“O, handle not the theme, to talk of hands,
Lest we remember still that we have none.”

QUARTER 3, WEEKS 1-4

Wednesday, January 8 (2) - And Then There Were None In-class Assignment - Due Monday

Thursday, January 9 (3) - And Then There Were None

Friday, January 10 (4) - Set Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (Due Thursday, March 6); And Then There Were None; For Monday, read Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1.1-2.

Monday, January 13 (5) - Macbeth Close Reading Assignment Set; Macbeth; For tomorrow, read Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1.3.  Extra Credit Opportunity:  Watch "Extraordinary Women: Agatha Christie" on PBS tonight at 9:00pm and write a 1- page reflection on how what you learned about her influences your understanding of And Then There Were None.

Tuesday, January 14 (6) - Macbeth; For tomorrow, read Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1.4.

Wednesday, January 15 (1) - Vocab Quiz 7-8; Macbeth; For tomorrow, read Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1.5. For tomorrow, look at the sample close readings to the right.

Thursday, January 16 (2) - Macbeth; For tomorrow, finish Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1.

Friday, January 17 (3) - Macbeth; For Tuesday, read Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 2.

Monday, January 20 - NO CLASSES (MLK)

Tuesday, January 21 (4) - Macbeth

Wednesday, January 22 (5) -Set Macbeth Essay; Macbeth; For tomorrow, read Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.1.

Thursday, January 23 (6) - Macbeth; For tomorrow, read Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3.2-3.

Friday, January 24 (1) - Vocab Quiz Units 9-10; Macbeth; For Monday, finish Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 3.

Monday, January 27 (2) - Macbeth

Tuesday, January 28 (3) - Macbeth

Wednesday, January 29 (4) - Macbeth; February 27th for Main Street Production? For tomorrow, read 4.1 AND turn in close-reading by 11:59 PM.  Hard copy tomorrow in class.  Start taking responsibility for your own learning.  Be proactive.

Thursday, January 30 (5) - Macbeth; For Monday, finish Act 4.  Continue working on Macbeth essay.

Friday, January 31 (6) - NO CLASSES

Monday, February 3 (1) - Macbeth; By tomorrow, select which performance you will be attending by using the form to the right.  Also, read 5.1-2.

Tuesday, February 4 (2) - Macbeth; By tomorrow, read 5.3-5.

Wednesday, February 5 (3) - Macbeth; By tomorrow, finish the play!

Thursday, February 6 (4) - Macbeth

Friday, February 7 (5) - Macbeth, Over the weekend, be sure to get your hands on a copy of Titus Andronicus and read Act 1 by Wednesday.  It's one, long scene.  Read 100 lines per day.

Monday, February 10 (6) - Silent Shakespeare; Set Shakespeare Project; Bring $10 for your ticket to Macbeth.

Tuesday, February 11 (1) - Vocab Quiz Unit 11; Finish Macbeth

Wednesday, February 12 (2) - Titus Andronicus

Thursday, February 13 (3) - Titus Andronicus; Over the weekend, read Titus Andronicus 2.1-2.  This is not a ton of reading over a long weekend.  You should use the time to work on your group project and to continue reading The Hound of the Baskervilles. Also, complete this survey on your reading habits.

Friday, February 14 (4) - NO CLASSES

Monday, February 17 - NO CLASSES

Tuesday, February 18 (5) - Titus Andronicus; By tomorrow, finish Act 2 of Titus.

Wednesday, February 19 (6) - Titus Andronicus; By Friday, read Titus, Act 3.

Thursday, February 20 (1) - Vocab Quiz Unit 12; Time to finalize plans with group

Friday, February 21 (2) - Titus Andronicus

Monday, February 24 (3) - Titus Andronicus

Tuesday, February 25 (4) - Titus Andronicus

Wednesday, February 26 (5) - Titus Andronicus

Thursday, February 27 (6) - Titus Andronicus

Friday, February 28 (1) - Vocab Quiz Unit 13; Presentation of Set Designs; Over the weekend, read Titus Act 4.

Monday, March 3 (2) - NO CLASSES

Tuesday, March 4 (3) - Titus Andronicus; By tomorrow, read Titus 5.1.  Submit video to YouTube and e-mail the link to me.

Wednesday, March 5 (4) - Titus Andronicus; Respond to prompts 1, 2, 7, 8, and 10. By tomorrow, finish Titus

Thursday, March 6 (5) - Titus Andronicus

Friday, March 7 (6) - Film Screenings; Set Novel Project

END OF THIRD QUARTER

Monday, March 10 (1) - The Hound of the Baskervilles Reading Test

Tuesday, March 11 (2) - The Hound of the Baskervilles

Wednesday, March 12 (3) - The Hound of the Baskervilles

Thursday, March 13 (4) - KUBUS OUT WITH TENNIS TEAM - Get in these groups.  Respond to these discussion prompts.  Over the break, work on your novel project.  Enjoy your time off.

Friday, March 14 (5) - NO CLASSES

SPRING BREAK

Monday, March 24 (1) - The Hound of the Baskervilles

Tuesday, March 25 (2) - The Hound of the Baskervilles

Wednesday, March 26 (3) - The Hound of the Baskervilles; By tomorrow, read A Modest Proposal (Norton 1114-1119).

Thursday, March 27 (4) - Swift, A Modest Proposal

Friday, March 28 (5) - Swift, A Modest Proposal; Over the weekend, read Shelley, "A Defense of Poetry (selections) (Norton 1785-1798)

Monday, March 31 (6) - "A Defense of Poetry"

Tuesday, April 1 (1) - Final Vocab Quiz, Units 14-15

Wednesday, April 2 (2) - Set Shelley Assignment; "A Defense of Poetry"; By tomorrow, read Blake, Songs of Innocence (Norton 1410-1416)

Thursday, April 3 (3) - Blake, Songs of Innocence; By tomorrow, read Blake, Songs of Experience (Norton 1416-1425)

Friday, April 4 (4) - Blake, Songs of Experience;  Study these words for a vocab quiz on Wednesday, April 9... because I know you just can't get enough!  Over the weekend, read Wordsworth, "We are Seven," "Expostulation and Reply," and "I wandered lonely as a cloud"

Monday, April 7 (5) - Wordsworth; By tomorrow, read Wordsworth, "My heart leaps up," "The Solitary Reaper," and "The world is too much with us"  

Tuesday, April 8 (6) - Set Blake's Songs Essay; Wordsworth

Wednesday, April 9 (1) - Vocab Quiz; Romantic Poetry Lecture (What have we learned about the period in light of reading Shelley, Blake, and Wordsworth?); By tomorrow, read Coleridge, "The Eolian Harp" and "Kubla Khan" 

Thursday, April 10 (2) - Coleridge

Friday, April 11 (3) - Coleridge; Over the weekend, read Byron, "She walks in beauty" and "So we'll go no more a roving"

Monday, April 14 (4) - Byron; For tomorrow, read Shelley, "To Wordsworth" and "Ozymandias"

Tuesday, April 15 (5) - Shelley; By tomorrow, read Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind"

Wednesday, April 16 (6) - Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind"

Thursday, April 17 (1) - Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind"; Over the Easter weekend, read Keats, "Bright star," "La Belle Dame sans Merci," and "To Autumn"

Friday, April 18 - NO CLASSES - GOOD FRIDAY

Monday, April 21 - NO CLASSES - EASTER MONDAY

Tuesday, April 22 (2) - Keats: Read Keats, "Ode to Psyche" and "Ode to a Nightingale"

Wednesday, April 23 (3) - Keats' Odes; Read Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Melancholy," and "Ode on Indolence"

Thursday, April 24 (4) - Keats' Odes

Friday, April 25 (5) - NO CLASSES 

Monday, April 28 (6) - Romantic Poetry Test; By tomorrow, read Tennyson, "Ulysses"

Tuesday, April 29 (1) - Tennyson; You are to discuss numbers 1, 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 11.  We will talk about this poem (one of my favorites, if not my favorite) tomorrow.

Wednesday, April 30 (2) - Tennyson; By tomorrow, read Browning, "My Last Duchess"

Thursday, May 1 (3) - Browning; Read Arnold, "Dover Beach" by tomorrow.  You will be given some questions to answer in class.

Friday, May 2 (4) - KUBUS ON RETREAT

Monday, May 5 (5) - Arnold; By tomorrow, read Hopkins, "The Windhover" and "Spring and Fall" (Norton 2162, 2165)

Tuesday, May 6 (6) - Hopkins; By tomorrow, read Auden, "September 1, 1939" (Norton 2696-2699)

Wednesday, May 7 (1) - Auden; Read Thomas, "The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower" and "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" (Norton 2706-2707, 2710)

Thursday, May 8 (2) - Thomas; By tomorrow, read Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, pages 2169-2179

Friday, May 9 (3) - Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; By Monday, read Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, pages 2179-2188

Monday, May 12 (4) - Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; By tomorrow, read Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, pages 2188-2195

Tuesday, May 13 (5) - Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; By Thursday, read Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, pages 2195-2200

Wednesday, May 14 (6) - Court Day - NO CLASS

Thursday, May 15 (1) - Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; By tomorrow, read Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, pages 2200-2210

Friday, May 16 (2) - Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; By Monday, read Joyce, "Araby" (Norton 2503-2507)

Monday, May 19 (3) - Joyce, Araby; For tomorrow, begin reading The Dead (Norton 2507-2512)

Tuesday, May 20 (4) - Joyce, Araby; Joyce, The Dead; For tomorrow, read The Dead (Norton 2512-2523)

Wednesday, May 21 (5) - Joyce, The Dead; For tomorrow, finish The Dead (Norton 2523-2534)

Thursday, May 22 (6) - Joyce, The Dead

Friday, May 23 (1) - DEAD DAY - NO CLASSES

Due Dates 

Guide to iPad submissions to turnitin.com

Final Exam - Thursday, May 29, 2014, 8:15a-9:50a

 Patrick Stewart as Macbeth

 Patrick Stewart as Macbeth

 
Lavinia from the famous Ninagawa production

Lavinia from the famous Ninagawa production

Advertising Broadsheet for The Hound of the Baskervilles

Advertising Broadsheet for The Hound of the Baskervilles

Click image to read James Salter on Writing

Click image to read James Salter on Writing

““Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it””
— Shelley

Decompressing Metaphors

Macbeth (1976), directed by Trevor Nunn

Patrick Stewart, "Is this a dagger…"

Free learning from The Open University, an introduction by David and Ben Crystal to the 'Original Pronunciation'

Orson Welles and Peter O'Toole on Shakespeare's Hamlet

The official course description goes a little something like this: "Juniors survey the development of British Literature, becoming familiar with major British authors and their literary works within the context of history, philosophy, culture, and generic trends.  The Norton Anthology of British Literature is the prime literary text, though students also read Heart of Darkness, Brighton Rock, and other full-length works of the teacher's choice. The course emphasizes textual analysis, inquiry, and discussion. Juniors continue their study of writing fundamentals withThe Little Brown Handbook, advancing their skills in writing essays of literary analysis, interpretation, persuasion, argument, and comparison-contrast, as well as speculative essays. Students continue their study of vocabulary."

You should know, however, that there is going to be a little variation within this general framework.  We probably will not read Heart of Darkness, for instance.  I ask for your flexibility.   Trust me to choose texts that are going to be exciting to read and that will spark lively class discussion.

Here is a rather ambitious look at what I'd like to cover this year, but you will see that things change.  You all will have a say in what we read. 

       First Quarter – From the Medieval to the Early, Early-Modern

Old English Poetry (Beowulf), Middle English Chivalric Romance (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), Middle English Poetry (Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (selections)), Sixteenth-Century Epic (Spenser, The Faerie Queene (selections))

       Second Quarter – The Early-Modern Period

Renaissance Verse (Marlowe, Raleigh, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, Lanyer, Jonson, Marvell, Herrick); Renaissance Drama (Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus; Shakespeare, Twelfth Night); Renaissance Epic (Milton, Paradise Lost (selections))

      Third Quarter – Generic Transformations (1650-1850)

The Mock-Epic (Dryden, Mac Flecknoe; Pope, The Rape of the Lock); Romantic Poetry (Blake, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth), Victorian Poetry (E. Browning, Tennyson, Arnold), The Novel (Brontё, Jane Eyre)

      Fourth Quarter – Moving toward Modernity and the Modern Day

Short Stories, Novellas, Novels (Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Woolf, A Room of One’s Own; Joyce, The Dead; Greene, Brighton Rock); Modernist and Modern Poetry (Auden, Thomas, Heaney, Duffy)

Required Texts:           

Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre

Ishiguro, Kazuo, The Remains of the Day 

The Little, Brown Handbook (11th Ed.)

The Norton Anthology of British Literature – The Major Authors (8th Ed.)

Shakespeare, William, Titus Andronicus

Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein 

Shostak, Vocabulary Workshop, Level G

Resources for Studying British Literature