Week 2 2007 Hi all- hope the week has not been too exhausting

Thank you all for your keen participation during this second week.
Third years: we had a rollicking time mulling over the nature of love in the sixteenth century, contrasting that with love in the 21st century. Are there any essential similarities? Certainly love stories from the 16th century seem to be filling our cinemas.

My suggestions for third year live journal topics for week 2 are: write your own response challenging Ralegh’s cynicism about love; write a comment on Marvell’s attitude towards his Coy Mistress; tell a love story of your own!
Review a journal by one of the second years.

Second years we had a great time (despite technical difficulties) exploring the impassioned world of Romanticism, especially the experiences of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The film Pandaemonium gives an excellent insight into the context in which these two poets began their revolutionary writing.

Suggestions for LiveJournal entries for Week 2: Write a letter to Wordsworth agreeing/ or disagreeing with his view on Children as expressed in the stanza 5 of his “Ode to Childhood” (Norton Vol 2 p.309); Write a letter to Charlotte Smith telling her how much you like her poem “To Night” on page 40-41; Write your own poem about what you think it would be like to a woman in 1790.

First years: we are now beginning to get into gear. Three fabulous, deep, searching stories about various aspects of relationships (Walker, Chekhov, Melville)- lots of excellent discussion… but…. a need for more of you to get the text and read before the tuts… so let’s see a 100% improvement on this for next week!… Great to hear so much enthusiasm from many of you about the use of this technology as part of our teaching method…. and those of you having “teething problems” please see me for assistance… I hope we can all be swimming without life rafts by the end of next week!
Now some ideas for your LiveJournals for this week:
Tell a short story about someone in your life who you find really hard to understand (is that what the narrator in Melville’s story has done?)
Pretend to be either Anna or Gurov and write a letter to a friend explaining your difficulty.
Write a letter either supporting Maggie or Dee in the way they lead their lives.
Write a review of a second or third year student’s LiveJournal entry (go on … I dare you!)… but be sure to keep a copy of your review and cut and paste it back into your own LiveJournal…..
And by the way: a friendly reminder: I have already had one first year student ring me and tell me: “I just wrote all this stuff into my Journal and then when I click the “Post” button it suddenly all disappeared!” Ouch!…. caution… (she may have pressed the wrong button…) but at ALL events: do what I have suggested in the Unit Notes: write your LiveJournal entries into a Word Document first and …. then….. cut and paste this into LiveJournal… then you can’t lose it…. sound reasonable? Ciao
Have a great weekend.
MG