HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Halloween is usually celebrated amongst family, friends and, sometimes, co-workers. However, some areas hold large community events. Parties and other events may be planned on October 31 or in the weekends before and after this date. Read here. 

WALTER SCOTT - 5^C LINGUISTICO

Born in 1771 in Edinburgh, at the age of 1 year,  Walter Scott suffered from polio and lost the use of his right leg. In order to recuperate, his parents sent him to Sandyknowe, his grandfather’s sheep farm in the Borders, where he had an early exposure to Border myths and legends, and began a fascination with the Jacobite cause. After moving between the Borders, Edinburgh and Bath to improve his health, he finally returned to Edinburgh in 1778, where he was educated privately for admission to the High School of Edinburgh, which he entered the following year. At the age of 12, he matriculated at Edinburgh University, and entered his father’s legal practice at 15.

A talented and energetic person, Walter Scott became a lawyer, and pursued this profession all his adult life, in spite of his numerous social commitments and prolific writing. He made his first literary appearance with The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, a collection of ballads, but his first success as an author was in poetry with  The Lady of the Lake. Scott promoted an image of a wild, bloody, romantic, mysterious Scotland, which is still a valid stereotype of the country today. Abandoning poetry, he took to novel writing, and with his anonymous sequence of The Waverley Novels (Waverley, Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, Heart of Midlothian and others), he gained worldwide acclaim. 

He produced a new novel every year, and his appetite for money led him to a misinvestment. His subsequent bankruptcy Walter Scott faced with dignity and an ever increasing literary output. For six years, he wrote to clear his debts, at a terrible price to his health. He suffered a series of strokes, and died in 1832. 

Walter Scott is best remembered for his fiction, but he produced a great amount of poetry, biography, translations, and critical prose as well. 

He is the acknowledged master of the historical novel. 

As a matter of fact, Walter Scott gathered the different strands of contemporary novel-writing techniques into his own hands and connected them to his deep interest in Scottish history and traditions. The technique of the omniscient narrator and the use of regional speech, localised settings, sophisticated character delineation, and romantic themes treated in a realistic manner were all combined by him into a new literary form, the historical novel. He had a huge influence on the Romantic movement worldwide. On the whole, his work is flawed by sentimentality and rhetoric, ponderousness and prolixity,  but his novels command the power to put modern readers in touch with men of the past. ... there are still plenty of reasons to read him! Read here. 

THE ENGLISH ROMANTIC MOVEMENT

Here you can find my previous post about English Romanticism.
Here  you can download a PDF presentation.

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart."
William Wordsworth

OCTOBER

“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it.”
George Eliot

REVISING JONATHAN SWIFT

Born on 30 November 1667, Irish author, clergyman and satirist Jonathan Swift grew up fatherless. Under the care of his uncle, he received a bachelor's degree from Trinity College and then worked as a statesman's assistant. Eventually, he became dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Most of his writings were published under pseudonyms. He is best remembered for his satirical novel Gulliver's Travels (1726). Read here.

Here you can read some motivational back-to-school quotes to get yourself into high gear for the academic year.

REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

SEPTEMBER

"Departing summer hath assumed
An aspect tenderly illumed,
The gentlest look of spring;
That calls from yonder leafy shade 
Unfaded, yet prepared to fade,
A timely carolling."
William Wordsworth,  September

IMPROVING YOUR ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

WILLIAM TURNER

Joseph Mallord William Turner, known as J. M. W. Turner and contemporarily as William Turner, was an English Romantic landscape painter whose expressionistic studies of light, colour and atmosphere were unmatched in their range and sublimity. Read here.

THE MODERN NOVEL

Here you can find an introduction to the Modern novel.

Here are some interesting websites about Modernism and the Modern novel: 

Modernism in literature 

The 20th-century novel characteristics 

Modernism and the Modern novel

The Modern novel 

AUGUST

"When summer gathers up her robes of glory, and like a dream of beauty glides away."
Sarah Helen Power Whitman

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HARRY POTTER AND J.K. ROWLING!

Harry Potter’s creator J.K. Rowling, born on July 31, 1965, turns 53 today. Before becoming the first writer-billionaire ever, she lived a hard life. She faced a lot of trouble and her book, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, was rejected by about 12 publishing houses. But things turned around after her first book came out in 1997 and broke many records.

The first book told the story of Harry Potter, who, on his 11th birthday, learns he is a wizard and has been accepted to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. His date of birth? July 31 — the same birthday as the author who created him, J.K. Rowling. Harry was born in 1980, meaning he is now 38 years old.

Here you can read an interesting article about J.K.Rowling and here you can discover everything about the Harry Potter series.

HAPPY 200TH 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 and here.

SUMMERTIME TIPS FOR BETTER HOMEWORK AND STUDY HABITS

Here you can read an interesting and comprehensive article about finding your style of studying.