Macbeth in the modern world.

Drew the four apparitions with quotes, read up to Act 5 discussing specific points in the play and watched a movie. That is all.

Homework: - Mark Essays.

Roman A.

Heathcliff

Sorry for the late blog everyone,

Now in this lesson we looked at Heathcliff, his character and how he is described. For the start sir asked us to write three things we know about Heathcliff. Although most of us knew much about him, yet we knew little, he seemed like a mystery to us. Sir then gave us a sheet with descriptions of HEathcliff from the book and asked us to put them in order of least respectful to the most. We all had them in similar orders, "papa" and "my Heathcliff" being at the top and "imp of satan" and "dark devil gypsy" at the bottom. We then discussed what the words mean and what they represent.

We then, began to write an essay about Heathcliff. In the essay we focused on AO2 and how they create effect, we also DRIPPED in a bit of AO4 not CHUNKS. But most importantly, we focused on the narrative structure and how it is linked to Heathcliff.

Homework:
Finish the model answer essay so it flows well. Continue your reading of Wuthering Heights

Thats all
Aisha

The witches again

We started off reviewing gothic themes in Macbeth - and the witches / supernatural / evil were central to these.

Then we read through A1s4 and discussed the four apparitions.

We then reviewed iambic pentameter and introduced trochaic tetrameter, which the witches' verse mostly appears as. This distinction between iambic pentameter and trochaic tetrameter can be used for AO2 in essays, because it highlights the othernesss of the weird sisters.

STRESS
Banana is not pronounced BAR-NAR-NAR, it is b'NAR-na. So the stress is on the second syllable. Compare Canada. Native speakers have an ear for these natural rhythms, but people who are not native English speakers can fluff up the stress and pronounce things like BAR-NAR-NAR.

IAMBIC PENTAMETER
An iamb is a unit of meter (or foot) made of two syllables – unstressed then stressed. EG:
He said - goodbye - instead.
We speak using iambs in day to day English.
The pentameter bit means there are five iambs per line (ie 10 syllables).

TROCHAIC TETRAMETER
A trochee is a “foot” consisting of two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed (the opposite of an iamb). Eg ENGland.
Tetrameter means there are four feet (ie 8 syllables).

MAIN TASK
Writing a spell with “ingredients” of gothic genre in Macbeth.
In pairs... Write it in trochaic tetrameter. Include all of your gothic elements from your starter and anymore you can think of.

HOMEWORK
Mini Essay on Macbeth’s relationship with the supernatural.

semantic fields

We started the lesson carrying on from Fridays looking at liminal images and discussing what they showed. We then came up with 3 liminal elements in Wuthering Heights, 2 questions we wanted to know about oppositions in the text, as well as an analogy. My analogy was Wuthering heights is like reverse skittles where the outside is juxtaposed to the flavour inside.

We then held a long discusiion based upon the oppositions and the liminal that existed in Wuthering Heights and bloody chamber. We discovered oppositions are fixed whereas the characters who have liminal aspects can alternate between the two.

We were then all given a sheet where we linked characters with an adjective or a noun, and compared our opinions with one another and how they related, or opposed eachother. On the other side of the sheet was a critic's intepretation of Wuthering Heights with all the words we involved.

We then read two extracts where we had to find a pattern of words with similar meanings and group them up, these are known as semantic fields, some of the semantic fields found within the two extracts were; hidden, battle, household/domestic, colours and luxuries.

Our last task of the lesson was to read an article called Life on the Edge - opposition and fragmentation in Wuthering Heights, we then repeated our initial task of the lesson; findind 3 oppositions, 2 questions and an analogy. 'Lockwood is like an X factor contestant he has more potential than he knows'.

Our homework was to comment on this blog and to sum up each article in 10 bullet points.

Leigh

Liminality, symbols, motifs and themes

Hello Class and welcome to my blog!

We entered the class to be confronted with two questions:

1. Males: Would you describe yourself as a boy or as a man? and why?
2. Female: Would you describe yourself as a girl or a woman? and why?

Many came to the conclusion that they would describe themselves as a boy/girl because they didn't want to be fully responsible like a adult has to. I myself said I don't feel mature enough to call myself a man (which was certainly proved towards the end of the lesson)

Mr Sadgrove then taught us what the word Liminal meant, so he presented us with this definition:

• The unfixed position between any two oppositional terms; the experience of being on a threshold or a boundary, marginal.
• Liminal- of, pertaining to, or situated at the limen (threshold)

To help us remember the word, we were told to draw a picture representing the meaning . So if you were not present in the lesson, do this.

The class was then given an article from Emagazine (which sir has posted the login details below this post). This article consisted of liminality within Wuthering Heights and which characters had barriers, keeping them separate to others in any different way).

We came to the conclusion that Heathcliffe's Liminality was:

• He's different to the others because `Heathcliffe` is the name of a dead child. So he is, in a way, in a marginal position between the living and the dead.
• He is also on the borderline of a supernatural creature because the Earnshaw's call him the "imp of Satan" and when he first arrives, he is known as "as dark almost as if it came from the devil"
• He is also inbetween the "gypsy brat" and the rich Earnshaws. (Inbetween two barriers is the key point in understanding what liminal means.)

The article also mentioned Life and Death:

• In Chapter 3, when Catherine’s ghost appears, the window acts as the barrier between the living and the supernatural. Therefore Catherine also has liminal elements.
• Catherine is seen as a ghost before she dies, so she is once again trapped between the real world and the dead.
• Heathcliffe's dies, but his eyes are still open. From this we can say that he is, like Catherine, within those boundaries of life and death.

Nature and Culture:

• The window pane breaks down the barrier between nature and culture. It's the portal between instinct and civilisation.

Lastly, we were given a sheet, with a table labelled with Symbol, Motif and Theme. we had to decide which of the following went with what word.

• Power
• Weather
• Windows
• Love
• Confinement and escape
• Books
• Dreams
• The Bible
• Animals
• Childhood and Family
• Suffering
• A Whip
• Communication
• Transcendence (above other things)
• Religion
• Economic and Social Status
• Violence

Homework:
-Essay- Discuss the idea of the liminality with reference to Wuthering Heights.
Focus on how it is communicated through (symbols, motifs, windows, doors, ghosts, dreams) Use AO2 and some dripped in AO4

-Annotate the rest of the symbols sheet

-Read Chapter 6

Feel free to add anything I may of missed out on, due to the extreme laughing!! Thanks :D

Chris W

Wuthering Heights Radio

In order to help you help yourselves you should go on BBC iPlayer and listen to the radio drama which dramatises Wuthering Heights.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007jlky/Emily_Bronte_Wuthering_Heights_Episode_1/


Some questions to think about:
1) What is the effect of the removal of the narrative structure?
2)How is the dramatic version diffrent from the written novel?
3)Does this change your view of any of the characters; are they more or less "monumental" ?

Roman A.

Emagazine login

This year's emagazine log in details are:

Login: emagazine9
Password: cs349qt

There's bare stuff on the Gothic. Happy reading.

DB