WEEK 8

Good morning!

Here's your work for the week:

1. Write an original Elizabethan (or Shakespearean or English; it has lots of names) sonnet that meets the following criteria:

a. iambic pentameter (five iambs of two syllables each, the first unstressed, the second stressed).

    Shall I  com pare   thee to   a  summ  ers day?

If the stressed/unstressed vowel thing gives you trouble, just shoot for ten syllables per line.


b. fourteen lines that follow the rhyme scheme of one of the poems you looked at last week. 


c. On the subject of love. I'll open this up to, let's say, "affection", so you could write about something other than romantic love. You could write about a hobby you really like, for example. In college I wrote a sonnet about flying an airplane (I was all about airplanes then). 


d. The final rhyming couplet (last two lines) provides some kind of key or twist for the sonnet. Look back at our examples (any of the examples in this part of the book) and you'll see how that works. 


2. Write a line-by-line analysis of the sonnet. Explain what the author (you) is doing. What images or comparisons are being made? This will feel strange, but you will need to refer to yourself as the author. So you may have to write something like "Mr. Vanderwey uses an extended metaphor in line 5 to express...."  Or "In the ending couplet, Miss Brus provides the key to this problem when she writes..." This way you can both critique yourself and point out how great you are!

Here's an example of a sonnet I wrote a few years ago and used with my ER Brit Lit kids. You can do it just like that: Copy a line, explain what it means. Repeat until you're done. (My example does include some other instruction slides; just read what you think is helpful.)



3. Read the two introductory articles on Shakespeare and Macbeth on 144-146. 


4. Read Act I of Macbeth (p.148-164). Our goal this week is to comprehend what's happening in act 1. If you don't get it after one close reading, feel free to use whatever internet help you can find. This should be a help only. So read the play in its original, and when you're totally stuck, use a paraphrase or other study help to get unstuck.


5. Answer the Recalling and Interpreting questions on p.165



Due Friday at midnight.

Have a wonderful week!