Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown” (1137-1147)
1. Read “Young Goodman Brown.”
2. Read about critical approaches to literature on pp. 1599-1604 or explore them on the internet.
3. In the middle section, Note: these may be called critical approaches, schools of literary criticism, or interpretive methods.
4. The names of ten schools of literary criticism appear down the left side of the window: Deconstruction, Feminist Criticism, The New Historic-ism, Psychoanalytical Criticism, Reader-Response Criticism, Structuralism, Marxist Criticism, The New Criticism, Formalism, and Post colonial Criticism. Click on each name and read the brief definition and description of all ten critical approaches to interpreting literature.
5. Read the two critical essays written by Margaret Weld that interpret the story from two different perspectives. One appears as a blue pdf link at the end of the definition of Psychoanalytical critical approach, and the other appears at the end of the definition of Post colonial criticism.
6. In a three paragraph response to this activity.
In the first paragraph respond to the psychoanalytical criticism–tell us where you agree and disagree with that interpretation. Â
In the second paragraph respond to the post colonial criticism–tell us where you agree and disagree with that interpretation.
In the third paragraph, tell us which critical approach of the ten you read about most appeals to you and why.
Assignment 2: Poetry Explorations- Speaker
The following three assignments will help you read, think, and write about poetry by examining different poetic elements.
Piercy, “The Secretary Chant” (134)
Gluck, “Terminal Resemblance” (259)
Sapia, “Grandmother, a Caribbean Indian, Described by My Father” (415)
Dickinson, “Wild Nights–Wild Nights!” (581)
Sachs, “A Dead Child Speaks” (1012)
Cullen, “Incident” (1343)
1. Read all of these poems.
2. Choose one of the poems and explore he speaker in the poem (not the poet) by studying the language the speaker uses and his or her apparent moods and motivations. What facts do you know about the speaker from the poems? What facts can you infer from the poem? What reasonable guesses can you make about the speaker’s sex, age, ethnicity, education, family relationships, personality, interests, etc.?
Imagine you are the speaker and write a 250-300-word description of yourself. Push beyond what you know or infer from the words of the poem and imagine what might be true for you if you were this person.
Assignment 3: Poetry Exploration–Denotation and Connotation
Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz” (256)
1. Review denotation and connotation on p. 139 in our textbook. 2. Listen to Roethke read this poem on the Liter Active DVD or on youtube that accompanies your textbook. After you insert the disk, click on “Virtua Lit Interactive Tutorials” and then under “Poetry Tutorial” click on “My Papa’s Waltz.” Click on the small green “Audio” button under the poem’s title.
3. Read “My Papa’s Waltz” at least twice and underline at least five of the most vivid words–nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. If you’re not sure what a word means–like countenance–then define it in order to discover its denotations. Then list all of the connotations you can think of for each word. What images, moods, associations do you have for each word? For example, we might work with the term bald eagle this way:
bald eagle denotation: a bird of prey native to North America which weighs between 7 and 14 pounds, has an average 30-year life span, and lives primarily on fish.
bald eagle connotations: strength, courage, bravery, America, loyalty, fierceness, determination, post office, flight, freedom, soaring
4. Review your lists of connotations and decide what they may suggest to you about this poem. How do they add to–or confuse–its meaning? Write 250-300 words telling us what you’ve discovered and include your list of denotations and connotations.
