Bonus Discussion 5 - A Comedy of Masks

In J. Dover Wilson's What Happens in Hamlet(1935), Wilson states, "The second act of Hamlet is comedy; a comedy of masks." Comment on this statement.

Discussion 5 - Aspects of Hamlet Act 2

There are 5 choices for this weeks blog, therefore there can only be six students per choice.
Please indicate you choice by reserving it in this week's thread.

Topics:

1. Show that Hamlet is insane Act 2.
2. Show that Hamlet is sane in Act 2.
3. Discuss the parallelism of Hamlet, Laertes and Forinbras by the end of Act 2.
4. Who has the advantage in the play by the end of Act 2, Hamlet or Claudius?
5. Explain the significance of Ophelia by the end of Act 2.
   

Discussion 4 - Your thoughts on Act 1 of Hamlet

The foundation of Hamlet is laid in Act 1.
I would like to know what you think is the most interesting aspect of Act 1.

Considerations:

• Language
• Plot
• Dramatic devices
• Characterization
• Anything of considerable importance that you've noticed

Please use MLA citations, and the formal paragraph structure that I have given you in class. Make sure you have a clearly stated thesis from which you argue your opinion(Yes, your opinion ... yes, you can use 'I', judiciously).

This may be a good time to try some of the rhetorical devices I have given you.

This blog cannot exceed 500 words.
The due date has been extended to Wednesday March 28.

Bonus Discussion 3 - Hunting Findley

Follow the instructions for Discussion 3 (March 2007).

Choose any motif and part number not chosen by anyone yet. You can do as many bonus postings as you want. For example, if you would like to track Animals / Animal Imagery in Part 1 for Discussion 3, you may choose to continue this in Part 2 (This would count as one bonus assignment).

However, you do not have to track the same motif that you tracked in Discussion 3. For example, if you tracked Animal / Animal Imagery in Part 1, you may choose as a bonus to look at Photographs / Paintings / Artwork in Part 4 and Part 5 ( Yes, this would count as 2 bonuses).

You must indicate in the Discussion 3 (March 2007) discussion your intention for the bonus. Do not reserve your bonus topic in this posting. Reserve your bonus topic in Discussion 3 (March 2007).

Post only your finished bonus post in this thread.

This bonus is due on the last Sunday of the March Break. That gives you one standard week, and one extra week before warning letters to complete this bonus assignment.

Discussion 3 - Hunting Findley

Scholarly writings and criticisms of Findley are sparse. Although The Wars is studied perennially across Canada in high schools everywhere, it becomes challenging for students to acquire critical readings of The Wars. This weeks blog assignment will prepare you for your own criticism of Findley reoccurring motifs.

As you know, your Culminating Activity for ENG4U1 is a comparative essay. As you read the texts for this essay, you have been asked to keep a dialectical journal of each novel. If you have questions about your dialectical journal, please see the Culminating Activity package for a detailed explanation.

To help you in your dialectical journal writing, you will writing annotations for The Wars in this weeks blog assignment.

Using the topic list at the end of this posting, I would like you to compile a list (yes, an actual list, nothing else) of textual examples. Analysis in not required.

An example entry would be:

Part 1 Animals / Animal Imagery "In her lap she holds a large white rabbit."(7)


Notes:

1. State which part of the novel your finding comes from.
2. Use the motif as I have listed them in the Topic List at the bottom of this post.
3. Use quotation marks to encapsulate the actual quote.
4. Use parentheses to indicate the page number.
5. Everyone must have a unique motif and part number. That is, Part 1 Violence is different than Part 5 Violence.
6. You can reserve you motif and part number as soon as you want. Post it here, in this thread.
7. When your assignment is ready, just delete your 'reservation' post, and submit your real one.

The following short excerpts were taken from easily accessible Internet sources. Please read them before you continue, noting the bold text in each excerpt:

1.
"It came as something of a shock, when gathering these stories for collective publication Dinner Along the Amazon (1984)], to discover that for over thirty years of writing my attention has turned again and again to the same unvarying gamut of sounds and images. They not only turn up here in this present book, but in my novels, too. I wish I hadn't noticed this. In fact, it became an embarrassment and I began to wonder if I should file A CATALOGUE OF PERSONAL OBSESSIONS. The sound of screen doors banging; evening lamplight; music held at a distance -- always being played on a gramaphone; letters written on blue-tinted note paper; robins making forays onto summer lawns to murder worms; photographs in cardboard boxes; Colt revolvers hidden in bureau drawers and a chair that is always falling over. What does it mean? Does it mean that here is a writer who is hopelessly uninventive? Appallingly repetitive? Why are the roads always dusty in the man's work -- why is it always so hot -- why can't it RAIN? And my agent was once heard to moan aloud as she was reading through the pages of a television script I had just delivered: "Oh God, Findley -- not more rabbits!"

Library and Archives Canada (http://www.collectionscanada.ca/3/8/t8-2008-e.html)

2.
The Wars remains his most-discussed book. Based partly on the war-time correspondence of his uncle, Thomas Irving Findley, and on family photos, he wrote the novel in guise of a researcher trying to reconstruct the story of Robert Ross, a soldier of the Great War. The book explores many of the obsessions that colour all his writing: violence, loneliness, a concern for animal rights, and the survival of the individual in a world of madness. Findley believes that a writer has a responsibility to speak out about what is wrong with society.

Library and Archives Canada (http://www.collectionscanada.ca/3/8/t8-2008-e.html)

3.
His writing, typical of the Southern Ontario Gothic genre, was heavily influenced by Jungian psychology, and mental illness, gender and sexuality were frequent recurring themes in his work. His characters often carried dark personal secrets, and were often conflicted — sometimes to the point of psychosis — by these burdens.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Findley)

4.
Southern Ontario Gothic is a sub-genre of the Gothic novel genre and a feature of Canadian literature that comes from Southern Ontario.

Writers of this sub-genre include Alice Munro, Timothy Findley, Douglas Cooper, Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Jane Urquhart, Marian Engel, James Reaney, Susan Swan, George Elliott, Graeme Gibson and Barbara Gowdy.

Like the Southern Gothic of American writers such as William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty, Southern Ontario Gothic analyzes and critiques social conditions such as race, gender, religion and politics, but in a Southern Ontario context. Actions and people that act against humanity, logic, and morality all are portrayed unfavorably, and one or more characters may be suffering from some form of mental illness.

Some (but not all) writers of Southern Ontario Gothic use supernatural or magic realist elements; a few deviate from realism entirely, in the manner of the fantastical gothic novel. Virtually all dwell to a certain extent upon the grotesque.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ontario_Gothic)

Topic List

Violence
Loneliness / The Journey to Identity
Jungian Psychology
Social / Political Commentary
Animals / Animal Imagery
Mental Illness / Madness
Gender / Sexuality
Photographs / Paintings / Artwork
Any motif from Findley's 'Catalogue of Personal Obsessions'
Any motif's from the Southern Ontario Gothic Mode


This assignment is due on the last Sunday of the March Break. That gives you one standard week, and one extra week before warning letters to complete this assignment.

Bonus Discussion 2 - Photographs are worth one thousand words

Go to firstworldwar.com's picture archive at http://www.firstworldwar.com/photos/index.htm

There are over 3000 pictures for you to look at. I would like you to find one photo and describe it as if you were writing a letter home from World War 1.

Please note that the menu for the vintage photographs is located on the right hand side. When you have selected an theme, for example Battlegrounds, notice that there are nine pages of images to explore. The menu for page flipping is locate either at the top of the images or the bottom of the images.

Discussion 2 - World War I Poetry

World War 1 poetry is a genre of poetry which flourished in the horror of the First World War. Written predominantly by soldiers in the field, World War 1 poetry struck a chord with readers at home because it portrayed the reality of, The Great War.

As you read Findley's The Wars, I would like you to read World War 1 poetry and write a blog entry.

Your blog posting must include in this order:

• The poem (including title, poet's name, date)
• Your response

Notes:

1. Everyone must have a unique poem.
2. You can reserve your poem by posting the title of the poem you would like to use as soon as you want. Post it here, in this thread.
   
3. When your assignment is ready, just delete your 'reservation' post, and submit your real one.
   

In your response, I would like you to use the following guide to structure your posting.

A Framework for Responding to Poetry

Introduction:

• Briefly introduce the title of the poem and name of the poet.
• Try to classify the type of poem it is e.g. sonnet, ballad, haiku, acrostic, shape, lyric, ode, limerick, elegy, dramatic monologue etc.
• Briefly explain the subject of the poem.

Point One: Explore the Themes of the Poem

• Try to group the ideas in the poem is there a story that the poem tells?
• What do you think the poem is about?

Point Two: Imagery used to express themes

• What are the pictures in the poem?
• Are metaphors/similes used to explain ideas?
• Are the five senses used to evoke certain reactions in the reader?

Point Three: Form and Structure

• How is the poem organised e.g. lines, verses, layout and shape.
• Why has the poet decided to structure the ideas in this way e.g. the sequence of ideas, length of lines, patterns etc.

Point Four: Rhyme and Rhythm

• How does the poem rhyme? E.g. abab or aabb etc.
• What is the rhythm of the poem when read aloud?
• Why has the poet chosen this rhyme and rhythm to express these ideas?

Point Five: Language Patterns

• Think about the sound of the poem and choice of words
• The poet uses specific words because they have a certain association in the reader's mind.
• Look out for alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance, personification, symbolism. How has the poet grouped words to achieve a desired effect?

Conclusion: Poet's message

• What is the poet trying to communicate to the reader?
• How effective are the devices/language that he uses?
• What is your response to the poem?

(www.englishresources.co.uk)

I suggest trying the school library or the public library before you try the searching the Internet for poems.

Please note, if you use a search engine to look for poetry, please note that "one", "1", and "I" all give different results.

Bonus Discussion 1 - Career of a Salesman

Read Kerrane's "Arthur Miller vs. Columbia Pictures: The Strange Case of Career of a Salesman" and discuss the implications of Career of a Salesman. Use examples from the screenplay that Kerrane found to help you support your ideas. The essay can be found on our course web site.

Wikipedia and sources

A quick note regarding Wikipedia, and other sources:

• Primary sources include the actual text.
• Secondary sources deal with criticisms or analysis of primary sources.
• Any encyclopedic source is considered a tertiary source.

Tertiary sources are not to be used in this course as a replacement for either primary or secondary sources. I have given you these Wikipedia links because they are quick and effective starting points.

That's all that a tertiary source can ever be.

Wikipidia, a dictionary, an encyclopedia or a textbook are to be considered as reference points only. The validity of an open contribution encyclopedia like Wikipedia cannot be easily dismissed. That is not my intention, neither is it my intention to champion it. Wikipedia is a tool like the internet itself. Part of developing your literacy is your ability to collect information from a wide variety of sources.

Discussion 1 - Considering Miller

We have spent the first two weeks of ENG4U1 reading and thinking about Miller's Death of a Salesman. We have also talked about Modernism, Ancient Greek drama, the American Dream, and we have begun to deal with the elements of tragedy.

Before you transition from this landmark play to the next text, you should give Death of a Salesman a little more consideration before you write your first paper for this class.

There are three options for this first blog assignment. The essays can be found on our course web site.

It would be beneficial to you to read each question, then it's accompanying essay. This will help you to decide which topic you would like to approach.

1. Read Zoglin's "American Tragedy" and discuss Zoglin's thesis. I have included these starting points to help you formulate your response.

• Identify Zoglin's thesis, and trace his attempt to support it
  
• Elia Kazan's response to Miller
• Modernism - the wikipedia article for modernism can be found here
  
• Ibsen - the wikipedia article for Ibsen can be found here
  

2. Read Miller's "The 'Salesman' Has a Birthday" and discuss Miller's thesis. I have included these starting points to help you formulate your response.

• Note the date of the essay
• "And an old insistence - sometimes difficult to summon, but there none the less - that we will find a way beyond fear of each other, beyond bellicosity, a way into our humanity"
• Miller coming to terms with what he had written
• The realization of the script, from idea to production
• Miller's thoughts on the play's theme
  

3. Read Ferris' "A Conversation With Arthur Miller" and discuss Miller's response to Ferris' questions. I have included these starting points to help you formulate your response.

• Note the date of the interview
• The role of the artist in society
• How "one person's story can transcend itself"
• The effect of Death of a Salesman on drama
• The dramatic works mentioned in the essay / the nature of drama
• Saul Burry
• The theme of Fathers and Sons
• "There is an old rule of psychology that if something doesn't meet resistance, it is probably not true." How does this response link with "the public role of the artist"

Note, there are three choices for Assignment 1. Once 10 people have submitted responses to a specific topic, that topic will be closed.

Changeover complete

Two days before the start of the second semester! As you can tell by looking at the archive dates, this blog has been dormant since the end of 2006. With a new 4U class on the way, I will begin editing this blog. The first order of business is switching over from the Beta version of blogger.com.
Welcome to the non-beta version of Blogger! The changeover allows me to use templates that allow for the 'minima stretch' template which makes large text blocks easier to read. If you were part of the first group that tried this experiment with me, then you'll notice the difference. The new blogger templates also has a collapsing archive date menu which is more functional than the old one.
A course web page is slowly taking shape. It will house documents, hand-outs and assignments. The URL is http://mr.liconti.googlepages.com, or click here.

Note: the new URL for the website is sites.google.com/site/mrliconti

I have been playing with the site feed feature, and after reading about some clever blogger.com hacks, I figured out how to have my most recent comments and most recent posts to be displayed.

ENG4U1-06 June 2006

Class,

Thank you for participating in my pedagogical experiment. Your writings, will remain here. In the years to come, other students will contribute to what you've helped to create. Like you, they will struggle and hopefully, grow.
Others still, will eventually come across these writings, and because of your words, they'll see the world through your mind. The mind of a beginner.

Ovid said this better than I could have:

Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit. - Add little to little and there will be a big pile.

Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi, sed saepe cadendo. - The drop hollows out the stone by frequent dropping, not by force; constant persistence gains the end.

-liconti

Discussion 5 - Atwood, Orwell and You

This is the last discussion topic for the year. You'll have what's left of this week and all of next week to work on your blog. This blog will have a greater weight than your previous blogs.

Read Margaret Atwood's article, "Orwell and Me" from Guardian Unlimited. I will provide both a URL and the full article.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,978156,00.html

Consider the following in your 750 word response:

• What you have learnt in ENG4U
• What it's like to experience your adolescence (a critical and confusing phase of your life) in our post 9/11 world.
• Frye's The Educated Imagination
• Atwood's last question
• What you will do with your life
  

Orwell and me

Margaret Atwood cried her eyes out when she first read Animal Farm at the age of nine. Later, its author became a major influence on her writing. As the centenary of George Orwell's birth approaches, she says he would have plenty to say about the post-9/11 world

Monday June 16, 2003
The Guardian

I grew up with George Orwell. I was born in 1939, and Animal Farm was published in 1945. Thus, I was able to read it at the age of nine. It was lying around the house, and I mistook it for a book about talking animals, sort of like Wind in the Willows. I knew nothing about the kind of politics in the book - the child's version of politics then, just after the war, consisted of the simple notion that Hitler was bad but dead.

So I gobbled up the adventures of Napoleon and Snowball, the smart, greedy, upwardly mobile pigs, and Squealer the spin-doctor, and Boxer the noble but thick-witted horse, and the easily led, slogan-chanting sheep, without making any connection with historical events.

To say that I was horrified by this book is an understatement. The fate of the farm animals was so grim, the pigs so mean and mendacious and treacherous, the sheep so stupid. Children have a keen sense of injustice, and this was the thing that upset me the most: the pigs were so unjust. I cried my eyes out when Boxer the horse had an accident and was carted off to be made into dog food, instead of being given the quiet corner of the pasture he'd been promised.

The whole experience was deeply disturbing to me, but I am forever grateful to Orwell for alerting me early to the danger flags I've tried to watch out for since. In the world of Animal Farm, most speechifying and public palaver is bullshit and instigated lying, and though many characters are good-hearted and mean well, they can be frightened into closing their eyes to what's really going on.

The pigs browbeat the others with ideology, then twist that ideology to suit their own purposes: their language games were evident to me even at that age. As Orwell taught, it isn't the labels - Christianity, Socialism, Islam, Democracy, Two Legs Bad, Four Legs Good, the works - that are definitive, but the acts done in their name.

I could see, too, how easily those who have toppled an oppressive power take on its trappings and habits. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was right to warn us that democracy is the hardest form of government to maintain; Orwell knew that to the marrow of his bones, because he had seen it in action.

How quickly the precept "All Animals Are Equal" is changed into "All Animals Are Equal, but Some Are More Equal Than Others". What oily concern the pigs show for the welfare of the other animals, a concern that disguises their contempt for those they are manipulating.

With what alacrity do they put on the once-despised uniforms of the tyrannous humans they have overthrown, and learn to use their whips. How self-righteously they justify their actions, helped by the verbal web-spinning of Squealer, their nimble-tongued press agent, until all power is in their trotters, pretence is no longer necessary, and they rule by naked force.

A revolution often means only that: a revolving, a turn of the wheel of fortune, by which those who were at the bottom mount to the top, and assume the choice positions, crushing the former power-holders beneath them. We should beware of all those who plaster the landscape with large portraits of themselves, like the evil pig, Napoleon.

Animal Farm is one of the most spectacular Emperor-Has-No-Clothes books of the 20th century, and it got George Orwell into trouble. People who run counter to the current popular wisdom, who point out the uncomfortably obvious, are likely to be strenuously baa-ed at by herds of angry sheep. I didn't have all that figured out at the age of nine, of course - not in any conscious way. But we learn the patterns of stories before we learn their meanings, and Animal Farm has a very clear pattern.

Then along came Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published in 1949. Thus, I read it in paperback a couple of years later, when I was in high school. Then I read it again, and again: it was right up there among my favourite books, along with Wuthering Heights.

At the same time, I absorbed its two companions, Arthur Koestler's Darkness At Noon and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I was keen on all three of them, but I understood Darkness At Noon to be a tragedy about events that had already happened, and Brave New World to be a satirical comedy, with events that were unlikely to unfold in exactly that way. (Orgy-Porgy, indeed.)

Nineteen Eighty-Four struck me as more realistic, probably because Winston Smith was more like me - a skinny person who got tired a lot and was subjected to physical education under chilly conditions (this was a feature of my school) - and who was silently at odds with the ideas and the manner of life proposed for him. (This may be one of the reasons Nineteen-Eighty-Four is best read when you are an adolescent: most adolescents feel like that.)

I sympathised particularly with Winston's desire to write his forbidden thoughts down in a deliciously tempting, secret blank book: I had not yet started to write, but I could see the attractions of it. I could also see the dangers, because it's this scribbling of his - along with illicit sex, another item with considerable allure for a teenager of the 50s - that gets Winston into such a mess.

Animal Farm charts the progress of an idealistic movement of liberation towards a totalitarian dictatorship headed by a despotic tyrant; Nineteen Eighty-Four describes what it's like to live entirely within such a system. Its hero, Winston, has only fragmentary memories of what life was like before the present dreadful regime set in: he's an orphan, a child of the collectivity. His father died in the war that has ushered in the repression, and his mother has disappeared, leaving him with only the reproachful glance she gave him as he betrayed her over a chocolate bar - a small betrayal that acts both as the key to Winston's character and as a precursor to the many other betrayals in the book.

The government of Airstrip One, Winston's "country", is brutal. The constant surveillance, the impossibility of speaking frankly to anyone, the looming, ominous figure of Big Brother, the regime's need for enemies and wars - fictitious though both may be - which are used to terrify the people and unite them in hatred, the mind-numbing slogans, the distortions of language, the destruction of what has really happened by stuffing any record of it down the Memory Hole - these made a deep impression on me. Let me re-state that: they frightened the stuffing out of me. Orwell was writing a satire about Stalin's Soviet Union, a place about which I knew very little at the age of 14, but he did it so well that I could imagine such things happening anywhere.

There is no love interest in Animal Farm, but there is in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston finds a soulmate in Julia; outwardly a devoted Party fanatic, secretly a girl who enjoys sex and makeup and other spots of decadence. But the two lovers are discovered, and Winston is tortured for thought-crime - inner disloyalty to the regime.

He feels that if he can only remain faithful in his heart to Julia, his soul will be saved - a romantic concept, though one we are likely to endorse. But like all absolutist governments and religions, the Party demands that every personal loyalty be sacrificed to it, and replaced with an absolute loyalty to Big Brother.

Confronted with his worst fear in the dreaded Room 101, where a nasty device involving a cage-full of starving rats can be fitted to the eyes, Winston breaks: "Don't do it to me," he pleads, "do it to Julia." (This sentence has become shorthand in our household for the avoidance of onerous duties. Poor Julia - how hard we would make her life if she actually existed. She'd have to be on a lot of panel discussions, for instance.)

After his betrayal of Julia, Winston becomes a handful of malleable goo. He truly believes that two and two make five, and that he loves Big Brother. Our last glimpse of him is sitting drink-sodden at an outdoor cafe, knowing he's a dead man walking and having learned that Julia has betrayed him, too, while he listens to a popular refrain: "Under the spreading chestnut tree/ I sold you and you sold me ..."

Orwell has been accused of bitterness and pessimism - of leaving us with a vision of the future in which the individual has no chance, and where the brutal, totalitarian boot of the all-controlling Party will grind into the human face, for ever.

But this view of Orwell is contradicted by the last chapter in the book, an essay on Newspeak - the doublethink language concocted by the regime. By expurgating all words that might be troublesome - "bad" is no longer permitted, but becomes "double-plus-ungood" - and by making other words mean the opposite of what they used to mean - the place where people get tortured is the Ministry of Love, the building where the past is destroyed is the Ministry of Information - the rulers of Airstrip One wish to make it literally impossible for people to think straight. However, the essay on Newspeak is written in standard English, in the third person, and in the past tense, which can only mean that the regime has fallen, and that language and individuality have survived. For whoever has written the essay on Newspeak, the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four is over. Thus, it's my view that Orwell had much more faith in the resilience of the human spirit than he's usually been given credit for.

Orwell became a direct model for me much later in my life - in the real 1984, the year in which I began writing a somewhat different dystopia, The Handmaid's Tale. By that time I was 44, and I had learned enough about real despotisms - through the reading of history, travel, and my membership of Amnesty International - so that I didn't need to rely on Orwell alone.

The majority of dystopias - Orwell's included - have been written by men, and the point of view has been male. When women have appeared in them, they have been either sexless automatons or rebels who have defied the sex rules of the regime. They have acted as the temptresses of the male protagonists, however welcome this temptation may be to the men themselves.

Thus Julia; thus the cami-knicker-wearing, orgy-porgy seducer of the Savage in Brave New World; thus the subversive femme fatale of Yevgeny Zamyatin's 1924 seminal classic, We. I wanted to try a dystopia from the female point of view - the world according to Julia, as it were. However, this does not make The Handmaid's Tale a "feminist dystopia", except insofar as giving a woman a voice and an inner life will always be considered "feminist" by those who think women ought not to have these things.

The 20th century could be seen as a race between two versions of man-made hell - the jackbooted state totalitarianism of Orwell's Nineteen Eight-Four, and the hedonistic ersatz paradise of Brave New World, where absolutely everything is a consumer good and human beings are engineered to be happy. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it seemed for a time that Brave New World had won - from henceforth, state control would be minimal, and all we would have to do was go shopping and smile a lot, and wallow in pleasures, popping a pill or two when depression set in.

But with 9/11, all that changed. Now it appears we face the prospect of two contradictory dystopias at once - open markets, closed minds - because state surveillance is back again with a vengeance. The torturer's dreaded Room 101 has been with us for millennia. The dungeons of Rome, the Inquisition, the Star Chamber, the Bastille, the proceedings of General Pinochet and of the junta in Argentina - all have depended on secrecy and on the abuse of power. Lots of countries have had their versions of it - their ways of silencing troublesome dissent.

Democracies have traditionally defined themselves by, among other things - openness and the rule of law. But now it seems that we in the west are tacitly legitimising the methods of the darker human past, upgraded technologically and sanctified to our own uses, of course. For the sake of freedom, freedom must be renounced. To move us towards the improved world - the utopia we're promised - dystopia must first hold sway.

It's a concept worthy of doublethink. It's also, in its ordering of events, strangely Marxist. First the dictatorship of the proletariat, in which lots of heads must roll; then the pie-in-the-sky classless society, which oddly enough never materialises. Instead, we just get pigs with whips.

I often ask myself: what would George Orwell have to say about it?

Quite a lot.

Bonus Discussion 5 - 2+2=5

Do not use or expose yourself to any of the following for 4 days (96 consecutive hours):

• Television
  
• Internet
  
• Telephone
  
• Computer or Video Game system
  
• Radio
  
• Digital Personal Music Player (CD, MP3)
  
• Newspaper
  

Keep a pen and paper journal of your experience. Blog it on the fifth day.

Discussion 4 - Reading 1984

Why read 1984? What did you learn about yourself, or the world you live in?

Bonus Discussion 4 - 1984 Article Response

The Great 1984 Article Hunt: Student Response

1. Comment on one article that someone in the class posted. Focus your honest response towards the article that the person found. Share your ideas with the class.
2. Indicate early on in your response as to who you are writing to.
3. Your comment must follow the established criteria.
4. Only one student may comment on any other given student. In the event of a odd number of posts, the last student may choose to write their response to a person who has already been responded to.
   
   

Discussion 3 - 1984

The Great 1984 Article Hunt

The purpose of this week's discussion is twofold. Firstly, you'll begin to start thinking about the world you live in, and the world Winston lives in. Secondly, you'll learn how to focus a search by using specific keywords, or combinations of keywords. Consider using combinations of words rather than asking a question or typing a sentence.

1. Search the Internet and find a legitimate newspaper, magazine, or scholarly article that deals with the reality (social or political) portrayed in 1984. Consider articles which deal with comparing aspects of our world with that of Orwell's dystopia.
2. Once you've found an article, write a summary or response to the article. Your summary must follow the criteria set out for our class's blog.
3. Copy and paste the original article after your summary / response. Be sure to include the URL underneath your copy of the article.
4. NO DUPLICATED ARTICLES. ONE ARTICLE PER STUDENT.

Search Engines of noticeable consideration:

• Google - http://www.google.ca
• Google News - http://news.google.ca
• Google Scholar - http://scholar.google.ca

Search Engine tips:

• Read this amazing explanation http://www.google.ca/intl/en/help/basics.html#keywords
• Use keywords
• Use combinations of keywords
• Do not type sentences or questions
• Use quotations to force a word order
• Use the + sign to force a connection
• USE THE ADVANCED GOOGLE SEARCH

Keywords (I didn't think that I needed to do this, but given the responces ...)

• 1984
• George Orwell
• Orwellian

Bonus Discussion 3 - The Keys to Dreamland / The Canon

In "The Keys to Dreamland", Frye says, "But Shakespeare's plays weren't produced by his experience: they were produced by his imagination, and the way to develop the imagination is to read a good book or two."

With that quote in mind, consider this definiton:

The Western canon is a canon of books and art (and specifically a set with very loose boundaries) that has allegedly been highly influential in shaping Western culture. The selection of a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_canon)

American literary critic Harold Bloom's The Western Canon (1994) is his attempt to define the Western Canon. People will always argue as to what works should or should not be part of the canon. Some people will also argue that there is no need for a canon. Nevertheless, here is a link to a copy of the appendices to Bloom's book (NB: I have cut and pasted the parts you will need for your assignment further down in this post):

http://www.literarycritic.com/bloom.htm

Assignment details:

1. Research any three books in section A or B. I have provided this below.
2. Do not use a book that anyone else in our class has used.
3. Explain why they are part of Bloom's canon.
4. Do not use texts listed in sections C or D.

A. The Theocratic Age
"Since the literary canon is at issue here, I include only those religious, philosophical, historical, and scientific writings that are themselves of great aesthetic interest. I would think that, of all the books that are in this first list, once the reader is conversant with the Bible, Homer, Plato, the Athenian dramatists, and Virgil, the crucial work is the Koran....
"I have included some Sanskrit works, scriptures and fundamental literary texts, because of their influence on the Western canon. The immense wealth of ancient Chinese literature is mostly a sphere apart from Western literary tradition and is rarely conveyed adequately in the translations available to us." (p. 531)

The Ancient Near East
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Egyptian Book of the Dead
Holy Bible (King James Version)
The Apocrypha
Sayings of the Fathers (Pirke Aboth)

Ancient India (Sanskrit)
Mahabharata
Bhagavad-Gita
Ramayana

The Ancient Greeks
Homer. Iliad; Odyssey
Hesiod. Works and Days; Theogony
Archilochos
Sappho, Alkman
Pindar. Odes
Aeschylus. Oresteia; Seven Against Thebes; Prometheus Bound; Persians
Aeschylus. Suppliant Women
Sophocles. Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone; Electra
Sophocles. Ajax; Women of Trachis; Philoctetes
Euripides. Cyclops; Heracles; Alcestis; Hecuba
Euripedes. Bacchae; Orestes; Andromache; Medea; Ion; Hippolytus; Helen; Iphigenia at Aulis
Aristophanes. The Birds; The Clouds; The Frogs; Lysistrata
Arisotophanes. The Knights; The Wasps; The Assemblywomen
Herodotus. The Histories
Thucydides. The Peloponnesian Wars
The Pre-Socratics (Heraclitus, Empedocles)
Plato. Dialogues
Aristotle. Poetics; Ethics

Hellenistic Greeks
Menander. The Girl from Samos
Longinus. On the Sublime
Callimachus. Hymns and Epigrams
Theocritus. Idylls
Plutarch. Lives; Moralia
Aesop. Fables
Lucian. Satires

The Romans
Plautus. Pseudolus; The Braggart Soldier; The Rope; Amphitryon
Terence. The Girl from Andros; The Eunuch; The Mother-in-Law
Lucretius. The Way Things Are
Cicero. On the Gods
Horace. Odes; Epistles; Satires
Persius. Satires
Catullus. Attis and Other Poems
Virgil. Aeneid; Eclogues; Georgics
Lucan. Pharsalia
Ovid. Metamorphoses; The Art of Love; Heroides
Juvenal. Satires
Martial. Epigrams
Seneca. Tragedies, particularly Medea and Hercules Furens
Petronius. Satyricon
Apuleius. The Golden Ass

The Middle Ages: Latin, Arabic, and the Vernacular Before Dante
Augustine, Saint. City of God; Confessions
The Koran (Al-Qur'an)
The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Nights
The Poetic Edda
Snorri Sturluson. The Prose Edda
The Nibelungen Lied
Eschenbach, Wolfram von. Parzival
Troyes, Chrétien de. Yvain: The Knight of the Lion
Beowulf
The Poem of the Cid,
Pisan, Christine de. The Book of the City of Ladies
Pedro, Diego de San. Prison of Love


B. The Aristocratic Age
"It is a span of five hundred years from Dante's Divine Comedy through Goethe's Faust, Part Two [1321-1832], an era that gives us a huge body of reading in five major literatures: Italian, Spanish, English, French, and German. In this and in the remaining lists, I sometimes do not mention individual works by a canonical master, and in other instances I attempt to call attention to authors and books that I consider canonical but rather neglected. From this list onward, many good writers who are not quite central are omitted...." (p. 534)

Italy
Dante. The Divine Comedy; The New Life
Petrarch. Lyric Poems; Selections
Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron
Boiardo, Matteo Maria. Orlando Innamorato
Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso
Buonarroti, Michelangelo. Sonnets and Madrigals
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Prince; The Mandrake, a Comedy
Vinci, Leonardo da. Notebooks
Castiglione, Baldassare. The Book of the Courtier
Stampa, Gaspara. Sonnets and Madrigals
Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Painters
Cellini, Benvenuto. Autobiography
Tasso, Torquato. Jerusalem Delivered
Bruno, Giordano. The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast
Campanella, Tommaso. Poems; The City of the Sun
Vico, Giambattista. Principles of a New Science
Goldoni, Carlo. The Servant of Two Masters
Alfieri, Vittorio. Saul

Portugal
Camoëns, Luis de. The Lusiads
Ferreira, Antònio. Poetry

Spain
Manrique, Jorge. Coplas
Rojas, Fernando de. La Celestina
Anonymous. Lazarillo de Tormes.
Quevedo, Francisco de. Visions; Satirical Letter of Censure
León, Fray Luis de. Poems
Cross, St. John of the. Poems
Góngora, Luis de. Sonnets; Soledades
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote; Exemplary Stories
Vega, Lope de. La Dorotea; Fuente Ovejuna; Lost in a Mirror; The Knight of Olmedo
Molina, Tirso de. The Trickster of Seville
Barca, Pedro Calderón de la. Life is a Dream; The Mayor of Zalamea; The Mighty Magician; The Doctor of His Own Honor
Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la. Poems

England and Scotland
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales; Troilus and Criseyde
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte D'Arthur
Dunbar, William. Poems
Skelton, John. Poems
More, Sir Thomas. Utopia
Wyatt, Sir Thomas. Poems
Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of. Poems
Sidney, Sir Philip. The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia; Astrophel and Stella; An Apology for Poetry
Brooke, Fulke Greville, Lord. Poems
Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene; The Minor Poems
Ralegh, Sir Walter. Poems
Marlowe, Christopher. Poems and Plays
Drayton, Michael. Poems
Daniel, Samuel. Poems; A Defence of Ryme
Nashe, Thomas. The Unfortunate Traveller
Kyd, Thomas. The Spanish Tragedy
Shakespeare, William. Plays and Poems
Campion, Thomas. Songs
Donne, John. Poems; Sermons
Jonson, Ben. Poems, Plays, and Masques
Bacon, Francis. Essays
Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy
Browne, Sir Thomas. Religio Medici; Hydriotaphia, or Urne-Buriall; The Garden of Cyrus
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan
Herrick, Robert. Poems
Carew, Thomas. Poems
Lovelace, Richard. Poems
Marvell, Andrew. Poems
Herbert, George. The Temple
Traherne, Thomas. Centuries, Poems, and Thanksgivings
Vaughan, Henry. Poetry
Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of. Poems
Crashaw, Richard. Poems
Fletcher, Francis Beaumont and John. Plays
Chapman, George. Comedies, Tragedies, Poems
Ford, John. 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
Marston, John. The Malcontent
Webster, John. The White Devil; The Duchess of Malfi
Rowley, Thomas Middleton and William. The Changeling
Tourneur, Cyril. The Revenger's Tragedy
Massinger, Philip. A New Way to Pay Old Debts
Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim's Progress
Walton, Izaak. The Compleat Angler
Milton, John. Paradise Lost; Paradise Regained; Lycidas, Comus, and the Minor Poems; Samson Agonistes; Areopagitica
Aubrey, John. Brief Lives
Taylor, Jeremy. Holy Dying
Butler, Samuel. Hudibras
Dryden, John. Poetry and Plays; Critical Essays
Otway, Thomas. Venice Preserv'd
Congreve, William. The Way of the World; Love for Love
Swift, Jonathan. A Tale of a Tub; Gulliver's Travels; Shorter Prose Works; Poems
Etherege, Sir George. The Man of Mode
Pope, Alexander. Poems
Gay, John. The Beggar's Opera
Boswell, James. Life of Johnson; Journals
Johnson, Samuel. Works
Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful; Reflections on the Revolution in France
Morgann, Maurice. An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff
Collins, William. Poems
Farquhar, George. The Beaux' Strategem; The Recruiting Officer
Wycherley, William. The Country Wife; The Plain Dealer
Smart, Christopher. Jubilate Agno; A Song to David
Goldsmith, Oliver. The Vicar of Wakefield; She Stoops to Conquer; The Traveller; The Deserted Village
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley. The School of Scandal; The Rivals
Cowper, William. Poetical Works
Crabbe, George. Poetical Works
Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders; Robinson Crusoe; A Journal of the Plague Year
Richardson, Samuel. Clarissa; Pamela; Sir Charles Grandison
Fielding, Henry. Joseph Andrews; The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
Smollett, Tobias. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker; The Adventures of Roderick Random
Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
Burney, Fanny. Evelina
Steele, Joseph Addison and Richard. The Spectator

France
Froissart, Jean. Chronicles; The Song of Roland
Villon, François. Poems
Montaigne, Michel de. Essays
Rabelais, François. Gargantua and Pantagruel
Navarre, Marguerite de. The Heptameron
Bellay, Joachim Du. The Regrets
Scève, Maurice. Délie
Ronsard, Pierre. Odes, Elegies, Sonnets
Commynes, Philippe de. Memoirs
d'Aubigné, Agrippa. Les Tragiques
Garnier, Robert. Mark Antony; The Jewesses
Corneille, Pierre. The Cid; Polyeucte; Nicomède; Horace; Cinna; Rodogune
Rochefoucauld, François de La. Maxims
Fontaine, Jean de La. Fables
Moliere. The Misanthrope; Tartuffe; The School for Wives
Moliere. The Learned Ladies; Don Juan; School for Husbands; Ridiculous Precieuses; The Would-Be Gentleman
Moliere. The Miser; The Imaginary Invalid
Pascal, Blaise. Pensées
Bosuet, Jacques-Bénigne. Funerary Orations
Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas. The Art of Poetry; Lutrin
Racine, Jean. Phaedra; Andromache; Britannicus; Athaliah
Marivaux, Pierre Carlet de. Seven Comedies
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Confessions; Émile; La Nouvelle Héloïse
Voltaire. Zadig; Candide; Letters on England; The Lisbon Earthquake
Prevost, Abbe. Manon Lescaut
Fayette, Madame de La. The Princess of Cleves
Chamfort, Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de. Products of the Perfected Civilization
Diderot, Denis. Rameau's Nephew
Laclos, Choderlos de. Dangerous Liaisons

Germany
Erasmus. In Praise of Folly
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust, Parts One and Two; Dichtung und Wahrheit; Egmont
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Elective Affinities; The Sorrows of Young Werther; Poems; Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship; Wilhelm Meister's Years of Wandering
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Italian Journey; Verse Plays; Hermann and Dorothea; Roman Elegies
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Venetian Epigrams; West-Eastern Divan
Schiller, Friedrich. The Robbers; Mary Stuart; Wallenstein; Don Carlos; On the Naïve and Sentimental in Literature
Lessing, Gotthold. Laocoön; Nathan the Wise
Hölderlin, Freidrich. Hymns and Fragments; Selected Poems
Kleist, Heinrich von. Five Plays; Stories

Discussion 2 - Why Study Myth?

This weeks assignment is two-fold, it tackles both persuasive writing, and it starts you thinking about the larger assignment for The Educated Imagination.

Write an open letter to the Ministry of Education arguing persuasively that mythology should become part of the Secondary School English Curriculum.

Use both Frye's The Educated Imagination and the mythology package that I gave you as starting points. Secondary sources are most welcome, but must be cited.

Use at least three rhetorical devices to persuade your reader. There are three pages of rhetorical devices that comprised the last pages of your dialetical journal / literary devices handout.

Bonus Discussion 2 - The Motive for Metaphor

We've discussed Frye's first essay / lecture, "The Motive for Metaphor", in class. Give a poetic example of how, "the motive for metaphor, according to Wallace Stevens, is a desire to associate, and finally to identify, the human mind with what goes on outside of it."

• Include your poem in your response.
• Try to place your poem after your introduction.
• Explain your choice.
• Cite your poem, either a URL or a MLA listing.