Reading due Monday

Please read Act I of a Doll's House for Monday.

Tartuffe MOWAAW

Here

Shakespeare Practice Passage

Here is a passage to practice analyzing.  (The passage you want begins on the 2nd page and is about Wolsey)

Here are sample student essays and commentary to help give you a sense of what scores these essays have received.

Time Period Information

There are a few questions on the final about literary time periods.  Much of this we mentioned in passing in class, but you probably want more specifics to study from, so here it is!

Marking the text due Monday and Semester 1 Finals Information

Please complete a marking the text activity (due 1/13) for the passage below.

Hamlet, Act IV, Scene IV

How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!


Final Exam Information

Your final will consist of a fill-in-the-blank objective test and an essay on a Shakespearean passage. More specifics are below.

Objective Component--fill in the blank (70 Questions)

 Poetry Terms
 Poetry Time Periods (basic characteristics of; no identifying quotations)
 Names of Poets of major poems studied in this course (Think papers and discussions)
 Drama Terms
o aside, soliloquy, monologue, dramatic irony

 Shakespearean Drama Terms and general knowledge
o monologue, soliloquy, aside, foil, irony, blank verse, prose.
 Literary Criticism
o New Criticism
o Psychoanalytic Criticism
 Freud’s theories of development
 Short Story Titles
o Quotation Identification: Identify the title
 Short Story Authors
 Short Story and Drama Characters
o Quotation Identification: Identify the speaker
 Short Story Terms
o Point of View, (1st, 3rd limited, 3rd omniscient.) Direct/Indirect Characterization, Internal/External Conflict, foreshadowing
 Existentialism
o Basic Principles and important Writers of…
 Sentence Structures
o periodic, cumulative, etc. (not the fancy ones like anaphora, etc)


Semester 1 Reading List

Poetry(lots)

Living Like Weasels

Yellow Wallpaper
Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
Recitatif
Metamorphosis
Good Country People
Araby
Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

Hamlet

Marking the Text due Thurs/Fri

Here is the sheet that has marking the text strategies for Shakespearean passages.  These are now back from print, so you will get your very own copy in class next time!

Below you will find the text of the speech you need to mark along with a prompt.  Please mark the text with the prompt and the strategies in mind.  For your convenience, you may want to copy and paste into another document and create some usable borders.  Please make sure that as you write things on your text that you are actually writing your analytical thoughts, not just words like "diction" or "pathos".  Your text markings should convey actual ideas in response to the prompt.

Prompt:  In the following speech, King Claudius ponders the consequences of murdering his brother.  Read the speech carefully and consider how Shakespeare uses devices like tone, diction, imagery, syntax, and structure to reveal the king's conflicted state of mind.

(Act III, scene iii, line 39-)

KING CLAUDIUS

Thanks, dear my lord.
Exit POLONIUS
O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't,
A brother's murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what's in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon'd being down? Then I'll look up;
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'?
That cannot be; since I am still possess'd
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well.
Retires and kneels