Due Monday, 11/1

Reflection paper on "The Fall of the House of Usher".

Your paper should be written in formal voice, and use quotations from the text to support your points, but there are no other structural requirements: focus on developing strong insights and writing mature sentences. It should be typed and double spaced, and be about 2 pages long.

You may explore elements of symbolism, parallels, the role of reason, the supernatural, characters, etc, or it may take an interesting idea from class today and run with it. You may find this is a good opportunity to take some risks and speculate on some interpretations of the material.

Enjoy!

(And since many of you will put this off until Sunday, Happy Halloween!)

Due Thursday/Friday

Due Thursday:

The Oval Portrait

Due Friday:

The Fall of the House of Usher

Pay careful attention to elements of reason, elements of Romanticism (fantasy), and symbolic descriptive details.

Due Tuesday, 10/26

Read the story "The Devil and Tom Walker" paying careful attention to:

The characterization of Tom, his wife, and the Devil
Themes of the story
Setting/Role of Nature
Role of the Narrator
Similarities to previous literary movements
Differences to previous literary movements

Due Monday, 10/25

Final copy of the Colonial Authors Paper. Please bring your rough drafts, charts, and final copy to class. Plan on stapling with the most recent on top: therefore, final copy on top, rough drafts, and chart.

Here is a powerpoint to help with some MLA formatting questions. Information about quoations can be found about half way through it.

As you do your final proofreading, make sure you are limiting passive and progressive uses of to be, as well as focusing on specific analysis.

Review Information

Today is our first complete test. Access to author/device slips is available Link

The next two paragraphs of your essay will be due on Wednesday. Access to the editing sheet is available here. Please also check for passive/progressive.

Good luck studying!

Due Monday, 10/18

You will need to bring a rough draft (typed) of the INTRODUCTION and FIRST BODY PARAGRAPH of your Colonial Author's paper. You may have your body paragraph be on any of the three authors that we will eventually write on.

Make sure to:

- Establish context in the introduction
- Have a clear and effective topic sentence
- Focus on the analysis: How is that specific device example persuasive?
- Remember to connect back to the thesis (motive separation) as the final step of the Analytical unit.
- Have 3 Examples (3 complete analytical units) per paragraph.
- Have a clear summary sentence.

The information about the paper is available in the October 11th post.

Your test is on Tuesday, so here is what you'll need to be reviewing as well:

73 Multiple Choice Questions

Make sure you know:

Linking, Progressive, Passive (15 questions)

Literary Devices:
Aphorism,
Personification
Periodic Structure
Allusion, Metaphor
Parallel Structure
Metaphysical Conceit
Epanorthosis
Rhetorical Questions
Rhetorical Appeals

Title of Passages we’ve read

General History or Virginia
Of Plymouth Plantation
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Wonders of the Invisible World
Huswifery
On a Wasp
Dialogue…Gout
Autobiography
Poor Richard’s Almanac
Speech in the Virginia Convention
Declaration of Independence
The Crisis
To his Excellency, General Washington

 Authors of Passages we’ve read

 General time period and purpose of passages we’ve read

 You will need to be able to identify excerpts from the passages we’ve read.

Due 10/13

Today in class we discussed the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammar and learned some usage rules. The information for usage can be found on the Hamlit introduction page.

In answer to questions in class, here are some common prepositions:

"about," "above," "across," "after," "against," "along," "among," "around," "at," "before," "behind," "below," "beneath," "beside," "between," "beyond," "but," "by," "despite," "down," "during," "except," "for," "from," "in," "inside," "into," "like," "near," "of," "off," "on," "onto," "out," "outside," "over," "past," "since," "through," "throughout," "till," "to," "toward," "under," "underneath," "until," "up," "upon," "with," "within," and "without."

Due Monday, 10/11

Read Paine's "The Crisis" from your book paying special attention to how he uses literary devices to motivate his audience. You should be able to do some good comparison and contrasting with Henry, Jefferson, and even Franklin.

This following assignment is a chart that will allow you to begin preparing for your next major paper. Since the chart will be due on Tuesday, I recommend getting started on it over the weekend.

You are writing a paper with the following thesis:


Colonial authors used a variety of literary devices to persuade their audience to separate from the English. (The POA for this paper will be the authors’ names OR the names of the document.)

The authors you are writing on will be: Henry, Jefferson, and Paine.

You must create a chart that lists three examples of literary devices that each author uses to persuade his audience. The first column will be the author's name. The second will be the 3 quotations for each author that shows them using a literary device. The third column will explain the effect that specific example is having on the reader, and how it persuades them.

A sample of the chart is available here.

Due 10/6

Read "Speech in the Virginia Convention" paying attention to how Henry's use of specific literary devices influences his audience.

For Thursday, you will be turning in your dialogue (inspired by Franklin) between you and a personified object of your choice. Make sure that in the course of this conversation, you stress the importance of moderation, science, self-improvement and reason.

Your dialog should be 2-3 pages in length, and formatted to look like a dialogue (again, see Franklin and the Gout for an example)

Due Monday, 10/4

Read Franklin's "Dialogue between Franklin and the Gout." As our first work associated with Neoclassicism (also known as the age of Reason) focus on how this world view differs from the extremism of Puritan literature. Pay special attention to the ideas of:

Reason
Moderation (not too much or too little)
Personal improvement
Science

This is a fun work, so make sure you're prepared to discuss it in class.

(Also, we'll be discussing the Autobiography on Tuesday, and since this is a longer work, you may want to get a start on it when you have some time this weekend.)