A NEW YEAR'S PRAYER

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

Here  you can read the whole Shakespearean comedy. 

Here you can find a detailed analysis of this play which sparkles with wit and invention. Based on a farce by the Roman playwright Plautus, it is a work full of slapstick humour and rich characterisation that centres around two sets of identical twins accidentally separated at birth.

CHRISTMAS WISHES

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MISS AUSTEN!

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, England. While not widely known in her own time, Jane Austen's novels of love among the landed gentry gained popularity after 1869, and her reputation skyrocketed in the 20th century. Her novels, including Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, are considered literary classics, bridging the gap between romance and realism. Continue reading here. 

SAMUEL JOHNSON

Samuel Johnson was an English writer and critic, and one of the most famous literary figures of the 18th century. His best-known work is his "Dictionary of the English Language".

He died on 13 December 1784 and is buried at Westminster Abbey.

Here is a review of  David Nokes's 2009 biography of Dr Johnson.

MY SUNDAY MOVIE - UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN

Under the Tuscan Sun is a 2003 romantic comedy  film.  Based on Frances Mayes' 1996 memoir, the film is about a just-divorced American writer who buys a villa in Tuscany, hoping it will be the start of a change for the better in her life.

Frances is a writer in her mid-'30s who feels emotionally upset after her divorce. Unhappy and unable to write, she doesn’t know what to do with her life, and her best friend Patti decides she needs some time away from her problems - Patti gives Frances a ticket for a two-week tour of the Tuscany region of Italy; while there, Frances finds a decaying old villa. Charmed by the kindness, beauty, and charm of the small town of Cortona, she on impulse decides to buy the villa, thinking she can fix it up herself. She hires a crew of Polish immigrants to renovate the house. Over time Frances develops a new confidence as she makes friends with her neighbours and finds love with a handsome local named Marcello, but their relationship does not last. She is about to give up on happiness ...

I recommend you watch this delightful film which has an enjoyable story,  excellent scenery and charming characters ...  Just an old favourite of mine!

https://fsharetv.co/movie/under-the-tuscan-sun-episode-1-tt0328589

REVISING ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

On 3 December 1894  Robert Louis Stevenson  died very suddenly. He had defied his weak lungs for over 40 years, but in the end it was a brain haemorrhage which killed him. He was buried on the summit of Mount Vaea, Vailima, on a small Samoan island in the Pacific,  with his “Requiem”. 

Fourteen years earlier, when he was very ill in California, he had composed his own epitaph:

"Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."

Here you can find a study guide on Robert Louis Stevenson's most captivating novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

“All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.” 

ROMANTICISM IN LITERATURE AND ART

“In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects of the Poet’s thoughts are everywhere; though the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge—it is as immortal as the heart of man.”

William Wordsworth, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads"

Discovering Literature: The Romantics

Introduction to Romanticism

Romanticism

The Basics of Art: The Romantic Period

DECEMBER

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LOUISA MAY ALCOTT!

I have always loved Louisa May Alcott!  She was definitely my favourite writer when I was a teenager  and used to spend long hours reading and enjoying her beautiful novels! Jo March will always be one of  my favourite heroines because she is lively, intelligent, passionate,  strong-minded and independent ... even more than Jane Austen's heroines! 

Read here  an article from The Telegraph about this female author who also became a famous feminist and campaigned for the abolition of slavery. 

It is absolutely worthwhile to read her most celebrated novel Little Women! Click here for a detailed analysis of the novel.

10 FAMOUS QUOTATIONS FROM ROMEO AND JULIET

Romeo and Juliet is among the most popular plays ever written in the English language. Written by the master playwright William Shakespeare, it tells the story of two young lovers whose families have a long history of violence against each other. Like most plays from Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet is laden with many great dialogues. 

Here are 10 of the most famous quotations from the play with their explanations.

#10

“Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;

Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;

Being vex’d a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears.”

Romeo (Act I, Scene 1)

This is a famous definition of love from the master playwright through his character Romeo. It starts by saying that love is a smoke that rises from the fume of sighs, i.e. sighs of a person who is initially attracted to someone raises love just like fumes raise smoke. If the smoke is cleared, it causes a lover’s eyes to sparkle. However if the smoke is stirred up it can create a sea of tears of the lover. In simple words Shakespeare is saying that love can be source of great happiness or great sadness depending on how it is handled.

THE BALCONY SCENE IN ROMEO AND JULIET

The Balcony Scene in Romeo and Juliet is one of the most famous scenes in all of Shakespeare's plays. 

It follows the meeting of Romeo, a Montague, and Juliet, a Capulet, at a fancy dress party in Juliet's home. Romeo and his friends sneak into the party, uninvited, and when Romeo sees Juliet, he is instantly smitten. After the party, Romeo jumps over the Capulets' garden wall, and searches for Juliet.

Romeo hides in the garden and soon observes Juliet walking onto the balcony outside her room. When Romeo sees Juliet, he feels hope; it is as if the sun is rising. This is important to note, as Romeo has just spent several weeks pining over an unrequited love, Rosaline. When he sees Juliet at the party, Rosaline is instantly forgotten.

Read here.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING DAY!

WHY IS JANE AUSTEN STILL IMPORTANT?

Here you can find a significant article about Jane Austen's longevity. 

“Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness; second, that there are twenty-five elderly gentlemen living in the neighbourhood of London who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.” 
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

FICTION DURING THE ROMANTIC AGE - MARY SHELLEY

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, was the only daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Their high expectations of her future are, perhaps, indicated by their blessing her upon her birth with both their names. She was born on 30 August 1797 in London. The labor was not difficult, but complications developed with the afterbirth. Despite expert attention, her mother sickened from placental infection and died eleven days after her birth, on 10 September. Continue reading here.

Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" 

Revising Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" 

NOVEMBER

JOHN KEATS, THE POET OF BEAUTY

John Keats was born on 31 October 1795 in Moorgate, London, England, the first child born to Frances Jennings and Thomas Keats. After leaving school in Enfield, Keats went on to apprentice with Dr. Hammond, a surgeon in Edmonton. After his father died in a riding accident, and his mother died of tuberculosis, John and his brothers moved to Hampstead. It was here that Keats met Charles Armitage Brown (1787-1842) who would become a great friend. Remembering his first meeting with him, Brown writes "His full fine eyes were lustrously intellectual, and beaming (at that time!)". Much grieved by his death, Brown worked for many years on his biography, Life of John Keats (1841). In it Brown claims that it was not until Keats read Edmund Spencer's Faery Queen that he realised his own gift for the poetic. Keats was an avid student in the fields of medicine and natural history, but he then turned his attentions to the literary works of such authors as William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer. Continue reading here.

Here you can find a summary and an analysis of John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale". 

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

A major figure among the English Romantic poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley led an unconventional life and died tragically young.

He was born on 4 August 1792 near Horsham in Sussex. His father was a member of parliament. Shelley was educated at Eton and at Oxford University. There he began to read radical writers such as Tom Paine and William Godwin. In 1811, he was expelled for his contribution to a pamphlet supporting atheism.  Continue reading here.

http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/

http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/shelley/

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/s/shelleys-poems/percy-bysshe-shelley-biography

ENGLISH ROMANTICISM

The historical and literary background

Thomas Gray

William Blake

The First Generation of Romantic Poets

The Second Generation of Romantic Poets

Here you can find a PDF presentation too.

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR ENGLISH THROUGH READING BOOKS

Advice to improve your reading and writing

9 great novels to help improve your English

100 novels everyone should read

OCTOBER

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ELIZABETH GASKELL!

Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was born on 29 September 1810 in Chelsea, London, England. She was the eighth child born to Elizabeth  (1771-1811) and William Stevenson (c.1770-1829), a writer and civil servant with the Treasury. Her only surviving sibling John (1798–1828), who had joined the merchant navy, disappeared while on a journey to India. An early loss for Elizabeth was her mother's death; she went to live at Heathwaite in Knutsford, Cheshire with her 'more than mother' maternal Aunt Hannah Lumb (1767-1837). Surrounded by mostly female relatives and a busy social life, Knutsford and surroundings, its famous heath and people, would provide much fodder for Elizabeth's future works. Despite the losses she suffered at an early age, she was a gregarious young lady and enjoyed the company of friends and relatives on jaunts in the Cheshire countryside. Continue reading here.

Here and here you can find my previous posts about this writer.

Why was the Cranford author considered so “fearful”?

Elizabeth Gaskell: Biography 

THE RENAISSANCE - 4^C LINGUISTICO

The  Renaissance  -  The historical background
General characteristics of the Renaissance

Queen Elizabeth I of England

Shakespearean London theatres

The  Elizabethan theatre

Renaissance drama

Here you can find a useful Powerpoint presentation.

SEPTEMBER

I HAVE A DREAM SPEECH

"I Have a Dream" is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963, in which he called for an end to racism in the United States and called for civil and economic rights. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a decisive moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. 

A DEVASTATING AND HEARTBREAKING EARTHQUAKE

The earthquake that struck central Italy in the early hours of Wednesday has killed almost 300 people. Among scenes of devastation, dozens of emergency services staff and volunteers have been working night and day in the hope of finding people alive in the mangled wreckage of homes in demolished towns.

The earthquake was powerful enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, both more than 220 km (135 miles) from the epicentre.

Here you can read Beppe Severgnini's article about "Italy's fragile beauty".

THE SECRET GARDEN

"The Secret Garden"  is a novel by  Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was initially published in serial format beginning in 1910, and was first published in its entirety in 1911.

It is now one of Frances Hodgson Burnett's most popular novels, and is considered to be a classic of English children's literature. 

Here you can find a simplified version of the novel and some activity worksheets here .

Click here to read a book review. Here you can find a  detailed analysis of the novel.

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

Thomas Hardy  was born on 2 June 1840 in the county of Dorset. His father was a stonemason and his mother educated him until age eight. His family was too poor to pay for university, so he became an architect's apprentice until he decided to focus on writing. His stories are generally set in the Dorset area. In 1874 he married Emma Gifford, and her death in 1912 had a profound effect on him. In 1914 he married his secretary, Florence Dugdale. His first few novels were unsuccessful, and even his later works were controversial and often censored. Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure drew strong disapproval  for their sexual frankness and social criticism that Hardy stopped writing fiction, focusing instead on his poetry. He is best known for Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure. He died in 1928, at the age of eighty-seven.

Virginia Woolf  noted some of Thomas Hardy’s enduring power as a writer: “Thus it is no mere transcript of life at a certain time and place that Hardy has given us. It is a vision of the world and of man’s lot as they revealed themselves to a powerful imagination, a profound and poetic genius, a gentle and humane soul.”

AUGUST

THE LAST SONG

Based on Nicholas Sparks' best-selling novel, The Last Song is set in a small Southern beach town where a separated father gets a chance to spend the summer with his unenthusiastic teenage daughter, who would rather be at home in New York. He tries to reconnect with her through the only thing they have in common,  music.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EMILY BRONTË!

Emily Brontë was born on 30th July 1818, the 5th child of the Reverend Patrick Brontë, a stern Evangelical curate, and his wife Maria. When Emily was three years old, her mother died of cancer, and her Aunt Branwell, a strict Calvinist, moved in to help raise the six children (another daughter, Anne, was born soon after Emily). They lived in a parsonage in Haworth with the bleak moors of Yorkshire on one side and the parish graveyard on the other. 
Continue reading  here.

“My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Healthcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.” 
Emily Brontë, "Wuthering Heights"

HOMOPHONES AND HOMONYMS

ENGLISH VOCABULARY TRAINING

Here you can find tons of exercises to help you learn English words and expressions. 

http://www.learnenglish.de/vocabpage.html

http://learnersdictionary.com/3000-words

http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/grammar-and-vocabulary

REVISING THE FUTURE