Introducing Semiotics

AS Comms - Consolidating High & Popular Culture

Watch this short tutorial on High and Popular Culture: click here

AS Lit - How to analyse a poem

AS Comms - Culture: two good clips to watch

AS Lit - the poems we are studying

These are the poems from Poems of the Decade that we are studying for the exam:

‘To my Nine-Year-Old Self’ by Helen Dunmore

‘An Easy Passage’ by Julia Copus

‘The Furthest Distances I’ve Travelled’ by Leontia Flynn

‘A Leisure Centre is also a Temple of Learning’ by Sue Boyle

‘Inheritance’ by Eavan Boland

‘Out of the Bag’ by Seamus Heaney

‘The Fox in the National Museum of Wales’ by Robert Minhinnick

‘History’ by John Burnside

‘Eat Me’ by Patience Agbabi

‘The Gun’ by Vicki Feaver

‘The Map Woman’ by Carol Ann Duffy

‘Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass’ by Simon Armitage

‘Effects’ by Alan Jenkins

‘Material’ by Ros Barber

‘Genetics’ by Sinead Morrissey

‘Song’ by George Szirtes

‘Please Hold’ by Ciaran O’Driscoll

‘You, Shiva and My Mum’ by Ruth Padal

‘Look We Have Coming to Dover’ by Dalgit Nagra

‘Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn’ by Tim Turnbull

‘Fantasia on a Theme of James Wright’ by Sean O’Brien

‘From the Journal of a Disappointed Man’ by Andrew Motion

‘The War Correspondent’ by Ciaron Carson

‘Guiseppe’ by Roderick Ford

‘The Deliverer’ by Tishani Doshi

‘The Lammas Hireling’ by Ian Duhig

‘On Her Blindness’ by Adam Thorpe

‘A Minor Role’ by U. A. Fanthorpe

 

AS Lit: the first 4 poems

Visit the Padlet pages below and leave a comment on each page:


A leisure centre is also a temple of learning

To my 9 year old self

An easy passage

The furthest distances I've travelled

A2 Lang Lit - Blake documentary

Watch this documentary about William Blake: click here

AS Lit - Lesson 1 & 2

How are we going to learn this year?

https://youtu.be/PZo2PIhnmNY


Doing Poetry Right
https://youtu.be/Cca7SRzsbBw


Performance Poetry - Kanye West

https://youtu.be/M17XewSVeUo


Performance Poetry - Lauryn Hill

https://youtu.be/kntNPyThiH0


Performance Poetry - Ronak Patani

https://youtu.be/LGDXyoYlKlQ

AS Literature - Welcome to the course

Welcome to AS Literature!

Key details:

You can contact me on cdignum@rutc.ac.uk
I can be found in 1C2a or 1D11/a
Our lessons are on Fridays, starting at 11.20 sharp, in 1D25

Our set texts this year, for my side of the course:

Poems of the Decade: An Anthology of the Forward Books of Poems
A Streetcar Named Desire

Please buy these texts as soon as possible.

This is essential viewing for any Literature student - please watch it before next week:

A2 Language & Literature - Consolidating the first lesson

This is an analysis of the first Blake poem we have looked at as a class. It's only 10 minutes long. Watch and see if there is anything you want to add to your notes. Remember, this is just an interpretation - you do not have to agree with the points made!

 

 

William Blake was an interesting man. Read the article below from emagazine for an excellent overview of what made him tick:

 

 

 Blake, William: A critical essay exploring his visionary poetry and art
emagazine 1 September 1998

Blake: a critical essay

A discussion of William Blake’s visionary poems and paintings.
Some people think that William Blake must have been taking drugs – even though he is now regarded as one English Literature’s greatest poets and artists. He was born in London in 1757 and lived there for most of his life while he toiled away in obscurity, writing poems and drawing pictures which sang of the joys of a child-like imagination and condemned the evils of the adult world.

If you look at his paintings it’s not difficult to see why some might think that Blake was on drugs: human bodies grow out of trees, travellers in the night carry globes of fire, evil red dragons loom over the world, prophets walk through whirlwinds of eyes. Many of the pictures are coloured in the kind of enhanced, unlikely colours – volcano oranges, ocean blues, twilight turquoises – that you might connect with a trip. ‘Yeah man, that Billy Blake must have been off his face most of the time,’ a hippy friend once confided. There isn’t much evidence to support the argument that Blake was a pill-popping, dope-smoking raver. For one thing, he lived nearly two hundred years ago and he was poor; generally it was only the richer guys – like the poet Coleridge – who got to sample the opium that was flooding into the country.

Anyway, Blake started having his visions at an age when most people just don’t take drugs. At eight he saw a tree filled with angels, bright wings bespangling every bough. It was the first of many ‘visions’ which Blake was to have throughout his life; he frequently talked to angels, fairies, ghosts and Biblical prophets, all of whom were as real to him as other human beings.

During his lifetime, many people thought Blake was mad. It’s certainly true that if he were alive today a doctor might recommend at least a visit to the therapist. But Blake wasn’t mad. Instead he had what psychologists call an ‘eidetic imagination’ – the ability to visualise and bring to life the creations of his own imagination. Can you imagine possessing such a gift? The moment you think of someone, you’re able to see them there right in front of you, a living, breathing person. It’s partly this vision which makes Blake’s paintings so extraordinarily ‘real’ and alive.

William Blake was also a rebel. He hated schools, prisons, the church, lawyers and the law, the monarchy and the corrupt, repressive political system of England in the late eighteenth century. Blake believed in ideals which seem modern now: free speech, democracy, nudism and free love – all in an age when to believe in any of these things could land you in jail. Even today his habit of wandering naked around the back garden with his wife ‘like Adam and Eve’ could have led to trouble. He did get arrested for allegedly mouthing off against the King to a yobbish soldier who had drunkenly invaded Blake’s front garden (good job he didn’t make it to the back garden). Saying anything against the King in 1802 was a very serious charge; people were hanged for treason. Thankfully, he was acquitted but he had suffered a very bad scare, and he became increasingly paranoid.

Another remarkable thing about Blake is that he was the world’s first multi-media artist. He saw the printed page as a total concept, words and illustrations totally integrated. Today’s computer technology means that these printed pages reproduced on a large scale – something that was impossible even a few years ago. The Blake Trust in combination with Tate Gallery has just published all of his illuminated books. For the first time since his death, the full glory of his unique combination of images and poetry is available to a wide audience in affordable paperback form.

The Internet will also increase access to Blake’s work. If you type the words ‘William Blake Archive’ in any search engine you should find one of the most amazing sites on the web. Blake’s images download quickly and a good colour monitor comes close to conveying the magic of his art. It has taken nearly 200 years for technology to catch up with Blake’s visionary art. He was far too smart to need drugs.

This article first appeared in emagazine, issue 1, September 1998

 

A2 Language & Literature



 


















Welcome to A2 Language & Literature...

First things first - I will be teaching you the coursework texts for A2 Lang Lit, which will be:

• Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (you can buy it here )
• William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (we will provide you with the poems)