Jane Eyre and The Bildungsroman

In my class, I teach Their Eyes Were Watching God, Song of Solomon, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Jane Eyre. I also teach theories related to the "hero's journey" using lecture material from Joseph Campbell including a DVD with an interview between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell.

I also use several sites to pull together analysis of the hero's journey with various other works:


http://home.rmi.net/%7Eseifert/id22.html

http://www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/hehttp://hubcap.clemson.edu/~sparks/sffilm/mmswtab.htmlroinfilm.html

http://www.cerritos.edu/fquaas/resources/English102/hero.htm

http://ias.berkeley.edu/orias/hero/

http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~sparks/heroj.html

http://www.cerritos.edu/fquaas/resources/English102/HeroChart.htm


http://www.clickok.co.uk/index4.html

I have students chart the hero's journey with something familiar, this year we are using Harry Potter. When we finish reading Jane Eyre, we will analyze the novel using the hero's journey chart.

Resources for Teaching Jane Eyre

http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/bronte/cbronte/rosengarten.html


http://english.byu.edu/novelinks/Novel%20pages/Jane%20Eyre.htm

http://www.webenglishteacher.com/cbronte.html



A Capstone Project (I revised this annually...suggestions always appreciated).

The following assignment is prefaced by a lecture on the bildungsroman and related coming-of-age stories. The list of readings included below are familiar to our students from the current AP curriculum and from prior year’s study in other English courses.

Some examples of coming-of-age stories that can be considered within the Bildungsroman genre include:
Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima.
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations.
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: Harper & Row, 1937.
Joyce, James. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird.
Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon.
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Washington Square Press, 1983.



The Bildungsroman or Coming of Age Story in Literature

Over the course of the year, we have encountered several stories that can be considered to be a Bildungsroman or coming of age story. For the final six weeks project, students will be required to document their own “coming of age” as they approach a major rite of passage—high school graduation. Projects should give the audience a sense of the creator’s individual development over time and leave the viewer/listener with a sense that graduation is a threshold about to be crossed and that senior year has been the homestretch of a transformative journey preparing the student to be launched into the future—whatever that may mean and whatever may transpire in years to come.

This project will incorporate some combination or all of the following elements: quotations from literature; poetry; excerpts from movies; song lyrics; original writing in the form of prose, poetry, song lyrics, or musical compositions; photos; interviews; performances; and/or original artwork.

The project may take one of several forms. Students may opt to create a PowerPoint presentation or slide show; a video documentary; a memory book; and/or a graphic novel.

Students must frame their personal Bildungsroman in two ways: (1) by drawing a parallel with a story from the canon of classic literature; and (2) by establishing a connection with the current historical moment via some element of popular culture.

The project should be accompanied by a typed explanatory overview of the project. The overview should be at least 500 typed words in length. Students will have up to 10 minutes to present their projects.

Questions to consider when working on this project:

What experiences have shaped me into who I am today?
How am I different today than when I first started high school?
What do I know about myself now that I did not know last year, four years ago, or as a child?
What books have influenced my thinking?
What songs and/or films have influenced my thinking?
Are there books, films, or songs that I associate with specific time periods in my life? Why were these works important to me at those times?
If I had to choose one quotation from a book, song, play, poem, or film to represent who I am today, what words would best represent me?
What, if anything, has prepared me to venture into the world beyond the environment of high school? If I am not prepared, how will I deal with whatever awaits me?

The final project is completed during the last two weeks of school. The AP exam is also administered within the final two weeks we meet with our seniors.