Trailer for the National Theatre's 2013 production starring Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear
Adrian Lester (Othello) and Rory Kinnear (Iago) talk about their characters, the relationship between them, their relative position in the social and military hierarchy of the play and the motivations for their actions.
This clip looks at the military setting of the play and the role of Major-General Jonathan Shaw who helped to create this environment authentic on the Olivier stage.
Olivia Vinall (Desdemona) and Lyndsey Marshal (Emilia) talk about their characters, the relationship between them and the position of women in the world of the play.
Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud, the Moorish Ambassador to Elizabeth I, a contemporary image of a Moor.
Monday, February 29 (1) - McCormick and Nylund: Pope, "A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing (from An Essay on Criticism) (1077) --- Nguyen and Jones: Stevens, "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" (1089)
Tuesday, March 1 (2) - Tanner and Cassidy: Arnold, "Dover Beach" (1019); MLA Day 1
Wednesday, March 2 (3) - MLA Day 2
Thursday, March 3 (4) - (Re)introducing Shakespeare; Our focus for Othello; Tonight you are to finish reading 1.1 of Othello. Does Iago have a master plan?
Friday, March 4 (5) - Othello, 1.1.1-80; Over the long weekend, read these selections from Machiavelli's The Prince and finish Act 1 of Othello. You are to use this scene-by-scene analysis of the play as you read. First Annotated Bibliography Due Monday. Lots of exciting stuff to be getting on with!
Tuesday, March 8 (1) - Othello, 1.2-1.3; Tonight I'd like you to read 2.1. What kind of a love is the love between Othello and Desdemona? How does the image of the poisonous mineral gnawing at his inwards in Iago's final soliloquy help us understand Iago's motivations? What's Iago really afraid of? What is the underlying cause of his rage?
Wednesday, March 9 (2) - We'll begin with a quick introduction to Machiavelli, The Prince; Othello, 1.3 (Iago and Roderigo) and 2.1
Thursday, March 10 (3) - Othello, 2.1
Monday, March 21 (1) - Othello, 2.1
Tuesday, March 22 (2) - Othello, 2.3; Tomorrow we'll begin 3.3, a scene of nearly 500 lines that travels a great emotional distance. How do we get from "Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul / But I do love thee!" to damning her to Hell? Go back and re-read lines 1-174, this time keeping in mind Iago must always be thinking three things: "How will Othello react if I say this?", "How will Othello react if I don't say that?", and "How will I be able to cover myself if my web of lies is revealed?" Is Iago's ultimate aim at the beginning of the scene the death of Desdemona? Wherein do Iago's greatest skills lie?
Wednesday, March 23 (3) - Othello, 3.3.1-174
Thursday, March 24 (4) - Othello, 3.3
Tuesday, March 29 (5) - Othello, 3.3
Wednesday, March 30 (6) - Othello, 3.3
Thursday, March 31 (1) - Othello, 3.3
Friday, April 1 (2) - Othello, 3.3; Over the weekend, read "The Coddling of the American Mind," an article published last September in The Atlantic, addressing how "microaggressions" and "trigger warnings" are actually hurting mental health on college campuses. As you read pay particular attention to the authors' use of secondary material. Notice how they use sources as concisely as possible, so their own thinking isn’t crowded out by their presentation of other people’s thinking. Notice also that you're never left in doubt as to when the authors are speaking and when they're using materials from a source. Lastly, notice how the essay thinks. Like we did in the fall with "Money Talks," mark topic breaks and ¶ functions beside each ¶. We'll begin with this essay on Monday to kick start a week and a half on incorporating secondary material into your own writing. To this end bring a printed copy of the essay to class, marked up and ready to go... for a quiz grade.
Monday, April 4 (3) - Set Research Essay, Act 3; Lukianoff and Haidt, "The Coddling of the American Mind"
Tuesday, April 5 (4) - Incorporating secondary material into your own writing
Wednesday, April 6 (5) - Incorporating secondary material into your own writing
Thursday, April 7 (6) - MLA Day 1
Friday, April 8 (1) - MLA Day 2
Monday, April 11 (2) - MLA Quiz; Sample professional essays
Tuesday, April 12 (3) - Sample professional essays
Wednesday, April 13 (4) - Sample student essays; Tonight I'd like for you to read 3.4 of Othello. One of the lingering questions in the scene is why Emilia does not tell Desdemona about the handkerchief. Does the play offer a potential reason? I think the answer might require us to know something about the relationship between Iago and Emilia. Also, continue to trace how Iago maintains control over the principal figures in the play. He now needs to monitor and maneuver the actions of Othello, Desdemona, Emilia, Cassio, and Roderigo. How does he do it? He makes himself the liaison; he controls the channels of communication.
Thursday, April 14 (5) - Othello, 3.4
Friday, April 15 (6) - Kubus out -- Drafting Day; Over the weekend read 4.1. How the grandiloquent have fallen. Compare Othello's way of speaking in 1.2 and 1.3 to 4.1. Watch Iago react creatively, juggling Othello, and improvising a scheme that forces O into a trance. How does Iago work in the sudden appearance of Bianca? Is there any stopping him? Lastly, Iago no longer needs to convince Othello of Des's infidelity, so why does he now continue? To perfect his craft? To enjoy himself? To make Othello see the world in the same way Iago does? How wonderfully sinister!
Monday, April 18 (1) - Classes canceled due to weather
Tuesday, April 19 (2) - Classes canceled due to weather
Wednesday, April 20 (3) - Othello, 4.1; Tonight you're reading 4.2, one of the most emotionally compelling scenes in the play. Look carefully at Desdemona's speech at 150: What words, details, and images best describe her attitude toward herself, Iago, Othello, and her situation?
Thursday, April 21 (4) - Othello, 4.2; Tonight you're reading 4.3, a scene about tragic loss and love, including one of Shakespeare's palpable hits, "Willow." Based on Emilia's famous speech toward the end of the scene, what must it be like to be Iago's wife? What is the dramatic function of this scene?
Friday, April 22 (5) - Othello, 4.3; By Tuesday I'd like for you to finish reading the play so that you're prepared to write an in-class essay, even without the advantage of class discussion. At the beginning of Act 5 Iago is at the peak of his powers, trying to pull off a difficult double murder. Compare the stark contrast between the types of murder at the beginning of each of the two scenes in the act -- one a sword fight in a dark, cramped street; the other a discreet suffocation. At the beginning of 5.2 the tone is different from what it has been during the previous two acts; we've moved from chaotic uncertainty to calm determination. Iago, by the beginning of this scene, has been able to get Othello to make the reasons for killing Desdemona his own. Don't believe me? Read the speech at the beginning of 5.2 ever so carefully. Despite killing his wife, how does Shakespeare tilt the text back toward Othello by the end of the scene? Unless we come to view Othello as a worthy man, Iago wins.
Monday, April 25 (6) - AP open-ended free response question preparation; Tonight read the 6 student essays I've provided on the handout, two of which are on Othello. Don't forget also to read the score reports. What do you notice about the essays that received higher scores? They all, among other things, make very specific textual references in aid of getting at each text's larger significance. The more specific you can be, the better. We'll begin by looking at these essays tomorrow and finish your prepared outlines.
Tuesday, April 26 (1) - AP open-ended free response question samples
Wednesday, April 27 (2) - AP exam review
Thursday, April 28 (3) - AP exam review
Friday, April 29 (4) - AP exam review
Monday, May 2 (5) - AP exam review
Tuesday, May 3 (6) - AP exam review
Wednesday, May 4 (1) - AP exam - no class
Thursday, May 5 (2) - Othello, 5.1-5.2
Friday, May 6 (3) - Othello, 5.2
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
What's Due?
Tuesday, March 8 - Annotated Bibliography 1
Monday, March 21 - Annotated Bibliography 2
Tuesday, March 29 - Annotated Bibliography 3
“By the world, / I think my wife be honest and think she is not; / I think that thou art just and think thou art not. / I’ll have some proof.”
Click the image to read about Dr Johnson's Dictionary of the English Langauge
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.
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.
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
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