S314 - The Crucible: Images of Witch-hunt (Salem, Senator McCarthy, the play and the movies)

Sessions	Dates	Start	Finish
1	15 Oct 2009	05:30 PM	08:30 PM

IGCSE Literature teachers; teachers / schools who wish to introduce IGCSE English Literature in their curriculum.

- To provide IGCSE literature teachers with useful tools for the analysis of drama.
- To provide them with strategies to facilitate students' access to those texts.
- To enhance critical thinking in both teachers and students.

This seminar is designed to provide teachers with the historical and cultural background to the play, analyse the text and encourage debate and interpretations. In order to do so, some scenes of the 1996 film version will be analysed so that readers can become aware of the differences in medium and treatment, and can eventually “stage” their own version. Regarding the historical events, these will be taken into account for two important reasons: firstly, in order to highlight the artistic motives behind Miller’s changes to history; secondly, in order to continue Miller’s analogy with the which-hunt going on in The States at his time into our own time and country.

Aristotle, Poetics, http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/poetics.html, provided by The
Internet Classics Archive
Bigsby, Christopher (2003) “Introduction” in Arthur Miller The Crucible. London: Penguin.
Miller, Arthur (2003) The Crucible. London: Penguin
Smith, Leonard (1986) The Crucible by Arthur Miller. London: Macmillan Press Ltd.

Presentation of an integrated approach to the text covering both a historical and a literary background, as well as literary analysis and pedagogical considerations through debates, pair and group work, and video activities.