Wednesday, 4/30 - Let's Be Earnest

Algernon "Algy" and Jack "Earnest"

• P&P

• Let's be earnest in getting through this text. Go to iTunes and get the free version of the book. It's much easier to navigate together.

HW: Consider quotes you would like to address from TIBE.

Tuesday, 4/29 - Back in the Proverbial Saddle

• P&P

• Extended Chapel Schedule today - Senior Chapel

• If you don't see a GUM assignment, then work on your CWP Q4 dialogues (see yesterday's post for details) for a few minutes before class begins.

• TIBE PDF.

• Back into Wilde.  Below is an example of what I'm looking for regarding your six quotes from TIBE:

• 1. As you read each act, identify two quotes (or snippets of dialogue) that you think criticize Victorian values and/or institutions (total of six quotes).  
  1. (Who are the characters?) What is/are the character(s) saying?  
  1. e.g. Jack: "Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?"
  2. Here, Jack is oddly asking forgiveness for having deceived Gwendolen by living a "lie." 
  2. What do you think the playwright (Wilde) is possibly saying through the quote? 
  1. Although Jack ironically deceived Gwendolyn with the truth, it is a deception nonetheless. His "truthfulness" was null and void, since it was his intent to deceive. Wilde uses this comical irony to illustrate the sad reality that  relational infidelity was all too common in Victorian society. Realistically, Jack's deception would have the appearance of truth but be deception below the surface. Wilde reveals the ubiquity of Victorian duplicity through this reversal.
   

Monday, 4/28 - CWP Q4

• Finish Pride & Prejudice and then . . . begin your task below.
• Today you will begin working on CWP Q4. Read the following quote for inspiration: 
• "Turning round [Darcy] looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said: 'She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.' Mr. Darcy walked off; and Elizabeth remained with no very cordial feelings toward him."

• CWP Q4: First Impressions
• Having just "read" Pride and Prejudice and begun The Importance of Being Earnest, I thought it appropriate for you to do a little artistic foray into the realms of romantic drama or comedy of manners. Your job is to write a creative two to three page chapter (or opening scene) depicting the awkward (brutal?) first meeting between an unlikely yet eventual husband and wife (inspired by Darcy and Elizabeth). 

• Your opening scene must contain at least some semblance of any of the following forms of verbal jousting:

• some form of irony
• satire that critiques certain follies of the age in which your tale takes place
• witty dialogue (sharp-tongued discourse) between protagonists

• Further requirements
• 2-3 pages 
• MLA formatting
• Properly punctuated dialogue (I will review this later)

Block, 4/23 & 24 - Back to Pemberley

• P&P

• I really want to keep forging ahead with you through TIBE, but I must depart this fair region for the sublime concrete slab that is LA (for a family reunion). Thus, it is with a great sigh that I leave you (periods 1 and 3) with instructions to finish watching Pride & Prejudice. Someone start it on an iPad and then use airplay to get it onto the screen. Here is the information that should help you:
• Per 1 - begin HERE at 15:00
• Per 3 - begin HERE at 21:15 (to enjoy Darcy's "What?!" again)
• To access airplay, do the following:
• Make sure the monitor is on "Input 5"
• Select the airplay icon
• Select B25
• Password = darcy

HW: Review your sonnet

Tuesday, 4/22 - The Victorians - where the Wilde things are

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

• P&P

• Extended Chapel today

• NOT GUM: "The Victorian Age made one or two mistakes, but they were mistakes that were really useful; that is, mistakes that were really mistaken. They thought that commerce outside a country must extend peace: it has certainly often extended war. They thought that commerce inside a country must certainly promote prosperity; it has largely promoted poverty. But for them these were experiments; for us they ought to be lessons. If we continue the capitalist use of the populace — if we continue the capitalist use of external arms, it will lie heavy on the living. The dishonour will not be on the dead." — G. K. Chesterton

• Intro to The Victorian Period (see Notability for Brit Lit - Historical Contexts pg. 67).
• Learning the context by teaching: Break into eight groups. Read your assigned section(s) listed below, and write down what you believe to be the three most important facts/quotes/statistics to share with the class . . . IN YOUR OWN WORDS.
• Groups
1. "Peace and Economic Growth" and "The Idea of Progress"
2. "The Hungry Forties"
3. "The Movement for Reform"
4. "Decorum and Authority"
5. "Intellectual Progress"
6. "Questions and Doubts"
7. "From Trust to Skepticism and Denial"
8. "Revealing Reality"

• Copy new Nails, Lit terms, and Vocab

• Comedy of Manners - A comic drama consisting of five or three acts in which the attitudes and customs of a society are critiqued and satirized according to high standards of intellect and morality.
• e.g. Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest

• Hyperbole - Calculated overstatement, exaggeration

• e.g. "I'm so hungry I could eat a ________"
• e.g. "He ate everything in the house."

• Understatement - Says less than is intended

• e.g. "Adolf Hitler was a naughty man."
• e.g. "I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am?" (Oscar Wilde) 

• Paradox - Using contradiction in a manner that oddly makes sense on a deeper level.

• e.g. "Without laws, we can have no freedom."
• e.g. "If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life." (Oscar Wilde)
• e.g. "The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me." (Oscar Wilde)

• Epigram - a short, witty, often paradoxical--sometimes satirical--statement designed to surprise the audience

• e.g. "Swans sing before they die--'twere no bad thing /
  Should certain people die before they sing!" (Coleridge)
• e.g. "What is an epigram? a dwarfish whole, /
  Its body brevity, and wit its soul" (Coleridge)
• e.g. "Forty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin and forty years of marriage make her look like a public building" (Oscar Wilde). 
• e.g. "God made women beautiful so that men would love them; and he made them stupid so that they could love men" (attributed to La Belle Otero).     

HW: update Nails, Lit Terms, and Vocab in binder. 

Pride & Prejudice - Study Guide

Darcy, SO hot right now!

• Plot questions

• The names of the characters' abodes (the places they live) - Longborne, etc.

• Who am I? section 

• Five quotes - who said it?

• Literary Terms
• Direct characterization - an author's narrator tells you about someone directly.
• Indirect characterization - the author has the characters "show" you what they are like because of something they say or do (or though what another character reveals about a character).
• Free indirect discourse (speech) - when narration is composed of what a particular character would actually say, rather than the character saying it herself by a direct quote (hence, "indirect" speech).
• Irony
• Verbal - saying one thing and meaning another (Lizzy and Mr. Bennet are not unaccustomed to this style of communication)
• Situational - something perfectly unexpected/odd happens at just the wrong-right time (the firehouse burns down).
• Dramatic - when the audience knows something the characters do not know

• Passage interpretation - you will be given two passages from P&P and must answer several interpretive questions from each.

• Essay section - be ready for a couple of possibilities, but I have decided not to do a full-blown ICE. You're welcome! ; )

Wednesday, 4/9 - Get Ready For the Big'un

• P&P

• Extended Chapel Schedule - Meet at the stadium

• Romantics Exam

• Study for P&P Exam and Essay
• Are you a Darcy? Did you pay the heavy cost and reap the great benefit of having read? Or are you a Wickham, in it for the easy buck, just skating across the surface of Spark Notes? Or, ladies, are you Lizzie, or are you Charlotte (stooping to marry Sparky Collins, Mr. Collins' cousin)? This test will tell me who's who ; )

HW: Study for exam tomorrow and bring your hand-written journals, just in case I decide to let you use them. 

Romantics Test: A Study Guide

The sublime in Nature - a Romantic obsession

• Romantic Era - Historical Context

• Romantic Obsessions and Characteristics

• First Generation Romantic poets and their poems
• William Blake
• "Chimney Sweeper" poems
• "The Tyger"
• "The Lamb"
• "A Poison Tree" 

• William Wordsworth 
• "Composed upon Westminster Bridge"   
• "The World Is Too Much with Us" 

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 

• Second Generation Romantic poets and their poems
• Lord Byron
• "The Destruction of Sennacherib" 
• "She Walks in Beauty" 
• "Darkness"  
• "Prometheus" 

•  Percy Shelley
• A Song: "Men of England"  
• Ozymandias 

• John Keats
• When I have fears that I may cease to be
•  Ode on Melancholy 
• Ode on a Grecian Urn 

• Types of Imagery
• visual - sight
• aural - sound
• tactile - touch
• olfactory - smell
• gustatory - taste
• kinesthetic - movement

Tuesday, 4/8 - Just Keat-it!

An urn

• P&P

• Discuss Keats' poetry
• Ode: A formal, often ceremonious lyric poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea. The odes of the English Romantic poets often address an intense emotion at the onset of a personal crisis or celebrate an object or image that leads to revelation

• Discuss Austen Ch 14-15 (56-57)

• Begin Ch 16 (58)

HW: Finish the novel before block day (You may take notes if you'd like but aren't required).

1. (Wed) Test on the Romantic poets and Romanticism
2. (Block) P&P Test and Essay (bring your hand-written notes for the essay)

Monday, 4/7 - Stuff & Stuff

Gladiator

• P&P

• Discuss Shelley's poems 

• Discuss P&P P3 Ch 11-13 (53-55)

• Begin Ch 14 (56) together in class today (this is an all-out cat fight!) if we have time.

HW: Read the next two chapters of P&P 14-15 (56-57)

Block, 4/3 & 4 - Integrating Quotes

• P&P

• You have 30 minutes to finish your Romanticism 2.0 notes; then we will discuss.

• (I would like to work on integrating quotes into your own work. Let's work on this for a while so you can do it in your P&P essay.) First, you must have your quote, the context, and the reason for integrating it (connect it to your TS - main idea you're supporting in the paragraph). 

• Quote: Mr. Collins - "[This] false step in one daughter will be injurious to the fortunes of all the others; for who, as Lady Catherine herself condescendingly says, will connect themselves with such a family? And this consideration leads me moreover to reflect, with augmented satisfaction, on a certain event of last November; for had it been otherwise, I must have been involved in all your sorrow and disgrace" (Ch. 48).

• Context: He's writing a letter to the Bennet family both declaring their entire moral destruction through the folly of one daughter and gloating over his having avoided a "near" misalliance with them—Lizzy's rejection of his offer of marriage . . . what he believes is now a blessing in disguise. 

• Reason: Collins' letter of lamentation to the Bennet family is a veiled attempt to morally and socially elevate himself at their expense. This instance further develops Austen's theme that it is common, especially in hierarchical societies, for people to try to ascend the social ladder by disparaging and demoting others, simply and principally by associating the innocent with the morally or even socially inferior. 

• Discuss P&P

• DVD?

HW: Read P&P P3 Ch 11-13 (53-55)

Wednesday, 4/2 - Rawk the Romantics 2.0

• P&P

• Quick P&P discussion

• You have the rest of the period to work on your Romantics 2.0 poems. Plan on a half hour on block to wrap up the assignment. 

HW: Read P&P P3 Ch 9-10 (51-52)

Substitute Plans

Hello there! Welcome to my classes. I hope you have a wonderful time with my students. 


Take roll - Class Rosters: http://talesofthelongbow.blogspot.com/search/label/sub

The daily schedules are on the wall to the left of the monitor
 
  
FRIDAY

Just have the students go to the blog and follow the instructions there

Periods 1 and 3): http://talesofthelongbow.blogspot.com/

Period 2 - prep 




MONDAY:

Just have students go to their respective blogs and follow the instructions there

Periods 1, 3, 5 (Senior English): http://talesofthelongbow.blogspot.com/

Periods 4, 7 (Sophomore Honors English): http://theoldthatisstrong.blogspot.com/

Period 6 (Shakespeare): http://classy-shakey.blogspot.com/

Period 2 - prep


Thanks!

Tuesday, 4/1 - Keep workin' on being Romantic . . . Collins is ; )

Blue Steel

• P&P

• Today's time is yours. Please use it to work on your Second Generation Romantics assignment. See yesterday's post. This assignment will be due about midway through block day.

HW: JUST READ: P&P - P3 Ch 7-8  (49-50)