Lost Tools of Writing 2 and British Literature

Writing is a skill that requires coaching and practice. This course will create a shared literary experience and allow students to learn and practice writing using the rhetorical tools introduced in the Lost Tools of Writing Level 2.

During this course, your student will continue the study of classical rhetoric by practicing the judicial address. Just as the elements of LTW 2 build upon one another, so LTW 2 builds upon LTW 1. Students will continue using three canons of classical rhetoric: Invention, Arrangement, and Elocution. They will also continue practicing the five common topics and figures of speech from LTW 1 while adding new schemes and tropes, new sentence structures, further Amplification, new exordia, logic, and special topics like justice and stasis questions.

At the end of this course, your student will be able to write a 10-paragraph judicial address and grow in discernment and judgment by thinking deeply about issues arising from the literature we will read together.

This course pairs well with Challenge II by focusing on literature selections used in CC

Course Prerequisites: Students should have successfully completed at least one year of LTW Level 1 and be at least 15 years of age.

Course Objectives

• Learn to refine the thinking and writing skills introduced in LTW 1
• Utilize the new Invention Topics of Justice and Stasis Questions
• Recognize and use new schemes and tropes
• Write eight Judicial Addresses
• Grow in your ability to think and write well
• Learn how to read great books

Texts

• Lost Tools of Writing Level Two, 2nd Edition, Third Printing, Student Workbook, published by the CiRCE Institute 2022. ISBN 9781734785371
• Beowulf, Burton Raffel
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford University Press)
• A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
• The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien