Lyrical+Ballads+Game+Description+and+Rules

ENG 204 Fall Quarter 2011 Dr. Crystal Lake
 * Lyrical Ballads: The Game **

**Overview of the Game:**

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s //Lyrical Ballads// has been seen as a watershed literary texts. In other words, it changed everything in the course of literature. //Lyrical Ballads// charted a new course for poetry by seriously challenging the tenets of the poems that had come before it and making a call for the poetry of the next generation to be entirely different: more accessible to more readers, more engaged with the daily lives of a wide section of the population, more powerfully about feelings and nature. Yet when //Lyrical Ballads// was first published, it received scant and negative critical attention. People didn’t like it. How, then, has it come to be considered one of the most important and popular works in all of literature?

By playing the //Lyrical Ballads// game, you’ll address the question of what role great books of poetry ought to play in our lives and culture by considering a) the role Wordsworth and Coleridge thought poems should play b) the role other poets before them thought poems should play c) the role Wordsworth and Coleridge’s contemporaries thought poems should play, and d) the role poems do and can play today. You’ll ask questions such as “what is a poem?” “what does poetry do?” “how does poetry make us feel?” “can poetry change our beliefs and actions?” from the perspectives of Wordsworth, Coleridge, the poets who wrote before them, the people who read their poems in their own lifetime, and those who do and could read their poems now.

Playing the //Lyrical Ballads// game will help you better understand what makes a great book so “great,” and even give you the opportunity to think critically about the role literature has played in culture and the roles it should (or shouldn’t) play in our own contemporary moment. The game asks you to stage debates, dialogues, dramatic readings/retellings of poems, and/or imagined scenes between Wordsworth, Coleridge, and their readers.


 * Game Day Procedures: **


 * Game Day 1 **


 * Team 1 has a total of 30 minutes of game play: **
 * 5-10 minutes: Introduce the main arguments your performance will make
 * 15-20 minutes: Perform a dialogue, debate, or imagined scene (or a combination thereof) that illustrates how Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s ideas about poetry compared and contrasted to those of the poets who came before them and to those of //Lyrical Ballads’// original readers
 * 5-10: review the main claims and arguments put forward by your performance
 * Characters that must have speaking parts:
 * Wordsworth
 * Coleridge
 * Another poet (or poets) that Wordsworth or Coleridge could be reasonably responding to who was alive before 1790
 * A reader who would have read //Lyrical Ballads// between its original date of publication and the year 1840.
 * Someone from the team must also recite at least 10 lines of poetry from //Lyrical Ballads// by memory


 * Team 2 has a total of 30 minutes of game play: **
 * 5-10 minutes: Introduce the main arguments your performance will make
 * 15-20 minutes: Perform a dialogue, debate, or imagined scene (or a combination thereof) that illustrates how Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s ideas about poetry compared and contrasted to those of the poets who came before them and to those of //Lyrical Ballads’// original readers
 * 5-10: review the main claims and arguments put forward by your performance
 * Characters that must have speaking parts:
 * Wordsworth
 * Coleridge
 * Another poet (or poets) that Wordsworth or Coleridge could be reasonably responding to who was alive before 1790
 * A reader who would have read //Lyrical Ballads// between its original date of publication and the year 1840.
 * Someone from the team must also recite at least 10 lines of poetry from //Lyrical Ballads// by memory


 * Game Day 2 **


 * Team 2 has a total of 30 minutes of game play: **
 * 5-10 minutes: Introduce the main arguments your performance will make
 * 15-20 minutes: Perform a dialogue, debate, or imagined scene (or a combination thereof) that illustrates how an audience of college students today should respond to Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s claims about the importance and role of poetry
 * 5-10: review the main claims and arguments put forward by your performance
 * Characters that must have speaking parts:
 * Wordsworth
 * Coleridge
 * A college student
 * A professor
 * Someone from the team must also recite at least 10 lines of poetry from //Lyrical Ballads// by memory


 * Team 1 has a total of 30 minutes of game play: **
 * 5-10 minutes: Introduce the main arguments your performance will make
 * 15-20 minutes: Perform a dialogue, debate, or imagined scene (or a combination thereof) that illustrates how an audience of college students today should respond to Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s claims about the importance and role of poetry
 * 5-10: review the main claims and arguments put forward by your performance

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 * Game Day 3: **
 * Throughout Game Days 1 and 2, the Indeterminate Team observes and develops questions in response to Team 1 and Team 2’s performances, taking their introductions, summaries, and any other supplemental materials posted onto the wiki into account. On Game Day 3, the Indeterminates will lead class discussion, spending
 * 5-10 minutes reviewing Team 1’s performances: they will summarize Team 1’s claims as they understood them and present several discussion questions for Team 1.
 * Team 1 then has 10-15 minutes to respond to those questions
 * 5-10 minutes discussing Team 2’s performances: they will summarize Team 1’s claims as they understood them and present several discussion questions for Team 1.
 * Team 2 has 10-15 minutes to respond to those questions
 * Indeterminates spend 20 minutes directing general class discussion or engaging the course in an activity
 * Choosing a winner: ** After Game Day 3, the Indeterminates will choose a winner based on the following criteria:
 * The level of time and effort put into preparing for game day
 * The level of professionalism displayed during game day
 * The level of engagement with //Lyrical Ballads//
 * The level of engagement with other resources (scholarly and nineteenth century)
 * The overall persuasiveness of the Team’s performances, analyses, and answers to discussion questions

The Indeterminates will provide Dr. Lake with a brief report announcing the winner and justifying their decision.


 * Game Rules: **

Carefully prepare for and adhere to game day procedures, making sure that you use your allotted time and follow directions. Failure to follow game day procedures or the tenets of the game could compromise your entire group’s participation grade.

Maintain respect and professionalism at all times: All interactions with your team, the other team, and the jury – both inside and outside of the classroom – should be undertaken with respect and professionalism. You are each individually responsible for maintaining a civil tone and for conducting your work to the highest professional standards. Interrupting a classmate, disregarding a classmate’s perspective, undermining a classmate’s work, or disregarding the procedures of the game will all compromise your final grade.

Take responsibility for your participation in the game: A class like this demands that you actively participate by reading assigned texts, conducting independent outside research, and taking ownership of your team’s needs and goals. You need to be prepared to adjust your schedule as well as be flexible about the division of work and tasks among group members. Avoid taking on too much responsibility; avoid letting everyone else do the work. You are responsible for ensuring that the instructor can see the work that you’ve done for your team, and you will have to make considerable effort to ensure your presence and participation during game days.

Maintain the highest standards of academic integrity: You may not represent someone else’s work as your own. This is true in regards to the work of your team, the other team, and other specialized researchers you may consult. You need to explicitly acknowledge your reliance on other sources. For example, if you’re argument one day is based on the work of another researcher you may begin your speech with the phrase “According to [name of researcher].” Likewise, if you share information on the wiki, provide a bibliography of or a link to the sources you consulted. Finally, sabotaging the other team’s work by deleting it, stealing it, or making it difficult for them to conduct may result in a grade of 0 for your entire team. When in doubt about the integrity of your work, seek the advice of the instructor.

Failure to follow these rules may result in a grade of 0, both for participation in the game and on the reflection essay.

**Schedule:**

**Game Day 1: Team 1 goes first**

**Game Day 2: Team 2 goes first**

**Game Day 3: Indeterminates Lead Class**