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An elegy is a type of lyric poem of mourning or lamentation for the dead. Usually it expresses sorrow over the death of someone the poet admired or loved or respected; sometimes it simply mourns the passing of all life and beauty.
Extra Credit:
Compose an elegy for a deceased person you loved or highly admired, or a person whose death has brought great sorrow to people’s hearts, like Princess Diana, Martin Luther King, etc.
Here’s some inspiration:
O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman
Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
Elegy by Robert Seymour Bridges
In memoriam by Lord Alfred Tennyson
Assignment 9
Summarize the following stories in ONE entry in your blog. Include background information, plot, characters, etc.
1. Beowulf p. 21
2. The Gilgamesh (The Head of Humbaba) p. 53
3. The Seafarer p. 56
4. Lord Randall p. 91
5. Edward, Edward p. 92
6. Get Up and Bar the Door p. 95
7. The Canterbury Tales (Prologue) p. 107
8. The Canterbury Tales (The Wife of Bath’s Tale) p. 140
9. The Decameron (Roderigo’s Falcon) p. 157
10. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight p. 161
Assignment 8
Finish your frame story by having each character tell a story of their own… At least 10 lines each, in couplets!
Assignment 7
What do you think happens to the couple in Get Up and Bar the Door after the end of the ballad? The outcome could be material for a sensational newspaper article. Create a 4 paragraph article in which you describe what might have happened to the couple after the end of the ballad. The events you describe in your article should be consistent with the events of the ballad. Add the name of the newspaper, the title of the article, and two quotations from characters in the ballad.
For a few simple tips on how to write a newspaper article, click here.
(You have to finish reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to understand this assignment)
Extra:
While the lord of the mysterious castle is out hunting, his wife is at home on her own hunt. What might she have to say about the situation? In a diary entry written from the wife’s point of view, describe her feelings about entrapping Gawain. How does she feel about Gawain? Does she resent or enjoy carrying out her wifely duty?
400 words minimum, due Monday in Computer Lab.
Just for fun:
You can find a paper doll set on the web here, if you want to cut it out and play with it at home…
An annonymous (the author is referred to as the Gawain-poet) alliterative poem of the Romance genre, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written in Middle English and later translated into modern English. It’s set in the mythical past of King Arthur‘s court, in Camelot, the wilderness, Bertilak’s castle and the Green Chapel, and the protagonist is Sir Gawain.
Themes: The nature of chivalry, the letter of the law.
Motifs: The seasons, games.
In class today we read how Gawain accepts the Green Knight’s covenant and chops off his head, but he survives the blow. Almost a year later, Gawain sets out through the wilderness in search of the Green Chapel. He happens upon a castle, where he stays until he must leave for his challenge. At the castle, Gawain’s courtesy, chastity, and honesty are all tempted.
Tomorrow we will read how Gawain then journeys to confront the Green Knight at the Green Chapel.
Meanwhile, watch this video animation:
What did you think? How is it different from what you imagined when we read it together?
In the story we read today, Federigo’s Falcon, from The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, Federigo and Monna Giovanna live in fourteenth century Italy. Their customs and their ways of speaking are different from ours, but we share with them some basic human problems.
Extra:
Retell their story as the tale of Joan and Fred (or Juana and Federico), reset in the early twenty-first century (500 words min).
Try to find some contemporary examples of these lovers’ problems. Think about how the lovers in this story might be treated by a contemporary writer or filmmaker. How are the problems faced by Federigo and Monna Giovanna both similar to and different from the problems faced by lovers today?
“Few experiences are more painful than falling in love with someone who couldn’t care less. We get over it -most of us- and it never -well, almost never- does us serious damage. But while we’re suffering, we suffer intensely. It’s hard to think about anything else; we can’t do our work; food, if we bother to eat, is tasteless; we find ourselves staring into space, missing everything going on around us. Worst of all, we’re likely to do something, maybe many things, so foolish that we make matters even worse and embarrass ourselves in front of that one person who wouldn’t have noticed us at all if we hadn’t made ourselves look so ridiculous.
But you never know how it will turn out. In most painful moments, when you think that things can’t get worse, they very well might. Or they might, surprisingly, turn around…” (taken from your British Literature textbook)
You have until Friday.
Assignment 6
Finish this sentence:
If I could become invisible…
(At least 300 words)
Assignment 5
Write a prologue to your own frame story. Begin by deciding what kind of journey will bring your characters together. Will they meet in a bus station? at an airport? on a summer visit?
Using this frame, list four characters who will travel together on the journey you’ve outlined. Describe each character from tip to toe, including details of appearance that suggest each character’s traits.
Be specific and descriptive, searching for the words that will help the reader see or hear or even smell the person and feel his or her presence in the room. Then take each observed detail, and make it more precise. For example, perhaps one of your characters has “light hair”. How could you be more descriptive? You could describe the hair as “blond with brown roots”, for example.
You may either write in prose or try your hand at rhymed couplets like Chaucer’s. Devote at least six lines to each character.
The couplet: Chaucer’s favorite rhyme scheme in the Canterbury Tales was the couplet, two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme: “When good King Arthur ruled in ancient days / A king that every Briton loves to praise”.
(When he was growing old, Chaucer complained that his faculty of rhyming was leaving him, which may account for the reason henever finished The Canterbury Tales.)
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