Greek Tragedy: Electra
You may be wondering why I chose to have you read this play by Sophocles. The answer is rarely in the old days did playwrights cast powerful women as main characters. Also, since many of you have read Oedipus Rex this is a good reinterpretation of that story with a different flair. The character Electra is familiar to you from movies and comics as we've seen with other texts like Frankenstein.
Essential Learnings
As we read drama Electra, Othello and then a drama literature circle play you will uncover responses to the following questions:
- Is life determined by circumstances beyond our control or is fate a reality? Who determines the life of a character?
- Can justice be gained through violence?
- Who is the hero? Do they go through the typical hero's journey?
- How do playwrights make decisions for an audience?
- Is the play relatable to another novel, play, current event or movie?
Assignments:
Throughout the reading of plays I will be asking you to come to class with a "Thought Piece". You will:
Begin with a word, a line, a section, an opinion, an argument, or a question (to which you don’t have the answer to). Use the beginning you have selected to write your way into an understanding of the piece you are preparing for class discussion. This should be 1 1/2 to 2 typed or very neatly handwritten pages. Your word, line, section, opinion, argument or question should be your title.
This is how they will be scored:
√+ insightful think pieces that demonstrate their authors’ ability to draw
interesting connections between distinct concepts in the pursuit of new knowledge.
√- is intermediate. It represents an analytic paper but may lack some of the insight of the “10”.
√ demonstrate their authors’ ability to understand and analyze the subject matter. Some readings are difficult, and it can sometimes be a challenge just to make sense of them. Nevertheless, the ability to make sense of difficult material is the basic skill you are expected to develop as a college student.
6 Is average like a “7” but does not fully respond to the writer’s ideas or is lacking cohesion, may have may grammatical mistakes that keep it from being understandable.
Begin with a word, a line, a section, an opinion, an argument, or a question (to which you don’t have the answer to). Use the beginning you have selected to write your way into an understanding of the piece you are preparing for class discussion. This should be 1 1/2 to 2 typed or very neatly handwritten pages. Your word, line, section, opinion, argument or question should be your title.
This is how they will be scored:
√+ insightful think pieces that demonstrate their authors’ ability to draw
interesting connections between distinct concepts in the pursuit of new knowledge.
√- is intermediate. It represents an analytic paper but may lack some of the insight of the “10”.
√ demonstrate their authors’ ability to understand and analyze the subject matter. Some readings are difficult, and it can sometimes be a challenge just to make sense of them. Nevertheless, the ability to make sense of difficult material is the basic skill you are expected to develop as a college student.
6 Is average like a “7” but does not fully respond to the writer’s ideas or is lacking cohesion, may have may grammatical mistakes that keep it from being understandable.
Three TED Talks to Deepen your Understanding of Drama (and take notes on):
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Poetry
We will be reading poetry as a mentor text. For our first exercise you will use the following poems as mentor texts:
Lyric Poem examples
Lyric Poem examples