Literature classes

[Deleted]

Do they still teach Beowulf, Odysseus, Shakespeare, etc... In the old English... I mean, we know the stories, and have watched some in the old English translations, but do they spend much time on this in lit... As the generations go by there is just too much to read... 

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I don't remember doing Odysseus.   We did a brief segment on Greek myths when I was in middle school.

We did a good chunk of Beowulf my junior year but not the entire epic. We had to read the Epic of Gilgamesh.

I read Romeo & Juliet my freshman year, MacBeth my senior year and then I read Hamlet my sophomore year of college. I've read some of his other plays on my own time.

We read exerpts of Moby Dick, King Arthur and we did a segment on Edgar Allen Poe which included The Raven and Fall of the House of Usher.  This was all between my sophomore-senior years of high school.

We had to read the Scarlett Letter when I was a junior (bullet in head), Lord of the Flies or Wuthering Heights sophomore year depending on which teacher you head.  To Kill a Mockingbird my freshman year.  We got to pick our senior year for our English thesis paper (I chose Frankenstein).

I read Of Mice and Men in 8th grade.

I read One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Beloved, In Cold Blood and The Great Gatsby in my 20th century Lit class in college.

I read The Awakening and The Yellow Wallpaper in my Women's Lit class in college.

I've read numerous plays in my theatre arts classes. Death of Salesman, Waiting for Godot, Glass Menagerie, A Doll's House etc.

Wow, maybe I should list what I HAVEN'T read, it might go faster.  

[Chocolate Lover]

Ahhh, The Scarlett Letter.... to be a book about a "slut" it sure was dull.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

No wonder Hawthorn always walked around depressed. I would too after writing that book. God knows I was miserable enough reading it.

I forgot, we also had to read a few of the Canterbury Tales.  Both in original form and in translation (they were printed side by side in the textbook). Then I took an entire class on just the Canterbury Tales in college where we were not provided with translations.  Fortunately I own a copy that is translated so I would read that after class.

I am proving DH's theory that I am a major dork.

[Sunnyday]

Like drama, I read all those.

Unlike her, I did enjoy Scarlett letter.

I also read some Canterbury tales, but I think that was Middle English and not old English. Middle English isn't hard to read. Canterbury tales had a lot of salty humor. I enjoyed thoroughly.

I did read Beowulf but I can't remember when. I enjoy literature and the classics. I read very few modern novels.

The only book that I never got through was the whale book. Melville's book. I'm having a brain fart. Yhe famous novel that everyone knows the first line to, because they got past the first line. Call me Ishamel.

Off to google!!!

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Moby Dick. There is no way I could have gotten thru the entire novel. We read select pieces from it. I'd read the Scarlett Letter again over Moby Dick.

Make them read A Rose for Emily.  The ending made my skin crawl!

Poetry wise we read Byron, Coleridge, Woodsworth, Poe, Shelly, Dickenson, Robert and Elizabeth Browning and Whitman in high school .  I read some Sylvia Plath in my Women's Lit class.

We read quite a bit of Emmerson when we were doing a segment on the Romantic period.

On Walden Pond by Thoreau , we read segments of that as well.

[Chocolate Lover]

I didn't read 2 books in all of my assigned reading........Silas Marner and The Good Earth. I tried much harder on Silas than I did the other. I just didn't care anymore. It was during my senior year.

[Sunnyday]

this is why all know the first line. We stopped reading it at the second sentence!!! Moby Dick!!!

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge can be a pretty painful read too, but I still remember the line "Water, water everywhere but none to drink"

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Steinbeck is a must. We read one of his short stories in high school. I read Grapes of Wrath later on in my 20th century lit class.

I've also read A Christmas Carl and Great Expectations by Dickens. One for English class and the other for history class in college.

[Deleted]

See. I liked Silas Marner, that made the list for next year ... But I looked at, Death of a Salesman for instance, and was like, why, oh why would I do that? .... And there is just so much good contemporary lit... grrr. So hard to decide. 

I have had enough copies of the good earth to put it on the book club rotation for years though, and it's never made the cut, lol...

How about parents with teens, still doing the same old stuff? 

(I gave yellow wallpaper a yes too, but maybe I'm only pulling stuff I liked? Lol...) 

[Deleted]

I thought we'd read Of Mice and Men and, well, just watch Grapes of Wrath 

We did A Christmas Carol already, and is don't care for Dickens, so I'm trying to avoid that...

[Chocolate Lover]

Honestly, I recall most of what DQ listed from high school but really, I read those books quickly and got back to my preferred reading. If they *made* us discuss it in class I'd listen, if they gave notes, I took them and went back to my book.  

I do, however, remember Bartleby the Scrivener vividly. At least the part about how he answered "I prefer not to" to everything everyone requested of him.  I sooooo wanted to try that. Pretty sure I was supposed to learn something else about/from it.....

As far as what they're still teaching.....My oldest has read (or was SUPPOSED to read) In Cold Blood, To Kill a Mockingbird, a couple of Agatha Christie books, more that I can't recall.... I don't recall hearing anything about the classics though. No Beowulf, no Canterbury Tales, none of that.

[Chocolate Lover]

oped, I can't even recall the story line of Silas Marner anymore, just that it bored me to tears. Someone who would read the trivia scattered around the local phone book....bored. to. tears.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Death of a Salesman is pretty dry but it offers up a lot of good discussion material, especially the ending.

I wouldn't try to get thru everything, I'd break things down literary periods and then pick 1-2 pieces from each. Some you can make them read the whole thing, others assign specific chapters/segments.

Everything I've read was in the span of 8+ years, I didn't read it all over night!

[billisonboard]

May 15, 2014 15:00:45 GMT -5 oped said:

Do they still teach Beowulf, Odysseus, Shakespeare, etc... In the old English... I mean, we know the stories, and have watched some in the old English translations, but do they spend much time on this in lit... As the generations go by there is just too much to read... 

My ex is an English teacher. I know that she works hard to introduce books written by someone other than dead European (or European descent) males into her curriculum. It does cut down on the amount of time she could spend on those good old "classics".

[Deleted]

Silas Marner was like the original Scrooge, except he adopted an abandoned baby girl and became 'good' .. Lol  

im im going to combine history and English next year, do decades from 1850-present.  I'm trying to pick what we'll do excerpts, read, listen to...

The Beowulf stuff was for year after next, trying to see if I need to keep some books or get rid of them ... I'm trying to de clutter. 

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I found Beowulf extremely boring, but the guys in class loved it. I'd consider keeping it depending on the demographics of your class.

[Deleted]

Unless you are a prodigy, no one read Beowulf in Old English. Go to Youtube and listen to the Lord's Prayer read in Old English, and you will understand that it is pretty much a foreign language to modern speakers.  You might get 1 out of 10 words. Middle English (Canterbury Tales) is better. You might 4-5 out of 10 words.

Ours is a standard curriculum:

9th grade--Lots of the standard short stories ("Most Dangerous Game," "The Lady or the Tiger," "The Lottery," "The Cask of Amontillado, "The Scarlet Ibis," and so on. They read a few excerpts from The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet, and To Kill a Mockingbird. You fill in with outside reading, poetry, etc.

10th grade--This is the first half of Amer. Lit in our state. I bet you didn't know Julius Caesar belonged with Amer Lit., huh? In addition to that, they do excerpts from people like Mary Rowlandson (I think that was her name), Equiano, Jonathan Edwards, Anne Bradstreet, William Bradford, Benjamin Franklin, etc. Then we did The Crucible just to have something modern. We did Poe and Hawthorne as "The Dark Romantics." We did Emily Dickinson and Whitman.  Emerson and Thoreau made up The Transcendentalists. A real good intro. to Thoreau is the play "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail." We finished up with Huckleberry Finn.

11th grade--I haven't taught this grade.  But that's A Raisin in the Sun, The Great Gatsby, and a bunch of other stuff.  They do Othello as their Shakespearean play.

12th grade--This is what I teach now.  We start with excerpts from Beowulf, Legends of King Arthur (not a book--I show Camelot), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Prologue and a few of the Canterbury Tales, Macbeth, Frankenstein, and Pygmalion.

ETA: I forgot the Romantic poets in 12th grade.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

"The Lady or the Tiger,"

I remember that one! I've read "The Lottery" too.

If you don't want to teach the latter South Park does a spoof on it using the papparatzi and Britney Spears.

[Deleted]

Oh, the poetry, I hate the poetry. Will the kids be stunted for life if I only cover Billy Collins and Jim Morrison for poetry? 

We've done Gift of a Magi, Dangerous Game, Lady and the a Tiger, The Bet, Celebrated a Jumping Frog... I have a few shorts picked. I'll look at that Thoreau, Thanks! 

I do want to listen to Gatsby for 20s... It's only like a 5 hour listen.

[Deleted]

Uh, drama, the demographics of my class are one 16 yr old boy and one 13 year old girl

[Deleted]

My philosophy is to do the poetry I like. Lol. However, I do like Romantic poetry a lot, particularly Wordsworth and Coleridge. I learned to read (literally) reading Rime of the Ancient Mariner with my mother. We took turns with the stanzas. Emily Dickinson is easy to teach as well.

Do you know what a TPCASTT is?  Look it up on the internet. It's a decent way for students to get into poetry. We change the C ('connotation) to F (figures of speech) when we teach it because that's what is meant. I tell my kids that when they go to college and get assigned a poem to read, revert back to it. It will at least give them something to say when the professor calls on them.

Billy Collins is great! If you mean Jim Morrison as in The Doors guy, I would do Bob Dylan instead.

[wyouser]

In the early 70's we were still reading Shakespeare in the old English. What was harder was reading early German literature in the old gothic print as well as being in old German

[Spellbound454]

Our kids do Shakespeare as 13 year olds in their English classes. They'll read Golding, Steinbeck, Dickens and many other classics.

though I don't think they would do the Canterbury Tales 

[Sunnyday]

May 15, 2014 16:24:41 GMT -5 wyouser said:

In the early 70's we were still reading Shakespeare in the old English. What was harder was reading early German literature in the old gothic print as well as being in old German

Shakespeare isn't in old English. Older English perhaps but not old English.

Is anyone here old enough to have had to read new books with a letter opener???

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

[wyouser]

May 15, 2014 16:51:20 GMT -5 Sunnyday said:

May 15, 2014 16:24:41 GMT -5 wyouser said:

In the early 70's we were still reading Shakespeare in the old English. What was harder was reading early German literature in the old gothic print as well as being in old German

Shakespeare isn't in old English. Older English perhaps but not old English.

Is anyone here old enough to have had to read new books with a letter opener

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Explain the letter opener....I'm not familiar with that

[Deleted]

May 15, 2014 16:24:41 GMT -5 wyouser said:

In the early 70's we were still reading Shakespeare in the old English. What was harder was reading early German literature in the old gothic print as well as being in old German

No, you weren't reading Shakespeare in the "old English." Shakespeare wrote in modern English.

If you read German literature in old German, you came close to reading Old English. But if you read Shakespeare in it, you had a really dumb teacher who went to extraordinary lengths to personally translate it into OE.

[Deleted]

May 15, 2014 17:02:01 GMT -5 wyouser said:

May 15, 2014 16:51:20 GMT -5 Sunnyday said:

Shakespeare isn't in old English. Older English perhaps but not old English.

Is anyone here old enough to have had to read new books with a letter opener

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Explain the letter opener....I'm not familiar with that

A printer actually folds a sheet of paper to create several pages. Then the edges of some of the "pages" have to be cut.  Rainyday apparently had books where the pages weren't cut. I run across it occasionally in new textbooks. It is actually a defect.

[Sunnyday]

May 15, 2014 17:02:01 GMT -5 wyouser said:

May 15, 2014 16:51:20 GMT -5 Sunnyday said:

Shakespeare isn't in old English. Older English perhaps but not old English.

Is anyone here old enough to have had to read new books with a letter opener

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Explain the letter opener....I'm not familiar with that

In my school's library, I found some old books that were uncut. Before things were mechanized, they would print the pages on one full page and fold it (fold once downwards and then in half) and bound the book. So when you get a book for the first time, you had to cut the top edge to read the next page. You can tell which which were the old books or European books in the library by the ragged edges.

I once found an uncut book, and had the pleasure of cutting it. It was a weird feeling to cut a book. My professor said that teachers could tell if you read the book or not by whether the pages were intact or not.