Monday, March 24, 2008

This week in English 12AP

THis week we will continue to read and analyze Hemingway's short stories "The Killers" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber."

If you did not pick up a copy of the story on Thursday, you can access it here.

http://www.duke.edu/~ss57/macomber.pdf

We will also be reviewing poetic analysis again in class. We will be trying to find the "deeper meanings" in poetry, those elements and themes which convey universal applications.

Poetic elements and analysis questions we will review this week are:

Persona- Who is the speaker?

Setting - What is the occasion?

Tone / Theme - What is the central idea or purpose of the poem?

Syntax - What is the diction, structure, development?

Development - How does imagery, metaphor, simile, juxtaposition allow meaning to develop?

We will be re-reading Frost's "Out, Out"- , "(p. 178) "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen (p 7-8), William Carlos Williams "The Red Wheelbarrow" and "Constantly risking absurdity" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (17-18).

We will also be discussing reading assignments for the remainder of the short story/ poetry unit.
Everyone will need to take a copy of the short story anthology from the classroom.

Update 3/24: I have reviewed the anthology. The following short stories will be required reading for this week and next week:

"The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin (p. 63)

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (p. 82)

"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" by Katherine Ann Porter (p. 206)

"Cathedral" by Raymond Carver (p. 388)

That's four short stories.

We'll take Chopin, Gilman & Porter as homework for 3/27.

Review women's roles and themes in each one. Look at questions of identity, gender roles and feminism in each one. There will be an essay assigned to compare these three stories under this thematic evaluation.


Literary Notes.....


Today ( 3/24) is the birthday of poet, publisher, and bookstore proprietor Lawrence Ferlinghetti, (books by this author) born in Yonkers, New York (1919). His Italian father died while his French-speaking mother was pregnant, and his mother had a nervous breakdown and went to a mental hospital the year after he was born. He was sent to live with an aunt, who divorced her husband and took Lawrence to France. Four years later, she returned to New York, placed him in an orphanage until she could find work, then brought him into the rich household where she had found a position as governess. She disappeared and later died in an asylum, and the family she worked for adopted and began to educate the boy with classic literature.

After college, he served in the Navy during World War II. He was sent to Nagasaki shortly after the blast and said, "Before I was at Nagasaki, I was a good American boy. I was an Eagle Scout; I was the commander of a sub-chaser in the Normandy Invasion. Anyone who saw Nagasaki would suddenly realize that they'd been kept in the dark by the United States government as to what atomic bombs can do." He became staunchly antiwar. While in graduate school in New York and Paris, he began to write poetry and to draw and paint. He moved to San Francisco and wrote poems, book reviews, and columns for various Bay Area publications, including the City Lights magazine published by Peter Martin.

In 1955, Ferlinghetti started a publishing company, which that year published his first book of poetry, Pictures of the Gone World. He hoped to publish volumes slim enough that workers would be able to slip them into their pockets to read during their lunch breaks. Later that year, he went to a poetry reading called "Six Poets at the Six Gallery," organized by the poet Kenneth Rexroth. There he saw a poet named Allen Ginsberg read a new poem called "Howl." Ferlinghetti was deeply impressed, and after the reading, he sent Ginsberg a telegram that said, "I greet you at the beginning of a great career. When do I get the manuscript?"

The next year City Lights published "Howl," which was seized on its way back from the London printer by customs officials for violating obscenity laws. Ferlinghetti was put on trial for printing and selling lewd and indecent material. The ACLU defended him and he was acquitted, and the publicity from the trial benefited his bookstore and helped "Howl" to become one of the most widely read poems of the century. Ferlinghetti said, "The San Francisco [customs office] deserves a word of thanks. It would have taken years for critics to accomplish what the good [customs office] did in a day." From then on, he could publish what he wanted.

3 comments:

vanessa said...

Whew! What an ambitious schedule...I hope there is time for youtube enlightenment (Oh, and in my opinion, youtube should become an official word like Google. How can I propose a literary amendment to the English Language?) Anyways, this is such an awesome site and we should take advantage of it, especially for upcoming short story analysis. Why don't more people correspond on the blog? Maybe some people don't remember the address? Oh well. Adieu,
Vanessa

Spencer Place said...

That is quite a bit to do, indeed. Well, I hope it goes well. Is Google in fact a verb now? Last I knew it was just extremely popular slang... Oh well. Anyway, I think that less people use this site because it's not exactly designed for discussion... More like having people comment on a single post, rather than play off of other people's comments. Anyway, I have a feeling that Alex won't be too please (or happy) at Hemmingway's "Short Happy Life." Haha. Well, this ought to be fun, so ta ta for now! Mrs. Byrne, if you'd like a forums site to be setup, I can do that for you fairly easily. I set one up for my AP Chemistry class, though it was rather late in the year and no one's using it, but you are welcome to check it out if you'd like. http://forums.hidol.com
Spencer

Spencer Place said...

Alrighty then. I just set up a forums board for discussions for AP. Go on over to http://apEnglish.hidol.com to check it out! Register and start posting!