Class: Wednesday/Thursday (April 29th/30th) PLUS READING SCHEDULE, PLUS FINALS

For Hamlet acts 1-2. 

• Pick 3 questions from each of the following schools of literary theory: Formalism, Marxism, Archetypal, Feminism, Psychoanalytic. 
• Apply each of these questions to the first 2 acts of Hamlet. Put your findings in your notes. Leave some space for following acts. 
• Once you are done with this... and only after you have completed the questions... start reading Acts 3-5. You should have a much more comprehensive view of the play as you move forward. Still apply these question as you read.. add to your notes. You will be able to balance the bigger picture of the play once stopping after act 2 and building a strong literary foundation to move forward.
• Have a good start on this for class.. you do not need to be completely finished for class. We will work on SOME together... But have this started.

Hamlet reading schedule: 

Friday, May 1st- Read Act 3 of Hamlet adding to literary theory notes... 

Monday, May 4th- Have Hamlet completed.  Socratic seminar on Monday. 

Frankenstein: 

May 6th/7th: Letters and Chapters 1-3 (pages 1-39)

May 8th: Chapters 4-10 (pages 40-70)

May 11th: Finish the book (71-166)
* You know your schedule. If you need to read ahead.. do so. I will also Frankenstein books available Wednesday (4/29) on... pick up when you need to do so. 

FINALS: 

May 13th: 2nd and 4th Hours FINAL
May 14th: SENIOR PRESENTATIONS 

May 15th: 3rd hour FINAL 

Due: Friday, April 24th

1. Read the entire introduction to Hamlet. Take good notes!
2. Read Act 1.1-1.2 of Hamlet. 
3. Read through and take notes on the following PowerPoint over the introduction to Shakespeare.
Shakespeare PowerPoint

Class today: April 20th

I have a sick bug at home today..

1. You need to take out your literary theory questions.
2. Using Formalism, Marxism (sociological), Feminism, and Archetypal schools of theory, pick 5 questions from each school... and ask them of the General Prologue.. The Knight's Tale... The Wife of Bath's Tale... and The Miller's Tale. (Use the same five questions for each tale)

Work on your own today.

Write your findings out in your notes with ample evidence.

Wife of Bath Discussion- Class today

For class today- Group into small groups of 3-4.. go through the following questions: 

1. In her prologue, the Wife of Bath selectively reconstructs and presents her own life. What does she include, and what might she have left out?
   Does she accept any responsibility for her life and its troubles, or does she simply shift the blame onto her husbands, ‘men’ in general, or ‘women’ in general?
   What does the Wife depict as the male world-view, and how does it compare with what she presents as the female world-view? Is this a genuinely female view, or just her own, and if it is, why would she want to present it as that of ‘women’? Is it possible, in the late fourteenth century, to envisage a ‘female’ world at all?
   Is the Wife’s experience comparable to that of the other female pilgrims, the nun and the prioress?
   The Wife implies that she is uttering universal truths – are her words applicable today?
   Whose secrets is the Wife revealing – her own, her husbands’, or those of men/women in general, or all/none of these?
2. How does the Wife use language – does she succeed in turning the language of male dominance against itself, or does she simply present herself as guilty of all the ‘sins’ and failings which men (and priests in particular) allege? Is she a good theologian, or a good preacher? How does language prevent gender equality?
   What might be the impact of the Wife’s revelation that she (and every woman) is a gossip and a liar on the credibility of her story?
   What is the Wife’s attitude to the clergy, and does she reveal anything about a lay woman’s piety? Is Jankin himself an indictment of the clergy, or of clerical authority?
3. What authority does the Wife claim (she could be compared with the second nun and the prioress in this respect), and why does she claim experience over learning?
   Is this a carnivalesque ‘world upside down’, and if it is, does it represent a serious threat to authority?
   Is the Wife saying that learning is, or has become, divorced from real life?
4. What is the relationship between sex and violence in the Wife’s story, and how does this relate to the sex and violence (in this case, rape) in her Tale? Is Alison a ‘battered wife’, and what are the social and psychological points being made about this? Is this related to the male’s insistence upon linguistic and discursive dominance over the female? If the female body is text, what does Jankin’s, and the knight’s, violence represent?
5. The Tale centres around rape – is Alison implying that the forced marriage of a twelve-year-old girl is rape, in which Church and society both collude (this can be compared with the marriage of May and January in the Merchant’s Tale)? Can Alison be said to have ‘raped’ her old husbands? Is the implication that rape is a crime born of frustration and social exclusion – the young knight has no defined status – and is this how the knight feels he needs to prove himself? Therefore – who is to blame for this; the individual, society, the Church, the romance genre (which stresses the need for a young man of high status to prove himself as a lover), upbringing (in the chivalric tradition of winning honour by violence, and courtly love), or an unrealisable ideal?
6. Is the Wife’s prologue a sermon, a confession, an autobiography, an alternative hagiography (saint’s life), an exemplum (story illustrating a moral example), or what?
7. Why does the Wife choose an Arthurian romance – for example, is a sign of her middle-class aspirations? In what ways does the Tale take up the themes from the Wife’s prologue?
8. Does the knight get the punishment he deserves, or is he rewarded, with the collusion of the queen and her ladies, for raping the girl? Is the rape undone by the conclusion?
9. What DO women most desire? Is it what any of the women in the Tale say it is, or is it innocence, purity, childhood (as is possible with the prioress)? Could it be all of them at once. Does this imply that the Canterbury pilgrims are searching for these things also; that is, for a return to the Garden of Eden? Is Chaucer? Are we all?

After you are done, take out your literary theory questions and use these to go through the Wife's Prologue and Tale.. Use Formalism, Archetypal and Marxism... 

Read the Miller's Tale for Friday

The Wife of Bath Essay

Read and take good notes on the following article.
Pay attention to how the article is structured and supported.
Think about not only the subject of The Wife of Bath.. but how the writer develops an argument.
Wife and Painting of the Lions

Class today: April 10th The Knight's Tale Discussion

1. In the pile of bloody bodies, we are given a description of two knights lying side-by-side, wearing the same armor. They were cousins, because their mothers were sisters. They were lying there in between the states of life and death. Did this description desensitize or romanticize death? Is the fact that they are knights symbolic of the ambiguous middle ground in the chivalric code, in knighthood, in war? There seems to be a discrepancy that is hard to describe. There is a parallel between the relationship of God (faith or religious doctrine or the basis of Knighthood morality) and war and life and death. Does this scene represent the fog of war or the truth of war? Is this the dark side of war told in a romanticized lightness? Yes, these are over specified poles and incomplete binary understandings. However, what does this symbolize to you?

2. There is a pervasive theme of organized and civilized structure throughout this tale. The garden, in which Emelye spends her time picking flowers, is a man-made and man-kept garden. Is this natural? The fact that the Knight went first and he is a member of the first estate implicitly draws into question if the social hierarchy should be endorsed or critiqued. During this time frame, the Great Chain of Being philosophy was widely believed. The civilized tournament in a man-made amphitheater is more acceptable to the characters in the tale versus the "barbaric" fighting in the woods (a natural environment). What does this tell you about society and organization? Do you feel that these details are significant? What other details suggest or lead you to analyze structure and order in The Canterbury Tales?

3. What makes a prison? Are physical confinements what make a prison or is it a mental state that captivates one and ensures imprisonment? Richard Lovelace once wrote, "Stone walls do not a Prison make / Nor iron bars a cage / Minds innocent and quiet take / That for hermitage / If I have freedom in my love / And my soul am free / Angels alone that soar above / Enjoy such liberty" (1642). Between Palamon and Arcite, which situation do you believe was worse? Why? Which situation was more imprisoning?

4. Why do you believe that the Knight was selected to tell the first tale? Referencing the question I asked you to keep in mind in the beginning of this anthology, why do you think Chaucer makes this decision? Is Chaucer critiquing or endorsing/supporting the societal structure of the time?


5. Lastly, what is your take on the ending of the story? How do you feel about the Prime Mover's speech? Do you think this was a good ending? Palamon and Emelye live happily ever after. Do you feel that the ending was just right? Or perhaps a little rushed as if there was nothing more to say? If you had to come up with the moral of this tale, what would it be? What pervasive themes are present (love and war | art and chaos | etc.)? 

For Friday, April 10th

1. Read the essay on The Knight's Tale..  take good notes! It is found under Canterbury Tales links.

Due: Wednesday/Thursday April 8th/9th

1. You need to have Chaucer's The Knight's Tale read for class on Wed/Thursday. You will have a quiz.
2. Remember.. Starbucks Day after our quiz. We will start our discussion of the KT over coffee..

Here is a link to the article I referenced about taking handwritten notes versus typed notes.
Note taking Tweet