April 23

AGENDA:

1. Mary Shelley Bio (period 2)
2. Anticipation Guide...overarching questions
3. Self and the Shadow / Doppleganger
4. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Stereotypes: Not literary. We avoid using this term to talk about classifying characters, settings, plot points, etc..
• Archetypes: The broad, all-encompassing norms of the stories humanity tells. The same archetypes can be found in all or nearly all cultures. Ex. Hero, orphan, monster.
• Tropes: Culturally-specific norms in storytelling. Tropes are cultural classifications of archetypes. There can be many tropes found under the umbrella of one archetype. Ex. Girl home alone at night with crazy man on loose, babies switched at birth, etc. Literary devices are not tropes (i.e. narrators, foreshadowing, flashbacks, etc.).
• Clichés: Overused and hackneyed phrases, characters, settings, plot points, etc.. Archetypes do not become clichéd. Tropes can become clichés if they are used too often and readers get bored of them. Clichés are defined by a loss of the meaning or as a distraction from the story.
• Stock Characters: stock characters are pretty flat. There’s not much development that goes into them except to inform the reader as to what kind of story to expect. If you have a damsel in distress, there’s probably going to be a dramatic rescue. If you have an underdog sports team, there’s likely going to be a fairly large upset.
  This does not make them bad, mind you; these stock characters can help set a story. However, just because you use a stock character doesn’t mean you have to use them in the way they’re usually used. A lot of parody films take stock characters and play with their roles, or make stock characters their main characters. Young Frankenstein is a great example, because it takes the stock characters of the mad scientist and the monster, and it twists them around and turns them into full-fledged protagonists.

HW: Vocab Review Friday; Read Chapters 1-5 by Friday; Science projects Monday