Note: This lesson was in its entirety was done asynchronously with no teacher, therefore the group activities and communication/spirit reading sections were not performed during class, for there wasn’t one.
Aim: How can further implementation of our poetry skills enhance our exploration and analysis of Shakespearean Sonnets?
Do Now: (Think/Pair/Share)
With your partner, consider the word “Summer”. What symbolic meanings or connotations are usually associated with this word? Why?
For this lesson, the Do Now tasks the students to think about the word “Summer” and come up with connotations or other meanings/feelings it can have. Fairly unanimously, the class picked up how the word Summer invokes images of the beach, cool drinks, and endless amounts of free time, which in turn, meant the word “Summer” had a positive connotation. As for deeper meaning, while it is a joke for some students that school is a prison and that they are trapped there, there must be something to be said how Summer is symbolic of freedom, as for most kids, getting to Summer after 9 months of school is quite the grind, and is often the light at the end of the tunnel.
After the Do Now, we were introduced to Shakespeare's sonnets and how there were very specific qualifications/ a certain writing style for all of his sonnets.
These qualifications include:
Shakespearean sonnets are fourteen line poems.
They are traditionally about love and romance.
Divided into four parts: three quatrains (four lines each) and a rhyming couplet at the end of the poem (two lines)
First quatrain introduces the subject.
Second quatrain complicates the subject.
The couplet resolves or alters the subject in some way.
Follows the rhyme scheme- ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
Sonnets are written in iambic pentameter (a metric line consisting of unstressed syllables followed by stressed syllables)
Along with these rules, the lesson explains how each in English, a syllable is either stressed or unstressed, and how Shakespeare utilized something called a iambic foot, which makes a pattern out of these syllables and their stresses by having two syllable words, each with the first syllable unstressed and the second one stressed. When placed next to each other, these “foots” create an Iambic Measure, which create a rhythm that mimics a heartbeat.
We then watched a video, (https://www.youtube.com/
The image below shows this, where the highlighted syllables are stressed, forming the Pentameter.
After learning the basics, students were asked to examine and deconstruct one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets, unenthusiastically called “Sonnet 18”.
Students used this chart (shown below) to guide them through the process by looking for things like Figurative Language, Imagery, etc.
Sonnet 18
1 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
2 Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
3 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
4 And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
5 Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
6 And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
7 And every fair from fair sometime declines,
8 By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
9 But thy eternal summer shall not fade
10 Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
11 Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
12 When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
13 So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
14 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
After analyzing the Sonnet, the students answer some questions relating to the passage, the first one looping back to the Do Now to an extent by describing how he prefers the Summer day over the rough winds of May. The second question actually deals with some issues of Summer, which is highlighted in line 7 where he discusses how the often beloved Summer weather will sometimes turn for the worse. The 3rd question asks what the main difference was between the subject of the sonnet and summer, the 4th highlights the minor alteration of the sonnet’s ideas and themes that would come to be expected from the third segment of Shakespeare’s sonnets and the final question asks for the students general ideas of a theme for the reading.
Using the same chart as a basis, the students also took a look at Sonnet 130.
Sonnet 130
1 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun,
2 Coral is far more red, than her lips red,
3 If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:
4 If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head:
5 I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
6 But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
7 And in some perfumes is there more delight,
8 Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
9 I love to hear her speak, yet well I know,
10 That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
11 I grant I never saw a goddess go,
12 My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
13 And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,
14 As any she belied with false compare.
This sonnet was a bit more humorous, or could even be considered a parody of a Petrarchan poem, which was a type of love poem that praised the beauties of the mistress, some of which Shakespeare is grouped in as a writer of. Shakespeare’s take on the poem points out all the faults of the mistress. The speaker compares all these things that are much more beautiful and superior compared to the mistress. An example would be when the speaker compares their mistress’ breath to that of the scent of the perfume. They point out the fact that their mistress’ breath is often unpleasant.
In terms of the question, they ask about how the speaker speaks about the mistress and how it would be unconventional for a poem of its status to speak about the mistress that way, ultimately asking in the last question if it could be considered a parody.
At the end of the lesson there are two links, the first being another look at iambic pentameter, and the second being a Crash Course on Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Video 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Video 2 (below): https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Reflection
For today’s lesson, we learned about a very specific type of poetry style birthed from one of, if not the, greatest poet of all time. The importance of learning about sonnets is that we can understand and break down one of Shakespeare’s writing styles, it will become much easier to not only break down other Shakespearian work, but also be able to master other poets and types of poetry. Also, from a historical perspective, reading sonnets is a very good insight into life and culture at the time of Shakespeare’s writings. Other than that, this one lesson of many that we must take toward mastery of poetry.
No comments:
Post a Comment