Ok, my professor has laid out the authors/works I'm supposed to do a close reading and analysis on. I pretty much have a good grasp on most of the works, but sur egood use some insight on a few. I seem to have a particular mental block as to definitions of the works, ie, heroic couplets, pastoral, anti-pastoral, that iambic meter stuff, etc.

The overall coverage of the course is: English Lit 18th & 19th Centuries.

We started with the Brits and finished with the Americans. Besides poems, there are novels and short stories and plays as well as well.

I will post two or three listings to be dissected. If it helps, when dissecting, play the part of professor as to what you want the student to learn :insert role play joke here: that would be addressed in the final.

Really appreciate your input, and hope you have fun with this as well!

Our first authors/work:

Alexander Pope: "Epistle to Burlington"

Mary Leapor: "Crumble-Hall"

Herman Melville: "Benito Cereno" (short story)

Just doing a Google search of this poem, there are tons of articles. I was an English Literature and Creative Writing double major. The Internet was not available then. I do wonder how my education would have been different in the "Information Age." Would I have relied on it as my major source of information? How much more common is plagiarism today?

Lastly, I paid my way through undergrad school, grad school and law school by writing my classmates papers. I would not be a needed commodity thanks to the Internet and I would not have been able to afford to go to university.

Alexander Pope: "Epistle to Burlington"

Mary Leapor: "Crumble-Hall"

Herman Melville: "Benito Cereno" (short story)

Properly intimidating! And apologies - this faction of the posse is in mad chase of the dollar and temporarily without leisure to post at length. But see (not necessarily to condone this): http://www.freebooknotes.com/

::bump::

OK, the big final is coming up...i am still hoping the posse can add some reflections on the above mentioned works, as they are giving me fits. BTW, i am not looking for the "answers", just additional insight to go with the 20+ pages I've already written....ie, something i missed or overlooked or didint think of before.

I've already read and written about:

Emerson (loved "The American Scholar")

Goldsmith (Loved "She Stoops to Conquer")

John Stuart Mill (The Subjection of Women")

William Wordsworth (Preface to Lyrical Ballads") my fave writer!

William Blake- trickier than i thought!

Thomas Gray poems

Jane Austen

Charlotte Bronte

Samuel Johnson

John Keats

Jonathan Swift

Olaudah Equiano ("The Interesting Narrative")

Anne Finch

Steven Duck

Mary Collier

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (her reponse to a Swift article about widows is one of my fave alltime pieces- I actually did a one MAN show of it in my theatre class!)

thomas Caryle ("From past to Present")

Besides the Leapor and Pope pieces, the other ones that I am having trouble grasping are:

All of Keats! (I like his writing, am just not sure i "get it")

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Hiram Power's Greek Slave")

Lord Alfred Tennyson- "The Lady of Shallot"

ANY insight would be appreciated!