This blog will provide a place for discussion, questions, and thoughts outside of our regularly scheduled Friday meetings. The posts and comments don’t replace class time, but do give us a chance to think about reading and writing at our leisure (and possibly in our pajamas).
Should you want to talk in person about your assignments, the readings, or course expectations come visit during office hours or make an appointment.
My office is Brock Hall Annex 1255, right across from Buchanan Tower.
4 Comments
February 6, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Ok, here is a little rant of mine, read if you have some time.
I felt the lecture could be better… Yes, there are definitely areas that the professor can clear up a bit.
Today in lecture, the professor started to talk about Henry V’s background, but I think she was assuming we all read the book already; it was just assigned 2 days ago.
Faustaf? Who is this person? Professor didn’t seem to elaborate on him; when she mentioned him I had no idea.
The tennis balls France sent to Henry (eventhough this came from a TA); what is their significance? Why would some tennis balls anger a king? What’s so special about them?
Same thing happened during the lectures about Arthur, too.
When she talks about these things, events, and historical contexts behind the books, I find it hard to take note. What are important to worth writing down, what are not? Can’t tell by the way she talks.
When I’m thinking about something she just said, on how it relates to the material we are reading, then quickly she jumps to the next point, and this left me in a state of confusion.
What. What. What. What was that. These words are circulating my brain during the lectures. I felt that the lecture could be better organized, maybe cut down a little on the not so important contexual information?
Also, can someone explain the metatheatric concept? Perhaps that I’m just dull, couldn’t understand it.
Lastly, is it really necessary to read the introduction? It’s long and full of references and information about the publishing history that I felt a bit bored reading it. I want to jump right into the text but also fearing that skipping the introduction might have some bad consequences.
February 7, 2008 at 9:32 am
Kavin,
It’s true – we’re moving pretty quickly and covering a lot of new material. Here’s a few things to help organize the lecture material and your reading.
1) Think of our syllabus as a series of due dates: when it says we’re starting a new text, try and have a larger part of it read by that date so you’ll know what’s going on in lecture. I know we have some pretty lengthy readings, but if you do a little each day you can keep on top of it.
2)You will never be examined on all the material presented in lecture. As I’ve said before, the keywords are a good place to start with organizing the information you receive in lecture. You can also think about the clusters that the course is broken into:
i)warriors
ii)kings, queens, and knights,
iii)powers
iv)after-heroes
3)When you have specific questions about the text that aren’t answered in lecture and you’d like to talk more about – let me know. When can absolutely add them to our discussion agenda. With Henry V, we’re jumping into the last volume of a trilogy of historical plays
4)Context. There’s so much with these texts because they all come from specific points in (mainly English) social, political, and economic history. If a work is a few hundred, or thousand years old, you might ask yourself why we’re still reading it in 2008. I’ll use the Elizabeth portraits as an example: it isn’t necessary for you to know the names of all the portraits and who painted them – think about the larger issue of representation: who controls images and what does this say about power?
5)I recommend skimming the introduction. Get a sense of what’s there and because there’s the helpful page of contents you can go back and read the parts that are relevant if you become interested in “reception and reputation” or “characters and roles”
6)I’ve marked the “persons of the play” page so I can keep referring back it when characters are introduced. This will help as you figure out who the traitors are, where Falstaff fits in the play, and who gets to accompany Catherine.
February 26, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Is there any website that is helpful for learning about the basics of scansion? I never really understand this stuff. For example, I have no idea how to distinguish a stressed/ unstressed syllable.
I feel that if I don’t know about this, I WILL run into trouble in future English classes. Help is appreciated.
February 27, 2008 at 9:04 pm
I’ll work on having some notes about approaching poetry from the technical side up some and we’ll talk about it more on Friday.