Study Shakespeare's Hamlet in the context of Elizabethan attitudes toward revenge. The lesson includes activities in which students compare the text of Hamlet to the interpretations of several modern filmmakers.
In this French language lesson, elementary-school students learn about the ways that early humans communicated through art by exploring cave paintings of France and creating their own wall artwork.
Clues to Walt Whitman's effort to create a new and distinctly American form of verse may be found in his Notebooks, now available online from the American Memory Collection. In an entry to be examined in this lesson, Whitman indicated that he wanted his poetry to explore important ideas of a universal scope (as in the European tradition), but in authentic American situations and settings using specific details with direct appeal to the senses.
Poets achieve popular acclaim only when they express clear and widely shared emotions with a forceful, distinctive, and memorable voice. But what is meant by voice in poetry, and what qualities have made the voice of Langston Hughes a favorite for so many people?
