Fall 2014 Annotation Assignment 1
Due 9-17-2014, in place of the Word Log Assignment

1) First, set up your account at genius.com following the instructions on A Student's Guide to Genius,.

2) Now, go to our Fall 2014 CLASS ROSTER for 19th-c Brit Lit, and make an annotation on your name, so that we can associate your genius username with your actual name (so I can track you and assign you credit for your work this term).

3) Select a poem from the list below. Read the poem carefully, and then look up words, contexts, references as you have been doing for the Word Log exercises in our class so far. Make at least two distinctly different annotations, ideally to two different poems,  or add a suggestion to an existing annotation to help gloss a word, passage, reference on one of the poems on this list. Your annotations shouldn't just give an opinion on how to read the passage, but should provide some specific information that helps us visualize or understand a reference better. Try to incorporate information you learn from our gated (private) Pitt Digital Library resources (working with the Oxford English Dictionary, the Literature Online Database, and/or Credo Reference) with images and links to resources available publicly on the web. Images and multimedia resources are welcome, as long as they are helpful and relevant to the goal of providing a helpful explanatory gloss. Optional: If you wish, where the poem lacks a description of historical context or an overall introductory statement, try your hand at drafting something based on what you can learn about the poem.

Robert Southey, Poems on the Slave Trade

William Blake, "The Mental Traveller"

William Blake, "The Crystal Cabinet"

Charlotte Smith, "The Swallow"

Charlotte Smith, "Written Near a Port on a Dark Evening"

Charlotte Smith, "To the Goddess of Botany"

Charlotte Smith, "Beachy Head" (This is a very long poem that we may keep working on later! For now, try just reading  the first 36 lines or so. There's plenty to gloss here!)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Eolian Harp"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison"

William Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Dejection: An Ode"