Due Monday

Please read the essay, "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift which is in your lit book on page 1588-1593. You should be reading closely and noting what devices Swift is using to contribute to his explict thesis (what he is actually proposing) and his implicit thesis (what he wants us to understand from the document).

If you do not have your book, and online version is available here. There are a bunch of random credits at the beginning and end, but I think you'll be able to figure it out.

Due Friday

Please print and bring this information to class.

Beast Scores!

Your poetry objective test scores (The Beast!) have been posted. If you scored below a 70%, you qualify for "Beast Rehab" which will allow you to raise your score to the 70% level. This is a limited time offer, so please see me ASAP for details.

Beastmode Vocab

Here are the vocabulary words from our survey in class the other day if you are looking for a beastmode vocab option.

• Ambiguous
• Ostensible
• Juxtapose
• Complementary
• Ephemeral
• Pithy
• Pejorative
• Inauspicious
• Obdurate
• Sententious
• Disconsolate
• Incongruous
• Conventional
• Ambivalent
• Esoteric
• Demise
• Contemplative
• Evocative
• Abstemious
• Deprecating
• Derisive
• Torpid
• Modicum
• Colloquial
• Elicit
• Surmise
• Erudite
• Nonplussed
• Languorous
• Profligate

Due Tuesday

Please complete a prospectus style chart for the following poem. Please note that this is due Tuesday, not on Monday. In addition to the chart, please include a formally phrased thesis/poa.

Musee des Beaux Arts

(Museum of Fine Arts)*

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.




*The Musee des Beaux Arts is an art museum located in Brussels, Belgium.

Due Thursday

As part of the "Prospectus 2" assignment, please create a complete prospectus style chart on the Romantic poem, "When I have fears," by John Keats (628). If you did not bring your book home, please access the text online, but not any critical information. A complete chart should have three large categories with three supports under each. This is a rich poem, so you shouldn't have problems doing a complete chart. YOU DO NOT NEED TO WRITE THE PARAGRAPH.

If you happened to do this poem as part of prospectus assignment one, do your chart on "Ozymandias" (625) by Shelley.

Assignments Due Tuesday

Romanticism Reading

Please read and think about the following poems:

"Lines" (619-622)
"Ozymandias" (625)
"Ode to the West Wind" (626-628)
"When I have fears" (628)
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" (632-633)


At home "in-class" essay practice

You may choose to hand write or type the following assignment, but please try to spend no more than 45-50 minutes on the process.

In the following poem by Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), the speaker addresses the subject of desire. Read the poem carefully. Then write a well-developed essay in which you analyze how poetic devices help to convey the speaker’s complex attitude toward desire.

Thou Blind Man’s Mark

Thou blind man’s mark,1 thou fool’s self-chosen snare,
Fond fancy’s scum, and dregs of scattered thought;
Band of all evils, cradle of causeless care;
Thou web of will, whose end is never wrought;
Desire, desire! I have too dearly bought,
With price of mangled mind, thy worthless ware;
Too long, too long, asleep thou hast me brought,
Who should my mind to higher things prepare.
But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought;
In vain thou madest me to vain things aspire;
In vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire;
For virtue hath this better lesson taught—
Within myself to seek my only hire2
Desiring naught but how to kill desire.

1 target
2 reward

Renaissance/Metaphysical Readings

584 "Love that doth reign..."
584 "One day..."
590 "Let me not..."
594 "Valediction"
595 "The Flea"
599 "To the Virgins"
601 "Easter Wings"
604 "To His Coy"