“Dark, horror of darkness / my darkness, drowning, swirling around me / crashing wave on wave — unspeakable, irresistible / headwind, fatal harbor! Oh again, / the misery, all at once, over and over / the stabbing daggers, stab of memory / raking me insane.”
<--Previous This week's schedule -->
Tuesday, September 2 (1) - P&G Essay Peer Review; By tomorrow, read David Mikics' chapter, "Reading Drama" from Slow Reading in a Hurried Age.
Wednesday, September 3 (2) - Sample selections of P&G essays; By tomorrow, read "Sophocles" and "Oedipus the King" (Norton 607-610). Begin reading Oedipus the King, lines 1-96 (Norton 612-614).
Thursday, September 4 (3) - Intro to Greek Drama; The Theban Legend; Oedipus the King; By tomorrow, read Oedipus the King, lines 97-244 (Norton 614-618).
Friday, September 5 (4) - Oedipus the King; By Tuesday, read Oedipus the King, lines 245-767 (Norton 618-630).
Monday, September 8 (5) - Vocabulary Units 2-3; Oedipus the King
Tuesday, September 9 (6) - Set Extra Credit Opportunity; Oedipus the King
Wednesday, September 10 (1) - Oedipus the King
Thursday, September 11 (2) - Oedipus the King; By tomorrow, read Oedipus the King, lines 767-997 (Norton 630-636).
Friday, September 12 (3) - Oedipus the King; Over the weekend, read Oedipus the King, lines 998-1214 (Norton 630-641). Oedipus the King Essay Assignment to be set on Monday.
Monday, September 15 (4) - Set Oedipus the King Paragraph Assignment; Oedipus the King; By tomorrow, read Oedipus the King, lines 1215-1310.
Tuesday, September 16 (5) - NO VOCAB QUIZ; Oedipus the King
Wednesday, September 17 (6) - Tyrone Guthrie's 1957 Oedipus Rex; By tomorrow, read this chapter on body paragraphs.
Thursday, September 18 (1) - Middles
Friday, September 19 (2) - Oedipus the King; By Monday, finish the play.
Monday, September 22 (3) - Paragraph Peer Review; By Thursday,
Tuesday, September 23 (4) - Oedipus the King; By tomorrow, read Focus 6, Absolute Phrases (Killgallon 49-53).
Wednesday, September 24 (5) - Vocabulary Units 4-5; Killgallon
Thursday, September 25 (6) - Oedipus the King
Friday, September 26 (1) - Oedipus the King; Over the weekend, read "Euripides" and Medea, lines 1-48 (Norton 688-691).
Due Dates
The Power and the Glory Essay - First Draft - Tuesday, September 2; Final Draft - Monday, September 8
Oedipus the King Paragraph - First Draft - Monday, September 22; Final Draft - Friday, September 26
Studying Literature
Questions for analyzing novels
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.
Click on the image to read about the 1957 production staged in Stratford, Ontario.
Oedipus the King Study Links
Fate, Freedom, and the Tragic Experience
David Mikics' Definition of TRAGEDY
Terms for Studying Greek Drama
anagnorisis, catastrophe, catharsis, chorus, comedy, deus ex machina, dialogue, drama, hamartia, hubris, metadrama, miasma, mimesis, monologue, peripeteia, stasimon, strophe, tragedy, tragic flaw, tragic hero
“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... ”
Here is the official, departmental description of English 4:
Using The Norton Anthology of Western Literature, seniors build on their knowledge of the traditions of American and British literature by studying literature of the wider world, reading excerpts and full-length works from Western and Eastern cultures. Seniors continue their study of writing with The Little Brown Handbook, learning to improve their prose style and to write clearer and more cogent essays of literary analysis and personal reflection. In the spring, students learn the basics of academic research while producing an essay that combines their own insights with their synthesis of the ideas of scholars.
You are, however, to expect for things to vary. We have, for instance, added the Killgallon, Sentence Composing for College to the course syllabus. This will take up a good deal of time throughout the year. Below is a list of texts that we may or may not read. There are also, in fact, a few million texts not on the list that we may or may not read. Be flexible. I am. I like it that way.
First Quarter – The Ancient World
Stories of creation and ancient ideologies - Genesis, Hesiod, Plato, Lucretius
The Epic – Homer, Virgil, Ovid
Ancient drama – Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus
Second Quarter – The Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Narrative fiction before the novel – Boccaccio, Dante, Chaucer, The Arabian Nights, Cervantes
Renaissance thought – Montaigne, Castiglione, Machiavelli
Drama – Shakespeare, Marlowe
Third Quarter – The 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries
The Mock-epic and satire – Swift, Pope, Voltaire
Russian literature – Gogol, Pushkin, Chekhov
Fourth Quarter – The 20th Century
The Novel and the Novella – Conrad, Achebe
The Short Story – Kafka, Joyce
Course Texts
Killgallon, Sentence Composing for College
The Little, Brown Handbook (11th Ed.)
The Norton Anthology of Western Literature (8th Ed.)
Shostak, Vocabulary Workshop, Level H
If you do not mind (even if you do mind) bring in the Killgallon text on each day 5.