Today's Lesson: Read Wit by Margaret Edson, Pages 51-67(End)
Assignment: If you would like to comment on the text, you may use the questions, below. I posted the film if you would like to see it performed. Anyone is welcome.
Reading Questions
1. Compare and contrast young Vivian’s misreading of “Death Be Not Proud” with E.M. Ashford with the final discussion between Susie and Jason about “Salvation Anxiety.” Given the final scene in the play, what meaning could be derived here?
2. According to Dr. Vivian Bearing, what is the metaphysical conceit (or essence) of Holy Sonnet IX (If poisonous minerals)?
3. How does E.M. Ashford’s reading of The Runaway Bunny tie into Holy Sonnet IX and, ultimately, explain the essence of the play?
Wit (2001)
Reminder: Look at last Vlog for important info. See brief excerpt, below:
The State of Massachusetts has set guidelines about our learning experiences. At the time of this posting, there will be:
Today's Lesson: Read Wit by Margaret Edson, Pages 39-51
Assignment: If you would like to comment on the text, you may use the questions, below. I posted the film if you would like to see it performed. Anyone is welcome.
Reading Questions
1. How could Vivian’s cancer treatment be considered a paradox?
2. What paradox is unearthed in John Donne’s sonnet “If poisonous minerals”?
3. In terms of characterization, what parallel is made between Vivian and Jason? How could the comparison be described as ironic?
4. How dis Vivian treat her students? How was it similar to E.M. Ashford? How was it, ultimately, completely different?
Wit (2001)
Reminder: Look at last Vlog for important info. See brief excerpt, below:
The State of Massachusetts has set guidelines about our learning experiences. At the time of this posting, there will be:
Poem of the Day: "Poems Which Talk Back to Me" by Sharon Olds
Overview and Directions: As discussed, here are five ELA assignments from the English Department to help enrich your time away from school. If you would like to engage with these together, please let me know in the comments section. Some of you mentioned books you would like to read as a group. I can connect students from my five classes for a reading group if you wish. Just shoot me a quick comment so I know you're out there.
I am currently reading: The Waves by Virginia Woolf and Arias by Sharon Olds.
I will add a post on Wednesday and Friday to offer a "Poem of the Day" as well as share some of the reading and work I am doing during this time. Again, if you read a post, please just shoot me a quick comment so I know I am talking to someone.
Attention AP Students: Here is an important update from the A.P. Board regarding the test: Click here. Your class links to the A.P. College Board Classes are below. Most of you joined already. Let me know if you have a problem finding the site. Once you login, you will see that I unlocked all the practice quizzes for you. You should be able to quiz yourself and get results. I did not set time limits, etc., so you can practice as you wish. In the testing situation, you will have roughly 20 minutes for a multiple choice selection and 40 minutes for each essay. I will continue to make posts with helpful A.P. materials for you. Again, leave me comments to let me know how you would like to engage. Zoom, blog, etc.
Learning Activity 34: Write a book review about a book you like by describing the book in such a way to make others want to read it. Record this book talk and share it if you would like with a friend or relative.
Learning Activity 61: Interview any adult about a big, national, “event” from their adolescence. Have them recall a memory of a time when life changed and the whole country/world was impacted. What happened? How did their routines change? How did they get through it? When did they return to “normal”?
Learning Activity 6: Humans are social beings and need contact or perceived contact with others. What are you doing right now to maintain a sense of community due to our distance? What are you doing to maintain a sense of normalcy and routine. Write for ten minutes about this experience and your thinking?
Learning Activity 29: Ideas.Ted.Com with Guy Winch https://ideas.ted.com/author/guy-winch/ peruse and select an article, read and respond with your thoughts and connections. ( I enjoyed, “Dear Guy: I’m incredibly anxious about coronavirus, what can I do?” and also the great video at the end of the article, “We all need to practice emotional first aid.”)
Learning Activity 16: Do a virtual museum tour of the one of the 12 museums highlighted in this article. Choose a piece of art perform a visual analysis using the 4-question protocol:
What do you see?
Where is your attention drawn?
What is there to get (i.e. - what is the meaning of the work)?
What more is there to ask?
Then, write a one-page reflection connecting the piece either to something you’ve read in class (a novel, poem, play, article, etc.) or to one of the essential questions for your grade [insert your grade’s EQs here]. How do these pieces speak to one another? What is the connection between the two, for you?
Poem of the Day: “Meeting a Stranger” by Sharon Olds
Today's Lesson: Update from the State of Massachusetts on Learning during this crisis.
Hello my friends,
The State of Massachusetts has set guidelines about our learning experiences. At the time of this posting, there will be:
No directed curriculum
No deadlines
No graded assignments
Please disregard all due dates and work from Friday, March 13th. Do not stress out about your grades, etc. If you would like to complete work, I will accept it, but no one should feel obligated in any way to do work while we are out.
Having said that, I will provide resources that have been developed by myself and other members of the English Department on a weekly basis for you to choose from and do if you wish to keep learning and active.
For my part, I still want to stay connected with all of you and will continue to post my videos with a "Poem of the Day," sharing some kind of literary experience with all of you. Again, this is voluntary.
We are allowed to finish Wit, as we discussed, so we can have closure. If you want to read another play together,for example, that can be an option, but no one should feel it is expected or that we will do it when we get back, it will be graded, etc. Again, this is voluntary. We can still have experiences, but they will be more individually based.
I am here for all of you, and if you wish to speak to me through email or the blog you are always welcome.
Overview and Directions: Please view the above video for my class instructions.
This will be a daily Vlog to help us keep connected as a class during this troubling time. I will always have a poem of the day, and offer daily lessons on our assignments. You will have the opportunity to comment on the blog post, and I can answer you the following day. We can also set-up class time to all be on the blog for an hour and comment together in real time.
Today's "Poem of the Day" is from Sharon Old’s Arias, titled, “For You.”
Overview and Directions: Please compose an essay using the prompt and text below. This is a close textural analysis from Margret Edson's Wit. When you finish, please post the essay to Turnitin.com. Also, share one of your body paragraphs in this blog space, so we can see your analysis. I look forward to your responses!
"Just a Comma"
Essay Prompt: The following dialogue is an excerpt from Wit a play by Margaret Edson, produced in 1999. Read the passage carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how Edson reveals her values about the importance between literary analysis and real life experiences through characterization and other literary devices.
VIVIAN. (Hesitantly) I should have asked more questions, because I knew there was going to be a test. I have cancer. Insidious cancer, with pernicious side effects – No, the treatment has pernicious side effects. I have stage four metastatic ovarian cancer. There is no stage five. And I have to be very tough. It appears to be a matter, as the saying goes...of life and death. I know all about life and death. I am, after all, a professor of seventeenth century poetry...specializing in the Holy Sonnets of John Donne...which explore mortality in greater depth...than any body of work in the English language. And I know for a fact that I am tough. A demanding professor. Uncompromising. Never one to turn from a challenge. That is why I chose to study John Donne...while a student of the great E.M. Ashford. (Professor E.M. Ashford, fifty-two, enters, seated at the same desk as Dr. Kelekian was. The scene is twenty-eight years ago. Vivian suddenly turns twenty-two, eager and intimidated.)
Professor Ashford?
E.M. Do it again.
VIVIAN. (To the audience) It was something of a shock. I had to sit down. (She plops down).
E.M. Please sit down. Your essay on Holy Sonnet VI, Miss Bearing, is a melodrama with a veneer of scholarship unworthy of you...to say nothing of Donne. Do it again.
VIVIAN. I, ah…
E.M. Begin with the text, Miss Bearing, not with a feeling.
“Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for thou art not soe.”
You've entirely missed the point of the poem, because you've used an edition of the text that is inauthentically punctuated. In the Gardner edition –
VIVIAN. That edition was checked out of the library –
E.M. Miss Bearing!
VIVIAN. Sorry.
E.M. You take this too lightly, Miss Bearing. This is metaphysical poetry, not the modern novel. The standards of scholarship and critical reading...which one would apply to any other text are simply insufficient. The effort must be total for the results to be meaningful. Do you think that the punctuation of the last line of this sonnet is merely an insignificant detail?
The sonnet begins with a valiant struggle with death calling on all the forces of intellect and drama to vanquish the
enemy. But it is ultimately about overcoming the seemingly insuperable barriers separating life, death and eternal life. In the edition you chose, this profoundly simple meaning is sacrificed to hysterical punctuation.
And Death – capital D – shall be no more - semi-colon! Death – capital D – comma – thou shalt die – exclamation point!
If you go in for this sort of thing I suggest you take up Shakespeare. Gardner's edition of the Holy Sonnets returns to the Westmoreland manuscript source of 1610 – not for sentimental reasons, I assure you, but because Helen Gardner is a scholar. It reads:
And death shall be no more, comma, Death thou shalt die.
(As she recites this line, she makes a little gesture with a comma.)
Nothing but a breath, a comma separates life from life everlasting. Very simple, really. With the original punctuation restored, death is no longer something...to act out on a stage with exclamation marks. It is a comma. A pause.
This way, the uncompromising way...one learns something from the poem, wouldn't you say? Life, death, soul, God...past, present. Not insuperable barriers. Not semicolons. Just a comma.
VIVIAN. Life, death, I see! (standing) It's a metaphysical conceit, it's wit! I'll go back to the library and re-write the paper –
E.M. (Standing, emphatically) It is not wit, Miss Bearing, it is truth. The paper's not the point.
VIVIAN. Isn't it?
E.M. (Tenderly) Vivian, you're a bright young woman. Use your intelligence. Don't go back to the library, go out. Enjoy yourself with friends. Hmmm. (Vivian walks away. E.M. slides off.)
VIVIAN. I, ah, went outside. It was a warm day. There were students on the lawn, talking about, nothing, laughing. The insuperable barrier between one thing and another is…just a comma? Simple human truth. Uncompromising scholarly standards. They're connected. I just couldn't...
