literature Archives - David Rickert

Sometimes English classes can be art appreciation courses. We read a book, we examine carefully how the author worked his magic, and we write papers in which we analyze those techniques. We present students with literature that we hope will move them emotionally in some way, which is what all artists hope to accomplish with their craft.

We just finished a curriculum revision in our district in which we carefully and thoughtfully aligned what we taught with the standards. We started with the standards and worked our way backwards from there – what assessment can we design that would test that standard?

Two of the standards that gave us a little bit of trouble are RL.9-10.7 and RL.11-12.7, both of which require the analysis of representations of literature across different artistic media and the evaluation of how that representation treats the source material. It was really tempting to say, “We already do that! We read Romeo and Juliet and then we watch the movie version. We look for the differences, maybe do a Venn diagram. We have that covered.”

However, this method of instruction doesn’t get the job done for a couple of reasons:

By comparing the play and the film we are doing an activity. We aren’t assessing students’ ability to analyze the representation of literature in different media.
We’re missing an opportunity to do something more a lot more complex, and in doing so expose them to forms of artistic expression that are foreign to them.

Unpacking this standard

Let’s start off by looking at the example that the Common Core standards provide with the story of Icarus. In this scenario, we’d be reading the myth and looking at Breughel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” (a painting) and Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” (a poem about that painting.)

There are plenty of lesson plans out there that address this particular grouping. In fact, I have a lesson on Icaurs that includes more than just that painting and poem. But most of us don’t want to throw the story of Icarus somewhere during the year to meet this standard. We want to add it to something we already do.

Fortunately, if you teach Shakespeare (and there’s a good chance if you teach high school that you do) there are lots of opportunities to see what other artists have done with the source material besides creating a film.

Here are some techniques.

As an example, let’s look at some options with a play I teach: Shakespeare’s Othello. Once we are finished reading it I like to have students examine paintings of the final scene of the play, where Othello confronts Desdemona in her chambers and (spoiler alert!) strangles her for her alleged infidelity.

First off, here’s “Desdemona and Othello” by Antonio Muñoz Degrain:

And here’s “The Death of Desdemona” by Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix.

There are plenty of others out there as well that you can find with an image search.

When I’m using an image I project it in front of the classroom and give students a black and white copy to annotate. As they look at the image can come closer to the screen for a closer look if they wish (of course you could also do this on devices if you’re 1:1.)

Any time we’re looking at an image there are a few basic questions I want my students to answer, which are based on Edmund Feldman’s Method of Art Criticism.

1. Describe what you see in the painting. Avoid using value judgments, like “beautiful” or “funny looking.”

2. Analyze the painter’s use of design elements, such as lighting, color, shapes, and texture.

3. Interpret what the artist says about the scene. Is there a particular mood they are trying to convey?

4. Discuss the overall strengths or merits of the work. Do you feel like the painting is an accurate and effective representation of the scene?

And I like to add one more:

5. Why this particular moment? Why not five minutes (or seconds) before or after this moment?

You can model one image with the whole class and then have them work individually on the second. The Degrain image is pretty straightforward, but the Delacroix requires more interpretation. For example, who are the two people gathered around the bed? How does Delacroix communicate the emotions in the scene without facial expressions? By showing both, we are teaching students to work with realistic interpretations as well as an impressionistic reading.

Assessing this Skill

I take a series of images from various parts of the play – both painting and book illustrations, maybe some sculptures if I can find pictures of them – and place them on a series of slides. I project the slides in front of the class in five-minute intervals. For each slide, they have to answer the following questions:

What scene is this?
How do you know?
What choices did the artist make to communicate the emotion in this scene?
What line from the play would be the best caption for the work of art?

Not only are students demonstrating their ability to analyze an image, but they are also using evidence, finding support from the text, and using all sorts of writing skills if you choose to assess that as well.

Othello in Other Media

But you don’t have to use paintings. Many Shakespeare plays have been turned into ballets and there are clips of performances on YouTube. Here’s an example from Hamburg:

I don’t know which part of the play this represents (partially because I don’t read German). But that’s part of the challenge for the students: which part is it? How do you know based on the music and the movement? I’m guessing it’s early on in the play and establishes that Desdemona and Othello are truly in love, which is important for the rest of the play to work. But I have no way to be sure – it’s an informed guess based on reading the text.

Othello was also turned into an opera by Giuseppe Verdi. While most of my students have some knowledge of ballet, most have never listened to an opera, at least not closely. You can certainly watch a portion of the performance (again, there are several on YouTube) but I like to do an activity with a translated portion of the libretto (the text of the opera) while we listen to it. Sometimes it differs greatly from the original text and brings in new themes. If you’d like a libretto activity for Othello, click here and I’ll send it to you.

How do you turn these into an assessment? The same way you can with the paintings. Offer up some video clips of dances or other parts of the libretto and have them analyze them in the same fashion.

If you’re looking for other fun ways to teach Shakespeare, click here.

Other plays (and Greek myths)

You can do this with virtually any Shakespeare play. There are lots of great paintings for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example. And many of the plays have been turned into an opera or a dance that are easily available online. You can find modern takes on the plays in poetry, although it can take a little digging to find them. Here’s a great poem called “Purgatory” by Maxine Kumin that imagines what might happen if Romeo and Juliet successfully ran away together.

Of course, if you want to do Greek Myths but maybe Icarus isn’t your thing, there are a lot of myths that have been rendered in works of art, particularly painting and sculpture. And there are a ton of poems that reinterpret the Greek myths, like Rita Dove’s “Demeter’s Prayer to Hades.” What’s fun about Dove’s poem (and a lot of the other poems that are based off of myths) is that if you don’t know the myth, you read it one way, and once you know the myth the meaning completely changes. And if you’re looking for a good way to add it to something you already do, why not connect it to a lesson on allusions? Find in allusion to a Greek myth in something you’re reading and away you go.

Final Thoughts

Of course, there are great reasons to show the movie version of a work of literature. The kids enjoy it and-let’s be honest-you can get caught up on grading. But we don’t want to miss the opportunity to teach students to critically think about what they see. It matters because our students are bombarded with images every day. We need to teach them to critically view those images. What am I seeing? Why am I seeing it? If I’m compelled to do something (like buy a pair of shoes) how did the image convince me to do that? And what’s the ultimate agenda of the creator of this image? Looking at these works of art helps students develop these skills.

Learning should be fun! Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for fun resources like the ones you see below.

In the first episode of Bates Motel, Norman Bates and his mother hide a body in their hotel room. A couple of police officers come by unannounced, just looking things over. As you might expect the tension in the scene comes from whether or not the policemen will uncover the body.

As I watched this episode I remember thinking to myself how odd it was that I was rooting against the policemen. I didn’t want them to find the body. I was hoping that Norman and his mother would get away with it. Since Norman was the protagonist, I was hoping that he would succeed, even though in real life there’s no way I would wish that the police wouldn’t discover a murder in a hotel.

Point of View

Such is the power of point of view. Tell the story from the policemen’s point of view, and we want law and order to prevail. Tell it from the criminal’s point of view, and we want to see someone do something wrong and get away with it.

Point of view is a literary technique we cover for much of our students’ lives, but by the time they are in secondary we want our students to move beyond a simple understanding of point of view. We don’t want them to just be able to identify first person from third person, and third person limited from omniscient. We want them to be able to tell how point of view affects a story – how it shapes our understanding of the action based on who tells it.

An Activity to Help Students Understand How Point of View Works

I introduce point of view early on in the school year with an activity that gets students thinking about it. I show them this New Yorker cover from Adrian Tomine:

I project in on the screen, but I also have it available for students on their iPads so they can zoom in and look at the details.

I like to use this cover because it’s an objective view of a scene and the students are forced to make some inferences about what’s going on: the woman feels guilty that she is receiving a package from Amazon because she lives right next door to a bookstore. Unfortunately, he’s opening (or closing) the store for the day right when she gets her delivery. Talk about awkward.

How I Do It

I split the class into groups of three and have each person pick a different character from the scene. Then, using either first person or third person limited point of view, they have to tell the story from that person’s point of view. (If you have a group of four, you can have one student do third person omniscient, or have two student do the same character, but from first person and third person limited.) It’s best that students don’t know too much about what the other members of the group are doing, but they do need to stay consistent with what’s in the image (interior monologues are a good way to keep them focused.) Obviously students need to know the definitions of the different points of view, so you might have to review them.

The Next Day

The following day the students share their stories, not reading them word for word, but giving the basic framework for what they did. I then ask them to answer the following questions.

What assumptions did you have to make about the characters?

For example, you can’t see the bookseller’s face, so you have to assume what his reaction is. Same thing with the UPS guy, but my experience with them leads me to believe he’s thinking about quickly jumping in his truck and going off to the next delivery.

You also have to assume character’s reactions to the event, and this is a fun playground to be in. What does the woman assume that the bookseller is thinking, and vice versa?

What does your character know that the other characters do not?

The big one here is obviously: what’s in the package? It might not be a book. Or it could be a used book that wasn’t available at the bookstore.

Who is the best person to tell the story?

If you want an objective reading of the event, the UPS guy would probably be the best because he isn’t invested in what’s going on. However, most students said that the woman is the best person because she knows what’s in the package. We know from the composition that Tomine wants us to believe that too – she’s in the center of the image and she’s the only face we see.

Why is this important?

Developing an understanding of point of view can help students understand that there are multiple sides to every story. Sadly, many of us shelter ourselves from other points of view, only listening to those who agree with us politically or ideology. We can’t understand how anyone would think differently than us, and we surround ourselves with people on social media who reinforce that our world view is right. As teachers we want to develop students that will consider all sides of a story. Students whose opinions come from their own minds and not from what gets pushed to them on social media.

Looking for more creative assignments? Check out the posts below.

The Hat Project: A Great Project for the End of a Short Story Unit

Alternatives to the Essay: Infographics

Impostor Poems

Learning Stations in the Secondary ELA Classroom

David Rickert is a high school English teacher in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. He has been teaching for over 20 years and has taught virtually every grade and every subject. David is passionate about developing lessons that make difficult language arts subjects fun and engaging. He is also an author on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Literature Represented in Other Art Forms