British Literature
Grade: 9 - 12 Min: 4 Max: 15 (8 seats remaining)
Min Assistants: 1 Max Assistants: 1 (Assistant Max Reached)
British Literature is like a great city built up over centuries, and in this class, we will take a tour of this city from it's very beginnings to it's modern constructions. From Beowulf to George Orwell and C.S. Lewis, from the Romantics to the Modernists, we will cover the main movements in British literature and the cultural reasons that caused them. It will be a fast-paced tour, and by the end of it you will have a working familiarity with the biography of Britain's literature and a sense of why British Literature remains so popular, so compelling, and so influential, even today.
Reading the assigned chapters and extra poetic works; written narrations of the readings. There will also be occasional recorded lectures on the canvas page for things we weren't able to cover in class. Students will need to watch the extra lectures.
Summary papers will be assigned after each work or literary movement.
Beowulf by Burton Raffel * Macbeth by Shakespeare * A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens * Paradise Lost by John Milton * Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe * Frankenstein by Mary Shelley * Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen * Animal Farm by George Orwell and The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis --- Many of these are available free on archive.org or gutenberg.org, or are on Kindle for a few dollars. They can also be checked out from your local library. Any of these versions are acceptable. Audio books are also allowed though a print copy of some kind is needed for the student to have in class.
$10 per semester for copies of poems and essays - any unused portions will be returned at the end of the year
Willingness to read challenging books