Welcome to Blogging in Literature Across Time and Space (ENGL111) at ACU

Hi All, here are the topics for the First Blog of the Semester

Chose any of the topics listed below,  or create a topic of your own – as long as it is in some way connected to the themes of our unit so far.

Remember you are permitted to include personal reflections alongside your literary reflections or creations. But you must try to write as coherently and as grammatically accurate as you can. Always edit your work before your final posting. If you use any images (other than your own photographs) please also give the source link. If you use any text other than your own please also give the source.

Enjoy your blogging this semester and make your blogs as visually and textually interesting as you can. Remember to have a look at the criteria for this activity in your unit outline (on page 7) after the detailed description of Assignment 1. Also scroll to the APPENDICES (page 13-17) which gives you more detailed task description and also asks you to keep in mind the focal topic for this unit:

How does the study of literature help me to understand my own experience? (see page 16 of the unit outline)

Remember also the minimum word length requirements for Blogs (200) and Peer reviews (100). This is not meant to restrict your creative enthusiasm, but is a guideline. At all events well written, concise work is often much better than long-winded, rambling and poorly edited constructions…

Here are your topics for your first Blog

1/ Create your own topic that has grown out of your reading and interests in the literature and literary contexts that have been opened up in the first few weeks of the unit.

2/ Write a short description of a contemporary Australian character along the lines of the kind of detail that Chaucer uses in his mini character sketches in “The General Prologue”: eg: clothing, facial details, gestures, character traits, kind of car, handbag, laptop… etc… )

3/ Choose one of the authors that has been introduced to you; choose one of her/his poems (or lines from a poem) and express why you think this author has struck a chord with you.

4/ What impact has watching one of the the videos placed into the Weekly Readings and Video link made on you?

5/ Either a) Write a poem attempting to follow Anglo Saxon patterning beginning with the line “a gleaming plain girdled with waters” Or b) Write a prose passage beginning with the sentence “Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark, nursed a hard grievance”. (both quotes are from the “Heorot is Attacked” section of Beowulf.

6/ In your own words write a vivid sensory description of one of the art works to which you have been introduced in the first weeks of the unit.

7) Write a short poem in Chaucerian style beginning with the words

“Whan that August with his showres soote

The droghte of July hath perced to the roote. “

(you are of course permitted to write your poem in modern English!!)

6/ Write a paragraph on what has most touched your feelings and imagination in the first few weeks of this unit.