HAPPY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!

DISCOVERING EXPO

A couple of weeks ago I went to Milan to visit Expo. I was so eager to see it! I spent two boiling hot days there, it was a rather tiring, but absolutely worthwhile and memorable experience! I had the incredible feeling to travel from country to country while visiting the various pavilions, all of them so different, surprisingly captivating and culturally inspiring. As a matter of fact, every pavilion offers a journey through the culture, perfumes, colours and traditions of its people.

SEPTEMBER

"A late summer garden has a tranquillity found no other time of  the year."

William Longgood

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH'S HAMLET

Read here a review of Benedict Cumberbatch's performance as Hamlet which is now at the Barbican until 31 October 2015. The production is sold out, but 30 £10 day tickets are made available to buy in person to every performance.

Flitting across the stage with an athletic intensity, he is walking in the footsteps of the greats; among them Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, Peter O’Toole, Kenneth Branagh and most recently, David Tennant. 

Although Benedict Cumberbatch is best known for his film and television roles, he undoubtedly knows classical theatre. He first performed in Shakespearean plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost and A Midsummer Night’s Dream early in his career. He has appeared in films such as Atonement, Amazing Grace and  Star Trek Into Darkness, and was the star of the TV series Sherlock, receiving three Emmy award nominations for the role. For The Imitation Game, about  British cryptographer  Alan Turing during the Second World War, he received an Oscar nomination.

According to Henry Hitchings, the theatre critic on the London Evening Standard, Benedict Cumberbatch is "a charismatic Hamlet, energetic but also pensive."

BRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Bride and Prejudice is a 2004 romantic musical film directed by Gurinder Chadha. The screenplay is a  Bollywood-style adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. It was filmed in English, with some Hindi and Punjabi dialogue. The film released in the United States on 11 February 2005 and was well received by film critics. 
Needless to say, it has always been one of my favourite movies! 

AUGUST

"In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke their tender limbs."
Henry David Thoreau

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS

The Fault in Our Stars is a beautiful, entertaining, thrilling, touching, bold, tragic, unforgettable book about love and death whose teenage protagonists make us think over the meaning of true love. 

Here you can find a detailed analysis of this heartbreaking novel.

Teaching notes for John Green's novels are available for download here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EMILY BRONTË!

Emily Brontë   was born  in Thornton, Yorkshire, England   on 30 July 1818.  She produced only  one novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), a highly imaginative novel of passion and hate set on the Yorkshire moors, which  is considered one of the greatest novels in the history of literature.
Click here to learn everything about Emily Brontë and her single novel. 
Here you can find my previous post on Wuthering Heights. 

Emily Brontë: Biography & Writings

Introduction to Wuthering Heights

 

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Ernest Hemingway

The public's acquaintance with the personal life of Ernest Hemingway was perhaps greater than with any other modern novelist. He was well known as a sportsman and "bon vivant" ... He became a legendary figure, wrote John W. Aldridge, "a kind of twentieth-century Lord Byron; and like Byron, he had learned to play himself, his own best hero, with superb conviction. He was Hemingway of the rugged outdoor grin and the hairy chest posing beside a marlin he had just landed or a lion he had just shot; he was Tarzan Hemingway, crouching in the African bush with elephant gun at ready, Bwana Hemingway commanding his native bearers in terse Swahili; he was War Correspondent Hemingway writing a play in the Hotel Florida in Madrid while thirty Fascist shells crashed through the roof; later on he was Task Force Hemingway swathed in ammunition belts and defending his post single-handed against fierce German attacks." 

Continue reading here.

REMEMBERING JANE AUSTEN

Cassandra writes about Jane Austen's death, July 18, 1817

Memoir of Jane Austen, by James Edward Austen-Leigh

Reflections upon Jane Austen’s death, July 18, 1817

NORTH AND SOUTH

 

Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South is often considered one of her best novels, as well as an important piece of Victorian literature. It features a strong female protagonist, a mature love story, and significant social and political commentary regarding industrialization and class antagonisms present in mid-19th century England. The fictional industrial town of Milton was based on Manchester, where Elizabeth Gaskell lived with her family.  Continue reading here.

Here you can read the novel.

THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

Click here to listen to W. B. Yeats's beautiful poem. Here you can find a detailed analysis of it.

READING W.H. AUDEN'S POEMS

Poems

The Quest 

Analysing W.H. Auden's poems

What W.H. Auden can teach us in times of crisis

W.H. Auden's wisdom, faith and humor

JAMES JOYCE'S DUBLINERS

II PROVA SCRITTA ESAMI DI STATO

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

It included a text analysis and a composition, but they could choose among four different articles. I must admit that all of them were quite interesting and understandable.
Here you can download them.