Week 1: Getting Ready

Hello everyone, and welcome to English 1080.

Each Monday on this blog I will post this week's writing activity or activities, as well as other information of value to you in the coming week. Sometimes that will be reminders of what we have previously covered in class, sometimes that will be a preview of the coming week's readings and lessons, and it will also include any announcements or administrative business I need you to know.

To the right you will find some helpful links, including the course outline, the website for our course texts, and links to MLA style guides. Please make good use of these resources. Please try to pick up your course text books as soon as possible. The McMahan text, Literature and the Writing Process will be our major text book, and you will be expected have read the appropriate sections for each class. The recommended Troyka text, Quick Access: Reference for Writers, is a handbook to which we will not make specific reference in class but which will be useful to you as you write your major essays.  I have made it "recommended" rather than "required" because I don't want you to buy texts you won't use, but I do genuinely recommend it; if you actually use it it will make you a better writer.

Journal Activities

This week you will have two journal activities: one due on Wednesday and one due on Friday.

For Wednesday:

I do not expect you to make a critical stand yet, to decide for all time how you will approach reading and writing. However, it is useful to you to have some sense of what approaches there are. Now that you have read McMahan's explanation of some of the critical approaches for interpreting literature (p. 819-824), I would like you to respond.

One idea I will bring up as we proceed through this course is the value of an attempt. The word "essay" comes to English from the French essayer, meaning to try or to test. We'll come back to that idea when it comes time to write your essays, but the same approach is useful here. Think of these critical approaches more like tools you are able to try out then like something you need to choose forever. With this in mind:

1. Write a paragraph explaining which of the approaches McMahan mentions is the most appealing to you.

2. Put your favourite approach into practice analyzing any poem of your choice from our text.

For Friday 

The most common experience we have with poetry on a day to day basis in our society is through popular music.  Please choose a piece of music you enjoy and provide a two or three paragraph analysis of it as a poetic work, paying special attention to form and to poetic language.  Remember when you're talking about form that what I'm looking for is an analysis of the poetic form, so don't talk about the music, just the words.

If you can find it, please provide us with a link to the song you have chosen, or include a link to a you-tube video, or otherwise give us the ability to hear the song.

Looking Ahead to Week 2

Please come to class on Monday of next week having read Shakespeare's sonnet "Let Me Not To the Marriage of True Minds" and prepared to read it aloud if I call on you.

Please consider looking at the syllabus and reading ahead--not all days will be equal in work load. Please feel free also to ask me if you have any questions, either by finding me during my office hours, by commenting here on the blog, or by e-mailing me. Good luck on your journal activities this week. I look forward to reading your work this week, and this year.