British Literature-- CP English 12
Introduction
We will begin British Literature by reading one of the many novels written over the last 400 years. Americans have adopted their language from Britain, from the pidgin language of the Anglo-Saxons mixed with Norman French after the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066. It's changed a wee little over the last nearly thousand years. From Great Britain we find many of the greatest writers in English: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats. Novelists span from Daniel DeFoe to Ian McKewan-- choose one that strikes your fancy. The second part of the assignment requires you to read a book from the teen book list and complete an SSR one-pager, a form you will find at the bottom of this page.
ASSIGNMENT
Read one title from each reading list. For the first reading list, find two quotations for each question accompanied by your thoughtful analysis which should be roughly a paragraph equivalent to roughly six sentences. With one novel, five questions, and two responses for each, you should have ten responses per novel and and for the second novel from the teen book list you should complete the SSR one-pager. The questions following each category for quotes are designed to help you think about what to look for and what you may write about—you do not need to answer each question. One of your novels must be from the British Literature list and one from the teen book list.
PART 1:
1-2 Setting: Where does the story take place? What is the relationship of the place to the characters? What kinds of language does the other use?
3-4 Character: How is the main character described physically? What is something they do that defines them? Something they say? What does someone say about them?
5-6 Conflict: What confronts the main character or characters? What must they overcome? How will they do this?
7-8 Culture/Belief: What sorts of practices do the main characters engage in? Do these define the character/s? Are they religious? What do they believe in? How do we know?
9-10 Resolution: How does the main character solve their problem? How do things work out for other characters? This is important why?
Brontë, Charlotte, Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, The Last Days of Pompeii
Bunyan, John, Pilgrim's Progress
Butler, Samuel, The Way of All Flesh
Carroll, Lewis, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Conrad, Joseph, Lord Jim
DeFoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield; Great Expectations; The Pickwick Papers
Doyle, Arthur Conan, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Durrell, Lawrence, The Alexandria Quartet
DuMaurier, Daphne, Rebecca
Eliot, George, Adam Bede, Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner
Fielding, Henry, Tom Jones
Forster, E.M., A Passage to India; Howard's End; A Room with a View
Galsworthy, John, The Forsyte Saga
Graves, Robert, I, Claudius
Greene, Graham, The Power and the Glory
Hardy, Thomas, The Return of the Native; Tess of the D'Urbervilles; The Mayor of Casterbridge
Joyce, James, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses
Kipling, Rudyard, Captains Couragous, Kim
Lawrence, D.H. Sons and Lovers
Lewis, C.S., The Chronicles of Narnia
Maugham, W. Somerset, Of Human Bondage
Orwell, George, Animal Farm
Scott, Sir Walter, Ivanhoe
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein
Smollett, Tobias, Humphrey Clinker
Sterne, Laurence, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.
Stevenson, Robert Louis, Treasure Island
Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William Makepeace, Vanity Fair
Tolkien, J.R.R., The Lord of the Rings
Trollope, Anthony, Barcester Towers
Waugh, Evelyn, Brideshead Revisited
Wilde, Oscar, The Picture of Dorian Grey
Wolfe, Virginia, To the Lighthouse; Mrs. Dalloway
PART 2:
TEEN BOOK LIST
SSR one pager. Complete this handout as it relates to your second book.
SSR one pager-- web version
We will begin British Literature by reading one of the many novels written over the last 400 years. Americans have adopted their language from Britain, from the pidgin language of the Anglo-Saxons mixed with Norman French after the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066. It's changed a wee little over the last nearly thousand years. From Great Britain we find many of the greatest writers in English: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Keats. Novelists span from Daniel DeFoe to Ian McKewan-- choose one that strikes your fancy. The second part of the assignment requires you to read a book from the teen book list and complete an SSR one-pager, a form you will find at the bottom of this page.
ASSIGNMENT
Read one title from each reading list. For the first reading list, find two quotations for each question accompanied by your thoughtful analysis which should be roughly a paragraph equivalent to roughly six sentences. With one novel, five questions, and two responses for each, you should have ten responses per novel and and for the second novel from the teen book list you should complete the SSR one-pager. The questions following each category for quotes are designed to help you think about what to look for and what you may write about—you do not need to answer each question. One of your novels must be from the British Literature list and one from the teen book list.
PART 1:
1-2 Setting: Where does the story take place? What is the relationship of the place to the characters? What kinds of language does the other use?
3-4 Character: How is the main character described physically? What is something they do that defines them? Something they say? What does someone say about them?
5-6 Conflict: What confronts the main character or characters? What must they overcome? How will they do this?
7-8 Culture/Belief: What sorts of practices do the main characters engage in? Do these define the character/s? Are they religious? What do they believe in? How do we know?
9-10 Resolution: How does the main character solve their problem? How do things work out for other characters? This is important why?
Brontë, Charlotte, Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, The Last Days of Pompeii
Bunyan, John, Pilgrim's Progress
Butler, Samuel, The Way of All Flesh
Carroll, Lewis, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Conrad, Joseph, Lord Jim
DeFoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield; Great Expectations; The Pickwick Papers
Doyle, Arthur Conan, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Durrell, Lawrence, The Alexandria Quartet
DuMaurier, Daphne, Rebecca
Eliot, George, Adam Bede, Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner
Fielding, Henry, Tom Jones
Forster, E.M., A Passage to India; Howard's End; A Room with a View
Galsworthy, John, The Forsyte Saga
Graves, Robert, I, Claudius
Greene, Graham, The Power and the Glory
Hardy, Thomas, The Return of the Native; Tess of the D'Urbervilles; The Mayor of Casterbridge
Joyce, James, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses
Kipling, Rudyard, Captains Couragous, Kim
Lawrence, D.H. Sons and Lovers
Lewis, C.S., The Chronicles of Narnia
Maugham, W. Somerset, Of Human Bondage
Orwell, George, Animal Farm
Scott, Sir Walter, Ivanhoe
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein
Smollett, Tobias, Humphrey Clinker
Sterne, Laurence, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.
Stevenson, Robert Louis, Treasure Island
Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William Makepeace, Vanity Fair
Tolkien, J.R.R., The Lord of the Rings
Trollope, Anthony, Barcester Towers
Waugh, Evelyn, Brideshead Revisited
Wilde, Oscar, The Picture of Dorian Grey
Wolfe, Virginia, To the Lighthouse; Mrs. Dalloway
PART 2:
TEEN BOOK LIST
SSR one pager. Complete this handout as it relates to your second book.
SSR one pager-- web version