Sublime

Here is the video example of the Sublime Case Study that I showed in class yesterday.  Thank you Lisa for your permission to share it!

Sublime Case Study

Project due: Monday, December 14

Sublime—a theory and/or attitude toward beauty, nature, and spirituality marked by a combination of awe/pleasure and terror/fear inspired by natural beauty (usually of a huge, dark, and/or dangerous variety).

Your task is to compile a case study of the sublime in art, literature and music.  Your examples should be from historical Romanticism (1780-1830 in England) as well as more recent examples that demonstrate a contemporary understanding of the sublime (this understanding may have evolved).

You should have a minimum of four examples, two from historical Romanticism and two more recent examples (these can be artistic artifacts—photos, poems, songs—from your own life as well as published art, music, and writing).

The nature of your artifacts will dictate the format in which you present your case study.

•    If all of your artifacts are music, you may want to submit a CD with a cover you design (can you make the cover a representation of the sublime?) and liner notes that identify the musical pieces and briefly explain how they illustrate the sublime.

•    If your artifacts are visual, you may want to create scrapbook pages that include the images as well as brief explanations of how the images reflect the sublime.  Can you make the pages look like a representation of the sublime as well as contain information about the sublime?

•    If your artifacts are literary (poetry, passages from other literary works, etc) you may want to produce a small chap book with a cover you design and brief explanations of how the writing reflects an understanding of the sublime.  Can you create a cover that also represents the sublime?

•    If your artifacts are a combination of sound, image and words, you may want to create a wiki entry, webpage, or short movie.  Be sure to include a brief explanation of how the artifacts represent the sublime.

Regardless of how you choose to present your case study, the final object that you submit should be a visual representation of the sublime as well as contain examples of the sublime (form should reflect content).  Additionally, regardless of form, it should contain brief written (or spoken) explanations of how the artifacts illustrate the sublime and you should include your sources for the artifacts.  How you include sources will depend on the format (on a webpage, you would use links, for a CD, scrapbook pages, movie, you would need an MLA formatted list of sources).

I will have some examples of successful case studies in class tomorrow, but there are also some nice ones on the wiki from last year.  Here are links to two in particular that I would recommend checking out: Michael M. and Chris M.

Poetry Explication Wiki

Our Poetry Explication project has begun!  You can find the assignment (and eventually the finished project) on our wiki.

Theme Music Paragraph

Using Milton’s depiction of Satan and the temptation of Eve as your point of departure, compose a single, well-developed paragraph that discusses the representation of the devil in one of these contemporary songs (Sympathy for the Devil, Hell is Chrome, Let the Devil In).  Think about what the song seems to be saying about the nature of evil, how its portrayal of the devil and/or hell compares to Milton’s or to other common portrayals, or anything else that seems interesting or important.  Refer to specific lines and phrases to illustrate your observations.

A good paragraph should be coherent and thoroughly developed.

•    It should be organized around a single, unifying idea (introduced clearly at the start of the paragraph), and it should proceed to explore and develop this idea in detail.

•    Length and word count will vary, but a good paragraph should be at least five sentences long, and it should elaborate and illustrate its main idea thoroughly, without unnecessary repetition.

•    We should feel as if we’ve gotten somewhere new by the end of it.

Your first step should be to have something to say—a paragraph should have a distinct purpose.  Start by thinking through your ideas, to see where they lead you, what further insights you might uncover.  Once you know what you want to say, draft and edit your paragraph.  As always, aim for a clear and direct style, and try to be as specific as possible.

Due (typed, double-spaced) in class, Tuesday, November 10.

Choral Readings

Here is the video that I showed in class as a model for what a choral reading looks like:

Your group will have time in class to rehearse on Tuesday, but you may want to correspond over the long weekend about how you want to divide up the script and practice your lines.  It will be very important that everyone is familiar with the words they are speaking and don’t stumble in order for the unison to work.  I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Change to Syllabus

Just a note that there is one change to your current syllabus.  For Thursday, November 12, please do the following:

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias” (Packet 39).  Vocab: visage, colossal.  Can you find a specific argument in “Ozymandias”?  Read the poem carefully several times, and consider what point Shelley might be attempting to make with this story.

An updated syllabus will be handed out in class tomorrow.

Book Review Publication Opportunity

Jaime B.’s review of Elsewhere was recently featured on the Champaign Public Library’s Facebook page and on one of the librarian’s blogs.  If you are interested in sharing your review with other readers, the library is looking for more reviews by teens.  If you are interested in this very cool publication opportunity, please talk to Ms. Linder.

Paradise Lost Class Notes 1

We began class on Thursday by discussing the paragraph Milton included about the verse the poem is written in.  The phrase, “measure is English heroic verse without rhyme” is a fancy way of saying the poem is written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter).  We drew attention to the fact that Milton thinks rhyming poems are “barbaric,” “set off wretched matter and lame metre” and any readers who desire rhyming verse are “vulgar.” In this paragraph about verse we can also see Milton aligning himself with Homer and Virgil.  A number of students felt that he sounds a little pompous and arrogant.

The first sentence (lines 1-16) is the invocation.  Epic poetry almost always begins with an invocation wherein the poet requests the aid/inspiration of a muse.  After looking at the *allusions in lines 1-16, we determined that the muse that Milton is invoking is the holy spirit–because he is writing a Christian epic–but that he talks about this muse using language borrowed from the ancient Greeks (“muse,” “oracle of God”).  Again we see Milton aligning himself with the traditional epics as he write this new epic.

The invocation (or first sentence of the poem) is divided into two parts by a colon at line 10.  The subject of the first part of that sentence is “muse” and the verb is “sing.”  Everything that comes before “Sing heavenly muse” is a dependent clause.  If that is confusing to you, try reversing the word order to start the sentence with the subject, i.e. “Sing heavenly muse of man’s first disobedience…”

The subject of the second half of the first sentence is “I” and the verb is “invoke.”  We talked in class about how challenging it is to find the simple subject and verb in these long sentences.  I will not require that you continue finding them, but I would recommend that if you are having trouble figuring out what is happening in any given sentence you take the time to find subject and verb.

We discussed Milton’s stated purpose for this poem, to “justify the ways of God to men” (ln. 26).  Milton’s project is not just to retell the story of Adam and Eve, their temptation and eventual eviction from the Garden of Eden, but also to explain to humanity (through the poem) how it happened and why God created the world this way.  This poem is theological in nature.  In particular, Milton is concerned with how Eve, as a person without knowledge of good and evil before eating the apple, can actually make a choice about eating the apple.  We will spend more time talking about this as the poem goes on.

The action of the poem begins en media res around line 44 when God, “the almighty power” hurls Satan headlong out of Heaven.  Satan (also called the arch-enemy and Lucifer) is being cast out of heaven for leading a band of rebel angels in rebellion against God.  Before their rebellion, they were good angels and full residents of heaven.  However, Lucifer desired to be equal with God and rule over the other angels and “raised impious war in heaven” (ln. 43).  As a consequence, he has been thrown out of heaven (on fire!) and “confounded”(ln. 54) for eternity.

We didn’t have time to look at Satan’s speech in class on Thursday so will pick up there on Monday.

*allusions: indirect reference to historical, mythological, literary work or figure.

Today (Friday) we have book talks and independent reading so there are no notes.  Sonnets are due on Monday.  They should be typed and printed before class.

Intro to Milton & Paradise Lost

In case you have been waiting with bated breath to find out the answer to Tuesday’s post, it is Heavy Metal Music.

In class on Wednesday, I made the case that Paradise Lost is the heavy metal version of poetry.  It is not a love ballad, it is not a sonnet, it is not about the cute boy sitting next to you in class–it is a full-on, epic story of the battle between God and Lucifer for the very souls of humanity.  And for that reason, it is best enjoyed with a side of loud, intense, dramatically serious heavy metal.  Yesterday we listened to Led Zepplin’s Immigrant Song to get hyped to read Paradise Lost.  Today we will be listening to AC/DC’s Highway to Hell to be in the mood for our discussion of the first night’s reading.

If you were sick on Wednesday, here are a few things your should know:

Here is a nice Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keiler that will give you a good introduction to the life of John Milton (1608-74).  You aren’t responsible for memorizing the biographical information, but it will give you some insight into the poem–particularly the fact that Milton was blind by the time he wrote Paradise Lost.

Paradise Lost is an epic poem.  Here is the definition of epic poem that I gave in class.  You are responsible for knowing the details of this definition.

Epic Poems:

•    long, narrative poem
•    serious subject matter
•    formal and elevated style
•    focus on a hero or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, nation, or world
•    Setting: usually large in scale – worldwide or even larger
•    Beginning: narrative often starts in media res, “in the middle of things,” in the middle of the action

Traditional epics: written versions of oral poems
Literary epics: written by an individual poet in deliberate imitation of traditional form.

Traditional epics Literary epics

Greek:    The Iliad and The Odyssey
English:    Beowulf                                               Paradise Lost
French:    Chanson de Roland
Latin:                                                                       The Aneid
Sumerian:    Gilgamesh

From your syllabus, some instructions for reading Paradise Lost:  For every reading assignment in Milton–Mark spoken lines with quotation marks; mark simple subject(s) and verb(s) in each sentence (circle subject and double-underline verb).

Elizabethan & Petrarchan Sonnets

Your assignment this week is to try your hand at writing a sonnet.  Because many students were out sick yesterday when I talked about the form of a sonnet, here are the notes from class:

Elizabethan (also called Shakespearean) Sonnet:

• 14 lines
• Iambic Pentameter (iambic: da DA, pentameter: 5 feet, or 10 syllables in this case)
• Rhymes: abab cdcd efef gg (last couplet is called an heroic couplet)
• Divided into 3 quatrains (groups of 4 lines) and an heroic couplet
• There is a turn–or shift in approach to the topic–most frequently before the heroic couplet (think Sonnet 130) but it also can occur after the second quatrain

Petrarchan Sonnet:

• 14 lines
• Iambic Pentameter
• Two stanzas, the octave (the first eight lines) followed by the answering sestet (the final six lines)
• The tightly woven rhyme scheme, abba, abba, cdecde or cdcdcd, is suited for the rhyme-rich Italian language, though there are many fine examples in English.
• Since the Petrarchan presents an argument, observation, question, or some other answerable charge in the octave, a turn, or volta, occurs between the eighth and ninth lines. This turn marks a shift in the direction of the foregoing argument or narrative, turning the sestet into the vehicle for the counterargument, clarification, or whatever answer the octave demands.

Your sonnets are due on Monday, October 26th.  They should be typed.  We will have an opportunity for peer feedback on Friday, October 23rd so bring what you have written.  I will be looking to see that you have engaged with the challenge of this assignment and will not be overly picky about rhyme and meter in my grading.