William Blake Questions...3/16/2009

1) I do not agree with the editors of my textbook that Blake had the ability to to enact social change with his poetry. I do not agree because I don't believe that anybody is capable of bringing that much power to people just through poetry. Most people don't know what is going in a poem they are reading, so I don't think that Blake's poems were able to make change in the society he was living in. '

2.) The editors may have included the Parliament transcript as a primary source to show that social change was actually occurring during the time of his poetry. This did not affect my reading of the poem because I don't believe that one poem was able to change the way society acted, I think it was clearly just a big coincidence that it all happened at the same time as Blake's poetry being released.

Jonathan Swift Teach Prep Work

A.) My groups main question was "Why are the Lilliputians doing this to Gulliver?" We wanted to know what Gulliver did to deserve this. Did the Lilliputians have something against him? Was it a power issue? Did the people of Lilliput feel intimidated because of their size compared to Gulliver's?

B.) The small teacher groups that we did this week were very helpful in going deeper into the story and helping us better understanding what was going on in the story. I think it was interesting to hear what my peers had to say about the story and their personal views of the story line. I would like to do something like this again in the future with other novels or stories.

C.) My group decided to first present our question with all of our predictions of what we believed was going on. Our group then went on to make assumptions as to what would happen and why.