Grendel, The Live Performance

Lots of participation today! From vocab to the dragon to chapter performances, you were all involved in the world of Grendel. More specifically, we started off with a dragon characterization participation, bringing up points of the dragon's role as a projection of Grendel's conflicted mind, the imagery and color symbolism popping up in their momentous meeting, and the mentor figuration of the dragon to create a justification of Grendel's acts later in the text. All of you did so well with this - especially since we had 20 different points of view in class today!

Then, I witnessed the greatest theatrical production since last year's version of Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" by Noah & Alex: fifth hour's boulder-rolling, door-kicking expression of Grendel's final chapters. We ran out of the time at the bell to finish the analysis of those chapters, so we will be back with that on Friday. We also have to vote on strongest performance, so make sure you keep in mind your favorite skit. Then, we will chat about New Historicist Criticism, which in quick terms regards historical ideologies and how literature redefines or portrays these ideologies in a different light (sort of like the epic hero really being a narcissistic, selfish braggart). We will be cramming a lot into Friday because I would like you to have your quarter essay assignment for the weekend. And since fifth hour has the longest class time on Friday, we are going to go for it!