Julius Caesar Act II - Vocabulary Words (10/30/14)

You are responsible for the following vocabulary words for Julius Caesar, Act II:

vile
apprehensive
repeal
compel
mutiny
ingratitude
legacy
malice
consent
oration
render
banish
reverence
appease
colossus

Julius Caesar - Act II: Review Questions (10/24/14)

Scene 1

1. What are Brutus’ thoughts about Ceasar as he broods about the night? What does Brutus mean by the following lines: “It is the bright day that brings for the adder/and that craves way walking”?
2. How does the letter thrown in through the window affect Brutus?
3. Explain the message in the letter, “Speak, strike, redress.”
4. Explain what Brutus means when he addresses the conspiracy. (11. 80-84, Page 31.
5. What arguments regarding Marc Antony are presented by Cassius and Brutus?
6. Which of the two arguments (#5) seem more logical to you?
7. What is the group’s decision regarding Marc Anthony?
8. What does Brutus mean in lines 179-181 (page 34) regarding Ceasar?
9. What does Portia beg her husband to do?
10. What argument does Portia use to persuade her husband?
11. What has Portia done to prove her strength to Brutus?

Scene II

12. What request does Calphurnia make of Ceasar?
13. Retell in your own words Calphurnia’s dream.
14. What is Decius’ interpretation of the dream?
15. What does Ceasar mean when he says: “Cowards die many times before their death; the valiant never taste of death but once”?

Scene III
16. Why does Artremidorus want to see Ceasar?
17. How does he feel towards Ceasar?
18. What does he think of the conspirators?

Scene IV

19. What is Portia’s state of mind as she waits for Brutus?
20. Why does the soothsayer want to see Ceasar?

Julius Caesar Act I - Vocabulary Words (10/15/14)

You are responsible for the following vocabulary words for Julius Caesar, Act I:

surly
beseech
wont
construe
loath
rogue
infirmity
prodigious
offal
portentous
brooked
cogitations

The Authorship Debate (10/3/14)

Is this a portrait of William Shakespeare . . . and was he The Bard?

It is remarkable that not one of England's poet-dramatists, at the death of William Shakespeare, wrote a single line lamenting his passing or praising his literary talents. It is strange that Shakespeare's very detailed will lists no books or manuscripts as part of his estate. Perhaps more disquieting still is the man's epitaph, apparently written by him, if we are to take its words literally. It reads (modern spelling):

Good friend for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here
Blessed be the man that spares these stones
And cursed be he that moves my bones.

Was this embarrassing doggerel written by the author of Hamlet, MacBeth, King Lear, et al.? For over a century the authorship of the Shakespeare canon has been debated vigorously. Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, and Benjamin Disraeli are among those who wrote of their doubts that the man from Stratford was the Bard. A sample of their comments:

"I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him."

-- Sigmund Freud

"I am...haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world."

-- Henry James

"It is a great comfort...that so little is known concerning the poet. The life of William Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something should turn up."

-- Charles Dickens

"Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man was in wide contrast."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What do we really know about William Shakespeare? Where did he learn the French, Italian, Latin and Greek that provided the untranslated source material for the plays? At the village school--assuming his attendance--he would have learned only "...small Latin and less Greek." Shakespeare's plays represent the pinnacle of Renaissance art; the culmination of rhetoric, poetry, painting, and science. Never having become a member of the Inns of Court or attended Cambridge or Oxford, how did the man from Stratford gain the knowledge the plays reveal of the law and medicine? Never having been at sea, how did he gain the knowledge the plays reveal of navigation? Never having traveled there, how did he gain the first-hand experience of Renaissance Italy the plays so clearly reveal? Perhaps William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon did not possess the learning these plays exhibit, but others of his time did . . . .

For homework:

Using the internet, I want you to investigate the authorship debate. You must choose a side and defend it. If you say that Shakespeare did not author his plays, tell me who you believe might be the author. If you do believe he was the author of his plays, tell me why you think this is true. Write a five paragraph persuasive essay that defends your findings. You must cite at least three sources in your paper.

This is due on Friday, October 10, 2014.

Be prepared defend your argument!

* The contents of this post were taken directly from: http://shakespeareauthorship.org/

Julius Caesar - Literary Focus - Tragedy: Alas, An Unhappy Ending (Journal #2, Marking Period 1)

In your journals, consider the following quote:

"Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton

The actual quote is: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

What leaders can you think of who abused their power? What are some of the psychological or practical reasons this leader may have done so? How did other people respond to this abuse? What other ways could they have responded?

"When In Doubt, It's From Shakespeare..." (9/30/14)

When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare...

QUICK QUIZ: What do John Cleese, Cole Porter, Moonlighting, and Death Valley Days have in common? No, they’re not part of some Communist plot. All were involved with some version of The Taming of the Shrew, by that former glover’s apprentice from Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare. Cleese played Petruchio in the BBC production of the complete Shakespeare plays in the 1970s. Porter wrote the score for Kiss Me, Kate, the modern musical-comedy version on Broadway and on film. The Moonlighting episode called “Atomic Shakespeare” was one of the funniest and most inventive on a show that was consistently funny and inventive. It was comparatively faithful to the spirit of the original while capturing the essence of the show’s regular characters. The truly odd duck here is Death Valley Days, which was an anthology show from the 1950s and 1960s sometimes hosted by a future president, Ronald Reagan, and sponsored by Twenty Mule Team Borax. Their retelling was set in the Old West and completely free of Elizabethan English. For a lot of us, that particular show was either our first encounter with the Bard or our first intimation that he could actually be fun, since in public school, you may recall, they only teach his tragedies. These examples represent only the tip of the iceberg for the perennially abused Shrew: its plot seems to be permanently available to be moved in time and space, adapted, altered, updated, set to music, reimagined in myriad ways.

If you look at any literary period between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries, you’ll be amazed by the dominance of the Bard. He’s everywhere, in every literary form you can think of. And he’s never the same: every age and every writer reinvents its own Shakespeare. All this from a man who we’re still not sure actually wrote the plays that bear his name.

Try this. In 1982 Paul Mazursky directed an interesting modern version of The Tempest. It had an Ariel figure (Susan Sarandon), a comic but monstrous Caliban (Raul Julia), and a Prospero (famed director John Cassavetes), an island, and magic of a sort. The film’s title? Tempest. Woody Allen reworked A Midsummer Night’s Dream as his film A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy. Natch. The BBC series Masterpiece Theatre has recast Othello as a contemporary story of black police commissioner John Othello, his lovely white wife Dessie, and his friend Ben Jago, deeply resentful at being passed over for promotion. The action will surprise no one familiar with the original. Add that production to a nineteenth-century opera of some note based on the play. West Side Story famously reworks Romeo and Juliet, which resurfaces again in the 1990s, in a movie featuring contemporary teen culture and automatic pistols. And that’s a century or so after Tchaikovsky’s ballet based on the same play. Hamlet comes out as a new film every couple of years, it seems. Tom Stoppard considers the role and fate of minor characters from Hamlet in his play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. And that bastion of high culture, Gilligan’s Island, had an episode where Phil Silvers, famous as TV’s Sergeant Bilko and therefore adding to the highbrow content, was putting together a musical Hamlet, the highlight of which was Polonius’s “Neither a borrower nor a lender be” speech set to the tune of “Habanera” from Bizet’s Carmen.

Now that’s art.

Nor is the Shakespeare adaptation phenomenon restricted to the stage and screen. Jane Smiley rethinks King Lear in her novel A Thousand Acres (1991). Different time, different place, same meditation upon greed, gratitude, miscalculation, and love. Titles? William Faulkner liked The Sound and the Fury. Aldous Huxley decided on Brave New World. Agatha Christie chose By the Pricking of My Thumbs, which statement Ray Bradbury completed with Something Wicked This Way Comes. The all-time champion for Shakespeare references, though, must be Angela Carter’s final novel, Wise Children. The children of the title are twins, illegitimate daughters of the most famous Shakespearean actor of his age, who is the son of the most famous Shakespearean of his age. While the twins, Dora and Nora Chance, are song-and-dance artists – as opposed to practitioners of “legitimate” theater – the story Dora tells is full to overflowing with Shakespearean passions and situations. Her grandfather kills his unfaithful wife and himself in a manner strongly reminiscent of Othello. As we saw in the previous chapter, a woman seems to drown like Ophelia, only to turn up in a hugely surprising way very late in the book like Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. The novel is full of astonishing disappearances and reappearances, characters in disguise, women dressed as men, and the two most spiteful daughters since Regan and Goneril brought ruin to Lear and his kingdom. Carter envisions a film production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream more disastrously hilarious than anything the “rude mechanicals” of the original could conceive of, the results recalling the real-life all-male film version from the 1930s.

Those are just a few of the uses to which Shakespeare’s plots and situations get put, but if that’s all he amounted to, he’d only be a little different from any other immortal writer.

But that’s not all.

You know what’s great about reading old Will? You keep stumbling across lines you’ve been hearing and reading all your life. Try these:
To thine own self be trueAll the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely playersWhat’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweetWhat a rogue and peasant slave am IGood night, sweet prince, / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!Get thee to a nunneryWho steals my purse steals trash[Life’s] a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothingThe better part of valor is discretion(Exit, pursued by a bear)A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!We few, we happy few, we band of brothersDouble, double, toil and trouble; / Fire burn and cauldron bubbleBy the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comesThe quality of mercy is not strained, / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heavenO brave new world, / That has such people in’t!

Oh, and lest I forget,
To be, or not to be, that is the question.

Ever heard any of those? This week? Today? I heard one of them in a news broadcast the morning I started composing this chapter. In my copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, Shakespeare takes up forty-seven pages. I will admit that not every one of the citations is all that familiar, but enough of them are. In fact, the hardest part of compiling my list of quotations was stopping. I could have gone on all day expanding the list without getting into anything too obscure. My first guess is that you probably have not read most of the plays from which these quotations are taken; my second guess is that you know the phrases anyway. Not where they’re from necessarily, but the quotes themselves (or the popular versions of them).

All right, so the Bard is always with us. What does it mean?

He means something to us as readers in part because he means so much to our writers.

So let’s consider why writers turn to our man.

It makes them sound smarter? Smarter than what?

Than quoting Rocky and Bullwinkle, for instance.

Careful, I’m a big fan of Moose and Squirrel. Still, I take your point. There are lots of sources that don’t sound as good as Shakespeare. Almost all of them, in fact.
Plus, it indicates that you’ve read him, right? You’ve come across this wonderful phrase in the course of your reading, so clearly you’re an educated person.
Not inevitably. I could have given you Richard III’s famous request for a horse from the time I was nine. My father was a great fan of that play and loved to recount the desperation of that scene, so I began hearing it in the early grades. He was a factory worker with a high school education and not particularly interested in impressing anybody with his fancy learning. He was pleased, however, to be able to talk about these great stories, these plays he had read and loved. I think that’s a big part of the motivation. We love the plays, the great characters, the fabulous speeches, the witty repartee even in times of duress. I hope never to be mortally stabbed, but if I am, I’d sure like to have the self-possession, when asked if it’s bad, to answer, “No, ‘tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ‘tis enough, ‘twill serve,” as Mercutio does in Romeo and Juliet. I mean, to be dying and clever at the same time, how can you not love that? Rather than saying it proves you’re well read, I think what happens is that writers quote what they’ve read or heard, and more of them have Shakespeare stuck in their heads than anything else.

Except Bugs Bunny, of course.

And it gives what you’re saying a kind of authority.

As a sacred text confers authority? Or as something exquisitely said confers authority? Yes, there is definitely a sacred-text quality at work here. When pioneer families went west in their prairie schooners, space was at a premium, so they generally carried only two books: the Bible and Shakespeare. Name another writer to whom high schoolers are subjected in each of four years. If you live in a medium-sized theater market, there is precisely one writer you can count on being in production somewhere in your area every year, and it is neither August Wilson nor Aristophanes. So there is a ubiquity to Shakespeare’s work that makes it rather like a sacred text: at some very deep level he is ingrained in our psyches. But he’s there because of the beauty of those lines, those scenes, and those plays. There is a kind of authority lent by something being almost universally known, where one has only to utter certain lines and people nod their heads in recognition.

But here’s something you might not have thought of. Shakespeare also provides a figure against whom writers can struggle, a source of texts against which other texts can bounce ideas. Writers find themselves engaged in a relationship with older writers; of course, that relationship plays itself out through the texts, the new one emerging in part through earlier texts that exert influence on the writer in one way or another. This relationship contains considerable potential for struggle, which as we mentioned in the previous chapter is called intertextuality. Naturally, none of this is exclusive to Shakespeare, who just happens to be such a towering figure that a great many writers find themselves influenced by him. On intertextuality, more later. For now, an example. T. S. Eliot, in “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1917), has his neurotic, timorous main character say he was never cut out to be Prince Hamlet, that the most he could be is an extra, someone who could come on to fill out the numbers onstage or possibly be sacrificed to plot exigency. By invoking not a generic figure – “I am just not cut out to be a tragic hero,” for instance – but the most famous tragic hero, Hamlet, Eliot provides an instantly recognizable situation for his protagonist and adds an element of characterization that says more about his self-image than would a whole page of description. The most poor Prufrock could aspire to would be Bernardo and Marcellus, the guards who first see the ghost of Hamlet’s father, or possibly Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the hapless courtiers used by both sides and ultimately sent unknowing to their own executions. Eliot’s poem does more, though, than merely draw from Hamlet. It also opens up a conversation with its famous predecessor. This is not an age of tragic grandeur, Prufrock suggests, but an age of hapless ditherers. Yes, but we recall that Hamlet is himself a hapless ditherer, and it’s only circumstance that saves him from his own haplessness and confers on him something noble and tragic. This brief interplay between texts happens in only a couple of lines of verse, yet it illuminates both Eliot’s poem and Shakespeare’s play in ways that may surprise us, just a little, and that never would have been called into existence had Eliot not caused Prufrock to invoke Hamlet as a way of addressing his own inadequacy.

It’s worth remembering that comparatively few writers slavishly copy bits of Shakespeare’s work into their own. More commonly there is this kind of dialogue going on in which the new work, while taking bits from the older, is also having its say. The author may be reworking a message, exploring changes (or continuities) in attitudes from one era to another, recalling parts of an earlier work to highlight features of the newly created one, drawing on associations the reader holds in order to fashion something new and, ironically, original. Irony features fairly prominently in the use not only of Shakespeare but of any prior writer. The new writer has his own agenda, her own slant to put on things.

Try this for slant. One of the powerful voices to come out of resistance to apartheid in South Africa is Athol Fugard,best known for his play “MasterHarold...andtheBoys(1982)”.

In creating this play Fugard turns to you-know-who. Your first instinct might be that he would grasp one of the tragedies, Othello, say, where race is already at issue. Instead he turns to the history plays, to Henry IV, Part II, to the story of a young man who must grow up. In Shakespeare, Prince Hal must put his hard-partying ways behind him, stop his carousing with Falstaff, and become Henry, the king who in Henry V is capable of leading an army and inspiring the kind of passion that will allow the English to be victorious at Agincourt. He must learn, in other words, to wear the mantle of adult responsibility. In Fugard’s contemporary reworking, Henry is Harold, Hally to the black pals with whom he loafs and plays. Like his famous predecessor, Hally must grow up and become Master Harold, worthy successor to his father in the family business. What does it mean, though, to become a worthy successor in an unworthy enterprise? That is Fugard’s question. Harold’s mantle is made not only of adult responsibility but of racism and heartless disregard, and he learns to wear it well. As we might expect, Henry IV, Part II provides a means of measuring Harold’s growth, which is actually a sort of regression into the most repugnant of human impulses. At the same time, though, “Master Harold” makes us reexamine the assumptions of right – and rights – that we take for granted in watching the Shakespearean original, notions of privilege and noblesse oblige, assumptions about power and inheritance, ideas of accepted behavior and even of adulthood itself. Is it a mark of growing up that one becomes capable, as Harold does, of spitting in the face of a friend? I think not. Fugard reminds us, of course, even if he does not mention it directly, that the grown-up King Henry must, in Henry V, have his old friend Falstaff hanged. Do the values endorsed by Shakespeare lead directly to the horrors of apartheid? For Fugard they do, and his play leads us back to a reconsideration of those values and the play that contains them.

That’s what writers can do with Shakespeare. Of course, they can do it with other writers as well, and they do, if somewhat less frequently. Why? You know why. The stories are great, the characters compelling, the language fabulous. And we know him. You can allude to Fulke Greville, but you’d have to provide your own footnotes.
So what’s in it for readers? As the Fugard example suggests, when we recognize the interplay between these dramas, we become partners with the new dramatist in creating meaning. Fugard relies on our awareness of the Shakespearean text as he constructs his play, and that reliance allows him to say more with fewer direct statements. I often tell my students that reading is an activity of the imagination, and the imagination in question is not the writer’s alone. Moreover, our understanding of both works becomes richer and deeper as we hear this dialogue playing out; we see the implications for the new work, while at the same time we reconfigure our thinking, if only slightly, about the earlier one. And the writer we know better than any other, the one whose language and whose plays we “know” even if we haven’t read him, is Shakespeare.

So if you’re reading a work and something sounds too good to be true, you know where it’s from.

The rest, dear friends, is silence.

William Shakespeare (9/30/14)

William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's preeminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.

The Apples of Idun (9/23/14)

ONCE upon a time Odin, Loke, and Hœner started on a journey. They had often travelled together before on all sorts of errands, for they had a great many things to look after, and more than once they had fallen into trouble through the prying, meddlesome, malicious spirit of Loke, who was never so happy as when he was doing wrong. When the gods went on a journey they travelled fast and hard, for they were strong, active spirits who loved nothing so much as hard work, hard blows, storm, peril, and struggle. There were no roads through the country over which they made their [100] way, only high mountains to be climbed by rocky paths, deep valleys into which the sun hardly looked during half the year, and swift-rushing streams, cold as ice, and treacherous to the surest foot and the strongest arm. Not a bird flew through the air, not an animal sprang through the trees. It was as still as a desert. The gods walked on and on, getting more tired and hungry at every step. The sun was sinking low over the steep, pine-crested mountains, and the travellers had neither breakfasted nor dined. Even Odin was beginning to feel the pangs of hunger, like the most ordinary mortal, when suddenly, entering a little valley, the famished gods came upon a herd of cattle. It was the work of a minute to kill a great ox and to have the carcass swing- [101] ing in a huge pot over a roaring fire.
But never were gods so unlucky before! In spite of their hunger the pot would not boil. They piled on the wood until the great flames crackled and licked the pot with their fiery tongues, but every time the cover was lifted there was the meat just as raw as when it was put in. It is easy to imagine that the travellers were not in very good humor. As they were talking about it, and wondering how it could be, a voice called out from the branches of the oak overhead, "If you will give me my fill I'll make the pot boil."
The gods looked first at each other and then into the tree, and there they discovered a great eagle. They were glad enough to get their supper on almost any terms, so they [102] told the eagle he might have what he wanted if he would only get the meat cooked. The bird was as good as his word, and in less time than it takes to tell it supper was ready. Then the eagle flew down and picked out both shoulders and both legs. This was a pretty large share, it must be confessed, and Loke, who was always angry when anybody got more than he, no sooner saw what the eagle had taken than he seized a great pole and began to beat the rapacious bird unmercifully. Whereupon a very singular thing happened, as singular things always used to happen when the gods were concerned: the pole stuck fast in the huge talons of the eagle at one end, and Loke stuck fast at the other end. Struggle as he might, he could not get loose, and as the great bird sailed [103] away over the tops of the trees, Loke went pounding along on the ground, striking against rocks and branches until he was bruised half to death.
The eagle was not an ordinary bird by any means, as Loke sown found when he begged for mercy. The giant Thjasse happened to be flying abroad in his eagle plumage when the hungry travellers came under the oak and tried to cook the ox. It was into his hands that Loke had fallen, and he was not to get away until he had promised to pay roundly for his freedom.
If there was one thing which the gods prized above their other treasures in Asgard, it was the beautiful fruit of Idun, kept by the goddess in a golden casket and given to the gods to keep them forever young and fair. Without these Apples all their [104] power could not have kept them from getting old like the meanest of mortals. Without these Apples of Idun Asgard itself would have lost its charm; for what would heaven be without youth and beauty forever shining through it?
Thjasse told Loke that he could not go unless he would promise to bring him the Apples of Idun. Loke was wicked enough for anything; but when it came to robbing the gods of their immortality, even he hesitated. And while he hesitated the eagle dashed hither and thither, flinging him against the sides of the mountains and dragging him through the great tough boughs of the oaks until his courage gave out entirely, and he promised to steal the Apples out of Asgard and give them to the giant.
[105] Loke was bruised and sore enough when he got on his feet again to hate the giant who handled him so roughly, with all his heart, but he was not unwilling to keep his promise to steal the Apples, if only for the sake of tormenting the other gods. But how was it to be done? Idun guarded the golden fruit of immortality with sleepless watchfulness. No one ever touched it but herself, and a beautiful sight it was to see her fair hands spread it forth for the morning feasts in Asgard. The power which Loke possessed lay not so much in his own strength, although he had a smooth way of deceiving people, as in the goodness of others who had no thought of his doing wrong because they never did wrong themselves.
Not long after all this happened, [106] Loke came carelessly up to Idun as she was gathering her Apples to put them away in the beautiful carven box which held them.
"Good morning, goddess," said he. "How fair and golden your Apples are!"
"Yes," answered Idun; "the bloom of youth keeps them always beautiful."
"I never saw anything like them," continued Loke slowly, as if he were talking about a matter of no importance, "until the other day."
Idun looked up at once with the greatest interest and curiosity in her face. She was very proud of her Apples, and she knew no earthly trees, however large and fair, bore the immortal fruit.
"Where have you seen any Apples like them?" she asked.
[107] "Oh, just outside the gates," said Loke indifferently. "If you care to see them I'll take you there. It will keep you but a moment. The tree is only a little way off."
Idun was anxious to go at once.
"Better take your Apples with you to compare them with the others," said the wily god, as she prepared to go.
Idun gathered up the golden Apples and went out of Asgard, carrying with her all that made it heaven. No sooner was she beyond the gates than a mighty rushing sound was heard, like the coming of a tempest, and before she could think or act, the giant Thjasse, in his eagle plumage, was bearing her swiftly away through the air to his desolate, icy home in Thrymheim, where, after vainly trying to persuade her to let him eat the Apples and be forever young [108] like the gods, he kept her a lonely prisoner.
Loke, after keeping his promise and delivering Idun into the hands of the giant, strayed back into Asgard as if nothing had happened. The next morning, when the gods assembled for their feast, there was no Idun. Day after day went past, and still the beautiful goddess did not come. Little by little the light of youth and beauty faded from the home of the gods, and they themselves became old and haggard. Their strong, young faces were lined with care and furrowed by age, their raven locks passed from gray to white, and their flashing eyes became dim and hollow. Brage, the god of poetry, could make no music while his beautiful wife was gone he knew not whither.
[109] Morning after morning the faded light broke on paler and ever paler faces, until even in heaven the eternal light of youth seemed to be going out forever.
Finally the gods could bear the loss of power and joy no longer. They made rigorous inquiry. They tracked Loke on that fair morning when he led Idun beyond the gates; they seized him and brought him into solemn council, and when he read in their haggard faces the deadly hate which flamed in all their hearts against his treachery, his courage failed, and he promised to bring Idun back to Asgard if the goddess Freyja would lend him her falcon-guise. No sooner said than done; and with eager gaze the gods watched him as he flew away, becoming at last only a dark moving speck against the sky.
[110] After long and weary flight Loke came to Thrymheim, and was glad enough to find Thjasse gone to sea and Idun alone in his dreary house. He changed her instantly into a nut, and taking her thus disguised in his talons, flew away as fast as his falcon wings could carry him. And he had need of all his speed, for Thjasse, coming suddenly home and finding Idun and her precious fruit gone, guessed what had happened, and, putting on his eagle plumage, flew forth in a mighty rage, with vengeance in his heart. Like the rushing wings of a tempest, his mighty pinions beat the air and bore him swiftly onward. From mountain peak to mountain peak he measured his wide course, almost grazing at times the murmuring pine forests, and then sweeping high in mid-air [111] with nothing above but the arching sky, and nothing beneath but the tossing sea.
At last he sees the falcon far ahead, and now his flight becomes like the flash of the lightning for swiftness, and like the rushing of clouds for uproar. The haggard faces of the gods line the walls of Asgard and watch the race with tremulous eagerness. Youth and immortality are staked upon the winning of Loke. He is weary enough and frightened enough too, as the eagle sweeps on close behind him; but he makes desperate efforts to widen the distance between them. Little by little the eagle gains on the falcon. The gods grow white with fear; they rush off and prepare great fires upon the walls. With fainting, drooping wing the falcon passes over and [112] drops exhausted by the wall. In an instant the fires have been lighted, and the great flames roar to heaven. The eagle sweeps across the fiery line a second later, and falls, maimed and burned, to the ground, where a dozen fierce hands smite the life out of him, and the great giant Thjasse perishes among his foes.
Idun resumes her natural form as Brage rushes to meet her. The gods crowd round her. She spreads the feast, the golden Apples gleaming with unspeakable lustre in the eyes of the gods. They eat; and once more their faces glow with the beauty of immortal youth, their eyes flash with the radiance of divine power, and, while Idun stands like a star for beauty among the throng, the song of Brage is heard once more; for poetry and immortality are wedded again.

The Death of Baldur (9/23/14)

Baldur was one of the most beloved of all the gods. The son of Odin, the chief of the gods, and the benevolent sorceress goddess Frigg, Baldur was a generous, joyful, and courageous character who gladdened the hearts of all who spent time with him. When, therefore, he began to have ominous dreams of some grave misfortune befalling him, the fearful gods appointed Odin to discover their meaning.

Baldur’s father wasted no time in mounting his steed, Sleipnir, and riding to the underworld to consult a dead seeress whom he knew to be especially wise in such matters. When, in one of his countless disguises, he reached the cold and misty underworld, he found the halls arrayed in splendor, as if some magnificent feast were about to occur. Odin woke the seeress and questioned her concerning this festivity, and she responded that the guest of honor was to be none other than Baldur. She merrily recounted how the god would meet his doom, stopping only when she realized, from the desperate nature of Odin’s entreaties, who this disguised wanderer truly was.

And, indeed, all that she prophesied would come to pass.

Odin returned in sorrow to Asgard, the gods’ celestial stronghold, and told his comrades what he had been told. Frigg, yearning for any chance of saving her treasured son, however remote, went to every thing in the cosmos and obtained oaths to not harm Baldur.

After these oaths were secured, the gods made a sport out of the situation. They threw sticks, rocks, and anything else on hand at Baldur, and everyone laughed as these things bounced off and left the shining god unharmed.

The wily and disloyal Loki sensed an opportunity for mischief.

In disguise, he went to Frigg and asked her, “Did all things swear oaths to spare Baldur from harm?” “Oh, yes,” the goddess replied, “everything except the mistletoe. But the mistletoe is so small and innocent a thing that I felt it superfluous to ask it for an oath. What harm could it do to my son?” Immediately upon hearing this, Loki departed, located the mistletoe, and brought it to where the gods were playing their new favorite game.

He approached the blind god Hod (Old Norse Höðr, “Slayer”) and said, “You must feel quite left out, having to sit back here away from the merriment, not being given a chance to show Baldur the honor of proving his invincibility.” The blind god concurred. “Here,” said Loki, handing him the shaft of mistletoe. “I will point your hand in the direction where Baldur stands, and you throw this branch at him.” So Hod threw the mistletoe. It pierced the god straight through, and he fell down dead on the spot.

The gods found themselves unable to speak as they trembled with anguish and fear. They knew that this event was the first presage of Ragnarok, the downfall and death, not just of themselves, but of the very cosmos they maintained.

At last, Frigg composed herself enough to ask if there were any among them who were brave and compassionate enough to journey to the land of the dead and offer Hel, the death-goddess, a ransom for Baldur’s release. Hermod, an obscure son of Odin, offered to undertake this mission. Odin instructed Sleipnir to bear Hermod to the underworld, and off he went.

The gods arranged a lavish funeral for their fallen friend. They turned Baldur’s ship, Hringhorni, into a pyre fitting for a great king. When the time came to launch the ship out to sea, however, the gods found the ship stuck in the sand and themselves unable to force it to budge. After many failed attempts they summoned the brawniest being in the cosmos, a certain giantess named Hyrrokkin (“Withered by Fire”). Hyrrokkin arrived in Asgard riding a wolf and using poisonous snakes for reins. She dismounted, walked to the prow of the ship, and gave it such a mighty push that the land quaked as Hringhorni was freed from the strand. As Baldur’s body was carried onto the ship, his wife, Nanna, was overcome with such great grief that she died there on the spot, and was placed on the pyre alongside her husband. The fire was kindled, and Thor hallowed the flames by holding his hammer over them. Odin laid upon the pyre his ring Draupnir, and Baldur’s horse was led into the flames.

All kinds of beings from throughout the Nine Worlds attended this ceremony: gods, giants, elves, dwarves, valkyries, and others. Together they stood and mourned as they watched the burning ship disappear over the ocean.

Meanwhile, Hermod rode nine nights through ever darker and deeper valleys on his quest to rescue the part of Baldur that had been sent to Hel. When he came to the river Gjoll (Gjöll, “Roaring”), Móðguðr, the giantess who guards the bridge, asked him his name and his purpose, adding that it was strange that his footfalls were as thundering as those of an entire army, especially since his face still had the color of the living. He answered to her satisfaction, and she allowed him to cross over into Hel’s realm. Sleipnir leapt over the wall around that doleful land.

Upon entering and dismounting, Hermod spotted Hel’s throne and Baldur, pale and downcast, sitting in the seat of honor next to her. Hermod spent the night there, and when morning came, he pleaded with Hel to release his brother, telling her of the great sorrow that all living things, and especially the gods, felt for his absence. Hel responded, “If this is so, then let every thing in the cosmos weep for him, and I will send him back to you. But if
any refuse, he will remain in my presence.”

Hermod rode back to Asgard and told these tidings to the gods, who straightaway sent messengers throughout the worlds to bear this news to all of their inhabitants. And, indeed, everything did weep for Baldur – everything, that is, save for one giantess: Tokk (Þökk, “Thanks”), who was none other than Loki in another disguise. Tokk coldly told the messengers, “Let Hel hold what she has!”

And so Baldur remained with Hel until Ragnarok, when, after the cosmos was destroyed and re-created, he returned to bless the land and its inhabitants with his gladdening light and exuberance.[1][2][3]

The Role of Baldur’s Death in the Norse Mythological Cycle

Amongst the heathen Norse and other Germanic peoples, Baldur was regarded as the divine animating force behind the beauty of life at the peak of its strength and energy. Accordingly, his happy youth is the peak of the Norse mythical cycle as a whole, as summer is to the cycle of the year or noontime is to the cycle of the day. His death marks the beginning of the decline into old age, night, winter, and ultimately the death and rebirth that characterize Ragnarok.

If you enjoyed this article, check out my book on the worldview at the heart of Norse mythology, The Love of Destiny: The Sacred and the Profane in Germanic Polytheism.

And if you’d like to keep up with my ongoing work here and elsewhere, the best way to do so is to follow me on Google+: Dan McCoy.

References:

[1] The Poetic Edda. Baldrs Draumar.

[2] Snorri Sturluson. The Prose Edda. Gylfaginning 49.

[3] The Poetic Edda. Völuspá.

Everything Is Illuminated - Summer Reading: Possible Essay Questions (9/17/14)

Four of these questions will appear on the test. Prepare enough material to answer any one of them.

Throughout the novel, fantasy and reality are convoluted and conflated. How does this situation affect the way we interpret the story? Does Foer portray fantasy in a positive or negative light at different points in the book?

Many major and minor questions in this novel go unresolved. How does the presence of mystery affect the story?

Is there anything unusual about the way Jewish people are portrayed during the Holocaust, compared with other classic accounts?

Explain the title of the novel, Everything is Illuminated. What is "everything," and how and when is it illuminated? For whom is everything illuinated? What is the force that enlightens, and is there anyone or anything guiding it?

What role does chance play in the novel? From the evidence in the text, to what degree do we control our own lives and history? Is this a good text for examining general themes about agency, chance, and fate, or do we do injustice to an idiosyncratic narrative by looking for overbroad themes?

How is forgiveness treated in the novel? How is it important? What is its purpose?

Why do so many of the characters in the novel, including Jonathan, fail to find the things for which they are searching?

The Piano Lesson - Summer Reading: Possible Essay Questions (9/17/14)

Four of these questions will appear on the test. Prepare enough material to answer any one of them.

What is the piano lesson? What is the biblical symbolism of the struggle over the piano?

Why can't Boy Willie and Lymon lift the piano the second time?

Describe the role that Doaker plays in The Piano Lesson.

Discuss what the piece says about gender. How do the characters define masculinity or femininity? In what ways do these perceptions about gender empower characters, and in what ways do these perceptions about gender limit or confine characters?

What is the significance of the railroad in this play? Consider, for example, Doaker's reflections on railroad travelers, his traveling song, the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog, etc.

What is the significance of Avery's dream? Consider in particular his use of allegory.

The Piano Lesson is often a humorous play. Discuss one example of the comic in the play. Upon what literary devices does it rely? What is its thematic significance?

Slaying The Dragon - Norse Mythology (9/15/14)

This picture is a detail of a doorway that was originally carved in Setesdal, Norway. Carved around the year 1200, the doorway is decorated with scenes from the myth of Sigurd the dragon slayer. The episodes of this myth are interwoven in plant patterns, integrating them into a whole while maintaining the scenes as discrete moments in the narrative. This doorway is an example of bas-relief, a term for sculpture that protrudes only slightly from its background surface.

More importantly, this door displays something vital to the culture of the Nordic people. Their culture was built around mythology. We know that a myth is defined as a traditional story that is basically religious in nature. They usually explain a belief, a ritual, or a mysterious natural phenomenon. In almost all cultures, for example, you will find myths that explain why the seasons change, how humankind learned to make fire, and why we have to die.

Many myths have dragons and other monsters as characters. Traditionally, the dragon guards a treasure hoard that was acquire through deceit or violence. "Sigurd, The Dragon Slayer," a Norse myth, features what might be the archetypal dragon slayer - the model of the hero who descends to the underworld to slay a monster.

Monsters and Myths (Journal #1, Marking Period 1)

From the idea of a monster, a hero is born.
Whether people choose to acknowledge it, the fact remains that heroes and villains are linked. They need each other to exist. In many cases, one is actually responsible for the existence of the other.

In your journals, please discuss the stories or movies that feature a dragon or monster as the villain. What powers do these creatures usually have? What makes them a threat?

English 2 - Syllabus (9/9/14)

School District Of Philadelphia
The High School for Creative and Performing Arts

Mr. Joseph Ippolito
E-mail: jjippolito@philasd.org
Telephone: 215-952-2462

English 2 is designed to prepare students for the work they will do as upperclassmen and college students. In this course, your student will be exposed to a more diverse range of literature from around the world. The course will reinforce and expand on skills your student learned in 9th grade.

The texts we will read in this class will cover a variety of sociological issues that will be the basis for the assessments I give your students. The course will focus on themes and ideas that are universal to the human condition. Through careful study, students will examine how these themes have been developed in a variety of literary works both classical and modern, both foreign and familiar. Students will be expected to write at least one research paper that proves their ability to analyze and synthesize information based on the texts we read.

Upon completing the English 2 Literature and Composition course, students should be able to:

• Analyze and interpret samples of fiction, identifying and explaining an author’s use of rhetorical strategies and techniques;
• Apply effective strategies and techniques in their own writing;
• Create and sustain arguments based on readings, research, and/or personal experience;
• Demonstrate understanding and mastery of standard written English as well as stylistic maturity in their own writings;
• Write for a variety of purposes;
• Produce expository, analytical, and argumentative compositions that introduce a complex central idea and develop it with thesis that cites appropriate evidence drawn from primary and/or secondary source material, cogent explanations, and clear transitions;
• Demonstrate understanding of the conventions of citing primary and secondary source material;
• Move effectively through the stages of the writing process, with careful attention to inquiry and research, drafting, revising, editing, and review;
• Write thoughtfully about their own process of composition
• Revise a work to make it suitable for a different audience;
• Analyze image as text; and
• Evaluate and incorporate reference documents into researched papers.

The above was adapted from School District of Philadelphia: ENGLISH; English Literature and Composition Course
Description May 2006

Students will read a variety of British, World, and American works—both classic and contemporary—including those by: William Shakespeare, Harper Lee, William Golding, J.D. Salinger, Tennessee Williams, George Orwell, Bram Stoker, and more.

Course Objectives:

Recognize rhetorical modes, structures, and strategies used by writers
Write critically in a variety of genres (expository, analytical and argumentative writing)
Develop vocabulary in oral and written communication
Develop stronger voice in writing
Develop arguments that analyze, synthesize, and evaluate, various viewpoints on a wide variety of social, economic and political issues.
Read and master a wide variety of works both fiction and non-fiction
Improve critical thinking skills through dissuasion, writing and thoughtful inquiry

Required Texts:

Selections from Holt: Elements of Literature (Fourth Course)
William Shakespeare - Julius Caesar
Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird
William Golding - Lord of The Flies

There will also be informational text provided to supplement the fictional text presented in class.


Google Drive - Students will submit the majority of their work online using Google Drive. A tutorial will be given at the beginning of the year on how to compose and upload papers using Google Drive. All students must set up a Gmail account for this purpose. The account must resemble their name as closely as possible. (ie: abrown@gmail.com, alex.brown@gmail.com, abrownCAPA@gmail.com).

All written assignments submitted on Google Drive must be titled as follows in order to receive full credit:

Your Last Name - Title of Assignment (as stipulated by the teacher - noted on class site)

Example:
Brown - To Kill A Mockingbird Discussion Questions, Chapters 22-26

Assessment:

The most common types of assessments are:
Written responses to and analyses of works of literature in the form of classwork and warm-ups.
Other assessments include comprehensive selection tests (including vocabulary), vocabulary, and related homework exercises.

Work is generally weighted in the following increments (however, this is subject to change) and grades are calculated using a total points system:

Major tests or literary analysis essays (100 points), themes/essays (50-100 points), journals (5 points per entry - 25 points total for five entries), homework and class work (25-50 points depending on length of the assignment).

Assignment Completion and Attendance

Homework:

The purpose of the homework in my class is to reinforce skills, extend ideas, or prepare for the next lesson. Regardless, it’s essential for your development as a student in the class. Homework will be given most nights. You should expect to be doing some form of homework (reading, journals, composing analysis questions, answering discussion questions). When it comes to reading assignments, if I ask you to read something, you should take your own notes. If sense that reading that required reading is not being done, I will begin to give quizzes designed to encourage your participation.

Late Work:

Homework is due before class 3:00 pm on the deadline set by me. If you arrive after the bell without a written excuse from a teacher or parent, you are late and is your classwork and homework; you will receive half credit for that day’s assignments. The consequence for unexcused lateness to class is that you will only receive half credit for any work due or completed in class that day. You may submit any homework assignment ONE day late for half credit. After the second day, you may not make up the work.

Absences:

Student comes to school late and misses class: He/she must see me to submit work that was due that day. If he or she has missed a test/quiz but comes to school later that day, he or she must see me that day to take the test/quiz or schedule a time to make it up. Any work that is not completed that day will be deemed “late,” and receive a deduction in points; missed tests that are not made up that day are subject to a point deduction for every day that passes without the test being made up.

Student misses school due to an excused absence:
School policy applies to all absences; for each day the student is absent, he or she has two days to complete the work.

Students missing class because of school activities, i.e. sports, choir, orchestra, performances, etc. are responsible for the old and new work and homework assignment assigned while they are out; get the contact information of a few trusted classmates so you can find out what you missed. You can always see me before to find out what you will miss.

Student misses school due to an unexcused absence: He/she will receive a zero for the assignment and/or test and may not make up the work, according to school policy.


Plagiarism Policy
Any work turned in with false attribution to its author, such as work copied from another student, a published text, or downloaded without citation from the internet is plagiarized. When in doubt, always cite the the sources of your information and/or inspiration. Plagiarized work will receive a zero. You will not be allowed to redo the assignment and the student will be written up for the infraction, receiving the appropriate disciplinary consequences, as seen by the principal. The same consequences will result for a student who allows a classmate to copy his or her work.

Parents/Guardians,

Thank you for your support in helping your child achieve and adhere to the above guidelines, policies, and procedures of my classroom and the school at large. I encourage you and your son or daughter to work together toward his or her academic success. Your child will require access to a computer with word processing and internet capabilities. I strongly suggest that your child have a USB drive (aka: thumb drive, memory stick) so that they may transport works in progress between home and school. Do not hesitate to contact me if your child is experiencing any difficulties in this class. It is my wish that your child has a positive experience in my classroom. I am here to help make that possible for all of the students in my classroom.

Do not hesitate to contact me via the Main Office. I will return your call as soon as possible.

jjippolito@philasd.org / 215.952.2462

The Storyteller (Journal #1, Marking Period 1)

What do you expect from a children's story - a happy ending, a strong moral, surprising reversals? Think back to your favorite stories and books from when you were very young, and try to figure out why they captured your interest. Jot down your ideas.

Can you remember any story you read as a child that genuinely surprised you?
Are there any stories aimed at children that actually seem very adult to you, now that you are older?