“Why, children, do you look upon me with your eyes?
Come, children, give / Me your hands, give your mother your hands to kiss them.”
Back to this week's assignments -->
Monday, September 29 (2) - Sophocles, Oedipus the King; Jason, the Argo, a ram's golden coat, and Medea; Be sure to read, re-read, and study this document for the in-class assignment on Wednesday. By tomorrow watch both videos to the right.
Tuesday, September 30 (3) - Euripides, Medea; By Thursday read through line 95 of the play.
Wednesday, October 1 (4) - In-class Writing Assignment on Oedipus the King
Thursday, October 2 (5) - Vocab Quiz Units 6-7; By next Monday (October 13) you are to submit another body paragraph, this time over 20 lines from Medea. Refer to the Oedipus paragraph assignment for guidelines. As I will be returning your marked Oedipus graphs to you on Monday, your Medea graph will be scrutinized even more so. May your claim be debatable and surprising, your analysis rich and explicit, your transitions smooth and logical, your understanding richer by the end. As always, see me in my office for help. You need only submit to turnitin.com by 8am.; Euripides, Medea; Read through line 270 for tomorrow.
Friday, October 3 (6) - Oedipus graphs; Over the weekend read through line 445.
Monday, October 6 (1) - Euripides, Medea
Tuesday, October 7 (2) - Euripides, Medea; Read through line 519 by tomorrow. Expect a quiz.
Wednesday, October 8 (3) - Euripides, Medea; Finish the episode (through line 626) by tomorrow.
Thursday, October 9 (4) - Euripides, Medea; Read this document on openers
Friday, October 10 (5) - Vocab Quiz Units 8-9; Openers
Monday, October 13 (6) - Set Greek Drama Essay; Finish lecture on introductions; Read the document on conclusions found in the writing center.
Tuesday, October 14 (1) - Conclusions; Euripides, Medea; By Thursday read through line 1053 of the play.
Wednesday, October 15 - NO CLASSES
Thursday, October 16 (2) - Notice the addendum on the Greek Drama Assignment: You must now include 2 absolute phrases and 2 appositive phrases in your essay, denoting them in bold; Comparative Analyses
Friday, October 17 (3) - Essay preparation; Finish the play over the weekend. You will have a vocabulary quiz on units 10-11 on Tuesday. Also, as an extra credit assignment, complete Practices 6 and 8 of the Absolute Phrase Focus in your Killgallon text (pages 59-60; 62-63). I expect your hand-written responses to be turned in at the beginning of class on Tuesday to receive credit. Lastly, EVERYONE must read pages 65-67 of the Killgallon text (Focus 7 - Appositive Phrases). There will be questions about the reading on the vocabulary quiz.
Monday, October 20 (4) - C/C Thesis; Euripides, Medea
Tuesday, October 21 (5) - Vocab Quiz 10-11; Killgallon (Appositive Phrases)
Wednesday, October 22 (6) - Euripides, Medea
Thursday, October 23 (1) - Euripides, Medea; By tomorrow, read Seneca, "On Anger" (Norton 850-5).
Friday, October 24 (2) - Seneca, "On Anger"; Over the weekend, read "Homer" and Homer, Iliad, Book I, line 1 (Norton 100-2, 107).
Due Dates
Oedipus the King Paragraph - Final Draft - Tuesday, September 30
Medea Paragraph - Monday, October 13
Greek Drama Essay - Monday, October 27
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 image to open Medea discussion questions.
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.