Simon C. Edgett
Overview:
This introductory series of lessons is designed for the classroom that has not yet introduced the Romantic Period. The lessons provide a background on the changes in philosophy that brought about much of the literary and artistic changes during the period. By studying various works of poetry by the key poets of the time, students will learn firsthand how the elements of Romanticism had an influence on and were evidenced in works of the period. Key to these philosophical changes are an appreciation or love of nature in the "sublime," the importance of the individual as expressed through imagination and emotion, and the rejection of societal constructs.
Students will begin by analyzing a poem, "I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth, as a group, analyzing the poem's meaning through figurative language and other devices. The class will then draw their own understanding of the Romantic Philosophy by looking at the attributes of the movement in the context of the poem. Once students have an understanding of the concepts, they will move to independent analysis of other period poems and continue their discussions in class.
The final assessment piece asks students to compose a formal analysis paper of one of the poems from this series of lessons.
Objectives:
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Students will be able to list the key components of the Romantic Movement and apply them to several works by period writers.
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Methods:
"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth [Since this is a shorter poem with relatively simple vocabulary it makes a good introduction to the ideas of the period.]
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Read the poem aloud in the class or have a volunteer read it. Clarify any vocabulary.
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Break students into four groups and have each group summarize one of the stanzas from the poem.
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Share their summaries and ask the class for feedback that might help to complete the summaries.
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Record the class's summaries on an overhead, chart paper, or other medium.
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Have students trace the emotions of the poem's speaker throughout the poem. When is he the happiest? When is he the least happy?
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Have students look for instances of figurative language such as metaphor and personification. How does Wordsworth use these devices and for what purpose?
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Use these discussions to introduce the key components of the Romantic Movement to the class: emotion, imagination, individuality, rejection of society, and the "sublime".
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Continue the discussion of the period by looking at other poems, such as:
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"Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye on a Tour July 13, 1798" by William Wordsworth
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"Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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"To Autumn" by John Keats
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"She Walks in Beauty" by George Gordon, Lord Byron
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Assessment:
Students will write a two-page analysis of a poem from the period in which they analyze the appearance of romantic conventions in the poem.