Bleak House Lesson Plan

Nabokov on Bleak House

Kind of Activity:

Group Work

Objective:

Students will respond to a literary analysis of the novel by another famous author

Common Core Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.5, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.4, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.1

Structure:

The famous Russian-American novelist and scholar, Vladimir Nabokov, gave a series of lectures in the 1940s on major works of English literature, and one of his focuses was Bleak House. Nabokov (like many others) identified Bleak House as Dickens's masterpiece, and he laid out thirteen characteristics of the novel's style:

1. vivid evocation, with or without the use of figures of speech
2. abrupt listing of...