Click the image to read about Gounod's 19th-C opera, Faust.
Friday, November 13 (6) - Vocabulary Quiz, units 9-10; Killgallon; Over the weekend, read the first four chapters of The Age of Innocence (3-26). Use this reading guide put together by Mr Volding. I'll be leading discussions next week. You'll take over, in groups, beginning after the Thanksgiving holiday. More on those specifics next week.
The opening scene of Woody Allen's Manhattan. Compare the film's narrator to the narrator in The Age of Innocence vis-à-vis attitude toward New York society.
Monday, November 16 (1) - Wharton, The Age of Innocence: Narrative point of view, New York in the Gilded Age, our introduction to Archer. Tonight, read chapters 5-8 (pages 27-54). Continue marking key passages that help develop a theme you're interested in tracking. Also, if you're of a mind, peruse this website on Women in the Gilded Age and this one of Sargent's controversial portrait, Madame X.
Click the image to read "Nobody Likes Edith Wharton"
Tuesday, November 17 (2) - Wharton, The Age of Innocence; By tomorrow, please read chapters 9-10 (55-74).
Wednesday, November 18 (3) - Set The Age of Innocence Presentation Assignment; Wharton, The Age of Innocence
Thursday, November 19 (4) - KUBUS OUT - NO FORMAL MEETING
In her introduction to the Penguin edition, Cynthia Griffin Wolff writes, "The core of the novel is Newland's quest for real happiness, a quest that coincides with the pursuit of maturity. One uncompromising fact constrains this quest: the deepest and most indelible components of Newland Archer's nature have been formed and nourished within the narrow confinements of the very world against whose strictures he frets. He may be capable of improvement, of growth--even of achieving wisdom and contentment. However, he will never be capable of some fundamental transformation. Insofar as he can find happiness, the nature of his satisfactions will always necessarily be limited to the kind of person he is" (xxiv). This will be our central focus of the novel: to see if Wolff is right. To begin, in 500 words, write a short piece defining just what kind of a person Newland is in the early going. Make your insights as rich as possible, pitting character traits against others. Where do you see inherent contradiction in his character? This will be due to turnitin.com by Friday at 3:30 PM. Take today to prepare your ideas, tomorrow to organize them in a short essay. The structure is entirely dependent upon your ideas. 100-pt essay grade.
Friday, November 20 (5) - KUBUS OUT - NO FORMAL MEETING - Your assignment is the same as yesterday's. Have the piece posted to turnitin.com by 3:30 PM.
Over the Thanksgiving Break I'd like for you to finish Book One of The Age of Innocence (through page 143).
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Monday, November 30 (1) - Amend, Clark, Parma will present on The Age of Innocence, Book One, chapters 11-13.
Tuesday, December 1 (2) - Ward, Cassidy, Jones will present on The Age of Innocence, Book One, chapters 14-16.
Wednesday, December 2 (3) - Kennedy, Bourne, McAughan will present on The Age of Innocence, Book One, chapters 17-18.
Thursday, December 3 (4) - Bain, Morille, Palmer will present on The Age of Innocence, Book Two, chapters 19-20.
Friday, December 4 (5) - Tanner, McCormick, Corban will present on The Age of Innocence, Book Two, chapters 21-23.
Monday, December 7 (6) - Epley, Gardner, Miranda will present on The Age of Innocence, Book Two, chapters 24-26.
Tuesday, December 8 (1) - Stuchly, Jarlsjo, Murray, Morris will present on The Age of Innocence, Book Two, chapters 27-29.
Wednesday, December 9 (2) - Callaghan, Arrieta, Asensio will present on The Age of Innocence, Book Two, chapters 30-31.
Thursday, December 10 (3) - Bradley, Nylund, Nguyen will present on The Age of Innocence, Book Two, chapters 32-34.
Friday, December 11 - DEAD DAY - SEMESTER 1 EXAM - TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 8:15 - 10:15 - Note the format: 3 essays (1 verse analysis, 1 prose analysis, 1 open ended)
After the break we'll begin studying poetry. In preparation, I'd like you to read/do the following from your anthology:
(1) Poets on poetry (953-6) AND Billy Collins, "Introduction to Poetry"
(2) "Talking with Kat Ryan" (626-7)
(3) Your editors' brief introduction to poetry (628-9)
(4) Everything on pages 630-6: "To the Muse;" "Poetry or Verse;" "Reading a Poem;" "Paraphrase": Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and subsequent analysis, "Theme and Subject," "Limits of Paraphrase;" "Lyric Poetry": "What is a lyric poem?," Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays," Adrienne Rich's "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers"
Take notes on the terms in bold. Pay particular attention to the difference between subject and theme.
(5) Turn to page 644. READ "CHECKLIST: Writing a Paraphrase" and DO the exercise under "Complete Writing Assignment on Paraphrasing." This should be handwritten, and you are to use TWO poems from the further reading section (1016-1103).
(6) Watch these videos:
Mixing Latinate and Anglo-Saxon words is a delightful sensation, like mixing smooth and crunchy.
Words have always fascinated Pinsky, though it was his failure as a saxophone player that finally pushed him into poetry. Question: When did poetry first spark your interest? Robert Pinsky: I don't think I ever got into a thing called poetry writing poems the way somebody in a more traditional college educated family might.
Charles Bernstein What Makes a Poem a Poem? 60-Second Lecture, University of Pennsylvania April 21, 2004
(7) Reread poets on poetry (953-6) AND reread Billy Collins, "Introduction to Poetry"; Which of the memorable definitions of poetry on pages 954-5 works best for you?
Study Links
"6 reading habits from Harvard"
Achebe, "The Truth of Fiction"
Questions for analyzing novels
“In reading exam papers written by misled students, of both sexes, about this or that author, I have often come across such phrases — probably recollections from more tender years of schooling — as ‘his style is simple’ or ‘his style is clear and simple’ or ‘his style is beautiful and simple’ or ‘his style is quite beautiful and simple.’ But remember that ‘simplicity’ is buncombe. No major writer is simple. The Saturday Evening Post is simple. Journalese is simple. Upton Lewis is simple. Mom is simple. Digests are simple. Damnation is simple. But Tolstoys and Melvilles are not simple..."
-Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature
Required Course Texts
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, 11th edition
Vocabulary from Latin and Greek Roots VI
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment: Pevear & Volokhonsky Translation (Vintage Classics)
Euripides, Medea (trans. Diane Arnson Svarlien)
Killgallon, Sentence Composing for College
Wharton, The Age of Innocence (Norton Critical Edition)
Students should also expect to purchase a few paperback titles at my discretion.
General Literary Terms
allegory, allusion, anachronism, arete, bildungsroman, canon, characterization, chiasmus, close reading, conceit, diction, epiphany, epistolary novel, fable, fabliaux, frame narrative, genre, irony, leit-motif, metafiction, mood, motif, novel, novella, poetry, prose, satire, symbol, tone, verisimilitude, verse
Elements of Fiction
character, climax, conflict, denouement, dialogue, dynamic character, foil, narration, plot, point of view, suspense, tension, unity, unreliable narrator
Poetic Terms
alexandrine, alliteration, anapest, apostrophe, assonance, ballad, blank verse, caesura, canticle, canto, carpe diem, consonance, contrapasso, couplet, dactyll, elegy, end rhyme, english sonnet, enjambment, epic, epic simile, free verse, half rhyme, heroic couplet, imagery, in medias res, internal rhyme, lyric, metaphysical, meter, ode, pastoral, pathetic fallacy, personification, prosody, quatrain, rhyme, slant rhyme, sonnet, sprung rhythm, stanza, terza rima, verse
Drama Lingo
blank verse, catastrophe, catharsis, chorus, comedy, deus ex machina, dialogue, drama, hamartia, hubris, metadrama, miasma, mimesis, monologue, peripeteia, stasimon, strophe, tragedy, tragic flaw, tragic hero
Rhetorical Devices
a priori, anadiplosis, anaphora, antithesis, apophasis, asyndeton, hyperbole, parallelism, parataxis, pathos, polysyndeton, procatalepsis, stychomythia, synesthesia
Figures of Speech
catachresis, euphemism, idiom, metaphor, metonymy, oxymoron, paradox, personification, simile, synecdoche, synesthesia
What's Due?
Friday, November 20 - Short essay on The Age of Innocence
Monday, November 30 - Thursday, December 10 - The Age of Innocence Presentations
Edmund C. Tarbell: The Breakfast Room, 1903
New York's Latest Fad: The Michaux Cycle Club (Harper's Weekly, 19 Jan. 1895)
John Singer Sargent: Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), 1883–84
Wharton
Edith Wharton on the novel:
“the test of the novel is that its people should be alive” (36).
“Nietzsche said that it took a genius to ‘make an end’--that is, to give the touchstone of inevitableness to the conclusion of any work of art” (38).
“the first page of a novel ought to contain the germ of the whole...” (39).
“Again and again the novelist passes by the real meaning of a situation simply for lack of letting it reveal all of its potentialities instead of dashing this way and that in quest of fresh effects” (43).
“There is a sense in which the writing fiction may be compared to the administering of a fortune. Economy and expenditure must each bear a part in it, but they should never degenerate into parsimony and waste. True economy consists in the drawing out of one’s subject every of every drop of significance it can give, true expenditure in devoting time, meditation, and patient labour to the process of extraction and representation ” (39).
“The immense superiority of the novel for any subject in which ‘situation’ is not paramount is just that freedom, that ease of passing from one form of representation to another, and that possibility of explaining and elucidating by the way, which the narrative permits” (54).
Nabokov: Reading is rereading
Nabokov
“... one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do no have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous achievement of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is - a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally believed) - a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book.”
- Nabokov, Lectures on Literature
Below are 5 of my annotated pages from various texts and 1 of David Foster Wallace's copy of DeLillo's Players. The pages of the texts that you will be working with most closely should look just like these.
The College Board's official course description:
An AP English Literature and Composition course engages students in the careful reading and critical analysis of imaginative literature. Through the close reading of selected texts, students deepen their understanding of the ways writers use language to provide both meaning and pleasure for their readers. As they read, students consider a work’s structure, style and themes, as well as such smaller-scale elements as the use of figurative language, imagery, symbolism and tone.
Strake Jesuit's official course description:
In AP Lit & Comp. you will learn to read like an artist-critic, studying texts not only for their development of themes and cultural ideas but also for their technical mastery and innovations. How do writers employ language to create texts that engage their cultural moment and literary history in rich, often ambiguous ways? Why is first-person the right choice in A Farewell to Arms? Why so many disease images in Hamlet? What makes Joyce's sentences so terribly beautiful? You will read literature from a variety of genres and periods, always with an eye to unlocking its deeper mysteries. To read well you will first unlearn bad habits. No longer will quick reading, that nervous skim before class, do. No. You will learn to read slowly, to savor each sentence, each line, each paragraph or stanza for its multiple meanings, its suggestions, its silences. In time, you will learn the wisdom of Nabokov's remark that you can only re-read a book. Your writing assignments will be frequent and varied, from one-page response essays due the day of a reading, to longer, more formal essays of evaluation and analysis, to expository and creative pieces. Always, you will learn to sharpen your thinking and hone your writing, to give both an edge gained only by rethinking and rewriting. You will have conferences with me before and after essays are due. You will edit each other's essays for argument and style. And you will revise, revise, revise. This class offers an intensive reading experience and a full-on writing workshop.
Suggested Reading
Stanley Fish, How to Write a Sentence
E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel
David Mikics, Slow Reading in a Hurried Age
Francine Prose, Reading like a Writer
James Wood, How Fiction Works