Welcome to Ms. Ellis’

World Literature class!

• Check myCOMPASS for any official announcements.
• Need a digital dictionary? Try Merriam-Webster.

Use the following calendar to keep track of your current and future assignments. Once you click on a specific date, you will see the activities that are assigned for that specific day. For instance, the homework that is placed on April 9, is the specific assignment I would like you to complete the evening of April 9. If you are confused by the calendar below, please email me prior to the specified due date.

• PSAT- Oct. 19

Major Units in World Literature

• First quarter we study tragedy as a literary genre through readings of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth.  
• Second quarter theme is the ideal and the real.  Primary authors include Plato, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Cervantes, and Shakespeare. Students next consider the theme of the ideal and the real in some contemporary short stories. Part of the unit on the real and the ideal asks students to explore the theme as it appears in the worldviews of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in England.  
• Third quarter theme is the individual, nature, and the divine. Readings include poetry from the T’ang dynasty in China and the Romantic period in England as well as Hesse’s Siddhartha. In part, this unit complements students’ Outward Bound experience.
• Fourth quarter students explore a theme of culture and identity in various cultures by reading Fugard’s ‘Master Harold’…and the Boys (South Africa), Kincaid’s Annie John (Antigua), Crowther’s The Saffron Kitchen (England and Iran), and some short stories from yet other cultures (Haitian, Nigerian, and Native American, for example).