Shakespeare Navigator

This is a great site for summaries, notes and analysis of Shakespeare's plays:

http://www.shakespeare-navigators.com/romeo/index.html

Alf Field's "The Moses Principle"

Fresh from a major symposium on gold in Australia,  Alf has made this presentation, possibly his last, as he retired a few years ago. He is probably the best analyst on gold  . and its future direction

"The Moses Principle is an irreverent theory based on the question of why Moses spent 40 years traversing the Sinai desert before leading the Israelites to the "promised land".

Click on the link for Alf Field's article.
The Moses Principle

The Shakespeare Code

Young Shakespeare?

This is an interesting newish blog with contributions from "the great and the good." Take, for instance, this comment on Shakespeare's Othello from the Wharton professor of English of Oxford University.
Click here

A plethora of ideas to help understand the Elizabethan and Jacobean context. Fascinating reading!


William Shakespeare had to write in code.

The theory of the Shakespeare Code

I wonder whether the blog's title was taken from an episode of Doctor Who?

Reviewing the early poems from Carol Ann Duffy's 'Rapture" with "Captain Corelli's Mandolin"

This is for my A2 English Lit. class, as I will not be in today.

(First 45 minutes)

Do the next poem/activities in your Skills Booklet after Duffy's Mrs Aesop. The booklet is the one with Wilfred Owen's Face at the front. You need to make progress in the booklet to develop/review/practice skills for the unseen poem/passage in the exam.

(Second 45 minutes) Unless you have the poems you will need a PC for this activity!

If you do not have these texts below to hand, copy them into a Word document; that way, you can print them off, if you wish.

Review the poems below again by using your skills (i.e. FLIRT, etc.)  to look more deeply in the theme of Relationships: texts which confront the reader with powerful emotion.   Note the bit after the colon carefully as this is what the exam board wants you to focus on when you compare Captain Corelli's Mandolin, The Great Gatsby and/or several poems from Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy.

As you write notes comparing and contrasting these texts, consider the very important AOs 3-4.

Can you make any comparisons with the early stages of Mandras/Corelli's relationships with Pelagia or Carlo/Franceso/Corelli in CCM?

As you go over these poems, think about how they present the early stages of a relationship. Notice the subtleties of language; the use of imagery, form, voice, structure; how the poems are linked, etc.

Click on the links below

"You" by Carol Ann Duffy (Page 1 of "Rapture")

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=11507

"Text" by Carol Ann Duffy (Page 2 of "Rapture"

Text by Carol Ann Duffy

"Name" by Carol Ann Duffy

"Name" by Carol Ann Duffy (Page 3 of "Rapture") and printed in The Guardian

"Forest" by Carol Ann Duffy  (Page 4 of "Rapture")

"Forest"

The following poem is on page 6 of "Rapture"

River

Down by the river, under the trees, love waits for me
to walk from the journeying years of my time and arrive.
I part the leaves and they toss me a blessing of rain.

The river stirs and turns consoling and fondling itself
with watery hands, its clear limbs parting and closing.
Grey as a secret, the heron bows its head on the bank.

I drop my past on the grass and open my arms, which ache
as though they held up this heavy sky, or had pressed
against window glass all night as my eyes sieved the stars;

open my mouth, wordless at last meeting love at last, dry
from travelling so long, shy of a prayer. You step from the shade,
and I feel love come to my arms and cover my mouth, feel

my soul swoop and ease itself into my skin, like a bird
threading a river. Then I can look love full in the face, see
who you are I have come this far to find, the love of my life.

Prep for next lesson - complete presentations on your chosen chapters from Captain Corelli's Mandolin; read your coursework texts; find about about the Gothic and Romanticism for Frankenstein.

Gustave Freytag's method of understanding structure in five act plays

This should prove useful for students' understanding of the structure of "Othello" or any of the "big" tragedies. Often, novels and short stories have a similar structure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure#Freytag.27s_analysis

Click on the image to enlarge

"Toys" by Coventry Patmore

Click the link to post from a couple of years ago. There's a link to an interpretation of this poem, too.
http://goforgold-dog.blogspot.com/2009/10/toys-by-coventry-patmore.html

AS English Literature Terminology Quiz

http://quizlet.com/60157/english-literary-terms-quiz-9-16-07-flash-cards/

Quizzes on Othello

http://www.gradesaver.com/othello/study-guide/quiz1/

http://www.funtrivia.com/quizzes/literature/shakespeare/othello.html

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/othello/quiz.html

http://quizilla.teennick.com/quizzes/911996/which-othello-character-would-you-marry

http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=othello-act-iii-review-quiz

http://quizlet.com/1056738/othello-flash-cards/  Match up the quotations

http://quizlet.com/1920963/othello-poetic-vocab-flash-cards/ Poetic Vocabulary

http://quizlet.com/1471871/othello-quotes-flash-cards/  Quotations