I decided to give my juniors their first out-of-class paper of the semester on intertextuality. Since they haven’t done one before, I decided to give them a practice session first. I gave them a poem on Penelope (of Odyssey fame) and asked them to write about the narrator’s attitude toward herself (Penelope being the narrator of the poem). Then, I asked them to read a second poem (by a different poet) wherein Penelope speaks about her lot, but with a different tone and attitude.
Monday, they will write an essay stating and supporting how their attitude toward the first poem (or the first poem’s view of Penelope) has changed as a result of their having read the second poem. This assignment seems straight-forward to me, but based on the small amount of note-taking they have done this period, I am not totally sanguine.
Perhaps as a better example, I should have given them the following poem about which to write, then had them read Plato’s The Death of Socrates, then re-explicate the poem below.
Hemlock in Athens
I
Some drink,
Some think,
Both come
To the same end.
II
I urge the cup
Lest all my sins
Be uncovered.
III
Is God so small
He cannot stand
Enquiry?
This will surprise you and even surprises me, but I quite like this poem and am thinking of using it as the basis of my senior English paper.