WEEK 10

Good Morning and welcome to final exam week!

This week we'll be writing the film critical review. With this kind of essay, you'll want to keep your emphasis more on the word critical, as in think critically, and less on review or recommendation (though you're welcome to conclude your review with a recommendation to watch the film or not). You'll be analyzing the film just as you would an essay, picking something out of it that can be developed as a thesis. 

If you look again at the critical review from last week you'll notice that the first 9 of the 12 paragraphs of the essay all begin with topic sentences on deception. Lindsay is developing the thesis that he presented in the introduction paragraph. He doesn't attempt to analyze everything, just the motif of deception. It's a focused critical review. (But don't try to model the overall structure. You do NOT need 12 paragraphs. 3 to 5 body paragraphs will more likely be your structure.)

Here's your assignment:

Using the film that you watched last week, analyze a single element within it. This is literary analysis and you've been doing it all along with printed stories. This one is just on film. 

Hints, guiding principles, requirements...

1. Most of your writing needs to be analysis, but a paragraph or two of plot summary at the beginning is ok. You should keep this minimal. 

2. The same elements of analysis that you've used with the written literature is available for this essay too: character development, theme and motif, style, etc. But you've also got the uniquely film elements such as direction, editing, casting, and cinematography. Just make sure you're focusing on ONE element.

3. Take notes on the film. If you're working with an element involving character, you'll need to get the names right and to quote it accurately. If you're working with something like choreography (for a musical of course), you may need a list and the order of the dance numbers. Yes, you may need to watch the film again this week, and if you're not sure if you should take notes on something, take notes on it. 

4. 800-word minimum, 1000 maximum. That's a tight window. Stick to it, please. 

Final drafts (the only drafts) are due Friday night. You will NOT have an opportunity to revise this essay (it's your final exam!); however, if you want my input you're welcome to send me your thesis statement, an outline, or just a description of what you're planning. Don't send me an entire draft. 

Again, this is your final exam. I'll be assessing your work for such basics as organization, economy (no fluff or unnecessary repetition of ideas), and close proofing of grammar, usage, and mechanics (Yes, I'm grading this for proofing just like I would a final draft because it is a final draft). And avoid first and second person pronouns; You're analyzing not reflecting.

Have a great week!

WEEK 9

WELCOME!

Your work for week 9...


1. Revise the 2nd Generation Romantics essay.

2. We'll start working with the last form of literature -- FILM. The essay will be a critical review. 

This is American Film Institute's Top 100 list. Your job is to pick one film from the list, — Sorry, no STAR WARS or LORD OF THE RINGS. — (Be wise here; have your parents help you pick it, and pick one you haven't seen yet), view it, and do the following:

a. Write up a "credits" list: producer, director, writer (who wrote the screenplay; was it an adaptation from a book or play?), cinematographer, lead actors/actresses

b. Write a brief (one paragraph) synopsis of the plot.

c. Summarize (one paragraph) a positive review of the film (you'll have to go find one).

d. Summarize a negative review of the film (for this you may need to pull a negative part from an overall positive review; if it's in the top 100 you're not going to find many credible, negative reviews; but there are always haters out there).

e. Write a brief personal review of the film. This is not a formal piece of writing. Let's say 100-150 words. 

f. Read this critical review of an old film, and summarize the thesis and its development in a paragraph. This essay does a good job of demonstrating the form. It's more than a thumb up or thumb down review. A critical review focus in on something in the film and asks the reader to think critically about it. It works very much like a thematic essay for a novel. Yes, this is an example of what you'll write next week.

Due @ midnight Friday.

Have a great week!

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. ~1 Thes. 5:18

WEEK 8

Welcome to week 8! 

We're literally in the home stretch!

No, wait. That's wrong. We're not literally in the home stretch because we're not all on horses making the last turn before racing to the finish line. Literally doesn't work here. Some of you need to look back at your "Literally" sentences. If you lost points and want them back, you can revise them. Re-read the LBGB entry!

For the last two weeks you've been applying Romantic poetical elements to one long poem. This week you'll do the same with three shorter pieces of your choice (sort of). 

Coleridge and Wordsworth are considered the "first generation" Romantics. This week we'll take a look at the "second generation": Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats. They did their writing in the decades following the release of Coleridge and Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads and continued to work out the idea that poetry is "emotion recollected in tranquility." The poetry of these younger Romantics emphasized the same topics and ideals but in a bolder, more passionate way.


Here is your work for week 8:

1. Revise the RAM essay.

2. Choose THREE poems, one from each of the 2nd generation poets (you'll have to go digging), and in a well-developed and supported essay show how they share the Romantic traits of an emphasis on nature and the use of strong emotion. Consider also how the poets differ in their handling of these traits. 

a. Include the entire text of each poem at the end of your essay. (No worries about copyright laws; these are all public-domain because they're oooold).

b. Title formatting (short poems get "quotes" not italics.)

c. Use lots of quotes.

d. Organization -- you have some options. You could organize it by poem/poet or by trait. Either way, keep it balanced. If you give Byron two paragraphs (one for each trait), be sure to do the same for the other two. If you organize it the other way and write one long paragraph on the nature emphasis, don't write more than one long paragraph for strong emotion. Get it? So you can choose the organization - just cover everything (3 poets and the two Romantic traits) and keep it balanced.

d. 800 words minimum


Turn it in by Friday @ midnight. 


Have a wonderful week! 


  

WEEK 7

Good morning!

Sorry - I know it's not on the agenda, but I need to add in another two-week / catch-up post. I've decided last minute to do the men's retreat this weekend. So yes, we'll end up going a week longer.

Here's your work:

1. LBGB...

A. Read chapter 4. 

B. Explain in your own words the 5 "AVOIDS" in the Style & Usage section.

C. Write a sentence using each term in the pair correctly:

    possible / plausible

    shall / will

    who / whom

D. Write three sentences, each using the word literally in a corret way.     

2. R.A.M. essay...

 In week 6, I had you explore the Neoclassical and Romantic movements and begin tearing down Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It required a lot of small pieces of writing. This week will be different. You'll be writing one essay.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is considered, along with his literary partner William Wordsworth, the primary influence in Romantic Age poetry. Together, they proposed how poetry should be approached, and for the most part, the rest of the poetry world at the time began to follow their suggestions. And we have never gone back. We have retained the Romantic ideals, though they show up primarily now in our pop culture and the mass media "arts."

Their ideas were, in part, a reaction to the neoclassical period of the previous two centuries. If we look at how specific ideas shifted between the periods, we get a good sense of what to look for in Romantic poetry:

Neoclassical emphasis   >>>   Romantic emphasis...
tradition   >>>   experiment
society   >>>   individual
urban   >>>   rural
artificial   >>>   natural/nature loving
intellect/reason   >>>   imagination/emotion
public/objective   >>>   private/subjective
clear, logical   >>>   mysterious
scientific   >>>   supernatural
aristocratic   >>>   common
cultivated   >>>   primitive
constraint   >>>   spontaneity
formal diction   >>>   natural diction

(There's nothing special or "official" about these designations. You can use your own words to describe them; for example, instead of intellect to imagination, you could say the emphasis shifted from the head to the heart.)

Rime of the Ancient Mariner represents all of these shifts, some more than others. Your job this week will be to draft an essay that proves this by showing how Coleridge relies on FIVE of these Romantic traits. I'll start the list off by saying you HAVE TO deal with nature, emotion, and the supernatural. You can pick the other two. 

Requirements / reminders for this draft...

• no plot summarizing
• author's full name and poem title in first P
• organization (intro / 5 body paragraphs / conclusion makes sense, right?)
• quote the text A LOT (more than any other literary form, poetry has to be quoted in analysis.)
• keep the quotes short (embedded quotes like Coleridge describes the specter woman as having "skin as white as leprosy" work well when writing about poetry)
• 800 words minimum

DUE NEXT FRIDAY, 3/20, AT MIDNIGHT.

Have a blessed two weeks!

WEEK 6

Good morning!

This is another catch-up opportunity. You will have TWO weeks to get this work done. Don't procrastinate. Use your time wisely.

This week, we'll be moving on to poetry. As this is not a survey course in which you would get the whole sweep of a particular classification of literature (Ancient Greek, American, British, etc.) but a course in writing about literature, we'll focus the poetry on a particular "chunk" called the Romantic movement. You might recognize the names: Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, and the one we'll start with, Coleridge. But in order to get at the Romantics, we also need to know a little bit about what came before: neoclassic poetry. 


Here's your work for the week:


1. Read the two articles below and follow the instructions for each: 

Neoclassic poetry  Write a 100+ word summary of the key ideas of this movement (You can stop reading at the "Alexander Pope" section). 

Romantic poetry. Write a one-sentence definition of romanticism using link.


2. Read this bio on... Samuel Taylor Coleridge.


3. Read Rime of the Ancient Mariner. (The notes in the margins are Coleridge's commentary; don't forget to read those!) I suggest printing out this version so you can make notes for item #4. Give yourself time for this. You might want to even break it up over a couple of days. I also suggest listening to an audio version. This one on Youtube lets you listen and see the words (It's also read by Ian McKellen which is kind of cool). 

a. For each of the poem's 7 parts, write a brief paragraph summarizing the plot.

b. Explain in a paragraph (50-100 words) how R.A.M. emphasizes or relies on nature, strong emotion, and gothic elements. 


4. Define each of the following (you'll need to look them up) and provide an example from R.A.M. for each:
a. masculine rhyme
b. feminine rhyme
c. near rhyme
d. end rhyme
e. internal rhyme
    (here's a good source for the 5 types of rhyme)
f. alliteration




TURN IN EVERYTHING BY MIDNIGHT, NEXT FRIDAY. HAVE A GREAT TWO WEEKS!

WEEK 5

Good Morning!

SOME IMPORTANT NOTES...

1. Title formatting: BIG items (books, plays, movies, etc.) get italicized. SMALLER items (chapters, short stories, poems, songs, etc.) get "quotes." And formatting is never mixed, so don't use both just because you forget which is which.

2. Quote formatting: Don't put direct quotes in italics (or bold or highlighted or any other formatting). Some of you really like doing that. I'm not sure why. Quotation marks are all you need.

3. Topic Sentences. Part of how I grade most of these literary analysis papers is to glance through the body of the essay and look at the topic sentences (the first sentence of the paragraph). I'm looking for simple, clear sentences that get right to the point of that paragraph. "Finally, Antaeus and T.J. both have to face a Hercules." Or something like that. If I can't do that, then there's a problem. While there are times when putting a topic sentence somewhere else (in the middle or at the end) is appropriate, for these kinds of essays, it's not. 


Your work for this week:

1.  You MAY have another draft to do for the "Antaeus" essay. 

2.  Watership Down essay...

I hope you enjoyed reading one of my all-time favorites. An aunt read it to me and my siblings when we were kids, so I grew up thinking it was just a silly children's story. Then for some reason I picked it up as an adult and recognized right away that there was a lot more going on than bunny rabbits getting chased around farms.

You've probably guessed correctly at our first piece of writing. You'll be discussing Hazel as a leader. This is straight-forward literary analysis of the simplest kind. You'll identify those characteristics of Hazel's that make a good leader and cite examples (with lots of quotes) from the text. Nothing tricky or nuanced here--it's meat-and-potatoes literary analysis. And for that reason, there will only be ONE draft of this essay. Keep that in mind. You have all week to draft, revise, and proof. 

So...

Write an essay in which you thoroughly discuss Hazel's leadership qualities. Here are the basics...

• Discuss FOUR leadership traits (so be thinking 4 body paragraphs with clear and simple topic sentences).
• Include at least TWO "QUOTES" PER TRAIT. (Remember, quotes don't need to be lengthy; in fact, they shouldn't be longer than 2 lines, and even that should be rare. Review the 3 ways of incorporating quotes into your writing.)
• Title and author's name in the intro paragraph
• 800 words minimum
• Absolutely no plot re-telling (I've read the story a dozen times; I know the plot. Just talk to me about Hazel's leadership. We're just talking – one expert to another.)

3.  LBGB...

• Read the "Style and Usage" section of chapter 3. 
• Look at these usage pairs and write a correct sentence using each (You may use my examples as models, but write your own):

            a. affect / effect
            b. assure / ensure / insure
            c. compose / comprise
            d. farther / further
            e. i.e. / e.g.
            f. me / myself

        

DUE FRIDAY NIGHT.

Have a wonderful week! 

WEEK 4

Hi Guys,

One business item first:

A few of you may not have read this part of the organization assignment from last week: Keep all drafts of essay assignments grouped together with the latest draft at the top of the group.

Like this:

"Antaeus" dr1

Antigone Conscience dr2

Antigone Conscience dr1

Antigone Tragedy dr2

Antigone Tragedy dr1

I need to be able to compare drafts side by side. 

Thanks!

Here's your work for week 4... 

1. Final draft for the "Antaeus" essay. 

There were a few common problems:

1.  Failing to stick to the thesis: that TJ is a modern-day Antaeus. That means showing how the two characters are alike. And that means each body paragraph tackles a specific way that the two are alike. Shoot for 3 or 4 ways. If you're not sure how to approach this, just have each topic sentence begin, "Like Antaeus, T.J....." or "In the same way that Antaeus _____ , T.J. also _____....." or  "Both Antaeus and TJ share the trait of _____...."

2. Analyze. Don't tell me what happened in the story (or in the myth), just refer to the things that help you make your points. Then support that with evidence from the text.

3.  Literary analysis relies heavily on quoting the text. The best supporting evidence of your point is the text itself. Also, there are only 3 acceptable ways of formatting the quoted text in your writing. I've posted information on this a few times. You might want to review. 


2. Watership Down - Go ahead and finish it and complete the chapter summaries. 


3. Write up a list of Hazel's leadership qualities. Find 10 examples from the text that demonstrate these qualities. 

Here's a model:  TRAIT - Hazel takes input from others in the group. EXAMPLE - We see this demonstrated when Blackberry figures out how to ride on something that is floating on water, and instead of taking credit for it or begrudging Blackberry the idea, Hazel is grateful.  

You probably won't end up with 10 separate qualities. Just try to come up with 10 total examples from the book. So if one quality has 3 or 4 examples, that's fine. Use your chapter summaries to jog your memory. 




Have a great week!