TODAY IN CLASS
Three hand-outs:  Senior Personal Essay, "The Seafarer" in Old English (only the first 50 lines), and something called "Anglo-Saxon Poetry" that has several literary terms.

In 1st and 3rd, we spent most of the class period on the personal essay hand-out, going over the topics with some suggestions/warning about pitfalls, etc. from me.  That left very little time for the poetry.  In 5th, I reversed the order, especially since we had accomplished less in that class yesterday re: "The Wanderer" study questions.  So in 5th, we need to finish up the topics list.

But in all classes, we at least looked at the hand-out enough to see the visual evidence of "caesura" and make the connection to the first term on the hand-out.  (We'll look at it more closely later.) Be sure  to have the hand-out with you tomorrow, because we will also use it to look at alliteration, assonance, and perhaps even a kenning.  (We'll also use the book for both "The Seafarer" and "The Wanderer" to find examples of these terms.

What really varied was how much we did/said about the next poem, "The Wife's Lament."

HOMEWORK
For 1st period--all I asked you to do was to find the poem online (p. 112) and read it, probably twice.  So during the first 8 minutes or so of class, I'll ask you to write out a short summary (5-6 sentences) of what you think the poem is saying.  (This is more problematic than it sounds--the translation in the book is really strange-sounding.)

For 3rd and 5th period--You also need to find the poem online (112) and read it twice.  But I said in class that you needed to do the summary; we need to move on in the morning, and you won't have time in class to do this.  Some of you are well aware that there is a difference between a paraphrase and a summary. For this task, I really do mean just a "summary"--and a short one at that (5-6 sentences should cover the whole poem).  There might well be some points at which even careful readers might be uncertain of "what happens" and especially WHY it happens; just write down what you THINK based on the translation you see.