L1 Lit: Poetry DST Grades

		Poetry DST
AGBODJAN-PRINCE		5.75
ANICET Jo-Anny		5.5
BELHASSEN Rudy (Derogatoire)		7.25
BEN AMEUR Imène		12.25
BOUTTIER Clémentine		9
Bronsart	Melissa	18.25
Boulararnand Eleonore		9
BRUNEAU Caroline		7.5
CAZENAVE Yoann		Documented absence
DESMOUCRON Marine		0
DJILALI Sarah		7
DJUTO Quita		0
Dong	Olivier	14.25
Durand	Melanie	13.25
Durand	Xaviere	6
ELZAHED Sarah		10.5
Fleury	Lola	9.5
GNABA Mireille		8
GOMIS Marvin		0
HAMIDA Anyssa		14.25
KINANGA Arnaud		0
LAVOISIER Pauline		9.75
MAIO Eléonore		0
Miraucourt	Chloe	12.75
NGANGUE Anne-Emmanuelle		4
N'GOLO Cédric		3
PONG Karine		5
Raynaud	Edouard	13.25
RENE-CORAIL Clarisse		12.75
SABOUKOULOU Ornella		0.5
SAILLARD Camille		9
TEROSIET-ISAAC Marine		8.75
TESTAERT Julien		0
TOURE Adama		7

L1 Lit:Theater Preparation Grades

		Theater Prep.
AGBODJAN-PRINCE		14
ANICET Jo-Anny		0
BELHASSEN Rudy (Derogatoire)
BEN AMEUR Imène		12
BOUTTIER Clémentine		12
Bronsart	Melissa	16
Boulararnand Eleonore		0
BRUNEAU Caroline		10
CAZENAVE Yoann		0
DESMOUCRON Marine		0
DJILALI Sarah		11
DJUTO Quita		0
Dong	Olivier	14
Durand	Melanie	11
Durand	Xaviere	0
ELZAHED Sarah		11
Fleury	Lola	12
GNABA Mireille		9
GOMIS Marvin		0
HAMIDA Anyssa		17
KINANGA Arnaud		0
LAVOISIER Pauline		14
MAIO Eléonore		0
Miraucourt	Chloe	14
NGANGUE Anne-Emmanuelle		0
N'GOLO Cédric		9
PONG Karine		13
Raynaud	Edouard	13
RENE-CORAIL Clarisse		0
SABOUKOULOU Ornella		0
SAILLARD Camille		12
TEROSIET-ISAAC Marine		11
TESTAERT Julien		0
TOURE Adama		0

L1 Lit: Poetry Preparation Grades

Poetry Prep. AGBODJAN-PRINCE Fernand 14 ANICET Jo-Anny 11 BELHASSEN Rudy (Derogatoire) 0 BEN AMEUR Imène 11 BOUTTIER Clémentine 9 Bronsart Melissa 16 Boulararnand Eleonore 1 BRUNEAU Caroline 11 CAZENAVE Yoann 0 DESMOUCRON Marine 8 DJILALI Sarah 11 DJUTO Quita 0 Dong Olivier 13 Durand Melanie 12 Durand Xaviere 0 ELZAHED Sarah 12 Fleury Lola 12 GNABA Mireille 8 GOMIS Marvin 0 HAMIDA Anyssa 13 KINANGA Arnaud 0 LAVOISIER Pauline 14 MAIO Eléonore 0 Miraucourt Chloe 11 NGANGUE Anne-Emmanuelle 0 N'GOLO Cédric 10 PONG Karine 8 Raynaud Edouard 13 RENE-CORAIL Clarisse 0 SABOUKOULOU Ornella 0 SAILLARD Camille 12 TEROSIET-ISAAC Marine 12 TESTAERT Julien 0 TOURE Adama 8 11 0

L1 Lit: Final Exam

Final Exam: Wednesday, May 19th. 9-11:00 a.m. Amphi. 500 Bat. T.

For your final exam you will have the choice between two questions: one will be a texual commentary of a passage from Betrayal. The other will be a "dissertation" style question that asks you to treat one of the major themes or questions that the play raises. Because we are now giving a common exam for all sections, there will NOT be a section on the staging vocabulary I presented the first week we discussed Pinter. I do encourage you though to keep that list of terms because they will be useful for theater discussions in your future literature classes.

In the next few days, I will post a list on the site with your preparation grades and your grade for DST1. Please verify that I have accurately recroded your grades. It is very easy, for everybody, to correct any mistakes now. Corrections become very difficult and involved after I turn in grades to the exam office. If you have any questions, you can contact me by email. Good luck preparing for this and all the rest of your exams.

L1 Lit: Fitzgerald for April 13

Tuesday, April 13th will be the last day to turn in a written preparation.

First of all, I'd like to say before posting your last assignment that I have enjoyed discussing these texts with you over the past eleven weeks. Your comments have frequently showed me new aspects of the texts that I hadn't considered before our classes. I often leave on Tuesdays saying to myself "Oh, wow I wouldn't have thought that about Auden/Yeats/Whitman..." Thank you for sharing your ideas. As you continue with your literary studies, I encourage you to have confidence and to speak up and share your thoughts frequently with your classmates.

I also wanted to add a brief word about the value of the analytic techniques we have practiced over the semester. We have focused closely on the language of the text, but for me the final aim of this type of analysis is never limited strictly to an understanding of the text itself. We're talking, thinking, and writing about the way Pinter deals with time, the way Shakespeare deals with love, or the way Yeats deals with political upheaval because things like time, love, and political upheaval are often very difficult to understand all on our own. My main goal in approaching these texts with you is that our discussions will allow us to better grasp things like love, political upheaval, or time. I hope your reading and thinking this semester has taught you things about these subjects that you didn't know when the semester started. For those of you who are interested in the relationship between textual analysis and literature teaching us about the world we live in, I highly recommend this article that talks specifically about the French education system.

Todorov, Tzvetan. "What Is Literature For?". New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation: 38.1 ( 2007 Winter), pp. 13-32.

If you'd like to write on a more general topic for this coming week, you can read the article and write a 250 to 500 word response to Todorov's ideas about the value of literature and structural analysis. I can send you a PDF file of the article if you contact me at njs2g@virginia.edu.

I'd like as well to comment on my choice of poems for the semester. When selecting the titles we studied, I realized quickly that it would be impossible to study all the poems I had in mind in only 6 weeks. I wanted to give you the titles of several other poems that I considered including in the course. All the poems I chose and the ones I had to leave out are poems that I personally enjoy reading and rereading.

T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock
Edgar Allan Poe The Raven
Eavan Bolan What Language Did
W.B Yeats The Circus Animals' Desertion
Emily Dickinson
Beck The Golden Age

And for the poetry/prose day

The last page of Ulysses by James Joyce
The "Addie" chapter in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.

If you did not turn in a preparation on poetry, you have a last chance this week to make up that grade. You can write a 250-500 word analysis of one of these poems to avoid having a 0 averaged into your grade.

Finally, if you would like to write on The Great Gatsby, analyze in 250 to 500 words one of the following topics: Success, money, the role of women, Fitzgerald's style, war, excess, or conversation.

L1 Lit: Betrayal Scenes 6-9

Reminders: April 14th will be the last day to turn in a written preparation. You must do one on prose and on poetry. You also need to read The Great Gatsby by April 14th.

For Pinter this week, review the final scenes that we haven't discussed yet in class. If you would like to write on these scenes you can

1) Write 250-500 words discussing Emma's place among these men. We have not spoken a lot about her in class. Is this simply because we have chosen topics that stress the importance of Jerry and Robert? Or is there something in the play that has guided us towards this male dominated discussion?

2) A vous de poser les questions. In 100-150 words come up with a question that you think would generate a compelling discussion about these last scenes. In order to get credit for this shorter writing, you will have to present your question to the class. Note: Questions that you don't know the answer to often make for the best dicussions.

L1 Lit: Betrayal Scenes 3-5 for Mar. 30

Review scenes 3-5 from Betrayal. If you would like to write for this week, you can respond to one of the two following questions in 250 to 500 words. You can also write 250 to 500 words on how you would stage the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet or a scene from any other English language play that interests you. If you write about staging a different scene, please also provide me a copy of the text.

1. Describe and comment on the way Pinter uses pauses and silence in these three scenes.

2. Some of you in class today discussed how important friendship with Robert is for Jerry. Do scenes 3, 4, and 5 change or comfirm Jerry's attitude towards friendship that we saw today in scenes 1 and 2? Has time altered the way he thinks about friendship with Robert?

For poetry scansion, here are the responses for the lines I posted last week:

"TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night," From William Blake's "Tiger" Trochaic Trimeter with Masculin Ending

"But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou, her maid art far more fair than she" From Romeo and Juliet Blank verse

"Here we go off on the London and Birmingham
Bidding adieu to the foggy metropolis" Dactylic tetrameter

"Come live with me and be my love Iambic tetrameter
And we will all the pleasures prove" From Christopher Marlow's"The Passionate Shepard to His Love"

And here are some more passages for practice. I will post the answers before next Monday so that you can check them before the retest on Tuesday.

"Nicholas Jonathan pacified Malachai Mulligun
That was a match for a title that nobody justified" from "Catcheur's Dream" by T.M. Defordy

"Am I strong?
Could I start a fight
And win?
With a black teen
In Brownsville?

I'm in my late youth;
It still feels like all there is.

I remember times when I felt strong" from an untitled poem by Victor Z. King a comtemporary American poet

"Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so

That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone forever.

I know when one is dead and when one lives.

She’s dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass" from King Lear

"Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble." from Macbeth

For the retest you will be allowed again to use a dictionary. I've put the answers lower on the page so that you can practice without seeing them and then check your answers.



















T.M Defordy- Dactylic Pentameter
Victor Z. King- Free verse
Romeo and Juliet- Blank Verse or unrhymed iambic pentameter
Macbeth- Trochaic Tetrameter

L1 Lit: Poetry Scansion and Betrayal Questions for Mar. 23

As I announced in class last week, I will be retesting you on poetry scansion on Tuesday, March 30. Here are several passages you can use to practice. Remember that if you're not sure for multiple syllable words, you can look up stress patterns in a dictionary. I will post the answers next week.

"TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night," From William Blake's "Tiger"

"But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou, her maid art far more fair than she" From Romeo and Juliet

"Here we go off on the London and Birmingham
Bidding adieu to the foggy metropolis"

"Come live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove" From Christopher Marlow's"The Passionate Shepard to His Love"

For Pinter's Betrayal, read carefully the first two scenes and if you would like to write for this week answer one of the following questions in a response of 250 to 500 words.

1. Comment on the relationship between the action that takes place on stage and the the action that happens offstage. What does the relationship between the two types of action suggest about how the play presents betrayal?


2. Comment on how Pinter's special use of dramatic irony and his reverse chronology function together to form a comment about sexual infidelity in these two scenes.

Finally, please do not forget that you must read The Great Gatsby for April 16th. If you start now and read 10 to 20 pages at a time you can easily finish the book. If you wait until the last week to start, it could be quite difficult for you to finish the novel.

L1 Lit.: Week 6 poetry/prose

If you would like to write a preparation for this week, you can choose one of the following questions. You can also do a practice commentary following one of the models I gave in class on Tuesday, February 9th. Remember, your preparations are to be between 250 and 500 words and that you are concentrating heavily on how the poet's language creates certain effects in the poem. If at all possible, I would prefer you type your responses. Remember that this is the last week to turn in a reaction on poetry.

Until now, we have looked at poems that follow traditional patterns in their rhymes, rhythms, and stanza forms. In week 6 we will examine three writers who stretch the barriers between poetry and prose: Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, and Virginia Woolf.

1. Walt Whitman's Song of Myself marks a break from traditional poetic forms. Whitman wrote this autobiographical poem in free verse which means there is no regular meter or rhyme. If you'd like to write on Whitman, discuss the use of this more open, flexible form and what it might imply to write about one's "self" in such a way.

1

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

...

51

The past and present wilt--I have fill'd them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day's work? who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too late?


2. For Howl by Ginsberg read the following excerpts from the beginning and the end of the poem. If you would like to write on Ginsberg, analyze the way he uses free verse to talk about the "madness" that he and his friends lived through in the Beatnik culture of the 40's and 50's in the U.S.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares,
alcohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind;...

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs!
skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic
industries! spectral nations! invincible mad
houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave-
ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to
Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!
gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole
boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!
gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs!
Ten years' animal screams and suicides!
Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on
the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the
wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!
They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!
carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

You can listen to Ginsberg reading the poem here.

3. Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is a novel that incorporates a highly poetic language into the story it tells. If you would like to write on Woolf, read the passage I distributed in class on Tuesday, February 23. Then identify several elements of the language that you could consider poetic and comment on how Woolf uses them to tell a story. To give you the context, this passage comes at the end of the first section of the novel. In that first section, Woolf describes a day during vacation at the Ramsay family's summer home. Here you are inside the mind of Mrs. Ramsay as she knits, reads, and looks at her husband after a big dinner with all her guests.

L1 Lit: Week 5 Milton

If you would like to write a preparation for this week, you can choose one of the following questions. You can also do a practice commentary following one of the models I gave in class on Tuesday, February 9th. Remember, your preparations are to be between 250 and 500 words and that you are concentrating heavily on how the poet's language creates certain effects in the poem. If at all possible, I would prefer you type your responses.

1. Follow up question for Shakespeare: There are 154 sonnets in Shakespeare's sonnet cycle. We studied one of them in class today. If you are interested in Shakespeare, I encourage you to read several more of the sonnets to get an idea of how reading them together can create a more complex picture of Shakespeare's exploration of love. For this question, choose another sonnet that interests you and analyze how this second sonnet presents a different experience of love from the insomnia in "Sonnet 27".

E-book of Shakespeare's sonnets

2. Paradise Lost is John Milton's poetic adaptation of the story of the fall of man found in the book of Genesis.

We will concentrate on the passage where Eve hesitates and then finally eats the the forbidden fruit of knowledge. In this passage she has just heard the serpent present the merits of this fruit. Genesis describes this moment very briefly. "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat" (Ch. 3).

Milton has expanded this moment considerably in his poem. If you would like to write a preparation for Milton, identify several things that Milton adds in his poetic adaptation. Once you have identified several added elements, analyze how these additions contribute to Milton's presentation of the fall of man. When Eve says "thy," "thou," and "thee," she is addressing the fruit.

Great are thy Vertues, doubtless, best of Fruits,
Though kept from Man, & worthy to be admir'd,
Whose taste, too long forborn, at first assay
Gave elocution to the mute, and taught
The Tongue not made for Speech to speak thy praise:
Thy praise hee also who forbids thy use,
Conceales not from us, naming thee the Tree
Of Knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil;
Forbids us then to taste, but his forbidding
Commends thee more, while it inferrs the good
By thee communicated, and our want:
For good unknown, sure is not had, or had
And yet unknown, is as not had at all.
In plain then, what forbids he but to know,
Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise?
Such prohibitions binde not. But if Death
Bind us with after-bands, what profits then
Our inward freedom? In the day we eate
Of this fair Fruit, our doom is, we shall die.
How dies the Serpent? hee hath eat'n and lives,
And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discernes,
Irrational till then. For us alone
Was death invented? or to us deni'd
This intellectual food, for beasts reserv'd?
For Beasts it seems: yet that one Beast which first
Hath tasted, envies not, but brings with joy
The good befall'n him, Author unsuspect,
Friendly to man, farr from deceit or guile.
What fear I then, rather what know to feare
Under this ignorance of Good and Evil,
Of God or Death, of Law or Penaltie?
Here grows the Cure of all, this Fruit Divine,
Fair to the Eye, inviting to the Taste,
Of vertue to make wise: what hinders then
To reach, and feed at once both Bodie and Mind?
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck'd, she eat:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost. Back to the Thicket slunk
The guiltie Serpent, and well might, for EVE
Intent now wholly on her taste, naught else
Regarded, such delight till then, as seemd,
In Fruit she never tasted, whether true
Or fansied so, through expectation high
Of knowledg, nor was God-head from her thought.
Greedily she ingorg'd without restraint,
And knew not eating Death: Satiate at length,
And hight'nd as with Wine, jocond and boon,
Thus to her self she pleasingly began.

L1 Lit: Week 4 The Sonnet

If you would like to write a preparation for this week, you can choose one of the following questions. You can also do a practice commentary following one of the models I gave in class on Tuesday, February 9th. Remember, your preparations are to be between 250 and 500 words and that you are concentrating heavily on how the poet's language creates certain effects in the poem. If at all possible, I would prefer you type your responses.

1. For Petrarch: Petrarch, an Italian poet from the 14th century, is one of the major predecessors for the sonnet tradition we will be studying this week in Shakespeare and Keats. Petrarch wrote a series of sonnets addressed to a (fictitious?) lover Laura. These sonnets often describe the experience of being in love as one of suffering. The sonnet that we will read describes how love attacked through the eyes. The syntax is heavily distorted from normal spoken English. When this is the case, beginning with a translation can help you better understand the content of the poem. If you would like to do a preparation for Petrarch, translate the poem into French prose. Then identify and analyze the different ways Petrarch presents love as a visual experience in this poem.

Sonnet III

Twas on the morn, when heaven its blessed ray
In pity to its suffering master veil'd,
First did I, Lady, to your beauty yield,
Of your victorious eyes th' unguarded prey.
Ah! little reck'd I that, on such a day,
Needed against Love's arrows any shield;
And trod, securely trod, the fatal field:
Whence, with the world's, began my heart's dismay.
On every side Love found his victim bare,
And through mine eyes transfix'd my throbbing heart;
Those eyes, which now with constant sorrows flow:
But poor the triumph of his boasted art,
Who thus could pierce a naked youth, nor dare
To you in armour mail'd even to display his bow!

2. For Shakespeare: In English, we often refer to Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnets. Both are composed of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter. The major difference between the two is in the rhyme schemes. You have a typical example of each sonnet form in the first two poems. First, based on these two poems describe the difference between Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnets. Once you have identified the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet, analyze how Shakespeare uses this form to present the lover's experience of insomnia in the following poem.

SONNET 27

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see
Save that my soul's imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.

3. For John Keats: Analyze how Keats uses images of movement, stillness, and tranquility in his presentation of love.

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

L1 Lit: Week 3 Yeats

Links to the poems

Easter 1916

Among School Children

If you would like to write a preparation for this week choose one of the following questions. Remember, your preparations are to be between 250 and 500 words and that you are concentrating heavily on how the poets language creates certain effects in the poem. If at all possible, I would prefer you type your responses.

1. For "Easter 1916:" Identify several of the different ways Yeats presents rupture and disruption in the poem. How does his presentation of rupture in the poem contribute to an understanding of the Irish Easter Uprising of 1916.

2. For "Among School Children:" First describe the stanza form. Number of lines? Number of syllables? Rhymes? Meter? Once you have described the stanza form choose one stanza and analyze the relationship between form and content. Does the stanza form reinforce, contradict, clarify... the content? Explain how.

Lit Week 2: Auden

Links to poems. The site with the Yeats poem also gives you a good introduction to Auden.

In Memory of W.B. Yeats

September 1,1939

If you want to write a written preparation, choose one of the two questions.

1. For “In Memory of W.B. Yeats:” The poem is divided into three different sections, each with a different stanza form. For this poem describe the differences between the stanza forms. Number of lines? Rhymes? Syllables? How does the change from one stanza form to the others contribute to the way Auden treats the death of a famous poet? Bonus question. Can you name the meter of the third section of the poem?

2. For “September 1, 1939:” First, find out why the date is important. Once you know what happened on that date, look at the way Auden presents notions of individual and collective existence. How does his presentation of each comment on the date in the title?