HAPPY NEW YEAR!

GIGI PROIETTI AND EDMUND KEAN

Last night, December 26th, at 10.50 pm, Rai1 broadcast “Gigi Proietti in Edmund Kean” from the Silvano Toti Globe Theatre in Rome. The , written by Raymund Fitzsimons and performed by the British actor Ben Kingsley, was played in 2016 and 2017 by the actor who passed away on his 80th birthday.  Edmund Kean was one of the greatest actors of the English tradition. His life was characterized by numerous intemperances and scandals which at the time, in the first half of the 19th century, undermined his career and reputation.

https://www.italy24news.com/a/2020/12/the-great-theater-by-gigi-proietti-rai1s-homage-with-alberto-angela.html

https://www.raiplay.it/programmi/gigiproiettiinedmundkean

BOXING DAY

http://www.kaisons.org/uploads/3/4/0/1/3401675/___boxing_day_2.pdf

 https://eslholidaylessons.com/12/boxing_day.html

THE QUEEN'S CHRISTMAS SPEECH

The Queen told the nation of the need for "life to go on" in her Christmas Day broadcast to millions. In a touching message, after such a terrible year, Her Majesty spoke of the importance of getting through the Coronavirus pandemic. She described how she had been “inspired” by the tens of thousands of Brits who had volunteered to help during the crisis. And she paid tribute to the NHS staff who risked their own lives to care for Covid-19 victims saying we all owed them a “debt of gratitude.”  Read here. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS! 🎄

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

CELEBRATING THE BIRTH OF JANE AUSTEN

Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775, the seventh of eight children of a clergyman in a country village in Hampshire, England.  Read here.

Some beautiful articles about our beloved novelist can be read  here and here.

"We read Jane Austen because she seems to know us better than we know ourselves, and she seems to know us so intimately for the simple reason that she helped determine who we are both as readers and as human beings."          Harold Bloom

THE GOTHIC NOVEL

The first Gothic fiction appeared with works like Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1765), Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk (1796), which opposed 18th-century “rationalism” with scenes of mystery, horror, and wonder. Gothic was a designation derived from architecture, and it carried—in opposition to the Italianate style of neoclassical building more appropriate to the Augustan Age—connotations of rough and primitive grandeur. 

The atmosphere of a Gothic novel was expected to be dark, tempestuous, ghostly, full of madness, outrage, superstition, and the spirit of revenge. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which maintains its original popularity and even notoriety, has in overplus the traditional Gothic ingredients, with its weird God-defying experiments and its monster. 

Easy targets for satire, the early Gothic romances died of their own extravagances of plot, but Gothic atmospheric machinery continued to haunt the fiction of such major writers as the Brontë sisters, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and even Charles Dickens in Bleak House and Great Expectations. In the second half of the 20th century, the term was applied to paperback romances having the same kind of themes and trappings similar to the originals.

Gothic fiction asks to be considered as ingenious entertainment; the pity and terror are not aspects of a cathartic process, but transient emotions to be, somewhat perversely, enjoyed for their own sake.

Read here.

GLOBAL ENGLISH - 3^C LINGUISTICO

More people speak Spanish than English as their first language. Nearly three times as many speak Mandarin Chinese in their family homes. Yet few would dispute that English is the leading world language.  Read here. 

LORD BYRON, MANFRED AND THE BYRONIC HERO

"We are all the fools of time and terror: Days steal on us and steal from us; yet we live, loathing our life, and dreading still to die.”

Manfred is a dramatic poem written in 1816–1817 by Lord Byron. It contains supernatural elements, in keeping with the popularity of the ghost story in England at the time. It is a typical example of a Romantic closet drama. It was adapted musically by Robert Schumann and later by Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Friedrich Nietzsche was impressed by the poem's depiction of a super-human being, and wrote some music for it.  

To say that Manfred is a Byronic hero in the Promethean mold is not new: not only the text of Manfred, but also Byron himself, as well as literary critics from his time until now, suggest it.  Read here. 

Here you can find a detailed analysis of the figure of the Byronic hero.

LORD BYRON - 5^C LINGUISTICO

Lord Byron was the Romantic poet whose poetry and personality captured the imagination of Europe. Renowned as the “gloomy egoist” of his autobiographical poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18) in the 19th century, he is now more generally esteemed for the satiric realism of Don Juan (1819–24).  Read here.               

He created the concept of the "Byronic hero" - a rebellious, moody, melancholy young man, brooding on some mysterious, unforgivable event in his past. 

Lord Byron's influence on European poetry, music, novel, opera, and painting has been immense, although the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by his contemporaries.

THE BYRONIC HERO

The character type of the Byronic hero was first developed by the famous 19th-century English Romantic poet Lord Byron. Most literary scholars and historians consider the first literary Byronic hero to be Byron's Childe Harold, the protagonist of Byron's epic poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. However, many literary scholars and historians also point to Lord Byron himself as the first truly Byronic hero, for he exemplified throughout his life the characteristics of the sort of literary hero he would make famous in his writing.

A Byronic hero can be conceptualized as an extreme variation of the Romantic hero archetype. Traditional Romantic heroes tend to be defined by their rejection or questioning of standard social conventions and norms of behaviour, their alienation from larger society, their focus on the self as the centre of existence, and their ability to inspire others to commit acts of good and kindness. Romantic heroes are not idealized heroes, but imperfect and often flawed individuals who often behave in a heroic manner.

According to many literary critics and biographers, Lord Byron developed the archetype of the Byronic hero in response to his boredom with traditional and Romantic heroic literary characters. According to critics and biographers, he wanted to introduce a heroic archetype that would be not only more appealing to readers but also more psychologically realistic.

The archetype of the Byronic hero is similar in many respects to the figure of the traditional Romantic hero. Both Romantic and Byronic heroes tend to rebel against conventional modes of behaviour and thought and possess personalities that are not traditionally heroic. However, Byronic heroes usually have a greater degree of psychological and emotional complexity than traditional Romantic heroes.

Byronic heroes are marked not only by their outright rejection of traditional heroic virtues and values but also their remarkable intelligence and cunning, strong feelings of affection and hatred, impulsiveness, strong sensual desires, moodiness, cynicism, dark humour, and morbid sensibilities.

Byronic heroes also tend to only seem loyal to themselves and their core beliefs and values. While they often act on behalf of greater goods, they will rarely acknowledge doing so.

Byronic heroes tend to be intelligent and arrogant. Read more here.

SONNET 18

It is the best known and most well-loved of all 154 sonnets. It is also one of the most direct in language and intent.

The poet starts the praise of his dear friend without ostentation, but he slowly builds the image of his friend into that of a perfect being. He is first compared to summer in the octave, but, at the beginning of the third quatrain (line 9), the speaker states with a renewed assurance that “thy eternal summer shall not fade” and that his friend will preserve his beauty and even cheat Death and Time by becoming eternal. He achieves this through his sonnet. The final couplet reaffirms the poet's hope that as long as there is breath in mankind, his lines too will live on, and ensure the immortality of the “fair youth”.

Here  and here you can read a short commentary on this sonnet.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

 

On 1 December 1860 Charles Dickens's Great Expectations began serialization in the December 1 issue of "All the Year Round."

One of Charles Dickens’s most fascinating novels, Great Expectations follows the orphan Pip as he leaves behind a childhood of misery and poverty after an anonymous benefactor offers him a chance at the life of a gentleman. From the young Pip’s first terrifying encounter with the convict Magwitch in the gloom of a graveyard to the splendidly morbid set pieces in Miss Havisham’s mansion to the magnificently realized boat chase down the Thames, the novel is filled with the transcendent excitement that Charles Dickens could so abundantly provide. Written in 1860, at the height of his maturity, it also reveals the novelist’s bittersweet understanding of the extent to which our deepest moral dilemmas are born of our own obsessions and illusions.

DECEMBER

“May and October, the best-smelling months? I’ll make a case for December: evergreen, frost, wood smoke, cinnamon.”   Lisa Kleypas

WILLIAM BLAKE'S ARTISTIC TALENT AND PROFOUND POETRY

 

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-5-things-you-didn-t-know-about-william-blake

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/blake-william/artworks/

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/nov/21/the-10-best-works-by-william-blake

https://artuk.org/discover/stories/artist-in-focus-william-blake

GIACOMO LEOPARDI - 5^C LINGUISTICO

Leopardi is considered the greatest Italian poet of the 19th century and one of the most important figures in the literature of the world, as well as one of the most  renowned Romantics; his constant reflection on existence and on the human condition - of sensuous and materialist inspiration - has also earned him a reputation as a deep philosopher. He is widely seen as one of the most radical and challenging thinkers of the 19th century,  but generally compared to his older contemporary, Alessandro Manzoni,  despite expressing completely opposite positions. Although he lived in a secluded town in the conservative Papal States, he came into contact with the main ideas of the Enlightenment, and through his own literary evolution, created a outstanding poetic work, related to the Romantic era. Read here.

His themes are mutability, landscape, love; his attitude, one of unflinching realism in the face of unavoidable human loss. But the manners of the poems are an amalgam of philosophical toughness and the lyrically bittersweet. In a way more pure and distilled than most others in the Western tradition, his  poems are truly what Matthew Arnold asked all poetry to be, a “criticism of life.” 

Leopardi was a contemporary of the great English Romantic poets such as Shelley, Keats and Byron who lived in Italy, though he never had the chance to meet them. Read here.

INTERACTIVE WORKSHEETS TO IMPROVE YOUR ENGLISH

https://www.liveworksheets.com/worksheets/en

SONNET 130

 

Here and here you can read a short commentary on this sonnet.

DISCOVERING SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS

Here you my can find my previous post about  William Shakespeare's works.

SHAKESPEARE'S DICTIONARY

https://www.bellenglish.com/blog/shakespeares-influence-language-quiz/

https://myblog-inplainenglish.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-english-language-owes-great-debt-to.html

http://www.projectink.com.sg/shakespeares-influence-in-our-everyday-speech/

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20160422-spot-the-real-shakespeare-words-and-the-fakes?ocid=fbcul&

https://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/resources/words-shakespeare-invented/

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/wordsinvented.html

WHERE DID ENGLISH COME FROM? - 3^C LINGUISTICO

 

WHAT IS ETYMOLOGY?

Etymology is the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history.

Read here.

JOE BIDEN ELECTED 46TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States, positioning himself to lead a nation gripped by a historic pandemic and a confluence of economic and social turmoil.

Kamala Harris made history as the first Black woman to become vice president, an achievement that comes as the U.S. faces a reckoning on racial justice. The California senator, who is also the first person of South Asian descent elected to the vice presidency, will become the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in government, four years after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.  Read here. 

 

OGNISSANTI HOLIDAY ON 1ST NOVEMBER

1st November is a national holiday in Italy known as la Festa di Ognissanti or Tutti i Santi. The date is the day of a Catholic feast and is celebrated as All Saints Day in Italy.  Though the origins of the holiday are religious, All Saints Day is also a public holiday in Italy meaning that government offices, schools, and many private businesses close.  

Read here.

NOVEMBER

"The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear."

William Cullen Bryant

SEAN CONNERY DIES AGED 90

The Oscar-winning Scottish actor Sean Connery was best known for his portrayal of James Bond, being the first to bring the role to the big screen and appearing in seven of the spy thrillers. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.  Read here.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

English lyrical poet, critic, and philosopher  Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772. His Lyrical Ballads, written with William Wordsworth, heralded the English Romantic movement, and his Biographia Literaria (1817) is the most significant work of general literary criticism produced in the English Romantic period. Read here. 

Here you can download a PDF presentation.

NATURE IS EVERYWHERE

How do you define "nature?" If we define it as that which is untouched by humans, then we won't have any left, says environmental writer Emma Marris. She urges us to consider a new definition of nature - one that includes not only pristine  (=unspoiled) wilderness, but also the untended patches of plants growing in urban spaces - and encourages us to bring our children out to touch and tinker (=play) with it, so that one day they might love and protect it.  Here you can listen to her TED Talk.

TONI MORRISON

The author Toni Morrison was the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and best known for her nuanced discussion of race in America. Read here.

INFINITIVES AND THE PASSIVE

http://random-idea-english.blogspot.com/2013/06/infinitives-after-passives.html 

http://passivecausality.weebly.com/personal-and-impersonal-constructions

https://www.learnamericanenglishonline.com/passive_infinitives.html

ESL CONVERSATION TOPICS

Take a look at this long list of topic based conversation questions.

http://iteslj.org/questions/

https://bilingualkidspot.com/esl-english-conversation-topics

https://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/words/topics_speaking.htm

https://www.learn-english-today.com/resources-for-teachers

IF SHAKESPEARE HAD HAD A SISTER ...

Virginia Woolf often questioned why men had always had power, influence, wealth, and reputation, while women had nothing but children. She believed that there would be female Shakespeare in the future only if women found the first two keys to freedom: independent incomes (=money) and “rooms of their own” (=privacy), a metaphor for women having access to their own private space. When A Room of One's Own was first published in 1929, it was considered revolutionary. Most people considered women less intelligent than men, they did not think about women's freedom and certainly no one was writing about it, let alone as convincingly as Virginia Woolf. Her essay became a classic in the movement toward equality. Even today it is hardly dated, for the reason that there are still some men (and women) who suppose that men are “the superior sex”.

If women were equal to men, people asked, why had none of them produced great literature like Shakespeare's? Virginia Woolf replied that this lack of achievement had nothing to with innate ability and everything to do with women's lack of opportunity.

To illustrate this, Virginia Woolf imagined a Judith Shakespeare, William's sister, going to London to make her fortune as a playwright. Unfortunately, she was regarded as a sex object, so rather than being taken seriously as a writer, she was lied to and seduced, she became pregnant and eventually committed suicide.

https://youtu.be/kp3lfiKzK9Y

WELCOME BACK TO SCHOOL!

IMPROVING YOUR ENGLISH

On www.test-english.com you will find lots of free practice tests and materials to help you improve your English skills and be more prepared for your English exams.
Here you can read a very interesting blog post!

SEPTEMBER

"For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure."

Tom Stoppard

REMEMBERING DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES

On this day 23 years ago, news of Princess Diana's death in a car crash in Paris sparked a global outpouring of grief. The Princess of Wales, 36, her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul died after the Mercedes they were travelling in struck a concrete pillar in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris around 12:30am on 31 August 1997. Read here.

https://edition.cnn.com/world/princess-diana-death-the-windsors-series

BARACK OBAMA GIVES BITING CRITIQUE OF TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY

Barack Obama criticized President Trump in his comments at the Democratic National Convention, saying Mr. Trump had shown “no interest” in using the office to help anyone but “himself and his friends.” He compared Mr. Trump's use of the White House to “a reality show”.

Read here and here.

https://www.nytimes.com/barack-obama-full-speech

AUGUST

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ'S SPEECH ABOUT MISOGYNY

Following sexist harassment from Republican Ted Yoho, referred to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest Democrat in Congress gave a powerful speech in the House of Representatives to denounce the abuse faced by women in Congress and across the nation. Read here and here.

She said: “You can take photos and project an image to the world of being a family man and accost women without remorse and with a sense of impunity. It happens every day in this country”.

https://www.biography.com/political-figure/alexandria-ocasio-cortez