Getting started again

Casting your mind back to last November, you probably remember that the last things I invited people to do as part of the English seminars were to reflect on what we'd done so far (and not done) with respect to the goals outlined for the course by the department, and to reflect on their own learning so far. You might also remember that I edited out some selections of people's "goals.htm" files and put them on the Web site (they're linked from the main page).

One of the clearest conclusions to be drawn from that procedure was that our next step should be to look at some "literature" in the traditional sense: poetry, fiction, plays.  Since that was what I was planning for term two, in any case, it's clear what our agenda should be.

Casting our nets

I've brought in a pile of the kinds of anthologies that people use in first year English classes.  They're all different.  Everyone will get one (we'll be exchanging them in a couple of weeks; and I'll expect them all back at the end of the process -- so treat them somewhat gently).

Here's what I propose.  Take one of the anthologies and, between now and Monday, spend some time with it.  It'll probably have an introduction or preface explaining what its intentions are; have a look through that.  See what kinds of literature the book includes, from where and from when.  Read a couple of short stories and a couple of poems -- choose ones that look interesting and that you can read within a couple of hours.  Finally, by Monday night, write an account of your experience -- it should be a few hundred words long, at least -- in which you describe your anthology, explain how you decided to read what you did, tell us what you read, and recommend one piece that you read which you think it would be worth all of us having a look at (and say why).  Save this on your Web site as mytext.htm.  I'll print these out and bring copies to the seminar meeting Tuesday afternoon -- I'll also put a table up on the English 1006T main page with links to all of them.
 

The long awaited "Shakespeare play" (or two)

We are lucky this year that two Shakespeare plays are being produced right here on campus.  The Early Drama in Production course is putting on The Tempest, and Theatre Saint Thomas is doing Romeo and Juliet. They're both going to be performed in the middle of February. This is a chance for us to have a realistic experience of what Shakespeare's actually about -- not a sort of linguistic puzzle to test the wits of frustrated students, but a score to be performed.  I'm going to organize in-class readings of both plays; you can start reading in them any time.  There are good texts available on the Web; one of the most accessible is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, here: http://the-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/. There are others. You can print a text out if you want a hard copy -- but, better, you will find hard copies in the bookstore, and there are lots of editions in the library (look either for the play published separately, or for collected editions; they're all on the fourth floor, around PR28).