Today’s Agenda
Pride and Prejudice – What are we going to do about it?
Journal:
At the beginning of the semester, I told you that, should someone ask you why you were enrolled in a course on British Literature, you could respond to the question by saying that the course would help you develop critical thinking skills. Since that time, we have read a number of books and works, and I have talked about the various historical and social struggles that are reflected in these works. This may suggest to you that there are other reasons to study literature than reasons that relate to critical thinking.
By this late date in the semester, you should be able to recognize literature as a means for addressing the cultural concerns of a specific times and peoples. However, you may also become aware of the fact that literature has applications and meaning beyond the specific culture within which it is created.
Jane Eyre is a text that invites us to consider our own lives in terms of Jane’s life. This may seem strange to you, as no one in this room is a nineteenth-century governess (that I know of!). Bronte paints a rich world with complex characters who express desires who may not be all that different from the people you encounter on a day to day basis. In your journal, I would like you to take the next ten minutes and focus on the following topic:
How do you value literature, if you do? It is something that can be directly valued against a sum of money, or the acquisition of a skill? Is it something that has a communal value? Or is its value personal? Or is it a combination of both? I would like you to include specific examples from the reading for today in your explanation, and I will be collecting these writings. You can look in your books.
Group Discussion of writing
Class Discussion of Group comments
Return papers.
Let’s look at the bibliography information you pulled up for today. What works, what does not – where did you get your information. There are WebPages that will do this for you.
We also need to be aware of how to do an in-text citation.
Now that we have our papers back, we need to begin drafting the final portion of our papers.
You will need to spend at least two pages describing the specific relationship you have noticed between the element you have choose and the theory you have selected. Let’s brain storm on some general practices for this.
[...] Wednesday, April 15 [...]