Wednesday, 2/26 - Is art a mirror or a lamp?

Reason as mirror, Imagination as lamp

• P&P

• GUM: Frustrated by England’s resistance to political and social change that would improve commoner's conditions the Romantic poets turned from the witty formal public verse of the eighteenth-century Augustans to a more private spontaneous lyric poetry; which expressed the Romantics beliefs that imagination rather than mere reason was the best response to the forces of change.

• Work on P&P journal (chapters 4-8 by block).

• Here is a link to the cast of characters ; )

HW: P&P Ch. 4-8 Quotes and Commentary (due block)

Tuesday, 2/25 - Remember the Revolutions of 1789/98 (French Revolution and Lyrical Ballads)

• P&P

• Have your Romantic era notes out for me to check while you chaw on the Big League Chew below ; )

• GUM: The 1798 publication of a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads a collaboration between William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge serve as a literary marker for the beginning of the Romantic period in England: another way to date the Romantic period is to say that it started with the French Revolution in 1789, and ended  with the Parliamentary reforms of 1832, that laid the political foundations for modern Britain.

• Discuss J13 and continue reading P&P
  
  HW: Hear ye, hear ye! Here is what I'd like for you to do for each chapter you read in P&P: For each of the 61 chapters (beginning with ch. 4) in Austen's Pride and Prejudice, you must select (and be ready to share in class) your favorite quote, communicating the following:
  
  1. The speaker(s) - is it Lizzie, Bingley, Mr. Bennet, the narrator?
  2. The context - what's happening, who's dialoging, what the quote means
  3. (chapters 4-30) Why you like the quote
  4. (chapters 31-61) Link the quote to another episode in the book or a larger theme you see Austen developing.
  Due block day of this week, read through Ch. 8 and do journal questions 1-3 above.
  

Monday, 2/24 - Intro to Romanticism

• P&P



Wordsworth - young

• Check J13

• Read the Introduction to The Romantic Period (also see the PDF, Brit Lit - Historical Eras, posted on Focus for larger font). Take notes.

• Continue reading P&P together in class.  

HW:

Wordsworth - ancient

1. Finish reading and taking notes on Intro to Romantic Period  

P & P - Background Info

Early on in your reading, I would like for you to read the social and artistic background information that I've provided for you on Focus. See the document entitled "P and P - Background Info."

Wednesday, 2/6 - "It is a truth universally acknowledged that . . .

You're not worthy! ; )

. . . a high school student in possession of a week off of school must be in want of a novel."

• P&P

• Your Modest Proposals

• Now, you prideful and prejudiced male thunder puppies, get yourself a copy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and prepare to die a whimpering juvenile and rise a robust man!

• We are going to try out an app called Subtext, the latest in interactive e-books. If you don't already have it, please get it. You must have the latest OS to do this, as I'm told. If you cannot, go to the ARC sometime over the next couple of days because I want to begin using it.
• Once you have the app, you'll need to log in using either your Facebook account or your gmail account, the one that the school gave you. If you don't know it, then look it up or go to Student Services.
• To join Reno's group, called English 400, you'll need the following code: IYQICHGW. 
• Now select Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from the English 400 bookshelf. 

• For the time being, please read the first three chapters of P&P and do the following journal:

J13 - First Impressions

Having just met our author and her characters, record your first impressions about the following:

1. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet - What is your view of them based on just three chapters? Please cite at least one quote to support your view of each.
2. Testing: please fill out the form at the end of this link

HW: 

1. Read the first three chapters of P&P (Pride & Prejudice)
2. J13  

Unit 6: Romanticism (and Jane Austen)

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818)

• Intro to Romanticism
• Texts 
• See Brit Lit - Historical Eras/Contexts (in Notability) or get it again in Google Classroom if necessary.
• Nails
• What/who were the major events, figures, and ideas of the Romantic Era?
• How did poetry drastically change from the Neoclassical to the Romantic Eras? 
• Romantic Obsessions 

• Jane Austen
• Texts
• Pride and Prejudice
• Use Subtext
• hypertext and notes
• Nails
• How do inheritance laws and social class hierarchy help create the drama that is unique to Jane Austen's works?
• Lit Terms
• irony
• satire
• characterization (direct and indirect) 
• character
• flat and static
• round 
• dynamic
• stock
• free indirect speech/discourse

• Romantic Poets 
• How to Read Poetry
• Romantic Obsessions
• First Generation Poets (and texts)
• William Blake
• William Wordsworth
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Second Generation Poets (and texts)
• Byron, Shelley, and Keats
• Nails
• Who were the first (and second) generation romantic poets, and what makes each poet's work both generally romantic and uniquely his?
• Lit Terms
• paradox
• personification
• symbol

Thursday, 3/7 - To Pemberly and beyond!

• P&P

• Check HW

• Continue reading P&P from Book 3 (or Chapter 43).

HW: read through Chapter 48 in P&P or (Book 3 Chapter 6)  

Tuesday, 3/5 - Romanticism Quiz

• P&P
• Take the quiz
• When you finish, begin reading Intro to the Victorian Era

HW: None

Monday, 3/4 - The End of Romanticism

• P&P

• Poetry recitation

• Prepare for quiz
• Remember several things concerning the Romantics and what fascinated them: 
• The sublime - terrifying beauty
• Romantic orientalism - the mysteriousness of the east
• Ancient ruins - man's fleeting grandeur surpassed by Nature's permanence
• The subjective, inner life of the poet
• Mortality, mystery, supernaturalism 

HW: 

1. Binder check  (Whenever I collect it)
2. Romanticism Quiz (Tues)
1. P&P
2. Romantic Era
3. Romantic poets - Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Keats
4. Bedford - 34, 36, 8
5. Lit terms - see blog
6. Vocab - see blog
7. Usage - see blog  

   

The Second Generation Romantic Poets

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

• Percy Shelley (bio)

• A Song: "Men of England"
• Ozymandias

• Lord Byron (bio)
• Satan and the Byronic Hero 
• "Darkness"



George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824)

• "Prometheus"

• John Keats (bio)

• When I have fears that I may cease to be 



John Keats (1795–1821)

With someone you have not yet had the opportunity to work, read each of the bios and poems above, taking notes on the following (when interpreting, DO NOT use the internet other than a dictionary, the bios, and the links I've provided below):

1. Identify the genre and/or form of poetry
2. Paraphrase each poem (short, more of a summary)
3. Write out what might be the theme for each poem (a one sentence overview that states what the author is uniquely saying in this work about some aspect of life)
4. How is he saying it? Identify two literary elements you see at work in each poem.
5. What you believe to be generally romantic about each poem and how it is different from the first generation romantic poets.

Wednesday, 2/27 - The Byronic Man, er, Hero

George Gordon, Lord Byron

To introduce you to the original "bad boy" of literature and his low-life/no-life  groupies, check out this excerpt from a Vanity Fair article by Laura Jacobs entitled "Charmed and Dangerous":

The baddest of the bad boys, the guy who goes all the way back to before the beginning, has been called many things: the Prince of Darkness, the Tempter, the Bringer of Light. As portrayed in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, he was the most beautiful of the angels before he rebelled. Also the most arrogant. “Better to reign in Hell,” he taunts, “than serve in Heav’n.” Charisma incarnate, he gets all the good lines and almost all the girls. This fallen angel, a primal archetype, is undying: whenever men misbehave we think of him. Robert Lovelace in Clarissa, the Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Don Juan in print and in opera, the Willoughbys and Wickhams, wily and wicked, of Jane Austen.

More recently, in real life, fabled Hollywood ladykillers like Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty come to mind, along with hot tempers Steve McQueen and Sean Connery, and men for whom the word “moderation” is moot—though this is often a consequence of youth, as with Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, and Colin Farrell. Let’s just say there would be very little art without our attractive little devils, and centuries of stories would be boring.

America has always loved its bad boys, but it wasn’t until the movies that we got to revel in them as one nation. Suddenly, in the 1930s, the libertine, gangster, outlaw, scofflaw, public enemy, serial seducer, bank robber, and sexy barn burner had faces. And what faces! James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart as bootleggers, the young Clark Gable as a meanie in black leather (more than once he played dubious characters called “Blackie”), Paul Muni and George Raft as mobsters. Darkness, temptation, light—the black-and-white film of early Hollywood caught it all in deep shadows and gray velvet, compositions of smoke and pearl. And then there was that gleam, which you cannot get in Technicolor, those dangerous gleaming eyes with lashes you can count.

Odd how we so often root for the bad boy, wanting him to succeed, or at least to get away. Why? Because he’s the one with the energy. And though William Shakespeare wrote that “ripeness is all,” energy is everything. It is light and therefore illumination; it is movement and therefore change; it tests the boundaries of freedom. . . .

Now, from Byron's bio from the Poetry Foundation, read the following excerpt concerning the Byronic Hero:

[Childe] Harold is the first "Byronic Hero." Of complicated ancestry . . . he descends, with inherited traits, from Prometheus, Milton’s Satan, the sentimental heroes found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, hero-villains in Gothic novels by Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe, Friedrich von Schiller’s Karl Moor, and Sir Walter Scott’s Marmion. . . . Byron’s various heroes exhibit not uniformity, but considerable diversity . . . protagonists [classified] under such rubrics as "Gothic Hero-Villains," "Heroes of Sensibility," and "Noble Outlaws." Among their possible traits are romantic melancholy, guilt for secret sin, pride, defiance, restlessness, alienation, revenge, remorse, moodiness, and such noble virtues as honor, altruism, courage, and pure love for a gentle woman. Their later Byronic incarnations include the heroes of the Eastern tales . . . as well as Manfred and Cain.  

Now, let's merely discuss the following questions for J12 - The Byronic Hero (you need not turn this in; just take notes on our discussion and have it in your binder notes section)

1. How many literary allusions can you identify in the "Charmed and Dangerous" excerpt above? Which ones?
2. What do you think of Jacobs' assertion that the Bad Boy is attractive because he full of energy, light, illumination, change and that he is even a man who "tests the boundaries of freedom"? What does scripture say about this sort of attractiveness, this sort of power? Quote a verse or two.
3. What modern day Byronic Heroes can you think of that trifle with the affections of many unmoored young women? Why do you suppose they have this effect?
4. Read Byron's "Darkness." What do you like about it? Dislike? How might it be considered "Romantic"?
5. Now read "Prometheus" and, consulting the second excerpt above on the Byronic Hero, identify any Byronic traits you see present in the poem. 

 HW: (see yesterday's post for a view of what is due this week); CWP Link...and the grammar is on Focus

Monday, 2/25 - Catch up on P&P, the novel

• P&P

• Update binder

• Talk about where you are in Austen . . . discuss (then read)

HW: 

1. Read P&P Book 2 Chapters 8-9 (or Chapters 31-32)
2. CWP Q3 - Wit and Satire (due block . . . baseball players please turn in before you leave for TX)
3. Next week
1. Poetry recitation (Mon)
2. Binder check  (Whenever I collect it)
3. Romanticism Quiz (Tues)
1. P&P
2. Romantic Era
3. Romantic poets - Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Keats
4. Bedford - 34, 36, 8
5. Lit terms - see blog
6. Vocab - see blog  

Wednesday-block, 2/20-22 - P&P Baby!

• P&P (Prayer & Poetry)
• P&P (Pride & Prejudice) . . . the "acceptable version" with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle (not the Capt'n Jack Sparrow version)

 HW: Read P&P through Ch. 30 (or Part 2, Ch. 7 if you're using Subtext) by Monday, 25th.
 

Block, 2/14 - St. Valentine and the Romantics (Ahem!)

Valentinus

• P&P

• St. Valentine: 
• Feastday: February 14 
• Patron of Love, Young People, Happy Marriages
• Died: 269

"Valentinus was a Roman priest martyred during the reign of Claudius the Goth [Claudius II]. Since he was caught marrying Christian couples and aiding any Christians who were being persecuted under Emperor Claudius in Rome [when helping them was considered a crime], Valentinus was arrested and imprisoned. Claudius took a liking to this prisoner -- until Valentinus made a strategic error: he tried to convert the Emperor -- whereupon this priest was condemned to death. He was beaten with clubs and stoned; when that didn't do it, he was beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate [circa 269]" (Catholic.org/saints).

• Check Bedford 8

• (Reno) Finish William Blake poems
• "The Chimney Sweeper" (two versions)
• "A Poison Tree" 

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

 

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (a beautifully illustrated copy by Gustave Dore)
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• Richard Burton's version

HW: 

1. Read through Ch. 30 in P&P by Monday, Feb. 25th.
2. Work on CWP Q
3. Update your binder (we will have a quiz over Romanticism, blog, Bedford, and P&P the week of the 25th  

William Blake (1757–1827)

Elohim Creating Adam - William Blake

William Blake

"The Tyger" - Blake

• Today we venture into a little romantic poetry. Please allow me to introduce you to my friend William Blake, author of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Remember C. S. Lewis' preface to his Great Divorce? 
• Wrote Lewis, "Blake wrote the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. If I have written of their Divorce, this is not because I think myself a fit antagonist for so great a genius, nor even because I feel at all sure that I know what he meant."

• William Blake (bio)
• "The Lamb"
• "The Tyger"  
• "The Chimney Sweeper" (two versions)
• "A Poison Tree"

Monday, 2/11 - Austentatious

• P&P

• Today is a nice day for a leisurely read in Mr. Bennet's library. If he inquires into what you are reading, just tell him you are exercising your mind and expanding your soul for the sake of your future spouse ; )

• For those of you who are interested, HERE is a link showing the financial worth of the major players in Austen's novels. Below is a copy of the table from the article.  

• For those interested in an illustrated book (part 1 has some poor scans, though)
  • Part 1
  • Part 2
   

 

HW: 

1. Read P&P through Ch 8, which means to finish Ch 8.
2. Update your binder