WATCHING MOVIES ONLINE

I have just found some movies on the Net I am very keen on and I hope you will enjoy them!   

Movies are a complicated collision of literature, theatre, music and all the visual arts.

Anonymous

HAPPY BOXING DAY!

Read here about Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, which is celebrated in Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

CHRISTMAS HOMEWORK - 1^C LINGUISTICO

Click here  and here to do lots of grammar exercises online!
Here you can download some Christmas worksheets. I hope you will find them enjoyable! 

REMEMBERING EMILY BRONTË

Emily Brontë is best known for writing the novel Wuthering Heights in 1847. She was the sister of Charlotte and Anne Brontë, also famous authors.

At first, reviewers did not know what to make of Wuthering Heights, a novel where realism and Gothic symbolism combine to form a work of fiction which is full of social relevance  and where themes such as good versus evil, chaos and order, selfishness, betrayal and obsession intertwine as the story unfolds.  It was only after Emily Brontë's death that the book developed its reputation as a literary masterwork. She died of tuberculosis on 19 December 1848.

The parsonage where Emily Brontë spent much of her life is now a museum.  The Brontë Society operates the museum and works to preserve and honor the work of the Brontë sisters. Read here. 

Here you can read my previous post on Emily Brontë's novel.

HAPPY 240TH BIRTHDAY, JANE AUSTEN!

My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.

Jane Austen

REVISING THE ROMANTICS - 5^C LINGUISTICO

In order to revise Romanticism, you can watch these videos. 

REVISING MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN

Frankenstein is a unique novel in the canon of English literature. The novel seeks to find the answers to questions that no doubt perplexed Mary Shelley and the readers of her time. Mary Shelley is intensely aware of the concern that technology was advancing at a rate that dizzied the mind of early 18th century readers. Perhaps this novel is addressing that issue of advances created by men, but which fly in the face of "natural" elements and divine plans. Continue reading here.

Click here to find useful material to revise the novel.

HAPPY MONTH OF DECEMBER!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LOUISA MAY ALCOTT!

Louisa May Alcott was born on 29 November 1832. She was an American novelist best known as the author of the novel  Little Women (1868), a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood experiences  with her three sisters in Concord, Massachusetts. 

Here you can read Little Women online.

PARIS DEADLY ATTACKS

Paris terror attacks leave awful realization: Another massacre
Hollande says "Paris attacks were an Act of War by ISIS"

Paris terror attacks:world leaders condemn “the work of the devil”

ELIZABETH GASKELL

The novelist Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell is now best-known as the author of Cranford and North and South, and the biographer of her friend Charlotte Brontë. Her greatest books were written in reaction to the industrialisation of Manchester, where she lived for much of her life. ‘I had always felt a deep sympathy with the care-worn men, who looked as if doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work and want’ she wrote in the preface to Mary Barton.

She was born in Chelsea, London on 29 September 1810, the daughter of two devout Unitarians, William Stevenson and Elizabeth Holland. After her mother died in 1811, she was brought up by her aunt, Hannah Lumb, in Knutsford, Cheshire. In 1832, she married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister and later a professor of history, literature and logic; both were interested in new scientific ideas and literature. The couple settled in Manchester.

Shattered by the death of her infant son in 1845, she turned to writing for solace. Mary Barton, published anonymously in 1848, won praise from Charles Dickens, who called her his ‘dear Scheherazade’ and invited her to contribute to his journals. In January 1853 she published the controversial Ruth, the story of a seduced seamstress. Cranford, a gentle but acutely observant Knutsford-set tale of two spinster sisters, was serialised in Household Words later that year. And in 1855, she published North and South, a study of the tensions between mill-owners and workers.

Elizabeth Gaskell met Charlotte Brontë while on holiday near Windermere. They became close friends through their letters to one another, and after Charlotte’s death in 1855, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote a carefully researched and protective biography of her.

She was still working on Wives and Daughters, a humorous coming-of-age tale, when she died suddenly of a heart attack on 12 November 1865.

See  at:  http://www.bl.uk/people/elizabeth-gaskell

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Click here to discover everything about this popular autumn holiday.
Here you can find some spooky short stories ... perfect for reading at Halloween!

WATCHING ROMEO AND JULIET - 4^C LINGUISTICO

This movie is simply breathtaking! You quickly find yourself enraptured  in the gorgeous Italian setting and time period of such a timeless love story. 

Here you can find my previous post about this well-staged and  well-acted movie. 

whatsworthseeing.com/romeo-juliet-review

slate.com/movies/2013/romeo_and_juliet

DISCOVERING BUCKINGHAM PALACE

Buckingham Palace has served as the official London residence of Britain's sovereigns since 1837 and today it is the administrative headquarters of Queen Elizabeth II.  
Read here.

QUEEN VICTORIA AND QUEEN ELIZABETH II

Queen Elizabeth II became the longest-reigning monarch in British history on 9 September 2015. This documentary compares the lives and the reigns of two extraordinary women who have dominated periods of remarkable change:  Victoria and  Elizabeth II.
Queen Victoria's reign of 63 years and seven months is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of political, industrial, cultural, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover. Her son and successor, Edward VII, belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father.

OCTOBER

HAPPY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!

DISCOVERING EXPO

A couple of weeks ago I went to Milan to visit Expo. I was so eager to see it! I spent two boiling hot days there, it was a rather tiring, but absolutely worthwhile and memorable experience! I had the incredible feeling to travel from country to country while visiting the various pavilions, all of them so different, surprisingly captivating and culturally inspiring. As a matter of fact, every pavilion offers a journey through the culture, perfumes, colours and traditions of its people.

SEPTEMBER

"A late summer garden has a tranquillity found no other time of  the year."

William Longgood

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH'S HAMLET

Read here a review of Benedict Cumberbatch's performance as Hamlet which is now at the Barbican until 31 October 2015. The production is sold out, but 30 £10 day tickets are made available to buy in person to every performance.

Flitting across the stage with an athletic intensity, he is walking in the footsteps of the greats; among them Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, Peter O’Toole, Kenneth Branagh and most recently, David Tennant. 

Although Benedict Cumberbatch is best known for his film and television roles, he undoubtedly knows classical theatre. He first performed in Shakespearean plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost and A Midsummer Night’s Dream early in his career. He has appeared in films such as Atonement, Amazing Grace and  Star Trek Into Darkness, and was the star of the TV series Sherlock, receiving three Emmy award nominations for the role. For The Imitation Game, about  British cryptographer  Alan Turing during the Second World War, he received an Oscar nomination.

According to Henry Hitchings, the theatre critic on the London Evening Standard, Benedict Cumberbatch is "a charismatic Hamlet, energetic but also pensive."

BRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Bride and Prejudice is a 2004 romantic musical film directed by Gurinder Chadha. The screenplay is a  Bollywood-style adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. It was filmed in English, with some Hindi and Punjabi dialogue. The film released in the United States on 11 February 2005 and was well received by film critics. 
Needless to say, it has always been one of my favourite movies! 

AUGUST

"In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke their tender limbs."
Henry David Thoreau

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS

The Fault in Our Stars is a beautiful, entertaining, thrilling, touching, bold, tragic, unforgettable book about love and death whose teenage protagonists make us think over the meaning of true love. 

Here you can find a detailed analysis of this heartbreaking novel.

Teaching notes for John Green's novels are available for download here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EMILY BRONTË!

Emily Brontë   was born  in Thornton, Yorkshire, England   on 30 July 1818.  She produced only  one novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), a highly imaginative novel of passion and hate set on the Yorkshire moors, which  is considered one of the greatest novels in the history of literature.
Click here to learn everything about Emily Brontë and her single novel. 
Here you can find my previous post on Wuthering Heights. 

Emily Brontë: Biography & Writings

Introduction to Wuthering Heights

 

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Ernest Hemingway

The public's acquaintance with the personal life of Ernest Hemingway was perhaps greater than with any other modern novelist. He was well known as a sportsman and "bon vivant" ... He became a legendary figure, wrote John W. Aldridge, "a kind of twentieth-century Lord Byron; and like Byron, he had learned to play himself, his own best hero, with superb conviction. He was Hemingway of the rugged outdoor grin and the hairy chest posing beside a marlin he had just landed or a lion he had just shot; he was Tarzan Hemingway, crouching in the African bush with elephant gun at ready, Bwana Hemingway commanding his native bearers in terse Swahili; he was War Correspondent Hemingway writing a play in the Hotel Florida in Madrid while thirty Fascist shells crashed through the roof; later on he was Task Force Hemingway swathed in ammunition belts and defending his post single-handed against fierce German attacks." 

Continue reading here.

REMEMBERING JANE AUSTEN

Cassandra writes about Jane Austen's death, July 18, 1817

Memoir of Jane Austen, by James Edward Austen-Leigh

Reflections upon Jane Austen’s death, July 18, 1817

NORTH AND SOUTH

 

Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South is often considered one of her best novels, as well as an important piece of Victorian literature. It features a strong female protagonist, a mature love story, and significant social and political commentary regarding industrialization and class antagonisms present in mid-19th century England. The fictional industrial town of Milton was based on Manchester, where Elizabeth Gaskell lived with her family.  Continue reading here.

Here you can read the novel.