The End... or is It?

Hello everyone! I hope we all did well yesterday! A huge thank you to Mr Barlow for all the incredible things that we've learnt, and for pushing us and pushing us - particularly through this blog - in the right direction; towards success.

There are a few things I'd like to say; whether you have the time to read them or not, it's completely up to you.

1. This year has been incredible. I truly mean that. And I think that all of us can agree. Yes, we've had our ups and downs and we've had the ephemeral torture of attempting to cram into our heads all of the things requisite for the exam. However, learning - and I attribute a lot of credit to Mr Barlow for the way he taught us - this year, I think, has definitely paid off. We may never remember some of those tedious critics ever again; albeit the voices of Arnold Weinstein and Ralph Allen Cohen will certainly never leave my mind! Regardless of this, we will remember the texts, and we will remember the great ideas expressed. As John F. Kennedy once said, "A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on."

Philosophers have some great ideas; but writers - novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, poets, lyricists - know how to present great ideas.

"We are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." (Arthur O'Shaughnessy)

Code of Hammurabi

2. It doesn't end here: literature hasn't ended for thousands of years. Preceding great texts like the Bible, we have the engravings of ancient civilisations; the code of Hammurabi in ancient Babylonian civilisation, or the Rosetta Stone of the ancient Egyptians. And even further we delve into history, noting the greatness of the oral tradition, of language - that strange stringing of phonetics on a huge evolutionary scale - itself. The point is: our quest for knowledge in the world of English literature did not end yesterday at exactly 3:00 pm. It hardly ended at all. I came out of that exam thinking, "Thank God, this is it!" (only because writing frantically for 5 hours and coming close to developing a kind of rheumatism in one's fingers seems to make one feel that way), but later on, whilst having coffee with Joshua in Romford, I thought to myself, "How stupid a thing to say." This certainly is not it.

3. So, what now? An abundance of things hopefully. I don't want jump into what kinds of things you could do yet because this is about you broadening your horizons. What are you really into? You don't have to buy a library to continue in your literary quest... although you could pop down to the library for a little quiet read every now and then.

But say you're more for the visuals than the reading: as Mr Barlow rightly pointed out, William Blake's work is being displayed at the Tate Britain! Along with the L. S. Lowry exhibition for those Lowry fans...

I will be reading George Eliot's Middlemarch this year, among other novels; I will also be attempting to write my own novel this July, as a part of the National Novel Writing Month (abbreviated: NaNoWriMo). That's 31 days of novel writing! But even just for your own pleasure... write, write, write!

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

It's always good to have motivation when you write: my incentives to write last year were my grandparents, who have always been supportive of my literary ambitions; one has passed away since then, and I think of her every time I go back to writing, thinking of how proud she would have been of what I accomplish.

Personal motivation is good for you, no matter what you will be doing. I know that Jack and Ellie, the artists of the class, have their own personal motivations when they offer something new to the wonderful world of art. Joshua will have his motivation of a need for justice behind him as he studies to become a lawyer! Daniel will have his motivation of the mystery of consciousness to be uncovered as he embarks on his psychology degree at UCL.

No matter what you do, remember that to keep yourself focused, you need motivation. Whatever that motivation is; that is down to you.

Thank you Mr Barlow for teaching us and for having the idea of creating this great means of conveying our own literary ideas.

Thank you to everyone in the class for such a great year. I'll see you all at the boat party!

Half-term essays

Good luck this week with your revision. Please make sure you learn plenty of quotes and also do at least 2 essays (timed if possible) for both Shakespeare and Blake/Ford. Either post these essays or email them to me and we'll discuss them. Also do some detailed essay plans for the essays which we have looked at this week. Please email me if you have any questions and I'll try to help you out!
Oh, and remember http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/shakespeare/a&c1.html which will is helpful in getting to know those tricky Acts 3 and 4 in more detail.

A new essay...

'A magnificent ruin, who becomes only more sublime as he falls.' By considering the dramatic presentation of Antony, evaluate this view.

Please get planning this for our lesson on Tuesday: I'm particularly interested in what you'll use for AO2 (what language/imagery is associated with and used by Antony?); AO3 (different readings) & AO4 (I'd suggest you look into how he differs from the 'tragic hero' as defined by Aristotle and also how he differs from Macbeth).

More useful lectures

Here are some links to lectures on Antony and Cleopatra:

1. http://americanshakespearecenter.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/doctor-ralph-reveals-all-antony-and.html  This is Ralph Alan Cohen's talk, which we've listened to already. No harm in revisiting it!

2. http://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning-initiative/shakespeare-after-all-later-plays This is a link to a page that shares lectures by renowned Harvard Shakespeare expert Marjorie Garber. You can either watch the video or download the mp3. She is brilliant, and like Mr Cohen, Antony and Cleopatra is her favourite play. The lecture is over an hour long but well worth it.

Homework

Today we listened to Emma Smith's lecture:
http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/antony-and-cleopatra-audio

What I'd like is for you to get a detailed essay plan together using anything you gained from her lecture, plus ideas from the A03/4 pages on this site. You might want to listen to the lecture again. The essay question uses a quote by A.C.Bradley and is really asking you both about your personal response to the play (is it 'painful?'; remember too that for some critics its 'painful' quality is its length or unstageability!) and questions of genre (Emma Smith talks about how it has elements of satire/farce but also discusses how it's been viewed as a comedy/history play/problem play/romance):

   ‘For a tragedy it is not painful.’ By considering the dramatic effects of Antony and Cleopatra, evaluate this view.

Homework

Thanks for yesterday everyone - and thanks to Joshua, even though Skype sabotaged us.

Don't have too much chilling out this holiday (see below). Here's the home work which you must do for the first lesson back:

 1.   List the 5 most important ideas you gained from our reading yesterday of Acts 4 and 5.

 2.   (IMPORTANT!!) Re-read the play: even if you just skim through what you’ve underlined in class, this is better than nothing. We will be working on what you’ve gained from re-reading the play on the first lesson back!

 3. Place the following statements on what the play’s about in rank order; then write a detailed post on the statement you agree with most:

a. The play has no moral value whatever.
b. The play is about the most magnificent love affair the world has ever known.
c. ‘Antony and Cleopatra is at last not about tawdry middle-aged lovers but about the power of imagination to place an Egyptian puppet and a drunken Antony on stage and, by poetry, to make the audience forget their smaller-than-life reality.
d. The play isn’t so much a love story: it’s about power.
e. The play dramatizes mythical encounter between Venus (the principle of love) and Mars (the god of war).
f. The play dramatizes the encounter between the pleasure principle and the desire for order, duty and boundaries.

Word search

Okay - here's a very interesting site for you:

http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/concordance/

Here's what to do:
1. Choose the first letter of the word(s) you are following: e.g. 'm' for 'melt'. Click on it.
2. Find the word from the new list and click again - this will reveal a list of the plays in which Shakespeare uses the word most. For example, 'melt' is used more in Antony and Cleopatra than any other play.
3. Look at all the examples of the word in our play and let me know if you find any interesting patterns or variations in its use? Why does Shakespeare use it so much in this play? What message or theme is he trying to illuminate through its use?
4. Now, for fun, check out a couple of examples of how he uses it in his other plays e.g. Hamlet's first soliloquy uses the word 'melt' in a very interesting way. Does Shakespeare  uese the word in a similar way? Does this reveal anything about his dramatic concerns overall?