Intro - Resources - Process - A Situation - Conclusion
Process
In order to complete this task, experts from four different
fields will be consulted and their reports assembled. The finished biography
will draw from the work of:
historians
literary critics
artists
religious scholars
In groups of three or four, investigate the websites
given in the Resources section and provide the following information
in a 15 to 20-minute presentation to the class:
GROUP ONE
Tasks for Historians
-
Document the date and place of Rouquette’s birth. Name
at least one other member of his family and cite the relationship.
-
Describe nineteenth-century New Orleans. Locate maps and
social information that illustrate the society in which Rouquette lived
and worked.
-
Describe St. Tammany Parish and tell what Rouquette accomplished
in this area. Locate passages in his work that show the importance of Lacombe
in his life.
GROUP TWO
Tasks for Literary Critics
-
Relate in what ways Rouquette was inspired by American
pioneer figures. Do some research on Daniel Boone and identify passages
in Rouquette’s work that reflect his influence on Rouquette.
-
Describe some basic characteristics of French Romanticism
and provide biographical information on the father of this movement, François-René
de Chateaubriand. Identify passages in Rouquette’s work that reflect the
influence of Chateaubriand on Rouquette’s writing.
-
Look at sites on the Choctaw Indians and discover thematic
parallels between their beliefs and Rouquette’s ideas. Explain how his
relationship with the Native Americans influenced his life.
GROUP THREE
Tasks for Artists
-
Create and take a virtual field trip to a forest and find
passages in Rouquette’s work that reflect his love of nature.
-
Provide landscape pictures that reflect the nature that
so influenced Rouquette. Provide captions from Rouquette’s work that relate
to each image. Identify the trees mentioned in his works.
-
Make a model or a sketch of one of Rouquette's hermitages,
as you imagine it might have appeared.
GROUP FOUR
Tasks for Religious Scholars
-
Examine the role of the Catholic Church in Rouquette’s
life and the importance of religious faith in his writings.
-
Define asceticism and explain its importance for
Rouquette.
-
Define transcendentalism and identify important
transcendentalist
writers
of the nineteenth century. What themes and ideas did Rouquette share with
this movement?