THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN IN THE VICTORIAN AGE - JANE EYRE - PUNISHMENT

Kindness

Jane Eyre - Power Point Presentation

The Exploitation of Children in the Victorian Age

The Woman Question

Ask Jane Eyre

Further videos:  Arrival at Thornfield Hall - Horse scene - Teaching Adele - Do you ever laugh, Miss Eyre? -  I would do anything for you - Return to Thornfield Hall - Proposal

  Interrupted Marriage   

CHARLES DICKENS (1812 - 1870)

Dickens (1812 -1870) was a great prolific writer and entertainer who portrayed a vivid picture of Victorian England. He created a vast range of characters, especially eccentrics, vagabonds, criminals and orphans. In his own life Dickens was extraordinarily popular and he is still the best-known English novelist. He profoundly influenced many of his contemporaries and successors, even abroad (Dostoyevsky and Kafka for instance). Earlier critics tended to regard him as a great comic writer and entertainer, whose plots were implausible and whose characterization was superficial. Contemporary critics now tend to see his works - especially the later ones - as combining social realism with the poetical devices of metaphor and symbolism. These allowed him to explore the depths of the human psyche and to represent social conflict and evil.

If you want to know more about Charles Dickens, download 

the Power Point Presentation from the Widget_Box on the right. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE VICTORIAN AGE - POWER POINT PRESENTATION

Queen Victoria's family in 1846 by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

You can download the

 POWER POINT PRESENTATION,   THE VICTORIAN AGE
  (HISTORICAL/SOCIAL/CULTURAL BACKGROUND )
from the Flash_ Widget Box on the right sidebar (The Victorian Age 2011)

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE & THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

 DOWNLOAD THE POWER POINT PRESENTATION 

S.T.COLERIDGE AND THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER  

from the widget_box on the right 

LINKS & CONNECTIONS

  If you like heavy metal, IRON MAIDEN made a rock version of Coleridge's ballad

Video: IRON MAIDEN THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER PART 

Lyrics  

MY STUDENTS GIVE THEIR LESSONS : THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Giulia, Nico e Sara closed the series of lessons my 5scB students gave to the rest of the class after reading a 19th century novel of their choice during summer. This morning it was the turn of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. The three students in the group used pictures and Power Point slides to visually support their very informative speech about the author, the characters, the story and the themes in the novel.
Since we are not working on the Victorian Age yet, they didn't try to contextualize Oscar Wilde's work. They instead made very interesting points analysing the themes .
While listening, their mates took notes. I sadly noticed that some of them were rather "surprised" at discovering  Oscar Wilde's troubles and tragic end due to his homosexuality. The mentioned some were rather judgemental and, I'm afraid,  I can't bear that. Unfortunately,  in my experience, young people are sometimes much less tolerant and less understanding than adults. I must work on that. Promise.

(The power point presentation used in this lesson is in the widget_box on the right - Dorian Gray 2012)

MY STUDENTS GIVE THEIR LESSONS: JANE EYRE

Federica, Valeria e Veronica read Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre in the summer and prepared a very interesting lesson  about the author and the novel.

They presented their points and analysis with power point slides that you can download from the widget_box on the right (Jane Eyre 2012) and they also proposed us a scene from the latest movie adaptation of the story with Michael Fassbender as Mr Rochester and Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre. 

They said they liked reading this novel  and I hope they will also like studying Victorian literature from January on.

For now, in our lessons,  we are working on the different genres of fiction between the end of 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century (Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Walter Scott)

Tomorrow we'll work on Pride and Prejudice. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that ..." a teacher fond of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and great classic literature is having and will have great fun.

 Will her students ever share her passion?

MY STUDENTS GIVE THEIR LESSONS: PERSUASION BY JANE AUSTEN

The book Elena, Eleonora, Elisabetta, Emi e Valentina read last summer was Persuasion  so they prepared their lesson on Jane Austen's last novel , introducing also The Novel of Manners as a genre . They carefully chose information, videos and pictures to report to the rest of the class with the help of a power point presentation.

They carefully analysed the characters and the themes in the story, proposed their favourite scenes from the 2007 adaptation of the book and introduced to their mates the woman question referring to authors like Mary Wollstonecraft and Margaret Fuller to finally discuss the fact if Jane Austen can be considered a feminist writer.

 You'll find their work in a folder in the widget_box on the right sidebar. 

JANE AUSTEN & THE NOVEL OF MANNERS: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE - PART I

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”.

This is the widely popular sentence opening the widely popular story of the five Bennet sisters  written by Jane Austen between October 1796 and August 1797. Its original title was FIRST IMPRESSIONS but it was published only in 1813 with the title, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.

The opening scene is set in Hertfordshire, a county that nowadays has practically become part of Greater London, as suburban development stretches even further northwards. In the late 18th century, however, it was still well-wooded countryside.

The story opens early in September, when Jane Austen takes us straight into Longbourn House to listen to the Bennets’ conversation after dinner. Mrs Bennet is making plans for husband –hunting on her daughters’ behalf. Five daughters and an estate worth £2,000 a year were not an easy situation to cope with, especially if your husband (Mr Bennet) is not very good at saving. The urgent need for husbands is also due to the fact that the estate of Longbourn is “entailed” – a legal arrangement whereby the property could descend only to a male heir.

THE GOTHIC NOVEL - NOTES & POWER POINT PRESENTATION

THE SUBLIME

The term refers to a linguistic, literary or artistic form which expresses noble or elevated feelings and behaviour. The concept of sublime was analysed by an unknown rhetorician of the 1st century AD who identified  the sublime with the beautiful and found its origin not in the perfection of style but in the passion of inspiration echoing in the soul .

OSCAR WILDE & THE END OF AN AGE - THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

"Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you. Be always searching for new

sensations. Be afraid of nothing(...)"

O. Wilde from THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE (1886)

A Power Point Presentation of the plot and themes in the novel and a

Power Point Presentation with notes about the author

can be found in the Widget_ box on the right


1. ROBERT LOUISE STEVENSON
2. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

ELIZABETH GASKELL AND THE INDUSTRIAL NOVEL - MARY BARTON (1848) - POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS, WORKSHEET & VIDEO

In the Flash_Widget Box on the right you'll find two Power Point Presentations related to Mrs Gaskell and her first novel, Mary Barton (1848):

- Gaskell ppt
- Mary Barton ppt
Click on the icons in the box and download them.
With Mrs Gaskell and her "industrial" or "social - problem" novels, 

 we will be able to experience a completely new world as readers, that of Victorian industrial cities with their restless, fierce and troublesome citizens: factory owners and factory workers, "masters" and "hands", the rich and the poor.

Industrialization was radically changing the strictly  conservative Victorian society but the strife to obtain modernity and basic rights was to be long, hard, paved with sufference and tragedy for workers.

WILLIAM BLAKE - A VISIONARY ARTIST

Download the Power Point Presentation we used in our lessons on William Blake
from the Widget_Box

WALTER SCOTT - THE FATHER OF THE HISTORICAL NOVEL

Download the Power Point Presentation THE HISTORICAL NOVEL with notes about Walter Scott,  Waverley and Ivanhoe, the themes and main features in Scott's work, the historical context of his novels, similarities and differences between Scott and Manzoni.  DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION from the Widget_Box on the right sidebar.

THEMES &TOPICS

WAR IN WALTER SCOTT'S NOVELS

Scott has a Romantic idea of war: he presents it as heroic, shaped by the code of Romances. According to him the battlefield is a place where every man can practise and show his bravery, his loyalty, his desire to sacrifice himself for other human beings or for a cause. War is the field of the Hero and the Rebel dissatisfied with society and its unjust rules. War is considered an idealized moment, men fight for some right reasons and for their ideals. 

Scott doesn’t describe the atrocities of killing, he distances the violence of a conflict transforming war into a source of imaginative pleasure, he undercovers the horrors of war with the idea of  future glory. Connected to this conception of war there is the cult of the individual, typical of the Romantic age: a rebel, a hero who fights to defend people unjustly accused, who fights to restore the just lists, against society .

Scott emphasizes heroic individual actions so a great importance is given to single combats or duels fought according to the rules of chivalry.

 Ivanhoe can be considered the Romantic Hero: he fights on the right side, to save Rebecca , to help Richard I; he doesn’t accept compromise, he is ready to die for his ideals, he is characterized by a disinterested personal virtue. Ivanhoe fights with the Anglo-Saxons against the evil Normans: patriotism is a virtue that implies active resistance to tyranny and oppressio, a heroic self-sacrifice for the public good. But the sacrifice will be rewarded, in fact the heroe is destined to be separated from the stern demands of patriotic duty and to be consigned to the enjoyment of persoonal liberty and prosperity.

In Ivanhoe, the clash between the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans reflects the social struggle between the aristocracy and the lower classes. In Waverley  the battlefield is also the place where the protagonist is subjected to an evolution: the war is the moment of the moral growth of Waverley, he will learn loyalty and bravery. The war consists also in a cultural conflict between the jacobite rebels, who want to restore the Stuart Dynasty on the throne, and the Hanoverians. Waverley is the point of contact between the two opposite sides. Also in Ivanhoe the two cultures in conflict, Anglo-Saxon and Norman, find their meeting point in the protagonist .