Senior English

1. Warm Up: Write a paragraph In which you analyze how H. Clinton is portrayed in this cover through the feminist critical lens. Consider the words and consider the image. Senior English Unit Four: Hamlet and Critical Schools • Agenda: • Warm Up • Feminist Critical Approach & Children’s books • Historicism: • Personal • Cultural • New Historicism March 27, 2014 • Objectives • Students will gain a basic understanding of the historicist/ new historicist lenses and be able to begin analyzing text through that lens • Homework: Position Paper (final) due Monday, March 31st.

2. Grab your book. Finish analyzing it through the feminist critical approach with the report card sheet.

3. Children’s Book Report Card • Analyze it using the guiding questions • What grade would you give it?

4. Historical Criticism “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.”-T.S. Eliot

5. Historical Criticism • How did the individuality of the age work with the individuality of the author to create that piece? • Examine literary works within their historical context. They consider cultural, political and social forces that influenced and are revealed through the text.

6. Grounds our Meaning The palm at the end of the mind,Beyond the last thought, risesIn the bronze decor, A gold-feathered birdSings in the palm, without human meaning, Without human feeling, a foreign song. You know then that it is not the reasonThat makes us happy or unhappy.The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

7. “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Personal History

8. What themes does this poem bring up? What is your first initial reaction that the message is? Who Understands Me But Me?

9. Who Understands Me But Me • Read the biography and annotate the poem, interpreting it according to it’s history. • For Example: • “Old age should burn and rave at close of day” Close of day stands for death (he wrote this as his father was dying)

10. Warm Up: In your journal, explain the quote to the right. Give some examples from the real world. You can replace “Poetry” with any text (text being loosely defined) Poetry brings “unthinkable thoughts and unsayable sayings within the range of human minds and ears.” The essence of art is not a statement but suggestion. Senior English Unit Four: Hamlet and Critical Schools • Agenda: • Warm Up • Feminist Critical Approach & Children’s books • Historicism: • Personal • Cultural • New Historicism March 31, 2014 • Objectives • Students will gain a basic understanding of the historicist/ new historicist, and Marxist lenses and be able to begin analyzing text through that lens • Homework: Bring hard copy of your essay tomorrow.

11. Bring a hard copy of your position paper tomorrow—peer review and lesson on continuity of body paragraphs*Need essay to complete activities tomorrow*

12. Poetry brings “unthinkable thoughts and unsayable sayings within the range of human minds and ears.” The essence of art is not a statement but suggestion.

13. “Harlem” Who’s dream? What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? Historical Context

14. What themes does this poem bring up? What is your first initial reaction that the message is? If We Must Die

15. If We Must Die • Read the biography and annotate the poem, interpreting it according to it’s history. • For Example: • “Old age should burn and rave at close of day” Close of day stands for death (he wrote this as his father was dying)

16. New Historicism Traditional historians ask, “What happened?” and “What does the event tell us about history?” In contrast, new historicists ask, “How has the event been interpreted?” and “What do the interpretations tell us about the interpreters?”

17. LANGSTON HUGHES' BOOK OF POEMS TRASH • LANGSTON HUGHES—THE SEWER DWELLER • Why should it be paraded before the American public by a Negro author as being typical or representative of the Negro? Bad enough to have white authors holding up our imperfections to public gaze. Our aim ought to be [to] present to the general public, already misinformed both by well meaning and malicious writers, our higher aims and aspirations, and our better selves. What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

18. I sympathized deeply with those critics and those intellectuals, and I saw clearly the need for some of the kinds of books they wanted. But I did not see how they could expect every Negro author to write such books. Certainly, I personally knew very few people anywhere who were wholly beautiful and wholly good. Besides I felt that the masses of our people had as much in their lives to put into books as did those more fortunate ones who had been born with some means and the ability to work up to a master's degree at a Northern college. Anyway, I didn't know the upper class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up with, and they weren't people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach. But they seemed to me good people, too

19. How is war interpreted? • Read through both poems. • Find and annotate lines in each poem in which war is represented differently. • Explain how war is represented differently in your annotation

20. Marxism and Literary Criticism

21. Marxism and Literary Criticism Much like historicism and new historicism, but, “The originality of Marxist criticism…lies not in its historical approach to literature, but in its revolutionary understanding of history itself.”

22. Think, Puzzle… What do you know about the history of Marxism? • Consider our topic: Marxism and Literary Criticism • Make a three column chart • In the first column, write down everything you THINK YOU KNOW about the topic. • In the second column, write down anything about the topic that confuses or puzzles you. • Be prepared to share your responses.

23. Marxism and Literary Criticism • Karl Marx (1818-1883) emphasized that the primary influence on life was economic, and he saw society as an opposition between the capitalists and the working class. • Marx’s political ideas were never widely accepted in the United States and have faded further since the downfall of the Soviet Union, but the idea of economic determinism is still considered credible.

24. Marxism and Literary Criticism • Revolutionary understanding of history: • BASE • The base is the basic way a society organizes the production of goods. It includes employer-employee work conditions, the technical division of labor, and property relations, which people enter into to produce the necessities and amenities of life. • SUPERSTRUCTURE • The superstructure of a society includes it’s culture [LITERATURE], institutions, political power structures, roles, rituals, and norms. The function of the superstructure is to make the structure in the base seem “natural” or invisible so that the class system may continue.

25. Marxism and Literary Criticism • In order to understand literature, you need to see it is part of the superstructure: • How does the content reflect the ideology (system of ideas…the way in which class system is experienced, legitimized and perpetuated) of the time? • How does the form reflect the ideology of the time? • How does the content and form reveal the limitations of that ideology?

26. “Harlem”: A Marxist Reading • Content: • Speaks of the inferior status given to African Americans in the US • Form • Uses jazz and Black folk rhythms in his work. • Ignores classical forms in favor of the oral and improvisational traditions of Black culture • How does it reveal limitations? • Content: reveals the way in which society holds Black men and women back • Form reveals that the place they hold in society is far from pretty. He doesn’t romanticize it, he reveals it in it’s crude form. What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?

27. W.C. Williams: A Marxist Reading This Is Just To Say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold • Content: • Careless and carefree poem about a trivial matter, in the way that the middle-upper class can exist. • Form: • Imagism seeks for the most accurate presentation of the subject • How does it reveal the ideology’s limitations? • It reveals the relative ease that the middle-upper class enjoy. Even the most accurate presentation can be beautiful, whereas the opposite would be true of the lower classes.

28. Howl: A Marxist Reading • Beat poetry evolved during the 1940s in both New York City and on the west coast, although San Francisco became the heart of the movement in the early 1950s. The end of World War II left poets like Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso questioning mainstream politics and culture. These poets would become known as the Beat generation, a group of writers interested in changing consciousness and defying conventional writing. The Beats were also closely intertwined with poets of the San Francisco Renaissance movement, such as Kenneth Rexroth and Robert Duncan.

29. Common Dust • Read through the poem • Answer the questions on Marxism literary criticism for this poem on your own.