HAPPY NEW YEAR WISHES

Count your blessings instead of your crosses; 

Count your gains instead of your losses; 

Count your joys instead of your woes;

Count your friends instead of your foes;

Count your smiles instead of your tears;

Count your courage instead of your fears;

Count your kind deeds instead of your mean;

Count your health instead of your wealth;

Count on God instead of yourself.

Irish blessing

May your Past be a pleasant memory,
Your Future filled with delights,
Your Now a glorious moment
That fills your Life with deep  contentment.
Happy New Year!

Auld Lang Syne  is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk song. It is well known in many countries, especially in the English-speaking world; it is traditionally sung  to celebrate the start of the New Year at the stroke of midnight. 
The song’s Scots title is translated as  “for (the sake of) old times”.

EAT PRAY LOVE

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/eat-pray-love-2010

https://ling.online/en/video/films/eat-pray-love-2010/

BOXING DAY

Boxing Day is December 26, the day after Christmas, and is celebrated in Great Britain and in most areas settled by the English, including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Boxing Day is just one of the British bank holidays recognized since 1871 that are observed by factories, banks, government offices, and post offices. The others include Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Whit-Monday (the day after Pentecost), and the banking holiday on the last Monday in August.

The exact origins of the holiday are obscure,  it is probable that Boxing Day began in England during the Middle Ages.

Historians say the holiday developed because servants were required to work on Christmas Day, but took the following day off. As servants prepared to leave to visit their families, their employers would present them with gift boxes.

Another theory  is that the boxes placed in churches where parishioners deposited coins for the poor were opened and the contents distributed on December 26, which is also the Feast of St. Stephen.                       

As time went by, Boxing Day gift giving expanded to include those who had rendered a service during the previous  year. This tradition survives today as people give presents to tradesmen, mail carriers, doormen, porters, and others who have helped them.

Just as Americans watch football on Thanksgiving, the Brits have Boxing Day soccer matches and horse races. If they're particularly wealthy or live in the country, they might even participate in a fox hunt.

Boxing Day is also a traditional sales day in various shops and boutiques. England and Canada's Boxing Day evolved into a major shopping event in the 1980s — the equivalent of post-Thanksgiving Black Friday.

For other European people, Boxing Day is just the second day of Christmas.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Clement Clarke Moore (1779 - 1863) wrote the poem “Twas the night before Christmas” also called “A Visit from St. Nicholas" in 1822. It is now the tradition in many American families to read the poem every Christmas Eve. The poem “Twas the night before Christmas”  has redefined our image of Christmas and Santa Claus. Prior to the creation of the story of “Twas the night before Christmas” St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children, had never been associated with a sleigh or reindeers!

The first publication date was 23rd December 1823 and it was an immediate success. It was not until 1844 that Clement Clarke Moore claimed ownership when the work was included in a book of his poetry.

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, long ago. Our God, heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain; Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign. In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ. Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day, Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay; Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before, The ox and ass and camel which adore. Angels and archangels may have gathered there, Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air; But His mother only, in her maiden bliss, Worshipped the beloved with a kiss. What can I give Him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.  Christina Georgina Rossetti, 1872

LET'S SING SOME CHRISTMAS SONGS!

Christmas is coming up!  It is a time for singing our favourite tunes, whether sacred or secular. We all have songs which bring back good memories and make us happy, bringing the child in us back to life!

So let's clap our hands, stamp our feet, and start singing our heart out!

LOST IN AUSTEN

Lost in Austen  is a four-part 2008 British television series for the ITV network, written by  Guy Andrews  as a fantasy adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Following the plot of Jane Austen's novel, it sees  Amanda, a modern girl who  lives in present day London and is an ardent Jane Austen fan, somehow transported into the events of the book via a portal located in her bathroom!

Here you can enjoy some videos of this television series which sees its heroine transported back through time to exchange places with Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet and live her life in Georgian Britain.

Find the time  to read this exhaustive article  about  Lost in Austen:

http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number30/kaplan.pdf

GEORGE GORDON BYRON

Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was as famous in his lifetime for his personality cult as for his poetry. He created the concept of the "Byronic hero" - a bold, proud, rebellious, though at times melancholy,  young man, brooding on some mysterious, unforgivable event in his past. Byron's influence on European poetry, music, novel, opera, and painting has been immense and prolonged, although the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by his contemporaries.

He was the only English poet of his age to achieve a European reputation and to exert a significant  influence  on the Romantic movement  -  Alfred de Musset was his disciple in France, Aleksandr Pushkin in Russia, Heinrich Heine in Germany, Adam Mickiewicz in Poland. His poetry inspired musical compositions by Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky; operas by Gaetano Donizetti and Giuseppe Verdi; and paintings by J. M. W. Turner and Eugène Delacroix. His spirit animated liberal revolutionary movements: the Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini associated Byron with the eternal struggle of the oppressed to be free. 

Click here to find a précis of the “Byronic hero”.

You can download a useful mind map of  Lord Byron  here.

Click here to see the BBC biographical movie about Lord Byron.

WILLIAM BLAKE ~ LONDON

Published in Songs of Experience in 1794, it is one of the few poems in Songs of Experience which does not have a corresponding poem in Songs of Innocence.

The poem has a total of sixteen lines which are split into 4 stanzas with a rhyming ABAB pattern throughout the poem. Repetition is the most striking formal feature of the poem, and it serves to emphasize the prevalence of the horrors the speaker describes.

I wandered through each chartered street,

Near where the chartered Thames does flow,

A mark in every face I meet,

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,

In every infant's cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry

Every black'ning church appals,

And the hapless soldier's sigh

Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear

How the youthful harlot's curse

Blasts the new-born infant's tear,

And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

THANKSGIVING DAY

Thanksgiving Day  in the United States falls on the fourth Thursday of November.

Almost every culture in the world has held celebrations of thanks for an abundant harvest. The American Thanksgiving holiday began as a feast of thanksgiving in the early days of the American colonies almost four hundred years ago.

The first Thanksgiving  was celebrated in 1621 by the Pilgrim Fathers, the founders of America, to thank God for their first good harvest. They celebrated it with the native Indians, who had helped them  survive and taught them how to plant their crops. That first  feast lasted three days.

In the second half of the 1600s, thanksgivings after the harvest became more common and started to become annual events. However, it was celebrated on different days in different communities and in some places there were more than one thanksgiving each year. George Washington, the first president of the United States, proclaimed the first national Thanksgiving Day in 1789.

Then in 1863, at the end of a long and bloody civil war, President Abraham Lincoln asked all Americans to set aside the last Thursday in November as a day of thanksgiving.

Today the Americans celebrate Thanksgiving  on the fourth Thursday  of November, a different date every year. 

There is no school and most government offices and  businesses close for four days.  Thanksgiving Day is  traditionally a day for families and friends to get together for a special meal. 

The meal includes a roast turkey, stuffing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy, pumpkin pie, and vegetables.  It is a time for many people to give thanks for the many blessings that they have.  

Thanksgiving Day parades are held in some cities and towns on or around Thanksgiving Day. Some parades also mark the opening of the Christmas shopping season. 

New York celebrates  with  the famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, starting at 9 am at the Museum of Natural History  near Central Park: more than two million people join this wonderful parade every year.

Now let's watch a short educational video that explains how Thanksgiving became a national holiday in the United States.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH ~ COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE

This sonnet conveys some of the emotions felt by William Wordsworth while crossing Westminster Bridge on an early September morning 1802. It is an Italian sonnet, written in iambic pentameter, the rhyme scheme of the poem is abbaabbacdcdcd.
Sonnets were traditionally the way love poems were written, so it could be claimed that this is a love poem to the city of London in the morning.

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

   Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

   A sight so touching in its majesty:

   This City now doth, like a garment, wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

   Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

   Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

   All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 

Never did sun more beautifully steep

   In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;

   Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will: 

   Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

   And all that mighty heart is lying still!

https://youtu.be/LdIId6uG6xI

SINGING TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

As you already know, music motivates foreign language students and develops their language skills. In fact,  singing is an amazing way to dramatically improve your language learning strategy. 

Today let's sing along with Sting!

To close, don't forget  to read this nice article about  the role of  music in  foreign language learning. 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

William Wordsworth  was born in 1770 in the Lake District. In 1791 he graduated from St John’s College, Cambridge. He left England in the same year for a walking tour of France, the Alps and Italy. It was during this period that, enthusiastic about new ideas of democracy, he became a supporter  of the French Revolution.

In 1791, Wordsworth visited France, which was engaged in the Revolutionary war with Britain at that time. During his stay there, he fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, and the next year in 1792, their daughter Caroline was born. Due to the ongoing war between the two countries he returned alone to England the next year. There are strong suggestions that he  did not marry Annette, though he continued to support both child and mother in the best possibly way for the rest of his life.

After returning to England, Wordsworth  published two long “travel diaries”,  An Evening Walk and  Descriptive Sketches in 1793.  A walking  tour that year took the poet across the Salisbury Plain and to Tintern Abbey (East Wales), both subjects of later poems. In 1795, in London, he met  the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, thus beginning one of the great friendships of literary history. The two poets had similar ideas on both love and poetry and enjoyed taking long walks together.                                                                                                                                           

By this time Wordsworth  had become intensely disillusioned with the Revolution whose initial ideals had degenerated into the so-called “Terror” (the years of Robespierre’s dictatorship when traitors to the new French Republic were executed by guillotine).  Politically he turned very conservative.  In 1798 Wordsworth  and Coleridge published anonymously Lyrical Ballads. The year after Wordsworth  and his sister Dorothy settled at Dove Cottage in the Lake District.  Later  he married Mary Hutchinson, a childhood friend, and they had five children together. 

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S RE-ELECTION VICTORY

The US President Barack Obama is on stage to deliver his Victory Speech in Chicago after decisively winning a second term.

Here's  his speech. He refers to  the US as a union that is “greater than the sum of our individual ambitions… more than a collection of red states and blue states.”

The Empire State Building is lit blue after Barack Obama wins the presidential election.

Supporters of President Barack Obama celebrate in Times Square in New York City.

WILLIAM BLAKE

William Blake was an English poet, engraver, and painter. A boldly imaginative rebel in both his thought and his art, he combined poetic and pictorial genius to explore life.

THE ROMANTIC AGE

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The period from the Declaration of American Independence  to about 1830  was marked  by great revolutions: the Industrial Revolution reshaped the social and political background of Britain;  the British colonies on the other side of the Atlantic became a new and free nation; the French Revolution brought  its ideas  of freedom and equality  all over Europe.  All this was  to influence  also the cultural and literary aspects  of life.

THE MYTH OF THE NATURAL MAN

In the 18th century the discovering of new populations in America, Polynesia, Africa, because of the explorers’ travels around the world, brought around a new vision of the human being. They found whole populations organised in a very different way than the Europeans, with no royal absolutism, without inequalities, without religious  intolerance, without excessive ambitions of profits.  The “myth of the Noble Savage” showed up in the scenario, as a pure being in contact with Nature, not contaminated by  modern society.

Then the whole structure of  European society, based on a system ruled by the Church and the Kingdom, was debated  and  all its rules and moral concepts, considered until  that time as absolutes, were seriously  discussed and criticised. 

Here  you can download a PDF Presentation to improve your knowledge of the "myth of  the Noble Savage".  

THE RISE OF THE NOVEL

The novel originated in the early 18th century after the Italian word "novella", which was used for stories in the medieval period. Its identity has evolved and now a work of prose fiction is at least 50,000 words. Novels focus on character development more than plot. In any genre, it is the study of the human psyche.

The ancestors of the novel were Elizabethan prose fiction and French heroic romances, which were long narratives about contemporary characters who behaved nobly.  The novel came into popular awareness due to a growing middle class with more leisure time to read and money to buy books. Public interest in the human character led to the popularity of autobiographies, biographies, journals, diaries and memoirs.  The early English novels concerned themselves with complex, middle-class characters struggling with their morality and circumstances.

THE AUGUSTAN AGE

When Queen Anne died without any heirs, the English throne was offered to her nearest Protestant relative, George of Hanover, who thus became George I of England. Throughout the long reign of George, his son, and grandson, all named George, the very nature of English society and the political face of the realm changed. 

In part this was because the first two Georges took little interest in the politics of rule, and were quite content to let ministers rule on their behalf. These ministers, representatives of the king, or Prime Ministers, rather enjoyed ruling, and throughout this "Georgian period" the foundations of English political party system was solidified into something resembling what we have today.

But more than politics changed; English society underwent a revolution in art and architecture. This was the age of the grand country house, when many of the magnificent  homes that we can visit today were built.

Abroad, the English acquired more and more territory overseas through conquest and settlement, lands that would eventually make up an Empire stretching to every corner of the globe.  Read here.

1714 - 1727

Queen Anne  was succeeded by George I of the House of Hanover, who was a descendant of the Stuarts through his maternal grandmother, Elizabeth, daughter of James I. He was an unpopular king partly because of his attachment to Germany, he didn't speak English  and had no knowledge of British customs. During George's reign, the powers of the monarchy diminished and Britain began a transition to the modern system of cabinet government led by a Prime Minister.  This laid the foundations for that form of Parliamentary monarchy which has been in existence  in England  ever since. During his reign, real power was held by the Whigs’ leader,  Sir Robert Walpole,  Britain's first Prime Minister.

1727- 1760

George II  exercised little control over British domestic policy, which was largely controlled by Great Britain's parliament. During the last years of  his reign, William Pitt the Elder of the Whigs, was appointed Prime Minister. He became famous  as the wartime political leader of Britain in the Seven Years' War, especially for his single-minded devotion to victory over France. Victory made Britain dominant in world affairs.  He was also known for his wide popular appeal, his opposition to corruption in government, his advocacy of British greatness, expansionism and colonialism, and his antagonism toward Britain's chief enemies and rivals for colonial power, Spain and France.

THE STUART DYNASTY AND THE RESTORATION OF THE MONARCHY

The Stuart dynasty reigned in England and Scotland from 1603 to 1714, a period which saw a flourishing Court culture, but also  uproar  and instability,  plague, fire and war.

It was an age of intense religious debate and radical politics. Both contributed to a bloody Civil War in the mid-17th century between the Crown and Parliament, resulting in a parliamentary victory for Oliver Cromwell and the dramatic execution of King Charles I.

There was a short-term republic, the first time that the country had experienced such an event.

The Restoration of the Crown was soon followed by another "Glorious" Revolution. William and Mary of Orange ascended the throne as joint monarchs and defenders of Protestantism, followed by Queen Anne, the second of James II's daughters.

1603	As Queen Elizabeth I of England’s nearest relative, James I, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, succeeded to the throne of England at her death. He became the first Stuart king  and he combined the thrones of England and Scotland  for the first time. He had problems with Parliament throughout his reign because he believed in the divine  right of kings to rule and in the subjection of Parliament to the King’s will; he also insisted on strict conformity to the Anglican Church which  excluded both Catholics and Puritans from government.
1621	A group of Puritans (a branch of extreme Protestants within the Anglican Church; they obeyed strict moral rules, believed spiritual life should become the focal point of all human existence, wanted to purify their Church from any traces of Catholicism), the Pilgrim Fathers,  sailed to  America on the Mayflower and founded New Plymouth in Massachusetts - the New World provided a convenient ground for unwanted religious and political agitators  and also a valuable market for English goods.
1625	When Charles I  became king of England, he engaged in a struggle for power with Parliament, attempting to obtain royal revenue, while Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which he believed was divinely ordained.
1629-1640	When Parliament refused to give him money, Charles I responded by dissolving Parliament and reigned as an absolute sovereign  causing great hostility.
1642	The  conflict between the King and Parliament  led  to the Civil War.  There were two factions:  the Royalists or Cavaliers, who supported the King, and the Roundheads, the parliamentary faction  led by Oliver Cromwell, who were supported by the landed gentry, the mercantile classes and Puritans.
1647	The King was made prisoner and Cromwell took control of London and  arrested more than 100 Members of Parliament loyal to the King.
1649	Charles I was executed, monarchy was abolished and Cromwell established a republic  known as  the “Commonwealth”.  However it was little more than a dictatorship, and Cromwell  made himself  Lord Protector, a position he held until his death in 1658.
1660	After a period of political uncertainty, the son of the beheaded Charles I was invited to return from his exile in France and became Charles II. The restoration of monarchy was greeted with a sigh of relief by most people,  who had felt oppressed in their everyday life  by the strict rules of the Puritan Commonwealth.
1665	London was struck by an outbreak of bubonic plague, during which more than 100,000 people died.
1666	The so-called “Great Fire of London” destroyed  most of the city in four days.
1673	To reassert the predominance of the Church of England, the Test Act was passed,  which excluded from public offices those who refused to  receive the communion according to the rites of the Church of England  -  the Test Act, required all persons holding public office to receive the Sacrament according to the Anglican rite and expressly to deny the Roman doctrine of Transubstantiation.
1685	James II,  Charles II’s brother, came to the throne.  He had open Catholic sympathies  and wanted to impose  Catholic religion on  a country which was largely  Protestant.   Thus Parliament made secret arrangements to  depose him.
1688	James II was forced to abdicate  leading to the event  which became known as the Glorious Revolution because it was  successful with minimal bloodshed. Parliament offered the throne  to William of Orange, who reigned as William III,  and his wife Mary, who were established as joint monarchs. Their  reign marked the beginning of the transition from the personal rule of the Stuarts to the more Parliament-centred rule of the House of Hanover.
1689	The Bill of Rights  established that the Crown could not rule the country without Parliament; it weakened the power of the monarch  and Britain became a constitutional monarchy.
1689	The Toleration Act allowed more religious  freedom.
1701	The Act of Settlement prohibited Catholics from inheriting the British throne.
1702	Queen Anne, the Protestant daughter of James II,  came to the throne. Despite seventeen pregnancies, Anne died without surviving children and she was the last monarch of the  Stuarts.  Anne favoured moderate Tory politicians, who were more likely to share her Anglican religious views than their opponents, the Whigs. Since the time of the Glorious Revolution there had been a development of the two great parties which would  dominate English political life  for the next two hundred  years: the Whigs represented the interests of the middle  classes; the Tories represented the old aristocracy, they were loyal supporters of the Crown and stricter in religious  matters.
1707	With the Act of Union England, Wales and Scotland joined to form the united Kingdom of Great Britain.

Now try these quiz!  

The Stuarts 

http://www.icteachers.co.uk/children/stuarts_quiz.htm