Homework 11/30

Last day in December!
(November) thanks Valerie...
-read and annotate the poems found on p.732-740
"Sonnet XXX"
"Lord Randall"
"Ballad"
"Midwinter Blues"

-Poetry Test and Root Words (pyr) on Friday
===============
Honors

-upload your Short Story draft #6 to Turnitin.com

Homework 11/29

ROAR post #2 due @5pm

Annotations for the poems on p.718-724 "Sloth" "Piano" "Fifteen" "Tonight I write"

Root Words quiz on Friday ---> pyr

Poetry Test on Friday, past poems and new poems

Homework 11/22

1) answer the questions on p.710 #1-9

2) ROAR post #2 on Monday, 11/29

Homework 11/21

1) read the three poems from the class handout, answer the questions from p702

2) ROAR post #1 due @5pm

Homework 11/18

1) PPP
-hints
place ALL titles into italics. Sometimes Gawain is in italics, sometimes not. Check whether it is used as a title (the Gawain poet) or a character (Gawain was a brave knight).

use full tabs

your last name and page number MUST be a header, not just typed at the top of your page

2) ROAR post #1 on Monday

Homework 11/17

1) read p. 688-692 in your text book

Go to: classzone
-select Language Arts/MA then find your book
-select McDougal Littell Literature, Grade 10
-click "online book" at bottom left
-create a "student account"
-use ACTIVATION CODE: 4726324-650 for the book
-have fun!

2) perfectly printed paper! Friday!
3) Roots--->Pater

Homework 11/16

1) bring your big textbook to class
2) Film Terms/TKAM film quiz
3) PPP due on Friday

-----------
Honors
-signed photo/video release form

Homework 11/15

1) get reading your ROAR book, since our class reading is light this week!
2) Film Terms/TKAM film quiz on Wednesday (11/17)
3) PPP due on Friday (read the previous post)
4) Root Word #9--->pater

Perfectly Printed Paper

Here is a mighty challenge. I ask that you prove your MLA and computer skills by printing a perfectly formatted paper. You do not need to write the paper; it's already done for you!

Papers must be printed prior to class on Friday. If your paper does not pass, then you will have one week to make changes.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Below is the text of the paper you need to properly format.

1) copy and paste SPECIAL (just text) into Word
2) set up a cover page using your name, date, class, and the paper's title
3) center title at the top of the 1st page
4) insert page number with your last name, but do not include the cover page
5) format the essay (double space, Times New Roman 12pt, indent new paragraphs, title of books italicized)
6) format the works cited page

NOTE: the essay should fit on two pages, not including cover and works cited pages
---------------------------------------------------------------------------


Evaluating the Medieval in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Composed by an unknown monk in the north of England circa 1375, the romance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight exhibits attributes common to medieval literature. The Gawain poet created his verse with attention to alliterative patterns, and employed stanzas of unfixed length that are connected through the bob and wheel device. Thematically, the poet places Gawain in situations that test his devotion to the medieval ideals of courtly love and chivalry. Thus, in form and theme this Arthurian romance contains poetic elements that mark it as a medieval text.
The text of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is preserved in a religious manuscript that also contains three poems: “Pearl,” “Patience,” and “Purity” (Borroff 20). Yet, Gawain opens with a passage more accustomed to the nationalist ethos of epic poetry. The poet offers an account of Britain’s founding, connecting the heroes at Troy with the “Bold boys bred there, in broils delighting,” who inhabit England (line 21). As in Beowulf, alliteration punctuates the poetic line. Where the device once served as a rhythmic and mnemonic tool, the sound repetition in Gawain belongs to a revival of alliterative verse in the medieval period. The medieval audience would have recognized and enjoyed this poetic element as it suggested a popular Anglo-Saxon form of storytelling. Thus, the poet’s insists for the reader to “…listen to my lay but a little while,/ As I heard it in hall, I shall hasten to tell/ anew” (line 30-32). By alluding to typical elements of Old English oral verse, the Gawain poet attracts the interest of his medieval readers.
However, the form of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight breaks from the Anglo-Saxon pattern in its stanza construction. Visually, the poem lacks caesura line breaks that divided the line after two stressed syllables. In its place, the Gawain poet employs a bob and wheel at the end of each stanza. The bob is a two-syllable line that sets a rhyme scheme in the four-line wheel. Most often, the bob and wheel offers a conclusion to a stanza, as shown in lines 485-490:
"Such happiness wholly had they that day/in hold./Now take care, Sir Gawain/That your courage wax not cold/When you must turn again/To your enterprise foretold." Here the bob presents “hold” as the initial sound to be rhymed in the wheel; the poet forms the wheel around this sound in an ABABA arrangement. Before expanding the narrative by offering further description or changing scenes, the Gawain poet uses the bob and wheel to alter the physical line length.
In plotting, the poem exemplifies the paradoxical romantic virtues of courtly love. Sir Gawain is tested to deny his faith and break his word by the temptations at Lord Bertilak de Hautdesert’s home. The host and Gawain agree to swap their daily earnings: the lord from hunting in the woods, Sir Gawain from interactions with the lord’s beautiful wife. As a guest, Gawain must obey the wishes of his host and hostess- a situation made difficult by the lady’s bold suggestions. Resembling the game animals Bertilak hunts, Gawain nervously evades the lady’s requests. To preserve the marriage vows, their love is never consummated; still, Gawain obeys the lady’s demands and his own desires by sharing furtive kisses. The responsibility required by chivalry and courtly love make Gawain’s temptation a foremost example of romance literature.
The Gawain poet makes skillful use of the romance conventions, writing the poem with attention to medieval aesthetics. Modern readers might not share Bertilak’s claim that Gawain is “polished as a pearl,” or worthy to wear the pentangle star after his blatant deception and failure to trust Mary against the Green Knight (line 2393). Still, the romance offers a fitting example of medieval literature in its poetic construction and thematic development.

Works Cited

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Trans. Mary Borroff. The Norton Anthology of English
Literature. Ed. M.H. Abrams. 7th edition. Volume 1. New York: Norton, 2000.

Homework 11/9

Root Word Quiz #8--> MY

Honors Short Story Revision #4
-printed copy to class
-send e-mail copy to 826publishing@gmail.com

Find your ROAR book for Term 2

Culture Vulture Researched Response due Friday @5pm to Turnitin.com

Doreian Culture Vulture: Shad @ Middle East Downstairs

well, this is a musical Culture Vulture. Shad's been on my play list this year; he's from Canada via Kenya/Rwanda and speaks conscious hip-hop that's very catchy. So, it was time for a babysitter and off to enjoy the show!

Homework 11/8

-begin research for your Culture Vulture final draft (11/12)

-root words #8 --->MY

Term II ROAR: The Bildungsroman

Staircase of a Thousand Steps
by Masha Hamilton

Jammana, a 11-year-old girl experiences an unsettling coming of age in a Jordanian village. She possesses an ancestral gift that allows her to see the past, travels with her mother, Rafa, against her father's wishes, to Rafa's birthplace, the ancient village of Ein Fadr.

Breath, Eyes, Memory
by Edwidge Danticat

After twelve years of being raised in Haiti by her aunt Atie, young Sophie Caco has been summoned by her mother to join her in New York. Sophie is terrified and does not want to go, especially since she does not remember her mother, who left Haiti when Sophie was just a baby. What follows is a painful rendering of horrifying secrets and Haitian tradition that deeply affects Sophie and the way she lives her life.


The Chosen
by Chaim Potok

In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, a horrible baseball accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders together. Despite their religious differences, Reuven and Danny form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together they negotiate adolescence and family conflicts.


Caramelo
by Sandra Cisneros

Lala Reyes is the seventh child of the family and the only girl. They live in Chicago, where her dad and his two brothers run an upholstery shop. There are cousins (three brothers named Elvis, Byron, and Aristotle), looong caravan-style car trips to Mexico City to visit the Awful Grandmother, and some snooping into the past by Lala.


Crazy in Alabama
by Mark Childress

Family tumult and social unrest converge to shake the world of 12-year-old orphan Peejoe Bullis in the summer of 1965, "when everybody went crazy in Alabama." Peejoe's relatively tranquil life with his grandmother is jolted by the arrival of his Aunt Lucille, who is on her way to Hollywood to become a star after poisoning her husband. The family moves to Industry, Ala., where racial conflict brings together George Wallace and Martin Luther King Jr.

The Chocolate War
by Robert Cormier

Jerry Renault is a typical fourteen-year-old freshman (and football player) at a private Catholic high school. But then he decides to go against the school fundraiser run by a gang called The Vigils. Can Jerry survive at school as the thugs and teachers plot to ruin his life?

Feed
by M.T. Anderson

The story begins on the Moon, where Titus and his friends have gone for spring break. He and his buddies all have Feed, which is an online computer implant typically installed shortly after birth. Feed constantly bombards the characters with information and banners, much of which has to do with the latest fashions, upcars, and music. It also provides them with Chat--the capacity to mentally instant message each other. Enter Violet; a girl Titus meets on spring break, a girl who wants to 'fight the feed'.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie

Arnold Spirit, a goofy-looking dork with a decent jumpshot, spends his time lamenting life on the "poor-ass" Spokane Indian reservation, drawing cartoons. When a teacher pleads with Arnold to want more, to escape the hopelessness of the rez, Arnold switches to a rich white school and immediately becomes as much an outcast in his own community as he is a curiosity in his new one.

Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida
by Victor Martinez

The tale follows the life of Manuel Hernandez. Manny's a good kid. He has a slacker older brother, an older sister that flirts with danger, and a baby sibling that doesn't understand the ways of the world just yet. His father is unemployed leaving him regularly drunk and belligerent. His mother, not quite up to facing the problems surrounding her, stays by his side despite the effects of his actions on the kids.

Yoruba Girl Dancing
by Simi Bedford

Remi is born into a privileged large Nigerian family. At the age of 6 she is sent to a very exclusive all girl boarding school in England. Feeling alienated because she was the only black girl in a school full of perfect English girls. She gets ridiculed for her culture and race. It isn't easy being different, but Remi has to cope with it and she needs to understand that people are different.

Rattlebone
by Maxine Clair

These interrelated short stories are set in fictional Rattlebone, Kan., a vibrant, close-knit African-American community. Narrated by young Irene Wilson, the confident but naive girl tells how she grows up in a town devoid of whites, falling in love with the boy who sells eggs, and witnessing the dissolution of her parents' marriage.

Betsey Brown
by Ntozake Shange

Betsey is the oldest child in a large, remarkable, and slightly eccentric African American family. Her father is a doctor who wakes his children each morning with point-blank questions about African history and Black culture while beating on a conga drum; her mother is a beautiful, refined, confident, and strong-willed social worker who is overwhelmed by the vast size of her young family and who cares very little for “all that nasty colored music.”

All that Lives
by Melissa Sanders-Smart

The Bell Witch is poltergeist that bedeviled a family of Tennessee farmers in the early 1800's. At age 13, Betsy Bell becomes the focus of the witch's torments. For more than a year, the Bell family is subjected to nocturnal noises, rains of stones, blows from invisible hands and, eventually, belligerent back talk from the articulate spirit.

Rule of the Bone
by Russell Banks

Flunking out of school and already hooked on drugs, the 14-year-old narrator leaves his mobile home in a depressed upstate New York town. Convinced that he is destined for a criminal career, Bone vents his anger in acts of senseless destruction. His wanderings are paused when he takes refuge in an abandoned schoolbus with an illegal alien from Jamaica called I-Man.

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
by Roddy Doyle

An Irish lad named Paddy rampages through the streets of Barrytown with a pack of like-minded hooligans, playing cowboys and Indians, etching their names in wet concrete, and setting fires. Paddy Clarke and his friends are not bad boys; they're just a little bit restless...

Homework 11/2

1) TKAM critical articles

here's a link so your eyes can see:
Critical Voices

Honors: short story edit #3

Homework 11/1

Happy November, and post halloween sugar crash...

1) TKAM article on historical context

2) TKAM exam on Thursday

3) Root Words #7--->lun

------------------------------------
Honors
3rd draft of short story printed for WEDNESDAY (11/3)