Class Agenda 6.27

1. Quiz: what kind of conflict does the play set up in the first act? what elements of the play interested you or confused you?
If you weren't able to do the reading, give me an indication why so we can try and solve your problem.

2. Powerpoint: elements of drama

3. Partner Work: Can you establish the comic moments in the play from the moments that present new plot information?

ACT ONE

PLOT MOMENTS
COMIC MOMENTS: the moments in the play Wilde probably intended to be funny
CITE EXAMPLES FROM TEXT

4. Class Reading

5. In-class writing

6. Break

7. Film

The Importance of Being Earnest

Reading Assignment: Page numbers Off

The bookstore ordered the wrong edition of the book.

So the syllabus says to read to page 56. That's basically the book. If you can't get that far, stop at page 46. If you can't get that far, stop at page 24.

Blog Assignment One: Satire and Marriage

Blog Goal

The goal of this blog is to successfully find, read, evaluate, and cite this reaction to "The Importance of Being Earnest."

Audience

Students will write this blog with several audiences in mind: their classmates, students from another class, and outside readers. To that end, they should begin their blogs by giving their readers a brief summary of what they are doing, why they are doing it, and what they will explain (1-2 sentences).

Structure

Blogs are 200-250 words, or about two or three paragraphs. They are written in a "professional casual" voice: you may use the first person ("I"), you may offer some jokes, you may express some feelings, but you must also remain professional and stay on task.  

Read

Some of your blog should summarize the main points of the website (2-3 sentences).

Evaluate

Some of your blog should react to the website by considering the key terms the author uses, such as satire. Connect such terms to a moment you discovered in the text.

Cite

One sentence from your blog should contain a direct quotation. Be sure to cite the webpage correctly and provide a bibliographical citation at the end. You can get these methods from the LaGuardia library homepage. Note the MLA style guide link, which is your friend.

Oscar Wilde

• God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too.
  • Quoted in "In Victorian days and other papers" By Sir David Oswald Hunter-Blair, (New York: Longmans, 1939, p122).

• I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
  • Quoted in "Oscar Wilde, an idler's impression" By Edgar Saltus, (Chicago Brothers of the Book, 1917, p20).

Hélas

To drift with every passion till my soul

Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play

Is it for this that I have given away

Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?

Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll

Scrawled over on some boyish holiday

With idle songs for pipe and virelay,

Which do but mar the secret of the whole.

Surely there was a time I might have trod

The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance

Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:

Is that time dead? Lo, with a little rod

I did but touch the honey of romance-- 

And must I lose a soul's inheritance?  

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