TGIF Everyone!
Above is a link to the a famous four-minute scene from Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936), about the negative sides of modern city life, and a link to a three-minute scene from the Charlie Chaplin movie The Circus (1928). By the way, Charlie Chaplin wrote, directed, and acted in both movies, as he did for almost all his movies (he also made all the music!). Watch them! they're easy to understand because there's very little talking, lots of gestures, and some subtitles. You can watch the WHOLE movie of The Circus on YouTube... **I can answer Ryoma and Kento's questions! How many movies did Charlie Chaplin make? 80!! His first seventy-five movies were silent, his last five movies talking (with sound), and his first sound movie was The Great Dictator (1940), that Ryoma watched in his English class in high school. Above are also two links to the French pianist and composer Erik Satie's most famous pieces, ones that you hear sometimes in movies or TV shows. Find him on youtube! Can you remember the following key points from today's class?
HOMEWORK (for July 7)
TOPICS FOR SUBMITTING COMMENTS (by July 4 at midnight) 1. Which do you prefer, a plain blue sky OR a blue sky with a red kite in it, nature only or nature with human touch??? Why? 2. Write about the scene from Charlie Chaplin's movie Modern Times. What message do you think Chaplin is trying to express about modern life??? 3. Write about the the scene from Charlie Chaplin's movie The Circus or about the whole movie (if you find and watch it on YouTube!). What does it show you about circuses and cities and entertainment and modern people, etc.? 4. Write about Erik Satie's music above. What impression does it give you?? Can you compare it to Bach or Beethoven's piano music? (Find links to their music on our blog's Day 7 After-Class Message)
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TGIF, everybody!
Do you like my Emily t-shirt? I bought it at HER house in Amherst... Really that's not MY t-shirt, but one off the Internet; mine is beige and large size. And on the back of the t-shirt, Emily is WINKING at you! wow... https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/ Also above are two youtube videos of poem #359 ("a Bird came down the Walk") by Emily Dickinson. Watch them! Check them out! They only take about 60 or 90 seconds each. From today's class, remember the following points:
HOMEWORK (for July 7): Read the Modernism lecture handout, topics 1-3. Read the "A Bird came down the Walk" lecture handout. Submit any comments or questions about Emily Dickinson or her poem, if you want to! TOPICS FOR COMMENTS (by July 4 midnight) Write about anything about Emily Dickinson's life or poems. Write your impressions of #359 ("A Bird came down the Walk"). Write about your impressions of a video of "A Bird came down the Walk." Write about your experience watching birds (or a bird). Ask a question about something in my lecture about "A Bird came down the Walk." Read one of your classmate's comments in this blog post and make a comment about them! Look at the famous true picture of Emily at age 16 (found on our Website: Spring Semester > Romanticism > Romantic Writers the Emily part of it).
TGIF, everybody!
I really recommend you to read "Annabel Lee" out loud enjoying the rhythm! Above you can find a picture of Poe's wife Virginia... The artist made the picture after Virginia died--he looked at her dead body to draw the picture! Also a Poe coffee cup with a great line from "Annabel Lee." Also a great fan art picture from the MANY on the Internet showing the last stanza of "Annabel Lee." Also four very different readings and animations and songs of the poem. Which one(s) do you prefer???? Why? "Annabel Lee" is a great poem, isn't it? It's so beautiful and so sad... I love the rhymes (sea, Lee, me, we; dreams, beams; rise, eyes; tide, side; etc.) and the "down down UP" rhythm (_ _ / _ _ / _ _ /). It's so fun (and sad and moving) to say the poem out loud! Remember the following points from today's class. 1) Poe often wrote about sad and dark things, but he also wrote about beauty and love a lot. Unlike Thoreau, Poe didn't care about nature. Instead, Poe liked imagination and emotion. 2) Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" comes from his situation with his wife Virginia, who died young, but remember that the poem is a fairy tale, a story, and not real life (so it's Annabel Lee, not Virginia; and it's many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea, not 1847 USA). 3) The poem shows that big, deep love can be so wonderful but also so terrible! (because every night the speaker "I" sleeps by the side of inside her tomb/grave/sepulcher). 4) The poem has so much consonance (especially r and l sounds) and assonance (especially long ee sounds), and so many nice rhymes (end rhyme and internal rhyme), and a lovely _ _ / rhythm (it was MAny and MAny a YEAR ago). And the last stanza has many internal rhymes and lots of assonance and consonance and big emotion. Read the last stanza out loud!! **Because Poe wrote the poem with two unaccented syllables followed by one accented syllable (down down UP or _ _ /), his poem reads really fast compared to usual poem rhythms (down UP or _ /) because his poem has fewer accented syllables and more unaccented syllables, and you read unaccented syllables faster than accented ones. HOMEWORK (for June 24)
COMMENTS TOPICS (by June 20) 1. Write your impressions of or questions about "Annabel Lee" and or Edgar Allan Poe. 2. Write about your own experience with (too) big love. 3. Watch the videos of the poem I put at the top of this blog post OR that I have on our website in the Spring Semester > Romanticism > Romantic Writers page for Poe and write about one of more of them. 4. Write about the images of Virginia and "Annabel Lee" that I put on this blog. TGIF, everybody!
From today's class, please remember the following points: 1) One theme (message) of Thoreau's poem is that nature (like ants and rain) is better than human creation (like books and beds). 2) However, Thoreau liked books, read them, wrote them, put them in his poem, etc.! (He just likes nature better than books in this poem!) 3) Moreover, Thoreau's poem also has a strict and artificial pattern/form: ABAB rhyme pattern and every line with ten syllables (five unaccented syllables and five accented ones), etc., so his poem does not have a very natural pattern/form! 4) Anyway, Thoreau increases beautiful repeating sounds (rhyme, consonance, assonance) in the last half of his poem when the rain is really falling, especially stanzas 7-10, so read them out loud and hear those sounds! HOMEWORK (for June 16): 1.Read my Day 8 After-Class Message on our website’s Spring Blog. 2.Read The Summer Rain LECTURE handout. 3.Read the Romantic Culture & Literature handout, topic 6, about Edgar Allan Poe. 4.Read Meishisen poem [9] “Annabel Lee.” Read the poem in English, Japanese, and English a few times, catching the easy words and imagining the situation and finding rhyme (end rhyme, internal rhyme), assonance, and consonance. BLOG COMMENT TOPICS (by June 13)
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