Thursday, December 10 " The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"

Learning targets: 1) I can read, annotate, and analyze informational texts on topics related to diverse and non-traditional cultures and viewpoints. 

 2) I can determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative connotative, and technical meanings; and analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone 

3) I can determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis and an objective summary of the text. 

Coming up: vocabulary quiz tomorrow.  If you are participating in the theatre productions on Thursday or Friday, make sure you make arrangements to take your quiz by the end of the day on Friday. There is no make-up, as you had plenty of heads up.

In class: continuing with "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"  As of yesterday, everyone should have finished section V (stanza 66) as I went over in detail in class. Make sure to make annotations. 

We have covered the significant parts of the narrative.

Make sure that you understand stanza 65

    O happy living things! no tongue

Their beauty might declare:

A spring of love gushed from my heart,

And I blessed them unaware;

Sure my kind saint took pity on me,

And I was blessed unaware.

If you need additional support, I will be in the library after school. There is also time available during the school day. Please ask. 

For those of you who have finished and turned in the graphic organizer, I am returning them graded today. 

Here is the essay, so you may get ahead.  Note that all organizers are due tomorrow.  (class handout / copy below)

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Expository essay assignment.   Due Wednesday, December 16 by the end of the day. If you receive an extension, this is due on Thursday.  Everyone must turn in the essay and an outline, as shown on the back of this sheet.

What is an expository essay? This genre of essay requires you to investigate an idea, evaluate evidence, expound on the idea, and set forth an argument concerning that idea in a clear and concise manner. This is exactly what you have done in the Hamlet and “A Room of One’s Own” essays.

Directions:

Introduction:

Begin with your hook sentence that is a general statement about the topic

Include in the introduction genre (poem in this case), author / poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the title of the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

A clear, concise, and defined thesis statement that occurs in the first paragraph of the essay.

Your introduction should include the basic points that you will cover within the essay. Take this from your outline.

Minimum 3 body paragraphs

Each must include evidential support; that is textual evidence. Weave in the text. Use quotations. Cite by stanza.

  Eg. “The Mariner hath his will” (Mariner 4).

Make sure that within each body paragraph you have a controlling idea, support / evidence for your statement and very importantly an analysis statement. Why or how is what you say significant.

Conclusion: A conclusion that does not simply restate the thesis, but readdresses it in light of the evidence provided.

Essay topic choices.  Read carefully and ask specific questions.

Below you will find the list of 5 themes that you have explored in the poem. These were at the top of the graphic organizer.  Select one and show how Coleridge develops the theme in his poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and how it supports the philosophical ideas of Romanticism: 1)  love of Nature, 2) the idealization of rural living, 3) a faith in common people, 4) an emphasis on freedom, 5) individualism, spontaneity, intuition, feeling, imagination, wonder, 5) a passionate individual religiosity 6)  life after death and 7.an organic view of the world.

1.            The Natural World (It can be beautiful and frightening and powerful) (often simultaneously),

2.            The Spiritual World: The Metaphysical (The poem occurs in the natural, physical world-the land and ocean. However, the work has popularly been interpreted as an allegory of man's connection to the spiritual, metaphysical world.

3.            Liminality-"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" typifies the Romantic fascination with liminal spaces. A liminal space is defined as a place on the edge of a realm or between two realms, whether a forest and a field, or reason and imagination.

4.            Imprisonment-"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is in many ways a portrait of imprisonment and its inherent loneliness and torment.

5.            Retribution-The poem is a tale of retribution, since the Ancient Mariner spends most of the poem paying for his one, impulsive error of killing the Albatross.

Name_________________________________-

Topic Choice_________________________________________-

Thesis statement: _________________________________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Three points that you include in your introduction that you will make in your three body paragraphs.

Point 1________________________________________________________________________________

Point 2________________________________________________________________________________

Point 3________________________________________________________________________________

Conclusion:  Possibilities

What broader knowledge is to be learned from has Coleridge’s development of the theme of  ____________________ in the “Mariner” ?  Think about long term outcomes.