British Literature

[moonlight]

If you were to design a British Lit course for a rising 8th grader (12 year old boy) using Literary Lessons for LOTR, what other books/authors would you add?

 

We will do A midsummer Nights Dream and Macbeth.

Something by Dickens..

 

Share your thoughts. I might use this as a high school credit if needed. This is my test course to figure out how many hours it will take him in terms of work load, etc.

[JDoe]

George Orwell: Animal Farm and 1984

[Entropymama]

I know he's a boy, but Jane Austen is a classic. C.S. Lewis - the Narnia books or try Perelandra. G.K. Chesterton has so much good stuff. The Father Brown books are good. H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes). Robert Louis Stevenson! Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island, Kidnapped. J.M. Barrie, Mary Shelly (Frankenstein), Bram Stoker (Dracula).  William Blake or Robert Louis Stevenson for poetry. Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe)

[Lori D.]

Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are frequently included as part of British Lit. courses, and both are covered with a bit of depth in several of the units of LLftLotR.

 

Works often covered in a British Lit. course (younger high school student):

 

700-1800

- Beowulf

- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

- selection of Canterbury Tales

- Robinson Crusoe (Defoe)

- Ivanhoe (Scott)

 

1800-1850

- Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

- Frankenstein (Shelley)

- Jane Eyre (Bronte)

 

1850-1880

- Silas Marner (Eliot)

- Christmas Carol -- or -- Oliver Twist (Dickens)

- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)

- The Golden Key, The Light Princess, The Wise Woman (MacDonald) -- short stories

 

1880-1900

- Treasure Island -- or -- Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson)

- Rikki Tikki Tavi -- or -- Jungle Book -- or -- Stalky & Co (Kipling)

- The Time Machine -- or -- War of the Worlds -- or -- The Invisible Man (Wells)

- Sherlock Holmes short story mysteries (Doyle)

- Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde)

- The Open Window (Saki) -- short story

- The Monkey's Paw (Jacobs) -- short story

- The Bottle Imp (Stevenson) -- short story

 

1900-1940

- Peter Pan (Barrie)

- Pygmalion (Shaw)

- Life With Jeeves (Wodehouse)

- Animal Farm (Orwell)

- My Family and Other Animals (Durrell)

- All Creatures Great and Small (Herriot)

 

1940+

- Murder on the Orient Express (Christie) -- or other Agatha Christie mystery

- Farmer Giles of Ham, Smith of Wooton Major, Leaf by Niggle (Tolkien) -- short stories

- Out of the Silent Planet -- or -- Till We Have Faces -- or -- Screwtape Letters (Lewis)

- Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)

- Watership Down (Adams)

- The Sword in the Stone (White) -- King Arthur

 

 

Some British 20th century works for older high school students:

- Lord of the Flies (Golding)

- Brave New World (Huxley)

- 1984 (Orwell)

- The Man Who Was Thursday (Chesterton)

- Heart of Darkness (Conrad)

- Tale of Two Cities -- or -- Great Expectations -- or -- David Copperfield (Dickens)

- Wuthering Heights (Bronte)

- Paradise Lost (Milton)

 

If planning this as a high school credit, I would be sure to include some poetry, short stories. Perhaps take a look at one of these British Lit. programs to get a good idea for books, amout of work to accomplish, types of output, etc. -- just scale it back a bit, as the typical British Lit. program is for grade 11-12 students, not grade 8-9 students. ;)

 

Excellence in Literature: British Lit (gr. 11-12)

Bob Jones: British Lit (gr. 12)

Learning Language Arts Through Literature: Gold: British Lit (gr. 9-12) -- 4 novels, 12 poets

 

Lightning Lit (one semester programs):

Early-to-Mid 19th Century British Lit (gr. 9-12)

Mid-toLate 19th Century British Lit (gr. 9-12)

Medieval British (gr. 11-12)

Shakespeare: Comedies and Sonnets (gr. 11-12)

Shakespeare: Tragedies and Sonnets (gr. 11-12)

Christian British authors (gr. 11-12)

 

[SporkUK]

I don't know much about Literary Lessons for LOTR, and in a quick look through I saw comparatives to Beowulf and Arthurian legends in the table of contents (along with '3 ancient epics' that aren't specifically listed). So I would bring in more Arthurian legends that are at his reading level (Sir Morien's tale  is a personal favourite). Beowulf would probably be stretching it for 8th grade, especially alongside Lord of the Rings, but if you wanted to include it there are likely ones with the Old English and Modern side by side that could work well-- Grendel by Gardner might be a good fit especially for pleasure reading though the author is not British (and there are dozens of movies if you just wanted to give familiarity if it isn't there already).

 

For the world building bits, The Blazing-World by  Margaret Cavendish (1666) would be a good classic book and is one of the earliest English/British books that would fit in that type of fantasy world building so a good way to show the history and compare through time.  Aphra Benn might also be a good writer to look at. It could be interesting to compare and contrast it to modern British writing about the real world like Londonstani by Sautam Malkani [about London now] and Anita and me by Meera Syal (1997) [About the 1970s].

 

Bringing in Wilfred Owen and other poets of World War 1 and World War 2 might be good for discussing Tolkien's personal history (and fit in with the poetry bits of Literary Lessons) as would works by regional writers like D H Lawerence as many find regional influences in Tolkiens work (which could be also compared to Anita and Me as there is regional overlap between Syal's work and Tolkien's though obviously not at the same time). 

 

Having been recently looking at our own British Literature recommendations for the English Lit GCSE here in England, British Lit seems to be to be stuck in a very sad image rut with very narrow viewpoints. For a fuller idea of Britain and British literature, I'm trying to find and would recommend others try to find short story collections from demographics outside of the normal reading lists. There are many classic and modern ones, I hope to get some time to look through more of them soon to find some for us and to recommend to others.