GRADES!!

1. GRADES!! • If you did not complete the work from last week, you were given a 0. • You have until Friday to turn in the “Wagner Matinee” packet and the “April Showers” 1-9 questions. • 40 points will be deducted for it being late. • You will be responsible for doing this AT HOME. • If I do not have it to me by tomorrow, it will be a 0. NO EXCUSES.

2. “A Wagner Matinee”By Willa Cather Big Idea: Regionalism

3. Willa CatherInspiration: Prairie Life / Characters were inspired by the personality of the Nebraskan prairie. Criticism: “Escapism” and Romanticizing the American pastToday: Cather is now recognized as a writer who explored the complexities of the American life and showed how the tendency to link one’s life to the past adds meaning.Life: After graduating from Nebraska University. Cather moved to Pittsburg and worked for Home Monthly.“A Wagner Matinee” came from her short story collection, The Troll Garden.

4. “A Wagner Matinee” • The title “A Wagner Matinee” refers to the German composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner. A brilliant composer, Wagner revolutionized opera by creating works with uninterrupted musical scores and passionate, crashing sounds. Willa Cather based “A Wagner Matinee” on her Aunt Franc’s and Uncle George’s experience of moving to Nebraska after the passage Homestead Act in 1862. The act allowed settlers and immigrants who were at least twenty-one years old to claim 160 acres of public land. They would fully own the land once they farmed it and lived there for five years. • REGIONALISM: The story’s conflict centers on where the characters live and the opportunities opened or closed to them as a result.

5. Summary A young man named Clark takes his visiting aunt, Georgiana, to a concert. Georgiana is a music teacher who has not been to Boston or heard a concert since she married and moved to a remote Nebraska farm many years ago. She has arrived in Boston exhausted and still focused on the country life she has temporarily left behind. As the music fills the theater, however, she becomes entranced and is greatly saddened when the performance ends. QUESTIONS: • Have you ever moved away from or left a place and returned to it much later? • How can music affect memory?

6. “April Showers” By: Edith Wharton BIG IDEA: Realism

7. Edith Wharton:Best known for: Her novels depicting the intricate codes of conduct that ruled the lives of New York City’s aristocracy at the end of the 1800s. Wharton felt that upper class society discouraged both art and the artist. Edith Newbold Jones was born into one of NYC’s most wealthy and distinguished families. In 1907 Wharton permanently moved to Paris after separating from her husband. She felt as if female artists were more accepted there. Wharton was given the Cross of the Legion of Honor award for helping French and raising money for Americans during WW1.First female to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her literary works.

8. “April Showers” Info • REALISM: • Edith Wharton’s greatness came from her ability to depict the interplay between the life of the mind and of society. Alternately tragic and satire, Wharton's incisive fiction helped establish Realism as the most important movement of her day. • SUMMARY: • Seventeen year old Theordoa Dace ignores her family responsibilities in order to write a novel. When her novel is accepted, she becomes a local celebrity. After a misunderstanding, Theodora confronts the publisher and retrieves her manuscript. At the end, she learns something about her father’s aspirations. • QUESTION: Have you ever neglected your family responsibilities in order to devote yourself to a project you felt passionately about?

9. “The Story of an Hour” By Kate Chopin Big Idea: Realism

10. Kate Chopin The First: Kate Chopin was the first female writer to frankly portray the passions and discontents of women confined to traditional roles as wives and mothers. Strong Independent Women: Chopin grew up at a time when women gave up their independence and devoted themselves to the will of their husbands and welfare of their children. When Chopin was 5, her father died in a railroad accident that is echoed in “The Story of an Hour.” She grew up with her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother. Growing up in a house of strong, independent women shaped Chopin as a person and a writer.

11. Kate Chopin • Kate married Oscar Chopin when she was 20 and moved to Louisiana. After he passed away in 1882, Chopin and her children moved back to St. Louis to be closer to her family. • A year later, her mother passed away. Chopin was overwhelmed with grief. Her doctor advised her to start writing again to help her cope. • During the next ten years, Chopin published 100 short stories, two story collections, and two novels. • Chopin explored women’s issues controversial in her time. • For more than 50 years after her death, Chopin’s works were ignored. Then in 1969 when the women’s movement in the US began gaining momentum, a biography and her complete works were published. • Kate Chopin is celebrated as a lonely pioneer who dared to write realistic portraits of women trapped and stifled by the social conventions of their time.

12. Summary • Chopin tells readers everything we need to understand her main character, Mrs. Mallard. Readers learn that when Mrs. Mallard hears about her husband’s death in an accident, she becomes emotional. However, in the privacy of her room, she realizes that his death comes with a benefit: her freedom from the demands and expectations of a husband. Mrs. Mallard becomes enamored of this thought; when it turns out that her husband is still alive, she feels such intense shock that her heart gives out. • QUESTION: How would you feel if you learned that something you valued in life was taken away from you?

13. 3, 2, 1 Activity After reading: • Find 3 details within the story that reveal realism. • Find 2 words that you do not know within the text. Use the context clues surrounding the word to give a definition. • Did you like this story? Provide 1 reason why you did, or 1 reason why you didn’t.

14. Bellringer Analyze the following quote… describe what you think it means in your own words. Think about the authors we have studied. Which one do you think would agree with Einstein? _________________________________ • “The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.” -Albert Einstein

15. Paul Laurence Dunbar • 1872-1906 • Dunbar was one of the first African American writers to attain national recognition. • To reach an audience for his poetry, he often felt he had to “sing” within the constraints of the taste and prejudice that dominated his time. • Grew up as the son of formerly enslaved people. • He was the only African America student at his Dayton, Ohio high school. • Although he was very successful in school, he could not afford to go to college. • Began by publishing the Dayton Tattler, an African American newsletter with the help of the Wright Brothers. • Published his first volume of poetry in 1893. • After being favorably reviewed by William Dean Howells, he found himself to be in great demand across the US and England. • He was the first African American who was able to live solely on profits from his writings.

16. Naturalism Naturalism held that people often faced challenges out of their control. As you read, consider how much control Dunbar seems to have felt he had over his own life and the challenges he faced.

17. Summary • In “Douglass” the speaker notes that the struggles of his day are even harsher than those that Fredrick Douglass faced as an enslaved person. He wishes that Douglass were alive to speak for what is right and to guide his people. “We Wear the Mask” describes the jolting contrast between the inner and outer lives of African Americans.

18. Edwin Arlington Robinson

19. Edwin Arlington Robinson • The subjects of Robinson’s character studies are often people who feel defeated or frustrated by life and who lack a sense of direction. • Most of his poems are written with an ironic tone, contain philosophical themes, and end in tragedy. • However, he was not a pessimist. He believed that life has meaning despite its hardships and that there is hope beyond what he described as “the black and awful chaos of night.” • NATURALISM: Robinson’s poetry often focuses on characters who seem to have little control over their lives or who are unable to cope with the scientific, social, and environmental forces that affect them. As you read, notice how Richard Cory and MiniverCheevy react to these forces.

20. Naturalism + Summary • Naturalism: Naturalist writers did not shy away from showing the dark sides of human condition. “Richard Cory” addresses depression. • What do you know about the effects of depression? • SUMMARY: In “Richard Cory,” Richard Cory, who is rich and knightly, is much admired by the working class. One night, Cory goes home and shoots himself. • In “MiniverCheevy,” MiniverCheevy is an idle, unhappy man who dreams of ancient and more glorious times.

21. Activity • With your group, create an illustrations for one of the author’s poems we just read. • When your illustrations are complete, paraphrase the poems you chose. DO NOT just summarize the poems, write what they mean in your own words. • Group Presentations – Read paraphrased poems 