For Friday, February 27 and Thursday, March 5

Finish the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Friday, February 27.  We will spend time Friday brainstorming ideas for your project (worth two major grades).

For our TodaysMeet chatroom, you will be responding to the 2012 prompt on the AP Language and composition exam.  This chatroom will be open for one week; all comments must be in by March 5.

ROOM URL:  
http://today.io/Pstq

Kristof Kintera is one of the most successful and most interesting Czech artists of the youngest generation. His oeuvre is characteristic of a certain doubt concerning the possibilities and role of the arts.

I DESIRE:

1. For you to have a fun way to see how many creative ideas and proofs you can come up with as a whole group.  12 minds are better than 1.
2. A free exchange of ideas; feel free to disagree with one another; however, I do not want you to create dissension in the class.  Be respectful and fight fair.  Use concrete examples to back up your opinions.
3. Each student must contribute at least five comments to the chat room.  I will grade your comments as one minor grade.
4. Note, if your comment exceeds the character limit, just add another box.  
5. The prompt in the chat room is limited because of space; refer back to the blog for the entire prompt.
6. Have fun!  

THE PROMPT:
Consider the distinct perspectives expressed in the following statements.

If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible. William Lyon Phelps, American educator, journalist, and professo
r (1865–1943)

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine. Bertrand Russell, British author, mathematician, and philosopher (1872–1970)

 In a well-organized essay, take a position on the relationship between certainty and doubt. Support your argument with appropriate evidence and examples.

For Wednesday, February 25

Name the painting and artist Mr. Brook represents on this cover.

Finish the novel Picture of Dorian Gray by Friday, February 27.


Options for raising your grade/extra credit:  This will take the place of your lowest major grade.

Write the argument essay over the relationship between art and humanity.

Oscar Wilde adhered to the tenants of aestheticism, a late 19th-century European arts movement which centered on the doctrine that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, and that it need serve no political, didactic, or other purpose.

Chinua Achebe believes that artistic and literary works must deal primarily with the problems of society. He has said that "art is, and always was, at the service of man" rather than an end in itself, accountable to no one. He believes that "any good story, any good novel, should have a message, should have a purpose."

Think about the differing views of art.  Then write an essay in which you explain your position on the relationship between art and humanity.  Use appropriate evidence from your reading, experience, or observations to support your argument.

THESIS TEMPLATES:

Templates for making concessions while still standing your ground:

     Although I grant that ________________________, I maintain that _____________________________________.

     Proponents of X are right to argue that _____________________. But they exaggerate when they claim that ___________________________.

     While it is true that ___________________________, it does not necessarily follow that ____________________________.

Templates for agreeing:

     X’s theory of _________________ is extremely useful because it sheds light on ______.

Template for disagreeing:

     By focusing on ____________________, X overlooks the deeper problems of _____________________.

For Monday, February 23

Read The Picture of Dorian Gray Chapter 13 through 18.  Pay particular attention to color, Biblical allusion, imagery, and symbolism.

Consider:

As we have discussed, Oscar Wilde wrote this novel 1890.  A decade later, he was arrested and charged with "'committing acts of gross indecency with male persons.'  The details of Wilde's final five years, spent in prison and in lonely exile, are tragic...Wilde's conversion took place within the last two days of his life, when desperate friends, the Catholic Robbie Ross among them, brought in a local priest to gauge Wilde's assent to the conversion and to administer Last Rites.  Appropriately, Wilde's last act was an assent to a final ritual" (Cauti xxxiii).

"Like an object caught in the tension of two opposing forces, his body and mind were torn between the love of God and the enticement of the sensual" (Zacharrias 5).

"His death at forty-six was attributed to the destruction he brought upon his body through an indulgent lifestyle" (Zaccharias 6).

So...PONDER THIS:

How do we account for Wilde's work that seems to speak so strongly against immorality and the pursuit of pleasure?  How does Wilde communicate his personal argument with Truth? What part does the Holy Spirit play in an artist's endeavor?  What does this tell us/bring up concerning the human condition?  As Christians, what is our take away?

For Thursday, February 19

Read Chapters 11 and 12 in The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Chapter 11 is a pivotal chapter in the novel.  While the first few pages contain some of the most interesting paragraphs regarding Dorian's fall into decadence, much of the chapter follows the format of A Rebours, the yellow book Lord Henry gives to Dorian.  Remember, the yellow book follows the moral decline of the young Parisian through description.  As you read, you may skim the paragraphs devoted to describing Dorian's mutliple obsessions/collections.  When you come to paragraphs where some plot development seems to occur, read them carefully.

Chapter 12 is crucial.  Read it carefully.  Mark it up.  We will read Chapter 13 together on Thursday.

Blessings!

For Tuesday, February 17

Read Chapters 9 and 10 in The Picture of Dorian Gray.  In Chapter 10, Lord Henry gives Dorian a "yellow book."  Chapter 11 will go into much detail regarding the book and its effect on Dorian. Much of Chapter 11 will mimic the book's own style and preoccupations.  So we will skim parts of Chapter 11 together and focus our attention more on plot line and symbolism.  The "yellow book" is most likely a reference to A Rebours (translated into English as Against Nature or Against the Grain), the seminal Decadent novel by the French author Joris Karl Huysmans.  Wilde first read A Rebours on his Paris honeymoon shortly after its publication in 1884.  We will talk more about this book in class.

Read the College Board sample essays for Question 3 over "ownership."  Before reading the actual grades and explanations, try to put your own grade on each sample.  Look at the differences between your essay and the samples provided.

On Tuesday, we will have a "salon" discussing Dorian Gray and as time allows the nuances of the argument essay.

In this painting, titled "Reading from Moliere," artist Jean Francois de Troy depicts a salon of the French Enlightenment.

A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine the taste and increase the knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate" ("aut delectare aut prodesse est"). Salons, commonly associated with French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries, were carried on until quite recently in urban settings. (Wikipedia)

The Salon by Toulouse-Leutrec

For Friday, February 13

Read Chapters 3-8 of Picture of Dorian Gray.  Use all of your close reading strategies.  You should be prepared for a reading quiz.

Wednesday is exam practice day.

For Monday, February 9

Oscar Wilde=Lord Henry Wotton

1.   Read Chapters 1 and 2 from The Picture of Dorian Gray.

2.  In these chapters, find and annotate for the following allusions:
Chapter 1:
Adonis
Narcissus
Antinous
Chapter 2:
Schumann's "Forest Scenes"
Hellenic Ideal
Hermes
Faun, Satyr
Dr. Faust *  (a key)


3.  Create a character sketch for each of the major characters:
Lord Henry Wotton
Basil Hallward
Dorian Gray

For this character sketch, you may write paragraphs with embedded quotations.  You may draw and annotate your drawing.  You may create a comic strip, design a collage, produce Picasso heads, etc. You choose the way in which you will communicate your findings.

*Note:  You must use words/quotes in your creation, so your communication is clear.

Dorian

Dorian Gray Complex

For Thursday, February 5

Write a one page response to one of the statements made by Oscar Wilde in the Preface to his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.  You will agree/disagree/or both with the statement.  Give evidence for your argument.  Concrete and relevant evidence.

What is your opinion?  Write a brief paragraph (4-5 sentences) stating your opinion regarding the following quote:

“Part of the role of the church in the past was—and could and should be again—to foster and sustain lives of beauty and aesthetic meaning at every level, from music making in the village pub to drama in the local primary school, from artists’ and photographers’ workshops to still-life painting classes, from symphony concerts, to driftwood sculptures. The point is this. The arts are not the pretty but irrelevant bits around the border of reality. They are the highways into the center of a reality which cannot be glimpsed, let alone grasped, any other way. The present world is good, but broken and in any case incomplete; art of all kinds enables us to understand that paradox in its many dimensions. But the present world is also designed for something which has not yet happened. It is like a violin waiting to be played: beautiful to look at, graceful to hold-and yet if you'd never heard one in the hands of a musician, you wouldn't believe the new dimensions of beauty yet to be revealed. Perhaps art can show something of that, can glimpse the future possibilities pregnant within the present time.” ― N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense