Tuesday 12 March 2024

THE VICTORIAN NOVEL

This is why I studied literature in college. This is why I became a teacher: to share in grand conversations about books, to spread the joy, to initiate and welcome students into the fraternity, into ..."the club of clubs," to travel with them into wondrously familiar or incredibly strange imaginative worlds.
Jeffrey D. Wilhelm


The Victorian Age was called the "age of fiction"  because of the immense popularity the genre gained in the period. Many outstanding writers turned to novel writing and the number of novels published yearly increased enormously. Novels were also serialised in magazines. The first part of the Victorian Age was characterised by the triumph  of the realistic novel. Both characters and events were interpreted and judged by an omniscient  narrator who expressed the dominant moral view of the time. The story generally ended in a happy way or at least with good triumphing over evil.  In the second part of the Victorian Age an anti-Victorian trend developed in the criticism of the hypocrisy and bigotry of the middle  classes. The  general anti-Victorian trend culminated towards the end of the century with the Aesthetic Movement which rejected the Victorian moral view of literature.
Here  you can download a handout about the Victorian novel.


Monday 8 January 2024

A JANE AUSTEN TOUR OF ENGLAND


For many of us, British or otherwise, the places and people of Jane Austen’s novels represent that quintessential English life. But these places and people were inspired by Jane Austen’s own home and life, all of which can be experienced by a Jane Austen tour of England.  Read here.

Sunday 31 December 2023

Sunday 24 December 2023

Friday 1 December 2023

DECEMBER

 

"Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is time for home." 

Edith Sitwell

Friday 27 October 2023

WILLIAM BLAKE - 5^C LINGUISTICO


"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity ... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."

William Blake (1757-1827) is one of the key figures of English Romanticism, and some of his poems are universally known thanks to their memorable phrases and opening lines. Read here.

"One thought fills immensity."
William Blake 

https://www.thehistoryofart.org/william-blake/poetry/