Here’s a link to a great set of comics about Robinson Crusoe by the excellent Kate Beaton: Land of No Baths
(I highly recommend poking around her site for more.)
This one, by an artist who goes by Thinston, might resonate as you finish the novel:
In case you missed it, here’s Saturday Night Live‘s take on the story of Adam and Eve:
We’ve talked a bit in this class, as we’ve moved from Old English to Middle English to Early Modern English, about how the language has changed and how those changes in language are reflected in the literature. Here’s an interesting article with an amazing graphic that helps you understand how dramatic these changes are: Changes in the English Language
UPDATED: So much Old English in the news! Here’s a link to an article (in the trashy Daily Mail, I’m afraid, but the pictures are good!) about a new archaeological discovery linked to Sutton Hoo: Anglo-Saxon palace found
UPDATE: I’ve uploaded a particularly strong close reading from the recent batch under the Assignments tab in case you’d like to see a model.
Here’s a link to a page where you can see Milton’s “arguments” or summaries for all twelve books of Paradise Lost. Please read all of these so that you have a sense of the plot of Milton’s poem, but pay special attention to the arguments for the books we’ll be reading (1, 4, 5, and 9). Milton added these to the second edition of the poem in response to a request from his publisher. (The Norton includes the argument only for book 1, which is a mistake, I think).
You might also want to take a look at the poet and painter William Blake’s gorgeous illustrations to Paradise Lost:
Finally, a website with lots of different resources for reading the poem. Explore! Darkness Visible
Here’s a brief clip from a recent production of Twelfth Night that played at the Globe Theatre in London and also on Broadway. I show you this one not only because it’s a fantastic production but also because it’s an attempt at a historically-accurate production: the costumes are meticulous recreations of late-sixteenth-century dress and (more importantly for the purposes of our discussion) the women are all played by men.
There is, by the way, another production of Twelfth Night that’s still showing in the city (Pig Iron Players). I haven’t seen it, but the reviews are very good. If you get the chance, check it out!
The weekly assignment for next Thursday is up under the Assignments tab.
Related to that assignment is this short blog post at The New Yorker about “verbal anachronisms”—tv shows that attempt to be very historically accurate but that still use language in ways that wouldn’t have been used at the time: Nobody Said That Then!