Tales of the Neutral

This week I'd like you to read while listening to the MP3 files available for both texts. By Thursday I'd like you to have read the "Prologue" and "Tale" of the Wife of Bath and write one extensive blog entry about it, or two shorter entries.

By this weekend you must have completed reading the "Prologue" and "Tale" of the Pardoner and write one blog entry.

In addition, you must revise your essays by Monday next week.

Next week you're to read The Road by Cormack McCarthy; don't worry it's an easy read.

This Week’s Reading

This week, read parts 1 and 2 of the Knight's Tale and write one blog response. Do the same for parts 3 and 4 of the Knight's Tale.

This weekend, read the Miller's Tale from The Canterbury Tales and write one blog response.

Here's a vocabulary list in case you want one. Here are some recordings of professors reading the original text. I highly recommend listening to them while you read.

What is a reading blog?

Reading to Blog

What's more important the book or our interpretations of the book? Can there be a book without there being interpretation? We'll be able to answer some of those questions after we've recorded the history of our relationships with our books.

In order to preserve paper, as well as to promote our communication with the academic world outside of CNG, we'll be keeping blogs about the books we read.

You will write your own blogs, and respond to your blogs as prescribed by your weekly homework blog entry. You should not approach each blog the same way. With variety comes varied thought; therefore, I hope you focus on different topics and take different approaches in each entry.

Here are some possibilities:

-Respond to the text personally:
I never had my house blown down by a wolf, but I have felt loss. For example, I once abandoned my favorite apartment. I left most of my furniture there, some clothes, even a television!

-Connect text to another book, a film, work of art, a comic or any other creation:
The Three Little Pigs reminds me of The Matrix. When the Wolf "huffed and puffed and blew his house down" he acted just as Morpheus did for Reeve's character. Suddenly, Reeves was without the security he once felt.

-Ask questions to later answer:

What might the grandmother represent? Why would the Wolf want to blow down the houses? How might I write a better ending? I would then maybe answer these questions in later blogs.

-Visual Vocabulary

Select the words you think it was important to define in the text. Match a picture to it on your blog post.

-Hyperlink

You might want to use the 21^st century's answer to footnotes when you're talking about something that is not common knowledge. We'll do a demo of how to insert a hyperlink in class.

You may use any combination of these, or you can write your own type of entries. Let your reading guide your entries. Check StandardScore weekly for your reading blog grades starting next Friday.

Write Your First Reading Blog by Wednesday

Watch "Migrations" by Dorian Merina and write one reading blog entry. Be sure to read the "What is a reading blog?" post before doing so. We'll read these in our next class.

What is a blog? Where do I get one?

For those of you in the pre-AP track, you already have blog accounts; you may skip to the last paragraph.

Go to blogger.com and open an account. Post your answers on your account.

Start a blog for this class, appropriately and orginally titled, with your real (full) name. When you've completed that, comment on this post. I'll be able to keep tabs on your informal writing this way.

What is “Literature in Motion”?

When we talk about literature –something my AP English Literature class aspires to do – it is difficult to avoid the travel metaphors. We read literature to be "moved". We are "taken somewhere". We "get to the end" of the book. When we talk about life, something literature traditionally does, we can't help but talk about it as a journey, a ride, with a clear beginning and an inevitable end. Narrative, like life, is an act of motion and as such, moves, and surely they'll be a way from point A to point B. Chaucer's pilgrims walk; Don Quixote rides a horse; Anna Karenina hops a train; Gatsby drives a car. Characters in one way or another must move, and if they do not, they suffer. Hamlet is tortured by his inability to move, and at the same time in awe of Fortinbras' ability to travel great distances. Here we too we find the angsty center of the alienated characters of Modernity and Postmodernity. Gregory Samsa is limited to the movements of an insect. Vladimir and Estragon are stuck waiting for Godot. In each case, their immobility is at the center of their estrangement.

At first, I thought of this as a smart way to do a chronological survey of literature. Historically, modes of motion have been subjects of much discussion. How should one walk when on a pilgrimage? Who is entitled to riding a horse? Can a train ride change things? What makes a car different from other modes of transportation? In fact, modernity from its start coincides with motion. The oldest texts would be walking, then sailing, then equestrianism, followed by train travel, and so on. This was not the case. Beowulf - something in the end I decided not to teach- features sea travel just as Joseph Conrad's very Modern Heart of Darkness. Once I realized I could scrap historical coherency, I began to have fun creating my syllabus. A work with a hot air balloon? I had just read Richard Holmes' brilliant Age of Wonder, about the Romantic poets obsession with science. I could use Shelley's "To a Balloon Laden with Knowledge"? And why not explore the gondola, the central symbol and vehicle in A Death in Venice? Or analyze stillness and absence in Cormack McCarthy's The Road? Now I was getting somewhere.

As I´m still at the beginning of the semester, I don't know how well this will work. We're still in the waiting room, listening for my row number, soon to embark. At least, I know the route now – more or less.