Elizabethan Journals

Dr. Margaret Hannay

Spring 2009

 

Each student will keep a reading journal, submitting approximately one entry per week on the class day of your choice for a total of 14 journals. Journals are due at the front of the classroom at the beginning of class; late journals will not be accepted. Please bring an extra copy of your journal to class, so that you will have it handy for discussion. No more than one journal may be submitted on any class day.  These journals will serve as the starting point for class discussion in this student-centered class; journals are thus an important part of the learning process. Journals, reports, and the discussion based on them will count 25% of your final grade.

 

Please write your journal entries of 1-2 pages on loose-leaf paper or type them on the computer.  Number your journals to help you keep track of how many you have done.  Supply a heading with your name, the reading, and date, as "Jane Doe, Faerie Queene Book I, Canto 1, January 24." Use parenthetic documentation (45).  Turn journals in at the beginning of class.  When they are returned, keep them in a loose-leaf binder for your future reference. For each journal, you may summarize for a check or analyze the reading.  A good analysis with a clear thesis and supporting evidence OR a creative response to the reading will earn a check plus.  Here are some suggestions that may help you write an analysis.

 

1.           Choose a brief quotation and react to it.

2.           Connect this reading to a previous reading on a similar theme.

3.           Connect this reading to work that you are doing in another class.

4.           Analyze how the work portrays Elizabeth (see questions below)

5.           Retell the story from the perspective of a minor character.

6.           Analyze the use of an image or symbol.

7.           Analyze a character.

8.           Analyze the setting.

9.           Analyze any literary technique--use of flashback or foreshadowing, use of comedy or satire, handling of metrics or rhyme, importance of end-stopped or run-on lines in a poem, etc.

10.       Discuss presentation of cultural values, either through positive or negative example.  What does this culture find worthy of praise?

11.       Discuss presentation of gender roles for men or for women.

12.       Discuss presentation of Christianity.

13.       Discuss use of allegory.

14.       Write a sonnet from the standpoint of any character in our reading--or from your own perspective.

 

Grading:  If the journal entry is at an acceptable level for this course, it will be given a  check; + or - added to the check indicates that the entry is of higher or lower quality than expected.  A reasonably detailed summary will earn a check.  A check-plus journal will normally have a clear thesis, proven by detailed evidence from the reading, including appropriate short (no more than a line) quotations.  If all 14 journals are completed at an acceptable level, the journal grade is 85 or a B.  Each plus or minus adds or subtracts 2 points; each extra credit or missing entry adds or subtracts 5 points.  The total journal grade may not exceed 100%.

 

Extra Credit Journals: You may receive extra journal credit for up to three journal entries on the following topics; only one extra credit journal may be turned in per week.  1) Attend any Greyfriar reading and turn in an analysis of the reading  2) Bring to class any reference in a newspaper, magazine, or contemporary song lyric to a work or author that we are reading in class. 3) View a film on Elizabeth (see list <tudorhistory.org/movies>) and analyze its presentation of her.  Is she presented as independent or dependent on male advisors?  brilliant at political strategy or bewildered? kind or temperamental? well educated or ignorant?  focusing on love or politics?  Does the film show the same person you see in her writings?  why or why not?