Mother Courage and Her Children Lesson Plan

Reading and Applying Literary Criticism

Kind of Activity:

Group Work

Objective:

Students will be able to read a text of literary criticism and apply it to the text being studied.

Common Core Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.1; CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.2; CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.5; CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.10

Structure:

One of the most famous and commonly used essays about the work of Bertolt Brecht was Walter Benjamin's "What is Epic Theatre?" Benjamin committed suicide while fleeing from the Nazis more than two years before Mother Courage was published and performed; nonetheless, his Marxist-inflected reading of key concepts in Brecht's work can help to...