WEEK 1

Welcome to the first week of British Literature A!


Let's start with some housekeeping items...


COURSE DESCRIPTION. The English language and the literature that has emerged from it make up a long chain of related parts. We can’t pull up just one piece and look at it without pulling up the links around it too. So Brit Lit is designed as a survey course. The readings are challenging, and some of the language (and the ideas conveyed) may seem strange or hard to comprehend. But that’s our job—to make sense of 1500 years of language and literature development. This means we’ll also be tracing the philosophical roots, influences, and pre-conditions to the literature. For example, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was a product of Enlightenment and humanistic thought, which were in turn products of other changes in values and beliefs. Some of the literature was an outworking of the political or religious forces of the time, so we’ll need to look at those big ideas too. Being able to see the “big picture” in all of this will be crucial to your success in British Literature. Throughout both courses (Brit Lit A&B) our focus will be on two big ideas: 1) the evolution of English literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to today; and 2) the analysis (and all the skills, techniques, and devices that go with it) of literature in its various genre.



FORMAT. For this course, we'll be exchanging work through the google doc I shared with you on Saturday. You'll use this to save and share all work. If you've used google docs in a previous class of mine, scrap those files. We'll start over with this new one.



TEXTS & MATERIALS. I'll provide a textbook (English Literature: With World Masterpieces). If you don't have one, let me know asap!


ASSIGNMENTS. You'll notice a few repeating assignment types. It might be helpful to go over those now. 

 1) Warm-ups: These are designed to begin each day's work and (in teacher lingo) activate your schema for the subject matter. Since you are working through the week's material at your own pace, you won't have daily warm-ups, but you will have them occasionally if the thinking required is beneficial. 

 2) Comprehension questions: most of the pieces of literature or chapters/parts within a piece will have questions for you to answer. Answer them fully. One-word answers are not full responses. If you're not sure how to make them "full" add a why or how thought. 

3) Reading Responses: similar to warm-ups; You will see these short responses to our reading perodically. They're generally informal in tone and subjective. 

4) Frontier Vocab: We'll do a self-generated vocab assignment every week. It's explained in this post on the right side under labels. This will require that you have an independent reading book (any genre)

5) Essays: If you've taken HSW1 and HSW2, then you're familiar with essay formatting. If not, don't worry about it until I've assigned one and I'll hit those particulars then.



A GOOD TIME FOR A REMINDER ABOUT LATE WORK: I know you home schoolers are busy people. If you let me know in advance [48 hours or more] that you'll need more time to get something done, I'll work with you. If you tell me the day it's due or after the fact, it will be counted late and will affect your grade for that work. DON'T WAIT UNTIL MID-WEEK to look at the assignments. I post them Monday at 6am. Managing your whole week is up to you, so take into account the whole week, not just how much English you can cram in on Thursday or Friday.   




Your work for week 1...

You'll notice that you've got multiple assignments for multiple pieces in multiple forms. This is typical for any given week. Label each assignment within the google doc (it can be simple: "18th C. intro def's" for example; yes, you can abbrev.) and skip lines between each assignment. Make it easy for me to grade it.



1. FRONTIER VOCAB (Go here and read the post on the right for directions.)


2. Warm-up: (You'll have to draw on your HSW2 memory for this one.) Sophocles assumed a universal conscience when it came to the message of obedience to the will of the gods. Do moderns believe that there is a universal conscience about anything today? In other words, are there deeply held beliefs that all people share? Do our consciences get “blocked” by other things, as they did with Creon and Ismene?


Anglo-Saxon intro: 

3. Read the introduction (.3 - 5). Define each bold-faced term, as well as the following:Commentaries, Book of Kells, Caedmon, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. That’s 11 terms total.


4. Read “Anglo-Saxon Epic Poetry” p.8 Define wyrd. How is it a similar idea to what we’ve read of the ancient Greeks? (Again, think back to Antigone.) Explain the significance of the epic hero to the Anglo Saxons.


5. Read the first excerpt from Beowulf (.10-17). Answer the "Recalling" and "Interpreting" questions on .18


6. Read part 2 of Beowulf. Answer questions 1-8 on p.26.


7. Read the final excerpt of Beowulf. Answer questions 5-10 on p.34.



Everything is due Friday at midnight.



HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEK!