FROM THE SATIRICAL NOVEL TO SATIRICAL PAINTING - WILLIAM HOGARTH, MARRIAGE A LA MODE

Hogarth was the inventor of the narrative sequence of paintings. Each sequence followed a theme such as the failure of combined marriages or the corruption of political elections, for examples. Hogarth's oil paintings were then engraved and sold as sets of prints, which made them much cheaper and very popular. Hogarth is at once a realistic and comic artist, a satirist.

Let's give a close look at his Marriage à la Mode (fashionable marriage in French) sequence (1743 - 45) .

1. The Marriage Settlement

This is the first scene in this series of paintings on the misfortunes of a marriage between people of fashion. The marriage is being arranged in the Earl of Squander's house. The Earl suffers from gout and rests his bandaged foot on a stool. He is receiving the dowry for his son's marriage to a rich merchant's daughter: her money for his old ancestry - he points to the genealogical tree, on the right. The Earl is in debt because of the expenses for the still unfinished Palladian villa seen through the window. The groom, on the left, is dressed as a perfecto fop and has a black patch on his neck (the sign of a venereal disease) . The bride sits with her back to him and looks sad; she's listening to the lawyer Silvertongue, her secret lover.

DIVERGENT FROM THE BOOK TO THE MOVIE - READING & WATCHING

Let's improve our English with a book and a movie: Divergent by Veronica Roth and its adaptation for the big screen starring Shailene Woodley and Theo James.

Task 1. Reading comprehension: Read an excerpt from Chapter 1 and answer the questions

Excerpt + questions

Task 2. Listening comprehension: Watch the trailer and fill in the gaps

Transcript - Fill in the gaps exercise

MOVIE PROJECT - ANITA B. BY ROBERTO FAENZA

Anita B. is the new movie directed by Roberto Faenza starring Eline Powell, Robert Sheehan, Antonio Cupo, Andrea Osvart, Nico Mirallegro, Moni Ovadia. We are going to see it at the cinema on the international Holocaust Remembrance Day (27th January). 

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE - HATH NOT A JEW EYES?

                             Watch the video then answer the questions in the worksheet HERE

REBELLIOUS YOUTH: THE ROMANTICS & LIBERTY

In this BBC documentary Peter Ackroyd,writer, historian and presenter,   reveals how the radical ideas of liberty that inspired the French Revolution opened up a world of possibility for great British writers such as William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, inspiring some of the greatest works of literature in the English language. Their ideas are the foundations of our modern notions of freedom and their words are performed by David Tennant, Dudley Sutton and David Threlfall. 

The Romantics are important because they helped to define, and indeed to create, the modern world. They helped to fashion the way in which we all now think and imagine.

REBELLIOUS YOUTH - DEAD POETS SOCIETY (1989)

Carpe Diem: Seize the day. This is the lesson John Keating, an unorthodox teacher at an all-male prep school in New England, wants to convey to his impressionable students. Keating is an alumnus of the school, Welton Academy, and hopes to make his students as curious and iconoclastic as he was (as is). Keating encourages them to "suck the marrow out of life," pursue their dreams, and find their voice. He does so with unusual teaching methods, such as tearing pages from textbooks, kicking soccer balls while shouting poetry, and standing on desks to gain a different perspective. These approaches are frowned upon by the administrators at conservative Welton, whose creed is "Tradition, Honor, Discipline, and Excellence."

REBELLIOUS YOUTH - READING SALINGER, KEROUAC & SYLVIA PLATH. LINKS AND MATERIALS.

DOWNLOAD THE TEXT OF SYLVIA PLATH'S POEM, DADDY

Listen to Sylvia Plath's herself reading the poem

FOCUS ON ... BEING A TEENAGER

Our topic for conversation classes has been what being a teenager means. Here is our worksheet for a reading, speaking, writing activity which can be rather involving since the focus of the discussion is the students themselves and their feelings. 

CLICK HERE FOR THE WORKSHEET

SUMMER READINGS - WORKSHEET

 (2scB, 3scA, 4scA, 4scB)

Here's the worksheet  you should fill in to prepare your oral report about the book you've chosen as your summer reading.

Don't forget to

- complete all the exercises at the end of each chapter

- read the texts about the author, themes, and context you'll find in your book

- listen to the audiobook once you've finished reading or while reading 

POSTS ABOUT VIRGINIA WOOLF AND MRS DALLOWAY

                                                   

Click HERE for the list of posts about Woolf and Mrs Dalloway

DEFOE VS SWIFT

The two great prose writers of the Age of Queen Anne stand out as representatives of two worlds, of two cultures in conflict: the last of the aristocrats and the herald of the middle  class.

Here are just a few hints to reflect on the differences between them

DANIEL DEFOE	JONATHAN SWIFT
English	Irish
Liberal ( Whig)	Conservative (Tory)
Dissenter	Anglican
Optimistic	Pessimistic
Exalted the use of reason	Satirized the use of reason
Championed individualism	Condemned individualism
Realistic novels	Imaginary voyages

 And now a closer look at SWIFT's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS

SATIRE

Gulliver’s Travels has been considered a satirical masterpiece. But what is SATIRE?

A JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF DARKNESS - JOSEPH CONRAD

“. . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence—that which makes its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream—alone. . . .”

These days we are reading some pages from Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS (1899) and, as usual, I'll try to help you study and understand both the novel and its author better providing you with useful materials and links.

Let's start with some links to know more about

THE CONTEXT

THE PLOT

THE MAIN CHARACTERS

THE THEMES

NIGHTMARES OF THE CONGO

The story of HEART OF DARKNESS is connected to Conrad's personal experiences. In 1890 he went to Africa to command a vessel on the Congo river for a Belgian company. His predecessor had been killed by native Africans. Conrad was partly there simply to get a living but, at the same time, he was a romantic for whom sailing was a spiritual vocation, as many of his novels testify. However, this time his travelling experience was extremely painful. His four-month adventure left him near death, devastated by fever. In 1891, after his return to Europe, he wrote in a letter to a friend :" I am still plunged in deepest night, and 

my dreams are only nightmares".

LET'S TALK ABOUT SCHOOL & LEARNING - A QUESTION FROM THE NET

Click HERE and download the worksheet related to this post

SOCIAL ISSUES IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN - THE WOMAN QUESTION

"Conventionality is not morality"
(Charlotte Bronte , Preface to the second edition of "Jane Eyre")

Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre - 2011

(see also THE WOMAN QUESTION  ppt in the widget box on the right  

We already discussed "The Woman Question" studying Jane Austen's novels. Unfortunately, things hadn't changed in time and Victorian women still had to bear a subordinate social role.

Queen Victoria, "the mother of the nation", personified 19th century middle-class femininity and domesticity perfectly. Supported by her beloved husband Albert and surrounded by her nine children, she presented a kind of femininity which was centred on the family, motherhood and respectability.

ANONYMOUS - WAS SHAKESPEARE A FRAUD?

READ THE ARTICLE + WATCH THE VIDEOS AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS IN THE WORKSHEET HERE

Scholars and intellectuals have argued the subject for centuries. Was William Shakespeare, the man from Stratford-upon-Avon, the “true” writer who penned the scope of work attributed to him? Or, was the name “Shakespeare” merely a cloaked facade to shield the identity of the works’ authentic author? Have we all been “played”?

Those who believe William Shakespeare did not pen the work are called Anti-Stratfordians; these scholars believe that Shakespeare’s “life doesn’t link up to his work.” They hold that only an aristocrat would have been able to pen such articulate and elevated prose.

Anti-Stratfordian scholars that hold to the “Oxfordian Theory of Shakespeare Authorship” believe that we’ve been “played” by a very talented, stealth Elizabethan courtier named Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. These specific scholars call themselves “Oxfordians.”

Oxfordians maintain that Edward de Vere’s biographical life matches that of the author of Shakespeare’s canon (at least more so than the biography of William Shakespeare of Stratford).

WELCOME TO ITALY - STEREOTYPES

Watch the video and complete the exercises in the worksheet HERE

WUTHERING HEIGHTS BY EMILY BRONTE

Emily Bronte was a clergyman’s daughter. She grew up in a remote part of England. She didn’t like to travel. When she left home she became ill. She never married and she died at the age of 30 having published her only novel and some poetry. It was one of the most shocking novel in English literature. When it was first published 1847, it created a firestorm of protest. It was called one of the most repellent book ever published. One critic said it should be burnt. The protest only settle down when the second edition came out and the author was revealed to be the daughter of a parson from west-Yorkshire. How had a parson’s daughter created such a threat to civilized society as Heathcliff, a   hero driven by sexual passion and vengeance and instead of a proper Victorian heroine she gave the world a married woman who runs around on the moor in her nightgown with her lover. The reading public was shocked. Shocked. But the novel has never been out of print and has had many film/ TV adaptations:  WUTHERING HEIGHTS.

HAMLET

  

Imagine you are a young university student ... Imagine you love Philosophy and Poetry ... You've got friends as well as  a beautiful girl you start fancying about...But your happy ordinary world is suddenly turned upside down by the news of your father's death. You grieve and mourn but you can cope with it...What you really can't stand is ... your mother's behaviour...After just few weeks,  she gets married again, with your uncle, your father's brother...You find it unbearable but nobody else seems to notice that unacceptable exhibition of joy and love. Then something even worse happens: your father's ghost comes back from hell, reveals you the tragic truth of his death and orders you to avenge him! Your uncle Claudius has murdered him and now he is your mother's new husband!

What would you do? Would you respect your father's will? 

This is what happens in the first act of Shakespeare's "Hamlet", one of  the most popular tragedies of all times.

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. 

VOICES FROM THE FRONTLINE - FIGHTING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Front Line Defenders is the International Foundation for the protection of human rights defenders. They work to provide fast and effective action to help protect human rights defenders at risk so they can continue their work as key agents of social change.
Voices from the Front Line, performed on 9 December 2012 at 8 pm GMT, was a celebration of the courage and determination of human rights defenders around the world.  Voices from the Front Line was hosted by Martin Sheen and featured Andrea Corr, Robert Sheehan & Amy Huberman.

Video 1 . Robert Sheehan reads Liu Xiaobo

WORKSHEET FOR VIDEO 1

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)

BEOWULF, GRENDEL AND THE DRAGON - NOTES AND ACTIVITIES BASED ON VIDEOS

The epic poem

The word “epic” come from the Greek noun épos, which means “the poets’ oral exposition”. The two major epic poems in the Western tradition are The Iliad and The Odyssey, attributed to the Greek poet Homer. Later examples of epic poems are Virgil’s Aeneid and the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf.

•  The main features of an epic poem are:
•   Long narrative
•   Elevated style
•  Celebration of the deeds of a hero
•  Presence of supernatural events and characters
•   Description of an aristocratic, military society
• Typical scenes: the banquet, the battle, the voyage, the funeral

Beowulf 

It is a poem of 3, 182 lines. It is the longest surviving poem in Old English, the name given to the language of the Anglo-Saxons. It is also the first important example of poetry in a European language that is not Latin or Greek.

There are a couple of references in Beowulf to historical events in Denmark from the 6^th century, but almost all the poem is based on legends, not history.

The version of the poem we have now was probably composed between 700 and 750. It was composed in England, but the story takes place in Sweden and Denmark. This means the Anglo-Saxons went on telling traditional stories from the Germanic world even after they had invaded England.

Like other early poetry in other cultures, Beowulf was first transmitted orally, for centuries, before finally being written down. In Anglo-Saxon times only very few people could read or write, and there were very few books, which all had to be written by hand. Printing books in Europe was only invented in the 15^th century.

THE GENERATION GAP - FATHER & SON

  Cat Stevens, Father and Son


 

 WORKSHEET 

READING, WATCHING, DISCUSSING JANE AUSTEN'S EMMA

Emma was written between January 1814 and March 1815. The setting of the narrative's action would appear to be recent: 1813-14. By this period, Austen was a known and successful writer. Like Sense and Sensibility, the work was published on commission by the distinguished house of John Murray. It was published ('by the author of Pride and Prejudice, etc.') in December 1815 (dated 1816 on the title page). The novel was dedicated to the Prince Regent, at the request of the Carlton House Librarian, the Revd James Stanier Clarke.

When , in January 1815, Jane Austen began to write her fifth novel, EMMA, she stated that she was working at creating a heroine that nobody but herself would be able to like ("I am going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like.")

The Heroine

Emma Woodhouse is beautiful, clever and wealthy (the only Austen heroine to own all these “virtues”) but also spoilt and a bit snob. Readers, especially Austen’s contemporary readers, shouldn’t like her much since Emma definitely lacks the common sense, balance and measure of other heroines. Yet, even with her faults and her mistakes, the character of Emma is drawn to get sympathy and understanding; the reader tends to forgive her and to side with her in a totally irrational way. Emma’s defects, constantly underlined in the text, make her the perfect anti-heroine: she is not particularly accomplished, she has been educated by too an indulgent father and too a friendly governess, she has great self-esteem and tends to misinterpret reality according to her wishes. In a few words, she is not “by the book”, if we think of the 18th century “conduct - books” about the education of girls belonging to high society. But , of course, Jane Austen, is mocking those clichés, so her Emma is not only beautiful and intelligent but , above all, free. It is Mr Knightley himself to acknowledge that Emma is perfect with all her imperfections. 

SHAKESPEARE'S RICHARD III IN MOVIES - VIDEO COMPARISON

While historians and historical fiction writers have re-discovered and re-written what people for centuries have thought of Richard III, the only image we have on stage and in films is the one we inherited from Shakespeare.

"The history of the world, like letters without poetry, flowers without perfume, or thought without imagination, would be a dry matter indeed without its legends, and many of these, though scorned by proof a hundred times, seem worth preserving for their own familiar sakes". (from the preamble of Richard III 1955)

On Imdb you can find a detailed list of all the filmed works dedicated to or  focusing on Richard III,  and including even those movies just featuring him as a minor character. But, except for The Black Arrow (adaptation of R. L. Stevenson's historical novel in which young Richard of Gloucester helps the protagonist Richard - Dick - Shelton), in all of them we have him portrayed as the wicked villain.