Unit One: Part Two
Objectives: Review lit. elements, author’s craft, allegory, allusion; Byronic hero;
Frankenstein and Byron (anti-heroes)
Assessment: Build Frank; know Romanticism, Byronic hero; write poem on perception? Literary
analysis! Byron and Shelley
Day One
1. Begin Frankenstein unit: show PPT to introduce Shelley and the idea behind the novel.
a. PPT
b. Key themes
c. HO Reading Schedule (combo of listening in class and reading at home)
d. Journal assignments: model format for class
e. Listen to letters (1-4); stop and check frequently
f. Frame story-define and cite examples
2. Homework: Journal and read!
Day Two
1. Prof. book: Ch. 10, 19
2. Ch. 10: It’s more than just rain or snow
a. Review key points of chapter
b. Pair up and hand out different weather types. Have them define the literary meanings.
3. Ch. 19 Geography Matters…
a. Geography is like a character…it’s chosen specifically for that story
b. Think Huck Finn and Jim going down the river; Mississippi…tied to slave trading, leading
from North to South and all that it implies for mid 1800’s in the US
c. Geography + Stuff= hills, rivers, seas, etc. + politics, economics, history
d. Why didn’t Napoleon defeat Russia? Geography. Russian winter kicked his butt.
e. Brainstorm types of geography. Now, pair up and recall the settings of any story you
have read last year, or this year.
f. When a writer sends a character(s) south, it’s so they can run amok; the effects can be
tragic or comic; they are having direct, raw encounters with the subconscious.
g. Up and Down/High and Low: Low- swamps, bogs, darkness, fields, people, life, death;
High: snow, ice, purity, thin air, clear views, isolation, life, death.
h. North Pole- Walton’ view vs. Victor’s view (describe each)
4. Homework: apply what we learned from Ch. 10 & 19 and find evidence from the book to
support it.
Day Three
BR: How can cold be warm? How can good be bad?
1. “Bread” by Margaret Atwood
a. Read in class
b. Do handout activity
c. Discuss perception…what can it relate to other than bread?
2. Check Prof. book homework for Frankenstein
a. Share ideas on board
b. Why does Shelley choose this geography? How does it affect plot? Characters?
c. Listen to chapters in book; check for comprehension
d. Write in journals
3. Homework: Reading Schedule
4. HO Build-a-monster kits!
Day Four
BR:
1. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage by Byron p 813
a. Byron – famous by luck; cousin died in battle, next in line for Baronage (Baron Byron of
Rochdale); real name George Gordon; wrote first two cantos of this poem, was instantly
famous.
b. Byronic hero- dark qualities, not typical “hero”; highly intelligent, hypersensitive,
isolated from society, wanderer or in exile; isolation can be either from society or selfimposed; moody or passionate about a certain issue; his heightened emotional and
intellectual capacities make him arrogant, confident, abnormally sensitive. He rejects
the values and moral codes of society b/c he is unrepentant of past acts.
c. Summary of poem- “childe” meant a young noble awaiting knighthood. Title, like
Sir/Lord; a long, thinly disguised autobiographical poem about Byron’s own journeys.
i. Canto 1: immoral youth goes to Spain and Portugal; travels
ii. Canto 2: travels to Baltics, loves the Albanians, admires ancient Greece; political
statement on Greece’s oppression from Turkey
iii. Canto 3: reflective canto on Rousseau, Voltaire, past love/Princess Julia,
Waterloo and Napoleon; cynicism softens and Harold matures
iv. Canto 4: Best of four; Italy; meditation on suffering, imagination, the eternal,
solitude(virtues and vices), on love, truth, and nature. Our section is from his
reflection on the ocean (and as we all know, it’s not just geography, is it)
d. Elements: apostrophe- a speaker directly addresses an absent or dead person, an
abstract quality, or something nonhuman; Romantics loved this element
e. Spenserian stanza- ababbcbcc; first eight lines are iambic pentameter, last is iambic
hexameter
f. Read aloud once (I will)
g. Accountability groups to read and interpret each stanza.
h. How does it relate to Frankenstein?
2. Homework: Reading schedule/journal
Day Five
Finish book!!!!!
Set test date/work on project (Build a monster)