B - ... when we engaged in 21st century digital audits of main character energy from an 18th century play.

ESSENTIAL QUESTION: To what extent do our filters prevent us from forming authentic connections?

Learners shared their understanding of Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," and Blake's "The Lamb" and "The Tyger." I filled gaps and talked about how the how Gray, Burns, and Blake kept one foot in the Age of Reason while their poems were expressions of the Age of Feeling, and how the pieces give rise to notions of the sublime.

We then stepped back from the Pre-Romantics to take one last look at the wit and reason of the 18th century as depicted in Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. Learners worked in pairs to create a "digital audit" of one of the characters from the play, exposing the "public grid" and the "private finsta," and then turning the dialogue into "status updates."

READ:

• Austen's Pride & Prejudice (ongoing)
• Intro to the Romantic Age
• Wordsworth's "Lines Composed Upon Tintern Abbey"

NEXT CLASS: digital audits, Burns, the Early Romantics