A Calendar of Sorts

TODAY IN CLASS
Frankenstein objective quiz/test.  Make it up ASAP if you missed it.

For the very short run (this week-end):
1) Finish reading the original PL hand-out (excerpt from Part I)
2) Go back to yesterday's post for the link, and check out the same excerpt online.  You do not have to annotate the footnotes back onto your sheet, but DO look them over for a few minutes to grasp the range of allusions Milton worked into his poem.  Pay special attention to the Aeneid, since it was the art epic that Milton was using as the best model of epic components, characteristics, and style
3) You received two new hand-outs in class:

• Just read the "Hymn to Light," which is the name typically given to  the first 55 lines of Book 3.  How does Milton let readers know that he is blind?  How/why is that important in helping him achieve his goal in Paradise Lost?  (That is, why does he feel that it's important.)
• The other hand-out has the heading Style Excerpts, but it was really meant to show several of the famous epic similes in Milton's poem.  Us the space next to each excerpt to write down the "essentials"--words this time, not pictures!--that make up the components of the epic similes in each case.  What is being compared to what, and then to what else?

LOOKING AHEAD
Monday/Tuesday: 
Wrapping up PL, with reference back to Frankenstein (short out-of-class paper)

Wednesday 2/3 through Monday 2/8: 
Assorted short poetry in class.  No poetry homework on these days.
(In fact, expect lots of poetry interspersed with whatever else we're doing between now and the exam)

Reading assignment by Tuesday, 2/9: 
Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King) by Sophocles.  It's in your big lit book. Our focus will be on IRONY, and reading the material by Aristotle that lays the critical foundation for the evaluation of tragedy

And from then to graduation:
Shakespeare's Hamlet will be next--read mostly out of class, with a few "readers' theatre" scenes in class
Mid-February to late March:  Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (Get it ASAP if you don't have it yet.)
Late March to late April:  Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles

The three weeks after the AP exam:  Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon.  (Student-run teaching/presentation
teams)