Love is a Battlefield

Does this mean Petrarch came up with the battlefield analogy and not Pat Benatar?
https://play.google.com/music/preview/Te4icddnqktv4utghlf454avtiy?lyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-lyrics

http://www.todayinliterature.com/assets/portraits/

http://4e7221.medialib.glogster.com/media

Make sure you bring your Petrarch/Donne packets for Friday's class. I can't wait to hear all of your Donne puns -- his name is the gift that keeps giving every year.

Vocabulary in Action - Atelier

To give you a sense of an atelier, and possibly remind you of the meaning of the word for the upcoming quiz, here is a link about my friend Kristen, the designer of iheartfink: http://www.hectv.org/watch/state-of-the-arts/october-2015/20240/fink-fashion-ink/.

And to anticipate a future question, no matter how much you like her atelier, we will not be able to take a field trip there.

A Petrarchan Catharsis

After realizing that you all need to study for the vocab quiz tomorrow, we started our next unit involving poetry. First up, the legendary Francisco Petrarcha and his muse Laura. Over class, we started to note religious motifs, repetitive symbols, elevating diction, and mythological allusions within two of his poems. But, we were not finished with just analyzing literary elements today! With poetry, recognizing structure is necessary for every poetical analysis.

The Italian sonnet rhyme scheme features the great band ABBA ABBA and then has a combination of CDE CDE or some related form. Check out more examples of the sestet rhyme scheme here:  http://www.sonnets.org/basicforms.htm. Also of note is the volta and its dividing turn between the octave and sestet.

For class tomorrow, close read the third poem for discussion. After our quiz, we will be spending the hour with Petrarch and his other poems.

A domani!

Keats Article

While we may not be reading my Keatsy until next semester, I thought many of you would appreciate this article dealing with his mental health while he was writing his letters to Fanny and other family members.

https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2015/09/28/moods-of-my-own-mind-keats-melancholy-and-mental-health/

P.S. AP Lang will be about Keats later this week! If it's October, it must be Keats!

http://www.keats-shelley-house.org/system/images/0000/0466/Yours-ever.jpg?1323279055

Poetry Prompting

Say goodbye to the epic and its heroes, storytellers, and monsters. Say hello to poetry. Today's class was a poetry prompt, which is acting as a pre-assessment. Rangefinders will follow soon. This week we will start poetry and travel back to the time when unrequited love causes a man to write 365 poems to his muse, the best name in the world, Laura.

Our Last Anglo Saxon Text

1. We finished our 20 words from the hybrid Unit 3/4 vocab unit. Review will be Tuesday and the quiz will be Wednesday.

2. We read our last Anglo Saxon test, "The Wife's Lament." I am sad we are leaving the Anglo Saxons behind. They were such a fun-loving, war-hungering, storytelling group. In class, we worked on two interpretations: the clan exile versus the husband exile. In groups, we determined a theme for the poem and identified literary devices. Then, in a 10 minute solo burst of writing, we produced a paragraph that connected one literary device to the theme of the text.

3. The New Historicist Essay has arrived, and it is ready for your analysis. 

4. The Jane Eyre New Historicist Essay example -- minus evidence -- provides a sample on how texts can exhibit the ideologies of old and still exhibit a more round picture of the ideology.

5. You have a chart to help you with prewriting this weekend. Fill out as much information you can -- this will act as an outline for your essay.

6. Time to move from college discussion to AP prompt writing. Timed poetry prompt on Monday to assess your skills at this time. 

And, here are all my favorite Jane Eyres...

Joan Fontaine

http://www.doctormacro.com/Images/Fontaine,%20Joan/Annex/Annex%20-%20Fontaine,%20Joan%20(Jane%20Eyre)_02.jpg

Charlotte Gainsbourg

https://criticalconfabulations.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/jane_eyre_11385_medium.jpg

Ruth Wilson

http://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/f18358bbd09fde16959d83668189cb897fe8f724.jpg

Mia Wasikowska

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/bbcfilms/image/976x549/film/832x468/jane_eyre_mia_wasikowska_8.jpg

I guess this means I will have to create a blog about my favorite Mr. Rochesters! I think Toby Stephens is the best one thus far!

Farewell, Dear Grendel

I still have the echo of a squawking Grendel losing his battle with Beowulf, the man of strong shoulders. From Gardner's perspective, we have witnessed the inner turmoil of the monster and, while a representative of Anglo Saxon ideology of pure evil and darkness, Grendel has become a round character full of insanity, spite, and longing for human connection.

Guess what? There is no reading homework for Friday! When we resume our Anglo Saxon class, we will read a poem, the last text before assigned the New Historicist essay. Time to write, my little monsters.