The Image of Othello

This week in British Literature, we will begin our work with William Shakespeare's famous tragedy, Othello. In class today, we watched several short video clips that all focused on the issue of race and "blackness" in the play. We heard from literary critics, actors, professors and others who all offered opinions on whether the play is racist, whether Shakespeare was a racist, whether racism even existed at the time of the play's production, etc. What these questions prove in their multitude is that race certainly matters, regardless of how you answer any of those questions.

Above, I offer you six examples of posters created for various theatrical productions of Othello. Since the Brit Lit students are just jumping into the play for the very first time this week, I thought it would be interesting for them to reflect on what themes they see emerging simply based off of these images. Without knowing much, what do they think the play is about? How do the posters make them feel? Is there one that is particularly striking or thought provoking? 

Poetry in Motion

"I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty."
~ Edgar Allan Poe

While I love teaching poetry, I am keenly aware of the challenges it presents to students. One of my favorite poets, Billy Collins, maybe captures this concern best when he says, "People think of poetry as a school subject... poetry is very frustrating to students because they don't have a taste for ambiguity, for one thing. That gives them a poetry hangover."

With those concerns in mind, in Brit Lit this week we are diving into British Renaissance Poetry. The language is (at times) antiquated, the ideas complex and the concerns may feel a bit trivial. At the same time, the poetry of this era is considered by many to be some of the best ever produced by mankind (although it is worth mentioning that we often focus these discussions on Western literature and completely ignore the poetry of other cultures and regions).

For this week's blog posts, I want students to reflect on why we study poetry in the first place. What things can poetry achieve that prose cannot. Poets like Shelley, Spenser and Milton all believed that the Poet had the power to change the world through his words. Do you believe this to be true? We all sort of chuckled when Spenser tries to convince his beloved that his poetry can make her immortal in "One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand" and yet here we are, nearly four-hundred years later, still reading his works. So tell me, students, is this a fruitless endeavor or is there still something to be learned from studying poetry?

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!