KDeJager

Annotated Bibliography of a Diverse Text Set My diverse text set is intended for a high school (specifically a sophomore or junior-level) English Literature class. The lesson is geared toward the study of British Literature with a focus on British Romanticism. At this point in their study, students have already learned about the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Periods and well as English Renaissance and the Restoration period. The students may require a background history lesson pertaining to the importance of the Romantic Period before diving into the study of the literature.

A. Print Resources McDougal Littell. (2007). “Flowering Romanticism.” Britsh Literature. Retrieved 26 February 2008, from http://www.classzone.com/books/language_of_lit_gr12/index.cfm?state=CT The given text is a English classroom textbook used in classrooms today. The British Literature text provides students with information on Medieval, Restoration, Renaissance, and Romantic Periods’ literature and their authors. This textbook would be useful to students to serve as a starting point in their study of British Romanticism. The text provides lists of authors and their pieces of literature. Some of the works that the text highlights as important to the study of Romanticism are the works of such famous poets as William Wordsworth, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, and Percy Blysse Shelley, among others.

Landow, G. (1988). “Emotionalist Moral Philsophy and the Origins of Romanticism.” The Victorian Web. http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/misc/romanticov.html This website contains an article writen by Professor George Landow of Brown University. The site provides information that is necessary to the study of Romanticism. The article discusses several authors of the Romantic genre and the thoughts and feelings they had about the political uprising of the time and how it affected them during the time of the French Revolution.

Brontë, E. (2007). Wuthering Heights. Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press. This text is a one famous for the Romantic genre, and also the sub-genre, the Gothic. It is a strange love story that takes place in the Engish country side. Wuthering Heights gives a snapshot of how things were unjust to lower-class citizens and how the rich maintatined their power. (“The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”) The students will enjoy the text for the remarkable characters and the story. I would use Wuthering Heights as a primary teaching text for the Romantic unit of British Literature.

Wordsworth, W. (2003).“There Was a Boy” The Longman Anthology of British Literature volume 2A: The Romantic and Their Contemporaries. New York: Longman. Wordsworth is one of the most notable poets of the Romantic Period. This particular poem comes from his work, Lyrical Ballads, a work that he put together with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth wanted to portray incidents from common life. He wanted to the poem to dipict real language used by real men and discuss ordinary things. Wordsworth took the ordinary things from life and thought about the ways humans think about ideas and soughtout to put excitement in the ordinary things. “There Was a Boy” is a thought-provoking poem about an isolated child. The poem can be read in many different ways and contains several different examples of literary devices. I would use this poem in my English class to teach the students about poetry and how literary devices work to enhance the meaning of a poem. Students would like the poem because it is short but full of meaning.

Coleridge, S. (2003). “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature volume 2A: The Romantic and Their Contemporaries. New York: Longman. Coleridge in another famous poet of the Romantic genre of British Literature. Though one of Wordsworth contemporaries, he is a different kind of person and sort of a “bad-boy” writer. Students will enjoy learning about what type of writer Coleridge was. “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” is a longer poem than “There Was a Boy” but both texts are included in Lyrical Ballads. “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere” is about a journey of a fisherman in which things go horribly wrong. The poem contains curses and spells as well as intense imagery. I think the male students would perfer this poem more so than the girls because of the content. I would use this Coleridge’s poem to give the students a different look than that of Wordsworth’s piece and give them a stark contrast to compare the two.

B. Media Resources Coppola, S. (Written and Directed by). (2006). Marie Antoinette (Motion picture). United States: Columbia Picture Corporation. Although this film uses modern day music and speech, it gives an insight to the reign of Loius XVI and Marie Antoinette. The film displays the outlandish spending of the king and queen of France while many of their cictizens were going hungry because of a lack of resources. The students would enjoy this film because of the recognizable actors ad music. The scerery is beautiful and the costume design is ornate. I would use this film at the beginning of the unit on Romantiicism. I would not show the entire film (it’s about three hours long) but instead show clips that are relevant to their study of the Revolution and how it effected the movement of British Romanticism.

Doré, G. (1876). “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Retrieved Frebruary 26, 2008, from http://www.fantastichorror.com/02/coleridge-therimeoftheancientmariner123.html Gustave Doré was a child prodigy of art. He illustrated several pieces of literature including Poe’s “The Raven”, Dante’s Inferno, and Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancyent Marinere”. I decided to include three paintings done by Gustave for Coleridge’s poem. The poem contains such rich imagery. The students would like the paintings because they would be able to compare their own thoughts about what the scenes looked like to that of a famous artist. I would use these paintings to show my students what some may interpret the scenes to look like.

C.	Online Interactive Resources The National Archives. (2000). “How Did the British React to July 1789?” Retrieved February 24, 2008, from http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/snapshots/snapshot36/snapshot36.htm This site contains newspaper clippings from the London Gazette at the time of the French Revolution. The clippings are dated July 13-30 of 1789. Although this site is intended as a teacher-reference site, I would use it to show my students the language of the newspaper and show them the eyewitness accounts of the writers. The site also offers a brief history of the Revolution as well as study questions. The questions ask for evidence of what is happening as well as what the people of France and Britain were feeling. I believe the students would like this activity and site because it contains real pieces of history that are very accessible to them.

Horgeshimer, S. (2002). “You Say You Want a Revolution…” Retrieved February 25, 2008, from http://coe.west.asu.edu/students/shorgeshimer/WebPage/revolutionwebquest.html This lesson is originally intended to be used in a Social Studies classroom, but I think it can be applied perfectly to the English unit of Romanticism. Though not exactly the best looking site on the web, I like the activity designed here for the students learning about the French Revolution and Britain’s reaction to it. The activity asks the students to split into four or five goups and each member of the group tasks responsibilty for a variety of tasks. The object of the acitivity is to have the students thinking about the different political stances of the time. Each group takes the responsibility of being a “public relations firm” where the must create a newsletter defending the British Civil War or the French Revolution. Students must include information about political leaders and historical events. I think students would enjoy this activity because it has them working in groups and thinking creatively about the politics in England and France and also because it is not a paper, instead it is a webquest activity. They are required to take a stance and defend it. I would use a similar activity like this one because a debate always gets the students interested and involved.

D.	Instructional Resources Georgia Department of Education. (2005). “Sequenced Lesson Plans: English Literature; The Romantics.” Georgia Department of Education. Retrieved February 26, 2008, from http://www.glc.k12.ga.us/BuilderV03/LPTools/LPShared/lpdisplay.asp?LPID=26581 This site gives an example of a prilimary activity that a teacher could do with their students as they begin discussing the Romantic genre. The activity asks students to descirbe what they believe the genre to be about and after they compile some ideas, the teacher introduces the notion that Romantic literature is an ideal and does not mean romantic love. The activity also asks the students to complete an indenpendent assignment where they think about the characteristics of language and the ideas of the Romantic genre and find a modern day song or poem that contains some of the characteristics of the Romantic period. Students must explain how the modern day song or poem applies to the Romantic in their own words. I think students would enjoy this activity because they will be able to discuss something they like and apply it to a new context.

I would use all of these texts in my classroom when teaching a unit on British Romanticism. Although students may not see the link in the beginning betweem the French Revolution and British Literature, I feel they will learn that many different aspects of life have an affect on what authors feel and write about. I would begin with film clips from Marie Antoinette and the newspaper clipping from the National Archive and then introduce the webquest. Students know a lot about the internet and could learn so much much from a guided webquest as they are introduced to the many aspects of the Revolution and its impact on British writing. Then I move to a little history about the topic, introduce some of the authors, and get their ideas on what they the Romanticism is all about. After they have a basis of their ideas on the subject, we will begin learning about the poets’ works and move into a larger text, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. If I have students who have learning disabilities in my classroom, I would make the necessary accommodations to enhance their learning in the best ways possible.

Learning Objectives covered in this unit: National Teachers of English: “Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience” (www.ncte.org) From the Rhode Island Grade Level Expectations for Reading Grades 5-12. R—10—4.5: “Identify literary devices as appropriate to genre (e.g., similes, metaphors, alliteration, rhyme scheme, onomatopoeia, imagery, repetition, flashback, foreshadowing, personification, hyperbole, symbolism, allusion, diction, syntax, bias, or point