ALERT: Before beginning to work on any assignments, you MUST review this week’s announcement posted under the Announcements page of your Blackboard course. Announcements are where I share all of my lessons and materials for class. Sometimes these include videos, handouts, templates, etc. Review the “Week 6 Lessons & Assignments” announcement before getting started on any of your work for this week.
ALERT #2: Do NOT look up any information about the literature from the internet for your discussion posts. The entire idea is for you to discuss what you think it all means and to exchange ideas with each other, supporting your theories with evidence from the literature itself. There is no one right answer anyway when it comes to literature. Multiple interpretations are possible.
Read the following:
1. Goblin Market (Links to an external site.) by Christina Rossetti
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market
2. Chapter 16 of How to Read Literature Like a Professor (Links to an external site.) by Thomas C. Foster
https://mseffie.com/assignments/professor/How%20to%20Read%20Literature%20like%20a%20Professor%202nd.pdf
— click on the link for chapter 16 from the table of contents, and read that chapter only. Don’t read the name of the chapter before reading the story because it might influence your interpretation before you’ve even started reading, and that would be boring.
It’s that dreaded time in English class. Time to read some poetry! For some students, poetry is the most difficult style of literature to analyze because it’s the style that tends to least resemble everyday speech. It’s a shame that so many students view poetry as “distant” or “boring,” though. Once you learn to understand and appreciate poetry, it’s like developing a taste for gourmet, smelly French cheese. Your palette has matured, and those Kraft cheese singles just won’t do anymore; they taste like plastic to you now.
Our first poem, Goblin Market, is a long one; I’d say it’s more of a short story written in verse. The key here would be to read it first on the literal level. Just try to understand what’s happening in the plot of the story from verse to verse. Once you’ve worked out what happens in a literal sense, you can begin analyzing (inferential/interpretive level). Consider deeper meanings, symbolism, use of language, etc. Goblin Market was published in 1862, which is the same era as A Doll’s House, but the author is English rather than Norwegian.
As with all of the literature we’ve read so far, do NOT look up any information on the poem for your discussion posts. The entire idea is for you to discuss what you think it all means and to exchange ideas with each other, supporting your theories with evidence from only the poem itself. There is no one right answer anyway when it comes to literature. Multiple interpretations are possible.
Once you’ve read the poem and the Foster chapter, respond to the following questions:
Provide a basic summary of what happens in the poem (just on a literal level).
Do you think that the goblins represent anything in particular in this poem? If so, what … and why do you think that?
List 2 separate lines of the poem that you feel include some sexual imagery and break down the language to help others understand the sexual imagery you’re referring to.
What are some of the themes of this poem? What do you think it’s about deep down? What is the author trying to tell us? (This question is asking you to look at the bigger picture on an evaluative level.)
In addition to your main response, you must also post substantive responses to at least two of your classmates’ posts in this thread. Your response should include elements such as follow-up questions, further exploration of topics from the initial post, or requests for further clarification or explanation on some points made by the classmates.
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