February 13, 2017 - February 17, 2017 Weekly Agenda

 
Monday, February 13th:

2nd Period:

Passed back “The Pupil” essay
Went over it:
1.     Did you use an interesting attention grabbing opening paragraph?
2.     Did you just rewrite the prompt?
3.     Did you use quotations?
4.     Did you use too many quotations or were the quotations you used too long?
5.     Did you show how and why the quotations prove your point?
6.     Or did you just list the figurative language that you found?
7.     Did you use interesting, powerful verbs, nouns, and adjectives to color your essay?

Discussion on using quotations, using metaphors, verbs, adjectives that echo the theme or subject of the excerpt.

Passed out the released student essays on “The Pupil”.  Students read “W” essay. Tomorrow, go over it with class and pass out “T” and “H” and discuss.

  Vocabulary:
Diffident: modest, knowing your place, lacking in confidence.

Tuesday, February 14th: 


Read the student released essays for “The Pupil”
Discussion
Bring your Frankenstein book

Wednesday, February 15th:  

Went over Wordsworth’s poem, “Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room” and the answers.


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Another question you might have in your reading of FRANKENSTEIN is who the heck are Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus and why should we care? These were men who straddled the divide between rigorous scientific thought and superstition - men whose worlds of inquiry would attract a young restless and ambitious  mind like Frankenstein's, but would be discounted by men of serious scientific inquiry. 

Agrippa was a fourteenth century German astrologer whose scientific inquiries devolved into occult musings on the Kabbalah (a school or tradition in Judaism which sought to divine mystical truths in the Old Testament  through ciphers and numerical codes) and the magical properties of plants, minerals and crystals, and of course, astrology. After the Age of Reason (the 1700's), people of a more scientific mind frowned on the occult and mystical bent of his thinking.

Albertus Magnus was a 13th Century German priest/scholar who sought to bridge the gap between religious thought and scientific inquiry. He was the first to wed Aristotelian philosophy with Christian philosophy and was renown for his encyclopedic knowledge of all things pertaining to natural sciences and philosophy. There was little or no barrier between the occult and the sciences and like many intellectuals of the time (the time lasting until the "Age of Reason" - the 18th Century, five centuries later) Albertus Magnus was as knowledgeable in astrology and alchemy as he was in astronomy and chemistry. (He was the first to isolate the compound arsenic.) The renown of his genius aroused jealousy and there were those who accused him of black magic and of even creating a speaking automata (an animated creature resembling a human - much like Prometheus). Do you think Mary Shelley might have had a reason for including Albertus Magnus in this group?

Paracelsus was a 16th Century physician-astrologer who graduated with a bacclaurate degree in medicine from the University of Vienna at the age of 17. He made significant contributions to toxology when he discovered that the dose of a substance is as important as the substance itself. For example, a drug (like aspirin) in small amounts may be beneficial, but in large amounts may be lethal. Although he eschewed most superstitions, Paracelsus, like many of the physicians of the time, was a serious astrologer and used his astrological knowledge in the treatment of his patients. Paracelsus wrote many books on the role of astrology in medical treatments and created astrological talismans based on the zodiac signs of his patients to aide in their treatments.

Showed a little bit of the video on “Crash Course on Frankenstein”.

Thursday, February 16th:  
 

Watch “Bright Star” – Ben Wishaw saying the poem “Bright Star” from the film clip of “Bright Star”.

Watch Frankenstein – Crash Course.
Take notes as you watch the video on "Crash Course on Frankenstein" and answer the following questions:
Who were Mary Shelley’s parents?
How did she and Percy Bysshe Shelley meet?
What was the slight issue Percy Shelley had in marrying Mary?
How did Percy Shelley die?
What was his funeral like?
What was the weird thing that was found out about Percy Shelley after he died?
How did the book Frankenstein come into being?
What are some of the major themes of Frankenstein?
What was Shelley’s reasons for writing Frankenstein?
Why is the subtitle for Frankenstein Prometheus Unbound?
Why does Shelley use  Walton’s Arctic adventure as a framing device?
How are Paradise Lost  and Frankenstein similar in terms of the creation myth? 

Watched up to 7 minutes in the twelve minute video on Part 2 of "Crash Course on Frankenstein"

 Discuss the in-class essay for tomorrow.
The theme is always expressed in a sentence
One word descriptions are the subjects of the story, not the theme.
The theme should reference “the actor” + “the action (think in terms of active verb) + the result or consequence
Man’s arrogant challenge in creating life may have disastrous and unseen consequence.

 The prompt:
Many writers use a country setting to establish values within a work of literature. For example, the country may be a place of virtue and peace, or one of primitivism and ignorance. Using Frankenstein, analyze how the country setting (or nature) functions in the work as a whole. (Remember the Romantics’ feelings regarding nature.)

This will be tomorrow during class, and will be due at the end of the period. You may use your book during the essay. 


Friday, February 17th: 



The prompt:
Many writers use a country setting to establish values within a work of literature. For example, the country may be a place of virtue and peace, or one of primitivism and ignorance. Using Frankenstein, analyze how the country setting (or nature) functions in the work as a whole. (Remember the Romantics’ feelings regarding nature.)

This is an in-class, and will be due at the end of the period. You may use your book during the writing of this essay.  







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