Thor’s Day, December 6: The Wandering Outlaw
EQ: How did Byron’s vision create the modern “hero”?
· Welcome! Gather pen/pencil, paper, wits!
· Lecture/Presentation: George Gordon, Lord Byron
· George Gordon, Lord Byron: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
o Freewrite and Quote: The Wandering Outlaw
· George Gordon, Lord Byron: “Darkness”
o Freewrite and Quote: The Wandering Outlaw
· Journals, Notebooks, Letter to Parents
ELACC12RI3: Analyze and explain how individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop
ELACC12RI6: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text
ELACC12W2: Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas
ELACC12W4: Produce clear and coherent writing appropriate to task, purpose, and audience
ELACC12W10: Write routinely over extended and shorter time frames
ELACC12SL1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions
ELACC12SL3: Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, evidence and rhetoric
ELACC12L1: Demonstrate standard English grammar and usage in speaking and writing.
ELACC12L2: Use standard English capitalization, punctuation, spelling in writing.
ELACC12L6: Acquire and use general academic and domain-specific words and phrases
BritLitComp Assignments, Fall 2012
Unit Four: The Individual Vision (Part II)
26 COMPUTER LAB – revise Analytical Essay #2
27 The Beauty Myth: Shelley, Byron, Keats
28 Introduction to Mary Shelley
29 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
30 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
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3 Introduction to Project Essay – Parameters and Possibilities
4 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
5 COMPUTER LAB – work on Project Essay Rough Draft
6 George Gordon, Lord Byron, “Darkness”
7 COMPUTER LAB – work on Project Essay Rough Draft
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10 COMPUTER LAB – work on Project Essay Rough Draft; ESSAYS GLADLY TAKEN!
11 W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”; T. S. Eliot, “The Wasteland,” “The Hollow Men”
12 COMPUTER LAB – Project Essay Rough Draft DUE END OF BLOCK
13 Unit Four Reading Journals DUE
14 Introduction to Final Exam – Work on Exam Packet
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17 COMPUTER LAB – Work on Essay Revision, Exam Packet
18 Work on Exam Packet
19 Work on Exam Packet
20 COMPUTER LAB – Work on Essay Revision, Exam Packet
21 Work on Exam Packet
********HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY AND A WONDERFUL LIFE!!********
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)
· b. George Noel Gordon 1/22/1788
o Born with a clubfoot
o “Poor Nobility” – at 10 got title Lord Byron and family’s debts
o Famously gorgeous – women made advances to him at age 9!
· Cambridge University (cf Milton)
o Skipped class, read everything
o Not allowed to have a dog, so got a bear! http://www.byronhs.new.rschooltoday.com/
· Literary Giant
o Friends with Keats, the Shelleys
o “Byronic Hero” (below)
d. 4/19/1824 fighting in Greece’s War For Independence. To this day, Byron is regarded as a Hero in Greece.
“The Byronic Hero”
· High intelligence, sophistication – tremendous reading and “taste”
· Dissolute, self-indulgent but –
o not exactly “immoral”: knows better; bothered by fall from grace and by fact that it doesn’t bother him very much
o never “vulgar” – the finest “tastes” in dissipation
· Brooding, moody, self-critical, existentially adrift, introspective; depressive/bipolar tendencies; self-destructive, self-immolating
· Gorgeous, mysterious, sexually attractive – seducer & seducee
· A loner who despises society but also is unhappy being alone
But his writing isn’t all dark; much of his stuff, Don Juan in particular, is very, very funny. But we’re not reading that. We’re going very dark today.
George Gordon, Lord Byron: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Excerpts from Canto I (1812)IV.
Childe Harold basked him in the noontide sun,
Disporting there like any other fly,
Nor deemed before his little day was done
One blast might chill him into misery.
But long ere scarce a third of his passed by,
Worse than adversity the Childe befell;
He felt the fulness of satiety:
Then loathed he in his native land to dwell,
Which seemed to him more lone than eremite's sad cell.
V.
For he through Sin's long labyrinth had run,
Nor made atonement when he did amiss,
Had sighed to many, though he loved but one,
And that loved one, alas, could ne'er be his.
Ah, happy she! to 'scape from him whose kiss
Had been pollution unto aught so chaste;
Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss,
And spoiled her goodly lands to gild his waste,
Nor calm domestic peace had ever deigned to taste.
VI.
And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart,
And from his fellow bacchanals would flee;
'Tis said, at times the sullen tear would start,
But pride congealed the drop within his e'e:
Apart he stalked in joyless reverie,
And from his native land resolved to go,
And visit scorching climes beyond the sea;
With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe,
And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below.
IX.
And none did love him: though to hall and bower
He gathered revellers from far and near,
He knew them flatterers of the festal hour;
The heartless parasites of present cheer.
Yea, none did love him--not his lemans dear--
But pomp and power alone are woman's care,
And where these are light Eros finds a feere;
Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,
And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair. / Excerpts from Canto III (1816)
III.
In my youth's summer I did sing of One,
The wandering outlaw of his own dark mind;
Again I seize the theme, then but begun,
And bear it with me, as the rushing wind
Bears the cloud onwards: in that tale I find
The furrows of long thought, and dried-up tears,
Which, ebbing, leave a sterile track behind,
O'er which all heavily the journeying years
Plod the last sands of life--where not a flower appears….
XII.
But soon he knew himself the most unfit
Of men to herd with Man; with whom he held
Little in common; untaught to submit
His thoughts to others, though his soul was quelled,
In youth by his own thoughts; still uncompelled,
He would not yield dominion of his mind
To spirits against whom his own rebelled;
Proud though in desolation; which could find
A life within itself, to breathe without mankind….
XVI.
Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,
With naught of hope left, but with less of gloom;
The very knowledge that he lived in vain,
That all was over on this side the tomb,
Had made Despair a smilingness assume,
Which, though 'twere wild--as on the plundered wreck
When mariners would madly meet their doom
With draughts intemperate on the sinking deck--
Did yet inspire a cheer, which he forbore to check….
XLII.
But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell,
And THERE hath been thy bane; there is a fire
And motion of the soul, which will not dwell
In its own narrow being, but aspire
Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore,
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire
Of aught but rest; a fever at the core,
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore.
Freewrite: The Wandering Outlaw
Thinking about the “Byronic Hero” encountered in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, freewrite 100 words total to answer one or both questions:
· What character in a movie or other story does all this remind you of; and
· Why is this kind of hero so popular?
Quote to support. Be sure to INTEGRATE the quote:
· According to Byron, “_____.”
· As Byron would say, “______.”
Now let’s contemplate the end of the world.
George Gordon, Lord Byron: “Darkness” (1816)
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went – and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires – and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings – the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded – and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash – and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless – they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again; – a meal was bought
With blood, and each sat sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left. / All earth was but one thought – and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails – men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corpse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress – he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects – saw, and shriek'd, and died –
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend.
The world was void,
The populous and the powerful – was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless –
A lump of death – a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge –
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon their mistress had expir'd before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them – She was the Universe.
The End
In most apocalyptic novels and movies, Man is at fault – people have angered God, or created a bomb or disease, or something.
But in Byron’s “Darkness” (and in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man) neither people nor God seem to have caused The End.
It just happens; no explanation.
Freewrite 100 words: What difference does this make? Why do we prefer stories in which we are to blame for The End?
Quote to support. Be sure to INTEGRATE the quote:
· According to Byron, “_____.”
· As Byron would say, “______.”
Submit today: BOTH 100 word freewrites with integrated quotes:
· The Wandering Outlaw (Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage)
· The End (“Darkness”)
Do not submit Byron poems; keep them for your notebook.
TOMORROW: COMPUTER LAB!!
Unit Four Reading Journal Checklist/Rubric
25 pt. Major Grade due end of class Thursday, December 13
Be sure to include this checklist with your Reading Journal.
Your Unit Four Journal needs TEN quotations with 100-wd reflections from:
· At least ONE: William Blake: Milton (“And Did Those Feet”), The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “The Lamb,” “The Tyger,” “London,” “Introduction to Songs of Innocence”
· At least ONE: William Wordsworth, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” “We Are Seven,” “The Tables Turned”
· At least ONE: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
· At least ONE: John Keats, “Endymion,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
· At least ONE: Tom Ford, Interview on NPR
· At least ONE: Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
· At least ONE: George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, “Darkness”
· At least ONE: T. S. Eliot, The Wasteland, “The Hollow Men”
· At least TWO MORE FROM THIS LIST (no rappers, movies, etc.)
1. Quotation and 100 wd. Reflection from Blake:
2. Quotation and 100 wd. Reflection from Wordsworth:
3. Quotation and 100 wd. Reflection from Coleridge:
4. Quotation and 100 wd. Reflection from Keats:
5. Quotation and 100 wd. Reflection from Ford:
6. Quotation and 100 wd. Reflection from Mary Shelley:
7. Quotation and 100 wd. Reflection from Byron:
8. Quotation and 100 wd. Reflection from Eliot:
9. Quotation and 100 wd. Reflection from ______
10. Quotation and 100 wd. Reflection from ______
BritLitComp Unit Four Notebook: The Individual Vision
15 Point Major Grade due END OF CLASS Thor’s Day, December 13
MUST be submitted NEATLY in a BINDER, “more or less” in this order
/10 pts: Syllabus: Rule Britannia! and CLOZE (submit with each notebook)