American Literature Online

If the phrase "classic literature" makes you think of dusty old books, think again. How about word-searchable Web sites? Hypertext? Electronic library? Now that classics have been brought into the digital age, they are even more accessible and you can interact with them in new ways. In this activity, you and one other classmate will team up in a literary scavenger hunt of English classics on the Web. You'll have just one hour to do your research, using the list of questions I will give you and your teammate. You will have just one more hour to create an interactive slide show in Office PowerPoint based on your research. Then you'll present your PowerPoint to the class. Once we’ve seen all the presentations, we'll vote for the best presentations in terms of content, design, and overall quality.

Objectives

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Students search the Web for information about literary classics.

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Students create an interactive Office PowerPoint presentation to effectively communicate the results of their research. California Standard: Literary Response and Analysis http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/englangdevstnd.pdf Subject: Language Arts Grades: 9-12 Scavenger Questions to Hunt for: 1. Name two novels by Ernest Hemingway. When were they were published? 2. Who wrote Travels with Charlie? Describe Charlie. 4. Who wrote The Lord of the Flies? Briefly describe the setting and theme. 5. What do the protagonists in The Scarlet Letter and Fahrenheit 451 have in common? 6. What is the nature of the conflict in To Kill A Mockingbird? 7. Who wrote 1984? What is the protagonist's greatest fear? 8. Name two plays by Arthur Miller. Give a one-sentence description of each. 9. Where does a symbol of God appear in The Great Gatsby? 10. Who is the narrator of Mary Shelley's epistolary novel Frankenstein? What is the basic conflict in this story? 11. Name a nature writer from the school of American Romanticism. 12. What new kind of story is Jo trying to write to win a contest in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, and what kind of story had she been writing before? 13. Who wrote the novel Jane Eyre? The novel uses the motifs of an old manor, a Byronic hero, the madwoman in the attic, and "the vampire." What is the name for these kinds of motif? 14. What was the name of the periodical that Charles Dickens published Great Expectations in from 1860-1861 in serial form? 15. In which chapters do you find the two famous death scenes in Uncle Tom's Cabin? Who dies in each scene? 16. In his memoir A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass identifies what enabled him to free himself and work to free other slaves. What is it? 17. What year was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice first published? What year was it first published under her name instead of as "Anonymous"? 18. What is the devastating natural disaster in Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God? 19. Who is the one man Buck will not steal from in Jack London's Call of the Wild? Why won't he steal from him? 20. How many chairs did Henry David Thoreau have in his house on Walden Pond and what was each one for? 21. Name three classic American novels that were banned and the (first) date they were banned

Websites to Use for Answering Scavenger Questions:

• Bibliomania (http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/frameset.html). Search 2,000 full classic texts by author or title. The site’s Author pages contain recommended links to more literary classics information.
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• Classics at the online literature library (http://www.literature.org/authors/). Read the full text of many classics.
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• American Literary Classics (http://www.americanliterature.com/ARCHIVES/ARCHIVES.HTML). Full text of more classics not available on other sites.
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• University of Delaware Library Guide to English and American Literature (http://www2.lib.udel.edu/subj/engl/internet.htm). 
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• Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/homepage/lchp.html
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• Keep your answers brief—no more than a few sentences.

Essential Question:

*Define the "American dream" and give an example from a novel you've read*