Summative Assessment: dates and instructions.

The closing date for the blogs is at the end of week 13, Monday, June 12, 4 pm. No blogs written after that time can be considered.

The closing date for the research assignments is the beginning of week 14, Friday, June 16 at 4 pm. No assignments after that date can be considered.

All research assignments are to be emailed to me at: m.johnson@xtra.co.nz. Please put ‘Lit Desire’ in the subject line of your email. Please put your name on the document you send me, and put your name inside the doc, on the front page. Please make sure pages are numbered.

Submissions will be accepted in a variety of formats, including plain Word docs for essays, Power Point for that style of presentation, Prezi and any other suitable presentation format. The suggested words limit is 1500 words, and this may vary a little with different formats. However, do not submit your assignment in note form, whatever presentation format used.

All submissions should be referenced. Those using hyperlinks should also provide a list of the websites used.

Note: There are no allowances for late submissions, as I have only a brief window of time to get these graded.

Best, and good luck, Mike Johnson.

Modernism:

What does 'The Wasteland' mean?
1) how has it been interpreted? (cite examples)
2)what are some of the key features
3) In what way has it been influential


Post-Modernism

1) What common qualities do 'the beats' share? Why 'beats'?
2) How is beat poetry linked to rap?
3) How was Bob Dylan's 'Masters of War' involved in controversy during the Bush administration?
4) On what grounds was 'Howl' accused of being obscene - grounds for the defense?
5) What kind of protest song/rap other media have come out in the last decade? Is there a spirit of protest anymore?

Weeks 7 to 9: The Romantics

1. How is the Romantic notion of the Sublime reflected in the ideological, conceptual and linguistic construction of the texts under consideration in this Romanticism reader? Discuss one or two examples...

2. Go online and see if you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816...

3. How many fictional accounts (film and other narrative media) can you find about that? Provide some useful links, including Youtube clips (hint: for a start try Ken Russel Gothic on Youtube).

4. Discuss the links between the Villa Diodati "brat-pack" and the birth of Gothic as a modern genre with reference to specific texts by the authors who gathered there and subsequent texts (e.g. The Vampire >> Dracula, etc).

Please use the comments section below for your answers.


1. Cite some variations in the Loathly Lady fabula across the three tales in your Reader. Focus on the conditions by which the lady is either beautiful or ugly, and the actions of the knight/king/"hero"...

2. The Wife of Bath's Tale is considered by some critics to indicate that Chaucer may have been a feminist. Why might they believe this? Do you agree? Remember to cite evidence from the text or some other source.

3.Hahn's essay (see critical reader)on The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelleidentifies the motif of the loathly lady, but arguesit has a different purpose than asserting the feminine. What does he think the function of the story is?

4. In the context of Elizabethan and Jacobean sonnets, how can we define "conceits"? 

5. Discuss what you think is the most striking or outrageous example.

6. What does Revard (1997) suggest about the relationship between language, sex, power and transgression in the English Renaissance?

Please answer the questions in the comments section below. Do not create a new post!

1. What genres do the following texts belong to?

Voluspa, Volsunga Saga, Beowulf, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

Give some examples from these texts that support your identification (for example: "Voluspa is an example of the _____ genre, as the following references to gods from the poem illustrate: "Hear my words / you holy gods' (l.1) "By Odin's Will I'll speak the ancient lore" (l.3), etc).

2. What are some possible features of residual (or "secondary") orality preserved in Voluspa, according to the criteria Ong (1982) advances?

3. Identify a central incident that happens in at least four of the above texts, and discuss how it is both similar and different in each example (remember to cite from the original texts).

4. How did Tolkien draw on the Old Norse and Old English texts in his Hobbit and Lord of the Rings fantasy novels? Provide some concrete examples.

5. Discuss how Tolkien's use of "tradition" (e.g. older literary sources) differs from the techniques and agendas of modernism (see Week 7 in your Reader).

6. What place do the old myths have in the modern world?

7. How does the film Beowulf and Grendel "problematise" the hero-myth of Beowulf ?

8. Discuss what you think any of these texts desire (in the sense of their intention, how they wish to be received, what pleasures they offer).