Listen to In Our Time podcast,  (Links to an external site.)A Modest Proposal (Links to an external site.) and respond to the DB.

Assignment

You’ve now read Swift’s famous satire, A Modest Proposal, and you’ve also listened to the podcast about it. Remember that satire is a form of writing that uses irony and humor to criticize (in Swift’s case, quite harshly) what the author perceives as some fault, vice, or wrong-thinking. Here’s a video that puts A Modest Proposal into contemporary visual terms, and it emphasizes the goals of satire. Other examples are The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live skits (their commercials are often satirical, too!), The Family Guy, Grand Theft Auto, and more.

Find a good example of contemporary satire. Try to be creative! It could be an image, a video clip, a television show, or something else you find online. Post it to this discussion board, and explain 1.) why you think it’s satire, 2.)what you think it is criticizing, and 3.) one specific way the example criticizes #2.

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How to do this:

To post a video clip, you can use the cloud icon to the far right of the reply box and EMBED it. Most video sites like YouTube have an “embed” option when you click “share.” You can also upload it directly to the canvas, or use a link, but it’s a really good thing for you to learn how to embed media directly in Canvas!

To post an image, you can first download it to your computer and then upload it, using the icon that looks like mountains and a sun/moon. This will embed the image directly in your reply.

Week 2 part 2 

Homework:

  • Draft Essay 1, and post it to the discussion board. Final essay due with Wednesday homework.
  • Read (literally put your eyes on the page) as you listen to the librivox audiobook(Links to an external site.) of Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey Book 1. This is a difficult text. Please read the text as you listen to the audiobook. The audio reading of Book 1 is 3 hours in length, but the reader is quite slow and deliberate. You could speed this up to 1.25x. Please plan accordingly.
  • Complete the reading guide to volume 1 as you read.

Study guide:

As you read the novella by Doyle, trace the places in the text where you get

information and imagery that can lead you to answer the questions below (add these examples,

at least one or two, to your responses). Identify page numbers, so you can return easily to the

text!

  1. In the 19th century, Britain was at the height of its empire; it thought of itself as “An

Empire on which the Sun Never Sets,” because it had dominions all across the globe.

Yet, what seems to be the attitudes toward the native inhabitants of these colonial

spaces? What are the conventional attitudes in the novella toward India, for instance?

Look closely at the descriptions of the Sholtos and their homes.

  1. Thaddeus Sholto is a white British man. Yet, he is presumed to be guilty very quickly by

the police, and his whole household is arrested. Given what we know about the

conventional attitudes in the novella toward India, why do you think Jones was so sure

Sholto killed his brother?

  1. There are very few women in this novella. How is Miss Morstan depicted or

characterized, as an individual? What about as a representative of “womanhood” in the

late 19th century?

  1. What is Watson’s internal conflict throughout the story?
  2. How does this novella depict the late 19th century London poor? The larger political,

social, and economic contexts of the late 19th century?

  1. How does this novella depict the world outside of London?
  2. How does the novella depict Britishness? What does it seem to mean to be British? List

the characteristics that define “Britishness.”

  1. What beliefs or attitudes are evident in the text about the aboriginals of the Andaman

Islands?

  1. How are the police represented by the popular press in the novel? What does Holmes

think of them? Why do you think Doyle shows this?

  1. How does Athelney Jones seem to understand proof? Holmes? What is the meaning of

“theory” to each?

  1. Think about the way that physicality is presented in the novella. Who has whole bodies?

Who, partial bodies? Why?

  1. Why do you think Doyle gives Small’s story–and the story of the Indian Rebellion–at the

end of the novella? Now that you’ve read to the end, have your ideas about some of the

questions above changed?

If you need a similar but plagiarism-free “british class week 2”, then feel free to contact us!