COMMEMORATING JANE AUSTEN

Jane Austen died this day in 1817. She left her home at Chawton for the last time on the 24th May 1817 in order to go to Winchester to be treated there. Her health was failing and she needed more expert care than could be provided by the local apothecary. She lived in lodgings in College Street, but her treatment there was not successful and she died on the 18th July. She was buried in the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral.

Here are some of the best quotes from the novelist and her characters.

MARY SHELLEY

Mary Shelley is a 2017 romantic period-drama film directed by Haifaa al-Mansour and written by Emma Jensen. The plot follows Mary Shelley's first love and her romantic relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, which inspired her to write her seminal novel Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley was a woman working in a man’s world, creating an entirely new genre of writing. Read here and here.

“We wanted to portray a strong woman who is willing to step out of line and find her own voice.” 

Haifaa al-Mansour 

KATE CHOPIN’S DÉSIRÉE’S BABY

“Désirée’s Baby” is Kate Chopin’s short story, set before the American Civil War, about a baby and a racial crisis between a husband and wife. It has always been one of her most popular stories. Read here.

The author emphasizes three controversial subjects in her short story: racism, prejudice, and marriage. One of her purposes was to expose the inequities of prejudice and female subjugation. Here you can read the story.

JULY

"That beautiful season the Summer!
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light;
And the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

EXTREME ADJECTIVES

Extreme adjectives are words that mean extremely + adjective.

READING SHORT STORIES ONLINE

Here you can find a website which contains all sorts of short stories. Simply great! 

II PROVA SCRITTA ESAMI DI STATO

Today  my students of  5^C Liceo Linguistico took an English test on the day of their II Prova Scritta.

As usual, it consisted of a text analysis and a composition, but they could choose among four different articles. All of them were very interesting, but quite complicated.

You can download them here, just in case you are curious!

JACK KEROUAC

Here you can read about Jack Kerouac, a pioneer of the Beat Generation.  

His method was greatly influenced by the prolific explosion of Jazz, especially the Bebop genre established by Charlie Parker and others. Later, Kerouac included ideas he developed from his Buddhist studies. He often referred to his style as "spontaneous prose." Although his prose was spontaneous and supposedly without edits, he primarily wrote autobiographical novels based upon actual events from his life and the people with whom he interacted. An often overlooked literary influence on Kerouac was James Joyce, whose work he alluded to more than any other author. Kerouac had high esteem for Joyce and he often used Joyce's stream-of-consciousness technique. He admired Joyce's experimental use of language, as seen in his novel Visions of Cody, which uses an unconventional narrative as well as a multiplicity of authorial voices.

Here you can find a PDF presentation on this controversial  American novelist and his most famous book, On the Road.

https://medium.com/@oliversnet/a-summary-of-on-the-road-by-jack-kerouac-768f5abc6e66

https://www.gradesaver.com/on-the-road

https://fsharetv.io/movie/on-the-road-episode-1-tt0337692

AESTHETICISM AND DECADENCE

The Aesthetic movement began in France with Théophile Gautier at the end of the 19th century. It was a reaction against the materialism and the strict moral code of the bourgeoisie during the Victorian Age. Read here.

The Aesthetic and Decadent approaches to life and art ...

Aestheticism and Decadence shocked the Victorian establishment ...

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS AND OTHER STORIES - 2^C LINGUISTICO

SUMMER HOMEWORK - 1^C AND 1^D LINGUISTICO

Here  you can find your summer homework! 

JUNE

VIRGINIA WOOLF - 5^C LINGUISTICO

Embracing formal innovations like stream-of-consciousness and narrative fragmentation, Virginia Woolf’s writing expanded the boundaries of modern fiction, reshaping our ideas about the ability of the novel to represent ordinary life and record swift, historical change. “Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall,” she advised, referring to her experimental prose capable of linking the apparently insignificant and immediate facts of daily life (shifts in mood, quotidian interactions, sensations, and judgements) to broader social events (war, patriarchy, technological developments, environmental transformations, and artistic renovations).

Read here.

EMILY DICKINSON

American lyric poet Emily Dickinson died on 15 May 1886. She lived in seclusion and commanded a singular brilliance of style and integrity of vision. With Walt Whitman, she  is widely considered to be one of the two leading 19th-century American poets. Only 10 of Emily Dickinson’s nearly 1,800 poems are known to have been published in her lifetime. Devoted to private pursuits, she sent hundreds of poems to friends and correspondents while apparently keeping the greater number to herself.  Continue reading here.

https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emily-dickinson/poetry/tips-for-reading/major-characteristics-of-dickinsons-poetry/

MAY