Elizabethan 4 - Wyatt & Howard - The Birth of Modern English Poetry
"He is not dead, that sometime had a fall, / The sun returns, hid was under cloud." Sir Thomas Wyatt
Wyatt & Howard - The Birth of Modern English Poetry: A VERY, VERY, VERY important lesson - for so many reasons. First, these are the first texts (other than the modern ancillary texts like Grendel) that are written in (early) Modern English. They do not need to be translated. That means SO much in a class that believes, essentially, that it is all "about the text". We can talk about the words - their relationship to each other, Stephen Booth moments (more on that in a later lesson), and the students can read these poems, pretty much, as they were written. Another very important reason this lesson is so important has to do with what some of these poems are saying - ideas like "we distract ourselves to not think about the serious things" and the idea of resilience (if you fall you can get up again, stronger). These concepts are so key in the current Anxiety Generation - and offer a glimpse of recognition and of hope.
Lesson Overview
No time for a quiz today - if I assign this reading as homework (sometimes we go into them cold), the students get a break from having to prove they read. Sometimes this can be a good idea - they never know... Still in the first semester - it is VERY rare for me not to give a quiz on the reading.
As I said in the intro above - I begin by saying how very excited I am. We get to read texts today in their (close to) original form. Not Old English, Not Middle English - but now we have Early Modern English. What Shakespeare writes in as well. Much of the lesson can be found in the copy of the reading that has my notes. But for the last few years I taught this by using a Power Point that went through most of the assigned poems - and the last two years (especially when we went remote) I also brought into the Power Point the biographical information as well. This is without a doubt - a Ring Master Teacher Class Discussion. BUT - you will be having the students read the poems. They will be asking and answering the questions - and there is an awful lot of information here. This lesson, like so many lessons, is designed to give students confidence in understanding texts - and showing them what they can figure out by reading the text closely. See my page On Poetry for more on my approach.
Rather than going over my lesson in this section (there is just so much) - I have instead updated my Power Point presentation with speaker notes - that take you step by step for how I handled this lesson. In addition to the notes being on the Power Point (when you want to view them) - I have also saved it a PDF so you can see the notes next to each slide as annotations that you can turn on or off.
Finally - there is the reading with my notes on the poems - including some lesson notes.
Power Point & Detailed Lesson Instructions
This is the Power Point that you would use in class - along with the Power Point are very detailed Speaker Notes that really lay out the lesson (if you choose to go that way). You can turn them on within Power Point
This version of the Power Point is mainly supplied to give you instructions - if you don't have Power Point. You can always view the above Power Point as a Google Slides Presentation (though I'm not sure how well it would preserve the Speaker Notes). In that case, this is a PDF of the Slide Show along with annotations (that can be turned on or off) that give the same detailed instructions for the lesson.
The Poems with Notes & Lesson Instructions
This version of the text book reading has my notes - both my general notes and some instructions for the lesson. A much more complete set of instructions for today's lesson can be found directly below.
Handouts - The Poems
Text Book Version
Wyatt & Howard Text Book Reading PDF
This is from an old text book I sometimes used. I think it's a shame their new textbook did not include Wyatt and Howard. These poems are not only important - but there is so much in them that the students will identify with.
This is great to print out and have the students follow along with - UNCOVERING LINE BY LINE AS WE GET TO THEM. They are also great because they remove the footnotes allowing the class to figure out what is going on without outside help. But these are only two. They will need the above handout for more of the Wyatt & Howard poems.
Remote Enhancements
This can all be done remotely of course - The Power Point included makes doing this remotely as effective (I really believe this) as in person.
Links
Here is the song that I play for the last poem, "A Lover's Vow" - "Aint no Mountain High Enough".
WyattHowardClass_2016.m4aClass Recordings
Audio - an audio recording of this class from 2016
A Lesson on Poetics: It makes sense to me, to put this lesson (on the mechanics of poetry) here - at this place and time of the school year. We have justdone this lesson and seen our first sonnets. We've been experiencing poetry for over a month - and I hope that the students have left much of their trepidation of the "What" and "Why" of Poetry behind - and now we can turn one day to the "How" of Poetry. This lesson will cover meter (including metrical feet), rhyme types, rhyme schemes, and basic forms of poetry. Students will also get a chance to practice these new scansion skills with a partner.
WHAT CAME BEFORE:
Thoughts on the Lesson
One of the most important classes of the year. After a quarter, students can take what they've learned and apply it to poetry that is written in Modern English. On top of that, we can talk about word choices, word textures - and we are not talking about the translator - we are talking about the poet. As if that wasn't enough: there are more than one "to know we're not alone" moments in this lesson. Things have not changed like we think they have.