Bring Perrine on Tuesday

FRIDAY IN CLASS
Group prep time for poetry teach-in.

TODAY IN CLASS
20 minutes to wrap that up and solidify plans for presenting to each new table
Three rounds of presentations
Will do one more similar round tomorrow, then use a different tactic to wrap up

FOR TOMORROW

• Read whichever poems in the packet have not yet been presented at your table.
• For those you heard about today, make reflective notes (on the poem page or in your notes) for further questions/concerns 
• As headlined above, bring Perrine to class tomorrow
• There was a new hand-out, the opening paragraphs of Crime and Punishment.  Annotate it (lightly, not within an inch of its life) for tomorrow. 

Read to the end . . .

WEDNESDAY IN CLASS
First draft essays due in class and on turnitin.com; peer response done during class.  Anyone who missed that step must both DO a peer response and have your own paper read and responded to by someone in my class. (If your own section does not work out, I will allow a 1st/5th period swap.)

TODAY IN CLASS
Step One (whole class poem) of group work and jigsaw rotation teaching for 16th /17th century poetry.  We will be doing this for 18th/19th century poetry and for modern/contemporary selections as well.  Today's work was on John Donne's "The Flea"; we will take a short time (7-10 min. max) tomorrow to wrap this up.
Then onward to the packet and your group's poem.

FOR TOMORROW
The revised essay ("final draft") is due.  It really is.  And you will have a better week-end if you just get that done.
But I have become increasingly aware of more people (besides Dance) who will be gone tomorrow and will thus get an automatic extension. And the fashion show has required some extra time from some of you.  And for many of us, public responsibilities always seem to take priority over private ones, however important those other obligations may be.  Also, though there will be a 4th quarter out of class essay after the AP test, this is is a very significant 3rd quarter grade, and it's the 3rd quarter grade that will determine valedictorians (earliest ever cut-off). Regardless of potential valedictorian status, though, I want all of you to do your best.
So--if your essay is on turnitin.com by Sunday night (11:59) AND the hard copy with you in class on Monday, no late penalty points will be applied.

SOME TIPS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Re: MLA--make sure you have the running header, heading, title, spacing, and margins properly done.  The advantage of a process paper is that another pair of eyes will check you on these basic formatting issue.

2.  Since you are using two sources, you need a Works Cited for this paper.  Do your best research in Perrine and the Purdue OWL for documentation guides; this is part of senior work responsibility vs. being told specifically how to do it.  One tricky component is the Project Gutenberg EText for Pygmalion.  Use the page numbers in the text I gave you--otherwise you would have to cross-check with the original (I'd left out some non-Pygmalion publication explanations).

3. On to content--be sure to respect the difference between a THEME and a THESIS.  The "theme" is a universal insight that could apply to multiple works of literature and specifically does NOT state details of plot, character, or other literary details.  But your "thesis" needs to be as rich, exact, and insightful as it can be in setting up the exact nature of the comparison/contrast you will be making.

4.  In that respect, you will find that the words similar and different (in any of their possible forms) lead to vague (or at least not precise) thesis claims.  Thus, your task is to write a thesis that does NOT use these words.

5.  Do not let quotations run away with your paper.  With drama, especially, it's tempting to quote too much.  Summarize/paraphrase non-essential elements of dialogue to shorten them, and keep the essential parts in quotation marks.

TODAY IN CLASS
1.  Overview of Book IX, quick-style; make sure you've read Milton's Argument as better back-up.

2.  In 1st, some consideration of the question that arises from "Hymn to Light":  how arrogant is Milton?

3. Close consideration of Adam's "complaint" to God in Book X.  The back of the "Epic Simile" hand-out had listed all the references; be absolutely certain to notice that lines 743-745 of Book X were on the title page of the original edition of Frankenstein Or, the Modern Prometheus as the epigraph. (I used the old-style underlining to show that the italicized part was in fact also in italics on the title page of the edition I'm using.

4. 1st period began work on revisiting the Donne sonnet from awhile back; we'll move forward in both classes with that tomorrow.

5.  In 5th period, the Paradise Lost written assignment was collected.

FOR TOMORROW
Serious work on the essay.  Go back to last Wednesday, March 19--the original assignment was on that post.  There will be a draft due IN CLASS and online on Wednesday, March 26.  So though you've had plenty of lead time, that means that most of you have two nights (and a Wednesday morning) to work on this essay.  Being out of school on Tuesday for band or orchestra does not change the draft due date.

Follow all the instructions on the assignment post, plus these additional guidelines:

1.  The first draft must be submitted to turnitin.com by the time school starts on Wednesday morning, and you must also have the paper copy with you in class to exchange.  I will be checking for completed drafts before your class gets to the room, and people without essays will not be allowed to proceed.  Giving and receiving feedback is an essential part of this process, and timeliness is the only way to make good use of our class time.

2. The final draft is due on Friday, March 28, also both on turnitin.com and in class as a hard copy.
In this case, the turnitin.com window is "all day"--due by 11:59 p.m. Friday night.  I don't see why anyone would want to wait until Friday night to submit it, though.

FRIDAY
Detailed work on the Rich poem in 1st; a few more comments on that in 5th.
Discussion of "Hymn to Light" in 5th.

Collected the Paradise Lost assignment from last Tuesday  in 1st; that same assignment is not due until tomorrow in 5th. (The difference is due to last week's HSPE schedule).

FOR MONDAY
Both classes make sure that you have thoroughly noted the points in Adam's complaint to God (Book X excerpt).  You don't need to do this on separate paper; just make sure it's carefully marked on the packet text.

Be working on the essay assignment (see last Wednesday's post).

"Review and Solidify" Essay Assignment

What: 
An out-of-class essay that allows you to reflect on broad thematic connections, narrower specific concerns, and close analysis of language in several works.  Though it is out of class, thus with differing expectations than for on-demand timed writing (affecting both the composition process and the polished nature of the final product), you will still be focussed on close analysis of particular conversations, thereby incorporating some of the features of the AP passage analysis question.

Literature to Examine:
You will be working with any TWO of the following:
Ibsen's A Doll House
Shaw's Pygmalion
Shelley's Frankenstein

Honing in on the Task:

• Though obviously your knowledge and understanding of these works as a whole will be important to your success, the assigned task is more limited and specific.
• You will focus on the scenes in each work that contain the most extended conversation between "creator" and "created"/"possessor and possession"/whatever term best applies in the works you select. 
• You will be comparing/contrasting these passages on two overall grounds: the nature of the exact relationship between the two speakers, as developed within the conversation, and the connection between the key passage and larger thematic ideas in the play.
• In order to do this, expect to examine the dialogue extremely closely, for essential content, language, and style (all the ways you can bring to bear.
• But don't forget that the essay as a whole has to make some rich and insightful CLAIM concerning how the works and the key conversation relate to one another.

So again, this assignment thus stresses the language and style analysis in a way that is useful continued preparation for the AP exam, but it also provides the flexibility and student choice/initiative that is typical of college English courses. 

Details:

1) Full-bore MLA:  follow all the rules.  See Perrine, see the Purdue OWL, see me if you are stuck.

Note that your book provides very specific guidelines on handling the special concerns of drama.

2) Length:  about 4 properly spaced and margined pages.

3) First draft due on Wednesday, March 26, two ways:  

Hard copy to be exchanged for peer response--must have with you in class, obviously!

On turnitin.com for me to confirm typed and formatted completion--anytime prior to class time.

NO printing/submitting allowed during class because time is short.  If necessary, you may come to my room well before 1st period.

4) Final draft due on Friday, March 28.  Hard copy in class, on turnitin.com by 11:59 p.m. that night.

Read Carefully -- Contains Specific Assignment Instructions

TODAY IN CLASS

1. An Adrienne Rich poem.

2. Time to read the following article about connections between Paradise Lost and Frankenstein:
By a recognized Milton scholar and expert on Paradise Lost (be sure to read the brief blurb below his picture):
http://exhibitions.nypl.org/biblion/outsiders/creation-remix/essay/essaymoeck

3. Linked to a professor's site; the course syllabus contains a particularly good list of literary terms (weighted toward the 19th C. British focus of this course, but still useful to us):
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~felluga/eng241/FrankPL.html

We looked at this site for two reasons:

• study the chart carefully as possible further connections between the two works
• click back to the course syllabus for this professor and find the list of literary terms.  Save that site and study it as a further resource (particular for examples in context) of literary terms for the AP test.

4.  We went over the "Hymn to Light" and looked at two good examples of the expected work.

HOMEWORK
This assignment will be collected from 1st period on Friday and from 5th on Monday.  You'll be receiving a significant assignment tomorrow that will make it probably that people in 1st might want knock this out sooner.  This assignment has an initial reading component:

Make sure you can trace Adam's "complaint"  in your PL packet from Book X).  No specific writing required beyond whatever annotating helped you read/understand.

Read all three of the following:
From a college student at Mt. Holyoke, apparently as an assignment:
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist257s02/students/Becky/paradise.html

A second example of student work:
http://mattbucci.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/frankenstein-and-paradise-lost/

From someone's personal blog (obviously geared to intellectual reflections, not a diary):
http://sroibal.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/intertextual-wreading-parallels-of-paradise-lost-and-frankenstein/

WRITING (typed, please)--30 assessment points
1) Write one short paragraph that identifies the section of Moeck's article that you found the most compelling.  If at all possible, extend the idea to anything further you see in Frankenstein or about Mary Shelley that makes the idea interesting/compelling to you.

2) Write a more substantial paragraph  response that defends ONE of the three sources immediately above (NOT Moeck's) as the strongest collection of insights.  Provide ample support for your choice.  If you find something to quibble with or qualify in an otherwise strong piece, state your reservations and why.

3)  Assume, given all the material referenced in this blog post and elsewhere,  that Mary Shelley might have had a complex and overlapping set of reasons for incorporating elements of Paradise Lost into her novel Frankenstein.  But pin down your thoughts on one aspect:  do you think the parallels (or "foil"-like differences) are more important for our understanding of Victor Frankenstein himself, or more important for understanding the Creature?  Pick one or the other here; you can't argue for both.  This should be a multi-paragraph response (2 = "multi"; 3 = the max).

Quick Assessment
Also on Friday (BOTH sections)--there will be a new epic simile for you to lay out carefully, completely, and correctly.  Worth 10 assessment points.