Is It Good To Be King?

This week, the Brit Lit students are tackling the oldest poem in the English language, Beowulf. There are entire semester-long courses in college dedicated to the study of Beowulf and we are only able to give it four days, so we are certainly only dipping our toes in the pool that is literary analysis of this seminal piece of English literature. Due to this, we have been focusing our conversation on the theme of leadership in the poem. What does Beowulf tell us about what makes a good leader? Has our definition of strong leadership changed all that much in the 1,000+ years since this poem was put on paper? As we face a truly volatile moment in American history with the current presidential election, the idea of leadership should be paramount in most citizen's minds, making our reading of Beowulf more relevant than ever.

In his 1965 article "Beowulf The Hero and The King", the professor John Leyerle states, "The hero follows a code that exalts indomitable will and valour in the individual, but society requires a king who acts for the common good, not for his own glory. The greater the hero, the more likely his tendency to imprudent action as a king." For this week's blog post, I want the Brit Lit students to really analyze this quote. What is Leyerle arguing here? Identify the conundrum he presents here and discuss how you see it playing out in both Beowulf and our current political situation. Has your reading of the poem impacted your understanding of leadership and its complexities in any way? If so, share how.

Hiya!

Welcome to Mr. McCandless' English IV/Brit Lit Blog! I'm really excited to be teaching British Literature this year to seniors at Sage Hill School. The function of this blog will be to discuss ideas and issues related to British culture as well as the texts we are reading in class. Eventually the blog roll on the left-side of my blog will offer links to the blogs being written by the students in my class this year.

For our first blog entry, I have asked students to create a word cloud for one of the characters from the British novel they read this summer. For our summer reading assignment, I asked students to read one of four iconic British novels. They could choose from Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre or Frankenstein. The idea behind the word cloud assignment is for them to think about words that matter for the character they have chosen. These could be people, places, activities, values, goals, etc. None of the students chose to read Great Expectations (such a bummer!) so as an example, I've created a word cloud for Pip:

Pip's word cloud has "Joe" and "Estella" as the two biggest words because I feel as if these two characters are the most impactful on his life throughout the novel. I've noted several other important characters as well as London because the city is both the setting for much of the novel but also nearly a character in and of itself. Finally, I chose the words "homecoming', "metamorphosis" and "truth" as these are three major themes I see occurring in the novel.

I very much look forward to my students posting their own word clouds on their blogs!