Coursework deadline: Wednesday March 23rd 2016 9am - 12pm; 1E3 Remember that when you submit the final essay, you must also submit:
your first draft
the extracts/poems you have used for your essay - these can be annotated
1. Look again at your opening paragraph. Remember how crucial this is for setting up your argument. A reminder of what AQA say about this:
Highlight your own thesis. Does it narrow down the parameters of what you are going to explore from the question? Does it give your essay a strong direction to move on from? Does the rest of your essay actually refer back to the thesis and develop an argument? Are you using topic sentences to hold your argument together?
2. Run through your essay with 2 differently coloured highlighters, identifying the parts of your essay that are about Blake's poetry and the parts of the essay which are about Death of a Salesman. Make sure that your essay is evenly balanced between the two & that you are rotating between the two texts. 3. Run through your essay again with a highlighter - this time, identify all of the moments where you make a comparative point, even if just briefly. Look closely at any sustained parts of your essay where there are no comparisons. Have you missed any opportunities? 4. Re-read your essay, focusing on your use of terminology. Are you demonstrating a wide vocabulary? Is your use of technical terms precise and accurate? Are you using literary & linguistic terminology? Are you using discourse analysis (where appropriate)? 5. Now think about context. Remember that context is measured in all sorts of ways. Have you contextualised the extracts from DOS that you are writing about? The poems you have chosen? The quotations you have selected? Where appropriate, have you embedded social, historical and literary context within your arguments? Finally - a reminder of what you are being assessed on:
Monday 1st Feb: 10.30 - Hollie 11.00 - Kamil 11.30 - Charlie 12.00 - Jess 1.30 - Blaize Wednesday 3 Feb: 11.00 - Keya 11.30 - Sophie 12.00 - Gabriel 12.30 - Chakade Thursday 4 Feb: 10.30 - Dannika Please come to 1C2a with a print out of your essay, a pen & your texts. If your name is not above then we will be having our 1-1 in our lesson on Thursday.
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
