THE BALLAD THROUGH TIME - 3^C LINGUISTICO

Once medieval ballads (=oral compositions passed on from generation to generation) became popular, they began to borrow freely from  the carols (=religious folk songs or popular hymns, especially associated with Christmas), riddle songs, popular stories and romances of the time. Ballads were popular throughout (=in every part of) Europe and the English-language ballad also borrowed from other countries and cultures.  Read here.

There are examples of the ballad form from the Middle Ages right up to the present day.  The 16^th century saw the gradual disappearance of the old-style romances, along with the minstrels who used to recite and sing them. 

The ballad form remained popular through the 17^th  and the 18^th  centuries, which saw a revival especially of magic and supernatural themes. 

In the 19^th century the poetry of the Romantics drew widely for inspiration on the materials of folk narrative ballads and lyrical folk songs: Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner  owes  its intense supernaturalism and its archaisms to traditional ballads; Keats's  La Belle Dame Sans Merci is a ballad about an encounter that involves both pleasure and pain. 

In the 20^th  century an oral ballad tradition still survived in England and the United States  and the term "ballad" was applied to a short song with a slow rhythm and romantic or sentimental content.

In the 1960s popular music in general became a space for cultural and political conflict and dialogue. Bob Dylan started to use the form of the ballad to protest against the Vietnam War  when, in 1962, he used the mixture of dialogue and narration of Lord Randal in his song A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. Among his most famous anti-war songs are Blowin’ in the Wind and Masters of War.

The ballad is still used in modern pop and folk music. Read here. 

from Performer Heritage 1,  Zanichelli, p. 63

CHARLOTTE BRONTË'S JANE EYRE - 5^C LINGUISTICO

https://myblog-inplainenglish.blogspot.com/2014/04/charlotte-bronte.html

https://myblog-inplainenglish.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-bronte-sisters.html

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Book-Review-of-Jane-Eyre-by-Charlotte-Bronte

https://www.rai.it/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-bf479522-b276-420e-84ea-b46630a71147-cinema.html

THE VICTORIAN NOVEL - 5^C LINGUISTICO

This is why I studied literature in college. This is why I became a teacher: to share in grand conversations about books, to spread the joy, to initiate and welcome students into the fraternity, into ..."the club of clubs," to travel with them into wondrously familiar or incredibly strange imaginative worlds.

Jeffrey D. Wilhelm

The Victorian Age was called the "age of fiction"  because of the immense popularity the genre gained in the period. Many outstanding writers turned to novel writing and the number of novels published yearly increased enormously. Novels were also serialised in magazines. The first part of the Victorian Age was characterised by the triumph  of the realistic novel. Both characters and events were interpreted and judged by an omniscient  narrator who expressed the dominant moral view of the time. The story generally ended in a happy way or at least with good triumphing over evil.  In the second part of the Victorian Age an anti-Victorian trend developed in the criticism of the hypocrisy and bigotry of the middle  classes. The  general anti-Victorian trend culminated towards the end of the century with the Aesthetic Movement which rejected the Victorian moral view of literature.

Here  you can find information about the Victorian novel.

https://graziatripodi/the-victorian-novel-main-characteristics/

AN ANCIENT INDIAN PROVERB

 

https://intentionalcommunication.com/living-in-the-4-rooms-of-wellness/

A JANE AUSTEN TOUR OF ENGLAND

For many of us, British or otherwise, the places and people of Jane Austen’s novels represent that quintessential English life. But these places and people were inspired by Jane Austen’s own home and life, all of which can be experienced by a Jane Austen tour of England.  Read here.

 

 

DECEMBER

 

"Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is time for home." 

Edith Sitwell

WILLIAM BLAKE - 5^C LINGUISTICO

"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity ... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself."

William Blake (1757-1827) is one of the key figures of English Romanticism, and some of his poems are universally known thanks to their memorable phrases and opening lines. Read here.

"One thought fills immensity."
William Blake 

https://www.thehistoryofart.org/william-blake/poetry/

THE WORDS OF LITERATURE

 https://staticmy.zanichelli.it/catalogo/assets/9788808737441_04_CAP.pdf

https://www.eluprogram.com/Elements_Of_Drama.pdf

https://myblog-inplainenglish.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-elements-of-drama.html

FROM THE STUARTS TO THE HANOVERIANS - 5^C LINGUISTICO

THE STUART DYNASTY AND THE RESTORATION OF THE MONARCHY

THE STUARTS

STUART ENGLAND

FROM THE STUARTS TO THE HANOVERIANS

THE AUGUSTAN AGE 

THE TUDORS - 4^C LINGUISTICO

 

https://www.thecollector.com/five-tudor-monarchs-tudor-period/

SUMMERTIME

 

"And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer."

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby