medea and Eurydice on stage!

Seattle Shakespeare is performing Medea right now, through November 13! See link here!
(would be fantastic if you've chosen to read Medea for your November MOR!)

Also you can maybe get day-of-show $5 tickets if you sign up through Teen Tix.

Also, Seattle Pacific University is performing a modernized version of the Eurydice and Orpheus myth Nov. 10-12 and 17-19.  Only $12 for students!

Medea: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/976x549_b/p019203t.jpg