WEEK 4
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became widely regarded as the foremost and most influential act of the rock era. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, the Beatles later experimented with several musical styles, ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock, often incorporating classical elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways. In 1963 their enormous popularity first emerged as "Beatlemania", and as the group's music grew in sophistication in subsequent years, led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, they came to be perceived as an embodiment of the ideals shared by the counterculture of the 1960s. |
Beatlemania
"Beatlemania" is a term that originated and was coined during the early 1960s to describe the intense fan frenzy directed towards the English rock band the Beatles. The phenomenon began in 1963 and continued past the group's break-up in 1970, despite the band ceasing public performances in 1966. There are multiple competing theories as to why the Beatles attracted such a fan base, with no clear agreement. After the Beatles, the term mania was used to describe the popularity of later acts, as well as popularity of public figures and trends outside the music industry. |
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Mark David Chapman
Mark David Chapman is an American murderer who killed John Lennon in New York City on December 8, 1980. Chapman shot Lennon outside the Dakota apartment building in Manhattan. Chapman fired at Lennon five times, hitting him four times in the back. Chapman remained at the crime scene and began reading J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye until the police arrived and arrested him. He repeatedly said that the novel was his statement.
Chapman's legal team intended to mount an insanity defense based on expert testimony that he was in a delusional psychotic state at the time of the killing. As the trial approached, Chapman instructed his lawyers that he wanted to plead guilty, based on what he had decided was the will of God. The judge allowed the plea change without further psychiatric assessment after Chapman denied hearing voices, and sentenced him to a prison term of 20 years to life with a stipulation that mental health treatment be provided. Chapman has been imprisoned since the murder and has been denied parole nine times amidst campaigns (most notably by Yoko Ono) against his release.
Mark David Chapman is an American murderer who killed John Lennon in New York City on December 8, 1980. Chapman shot Lennon outside the Dakota apartment building in Manhattan. Chapman fired at Lennon five times, hitting him four times in the back. Chapman remained at the crime scene and began reading J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye until the police arrived and arrested him. He repeatedly said that the novel was his statement.
Chapman's legal team intended to mount an insanity defense based on expert testimony that he was in a delusional psychotic state at the time of the killing. As the trial approached, Chapman instructed his lawyers that he wanted to plead guilty, based on what he had decided was the will of God. The judge allowed the plea change without further psychiatric assessment after Chapman denied hearing voices, and sentenced him to a prison term of 20 years to life with a stipulation that mental health treatment be provided. Chapman has been imprisoned since the murder and has been denied parole nine times amidst campaigns (most notably by Yoko Ono) against his release.
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens and was first published as a serial 1837–39. The story is of the orphan Oliver Twist, who starts his life in a workhouse and is then sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker. He escapes from there and travels to London, where he meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal, Fagin.
Oliver Twist is notable for its unromantic portrayal by Dickens of criminals and their sordid lives, as well as for exposing the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid-19th century. The alternate title, The Parish Boy's Progress, alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, as well as the 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress.
In this early example of the social novel, Dickens satirizes the hypocrisies of his time, including child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of working as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own youthful experiences contributed as well.
Oliver Twist has been the subject of numerous adaptations for various media, including a highly successful musical play, Oliver!, and the multiple Academy Award-winning 1968 motion picture. Disney also put its spin on the novel with the movie called Oliver & Company in 1988.
Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens and was first published as a serial 1837–39. The story is of the orphan Oliver Twist, who starts his life in a workhouse and is then sold into apprenticeship with an undertaker. He escapes from there and travels to London, where he meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the elderly criminal, Fagin.
Oliver Twist is notable for its unromantic portrayal by Dickens of criminals and their sordid lives, as well as for exposing the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid-19th century. The alternate title, The Parish Boy's Progress, alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, as well as the 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress.
In this early example of the social novel, Dickens satirizes the hypocrisies of his time, including child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of working as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own youthful experiences contributed as well.
Oliver Twist has been the subject of numerous adaptations for various media, including a highly successful musical play, Oliver!, and the multiple Academy Award-winning 1968 motion picture. Disney also put its spin on the novel with the movie called Oliver & Company in 1988.
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (/ˈdɪkᵻnz/; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms. Dickens's literary success began with the 1836 serial publication of The Pickwick Papers. Within a few years he had become an international literary celebrity, famous for his humour, satire, and keen observation of character and society. His novels, most published in monthly or weekly instalments, pioneered the serial publication of narrative fiction, which became the dominant Victorian mode for novel publication. The instalment format allowed Dickens to evaluate his audience's reaction, and he often modified his plot and character development based on such feedback. For example, when his wife's chiropodist expressed distress at the way Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield seemed to |
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reflect her disabilities, Dickens improved the character with positive features. His plots were carefully constructed, and he often wove elements from topical events into his narratives. Masses of the illiterate poor chipped in ha'pennies to have each new monthly episode read to them, opening up and inspiring a new class of readers.
Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton—for his realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.
Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens has been praised by fellow writers—from Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton—for his realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.
The Chimney Sweeper
"The Chimney Sweeper" is the title of a poem by William Blake, published in two parts in Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of experience in 1794. The poem "The Chimney Sweeper" is set against the dark background of child labor that was prominent in England in the late XVIII and XIX Century. At the age of four and five, boys were sold to clean chimneys, due to their small size. These children were oppressed and had a diminutive existence that was socially accepted at the time. In the earlier poem, a young chimney sweeper recounts a dream had by one of his fellows, in which an angel rescues the boys from coffins and takes them to a sunny meadow; in the later poem, an apparently adult speaker encounters a child chimney sweeper abandoned in the snow while his parents are at church or possibly even suffered death where church is referring to being with God. The poem from Songs of Experience was set to music in 1965 by Benjamin Britten as part of his song cycle Songs and Proverbs of William Blake. The Tyger "The Tyger" is a poem by the English poet William Blake published in 1794 as part of the Songs of Experience collection. Literary critic Alfred Kazin calls it "the most famous of his poems", and The Cambridge Companion to William Blake says it is "the most anthologized poem in English". It is one of Blake's most reinterpreted and arranged works. Auguries of Innocence Auguries of Innocence is a poem from one of William Blake's notebooks now known as The Pickering Manuscript. It is assumed to have been written in 1803, but was not published until 1863 in the companion volume to Alexander Gilchrist's biography of William Blake. The poem contains a series of paradoxes which speak of innocence juxtaposed with evil and corruption. The poem is 132 lines and has been published with and without breaks that divide the poem into stanzas. An augury is a sign or omen. William Blake William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His so-called prophetic works were said by 20th century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Although he lived in London his entire life (except for three years spent in Felpham), he produced a diverse and symbolically rich œuvre, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself". |
The Old Smoke
Through the 19th and in the early half of the 20th century, Londoners used coal for heating their homes, which produced large amounts of smoke. In combination with climatic conditions this often caused a characteristic smog, and London became known for its typical "London Fog", also known as "Pea Soupers". London was sometimes referred to as "The Smoke" because of this. In 1952 this culminated in the disastrous Great Smog of 1952 which lasted for five days and killed over 4,000 people. In response to |
this, the Clean Air Act 1956 was passed, mandating the creating of "smokeless zones" where the use of "smokeless" fuels was required (this was at a time when most households still used open fires); the Act was effective, though the nickname is still used sarcastically. Many cities have since aquired the nickname "The Smoke", but London was the first, hence "The Old Smoke".
Why is New York known as The Big Apple and Venice The Bride of the Sea?
Some nicknames refer to the ancient heritage of the city, some refer to the industry found in the city, some refer to the cities’ environment – there are a variety of reasons these cities have earned their unique monikers. Taking a wild guess at why Las Vegas is often referred to as ‘Sin City’, for example, might seem incredibly obvious - but the nickname actually came about before the Las Vegas was even built. In fact, it stemmed from a street known as Block 16 that became famous in the early 1900s for selling alcohol and for offering prostitution. |
Harry Peters, from Just The Flight, told MailOnline Travel: 'Block 16 and the surrounding area was demolished after the Second World War, and Las Vegas as we know it today was built up around it – but the ‘Sin City’ nickname has stuck, and is still rather relevant today.'
Out of Africa
Out of Africa is a memoir by the Danish author Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke. The book, first published in 1937, recounts events of the seventeen years when Blixen made her home in Kenya, then called British East Africa. The book is a lyrical meditation on Blixen’s life on her coffee plantation, as well as a tribute to some of the people who touched her life there. It provides a vivid snapshot of African colonial life in the last decades of the British Empire. Blixen wrote the book in English and then rewrote it in Danish. The book has sometimes been published under the author's pen name, Isak Dinesen. |
Memoir
A memoir is a collection of memories that an individual writes about moments or events, both public or private, that took place in the subject's life. The assertions made in the work are understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobiography since the late 20th century, the genre is differentiated in form, presenting a narrowed focus. A biography or autobiography tells the story "of a life", while a memoir often tells "a story from a life", such as touchstone events and turning points from the author's life. The author of a memoir may be referred to as a memoirist or a memorialist.
A memoir is a collection of memories that an individual writes about moments or events, both public or private, that took place in the subject's life. The assertions made in the work are understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobiography since the late 20th century, the genre is differentiated in form, presenting a narrowed focus. A biography or autobiography tells the story "of a life", while a memoir often tells "a story from a life", such as touchstone events and turning points from the author's life. The author of a memoir may be referred to as a memoirist or a memorialist.
Baron
Baron is a title of honour, often hereditary. The female equivalent is baroness. Etymology The word baron comes from the Old French baron, from a Late Latin baro "man; servant, soldier, mercenary" . The scholar Isidore of Seville in the 7th century thought the word was from Greek βαρύς "heavy" (because of the "heavy work" done by mercenaries), but the word is presumably of Old Frankish origin, cognate with Old English beorn meaning "warrior, nobleman". Cornutus in the first century already reports a word barones which he took to be of Gaulish origin. He glosses it as meaning servos militum and explains it as meaning "stupid", by reference to classical Latin bārō "simpleton, dunce"; because of this early reference, the word has also been suggested to derive from an otherwise unknown Celtic *bar, but the Oxford English Dictionary takes this to be "a figment". |
Karen Blixen
Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke was a Danish author, also known by the pen name Isak Dinesen, who wrote works in Danish, French and English. She also at times used the pen names Tania Blixen, Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel.
Blixen is best known for Out of Africa, an account of her life while living in Kenya, and for one of her stories, Babette's Feast, both of which have been adapted into Academy Award-winning motion pictures. She is also noted for her Seven Gothic Tales, particularly in Denmark.
Blixen was considered several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke was a Danish author, also known by the pen name Isak Dinesen, who wrote works in Danish, French and English. She also at times used the pen names Tania Blixen, Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel.
Blixen is best known for Out of Africa, an account of her life while living in Kenya, and for one of her stories, Babette's Feast, both of which have been adapted into Academy Award-winning motion pictures. She is also noted for her Seven Gothic Tales, particularly in Denmark.
Blixen was considered several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, therefore, he gained fame as the author of such novels as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets (particularly the Georgians) who viewed him as a mentor. After his death his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin. Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances, and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in southwest and south central England. Two of his novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, were listed in the top 50 on the BBC's survey The Big Read. |
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Far from the Madding Crowd
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership. The novel is the first to be set in Hardy's fictional county of Wessex in rural south west England. It deals in themes of love, honour and betrayal, against a backdrop of the seemingly idyllic, but often harsh, realities of a farming community in Victorian England. It describes the farmer Bathsheba Everdene, her life and relationships—especially with her lonely neighbour William Boldwood, the faithful shepherd Gabriel Oak, and the thriftless soldier Sergeant Troy. On publication, critical notices were plentiful and mostly positive. Hardy revised the text extensively for the 1895 edition and made further changes for the 1901 edition. The novel was listed at number 48 on the BBC's survey The Big Read in 2003. The book finished 10th on The Guardian's list of greatest love stories of all time in 2007. The novel has been dramatised several times, notably in an Oscar-nominated 1967 film directed by John Schlesinger. |
Title
Hardy took the title from Thomas Gray's poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751).
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
"Madding" means "frenzied" here.
Lucasta Miller points out that the title is an ironic literary joke as Gray is idealising the noiselessness and sequestered calm whereas Hardy "disrupts the idyll, and not just by introducing the sound and fury of an extreme plot ... he is out to subvert his readers' complacency".
Hardy took the title from Thomas Gray's poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751).
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
"Madding" means "frenzied" here.
Lucasta Miller points out that the title is an ironic literary joke as Gray is idealising the noiselessness and sequestered calm whereas Hardy "disrupts the idyll, and not just by introducing the sound and fury of an extreme plot ... he is out to subvert his readers' complacency".
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented is a novel by Thomas Hardy. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised version, published by the British illustrated newspaper The Graphic in 1891 and in book form in 1892. Though now considered a major nineteenth-century English novel and possibly Hardy's fictional masterpiece, Tess of the d'Urbervilles received mixed reviews when it first appeared, in part because it challenged the sexual morals of late Victorian England. |
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Jude the Obscure
Jude the Obscure, the last completed novel by Thomas Hardy, began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. Its protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man, a stonemason, who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion and marriage. |
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Romanticism
Romanticism (also the Romantic era or the Romantic period) was an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific rationalization of nature - all components of modernity. It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but |
had a major impact on historiography, education, and the natural sciences. It had a significant and complex effect on politics, and while for much of the Romantic period it was associated with liberalism and radicalism, its long-term effect on the growth of nationalism was perhaps more significant.
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham CH , better known as W. Somerset Maugham, was a British playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s. After losing both his parents by the age of 10, Maugham was raised by a paternal uncle who was emotionally cold. Not wanting to become a lawyer like other men in his family, Maugham eventually trained and qualified as a physician. The initial run of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897), sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time. During the First World War, he served with the Red Cross and in the ambulance corps, before being recruited in 1916 into the British Secret Intelligence Service, for which he worked in Switzerland and Russia before the October |
Revolution of 1917. During and after the war, he travelled in India and Southeast Asia; all of these experiences were reflected in later short stories and novels.
Of Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage is a 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had originally planned to call his novel Beauty from Ashes, finally settled on a title taken from a section of Spinoza's Ethics. The Modern Library ranked Of Human Bondage No. 66 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Of Human Bondage is a 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had originally planned to call his novel Beauty from Ashes, finally settled on a title taken from a section of Spinoza's Ethics. The Modern Library ranked Of Human Bondage No. 66 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
Stonehenge
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England, 2 miles (3 km) west of Amesbury and 8 miles (13 km) north of Salisbury. Stonehenge consists of ring of standing stones, with each standing stone around 4.1 metres (13 ft) high, 2.1 metres (6 ft 11 in) wide and weighing around 25 tons. The stones are set within earthworks in the middle of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred burial mounds. |
One of the most famous landmarks in the UK, Stonehenge is regarded as a British cultural icon. It has been a legally protected Scheduled Ancient Monument since 1882 when legislation to protect historic monuments was first successfully introduced in Britain. The site and its surroundings were added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1986. Stonehenge is owned by the Crown and managed by English Heritage; the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.
Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. Deposits containing human bone date from as early as 3000 BC, when the ditch and bank were first dug, and continued for at least another five hundred years.
Stonehenge could have been a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. Deposits containing human bone date from as early as 3000 BC, when the ditch and bank were first dug, and continued for at least another five hundred years.
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Additional works, including three novels, four short story collections, and three non-fiction works, were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature. Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he reported for a few months for The Kansas City Star, before leaving for the Italian front to enlist with the World War I ambulance drivers. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms (1929). In 1921, he married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives. The couple moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s "Lost Generation" expatriate community. He published his debut novel, The Sun Also Rises, in 1926. After his 1927 divorce from |
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Richardson, Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer; they divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had been a journalist, and after which he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940; they separated when he met Mary Welsh in London during World War II. He was present at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris.
Shortly after the publication of The Old Man and the Sea (1952), Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in two successive plane crashes that left him in pain or ill health for much of his remaining life. Hemingway maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, (1930s) and Cuba (1940s and 1950s), and in 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where he killed himself in mid-1961.
Shortly after the publication of The Old Man and the Sea (1952), Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in two successive plane crashes that left him in pain or ill health for much of his remaining life. Hemingway maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, (1930s) and Cuba (1940s and 1950s), and in 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where he killed himself in mid-1961.
A Farewell to Arms
A Farewell to Arms is a novel by Ernest Hemingway set during the Italian campaign of World War I. The book, published in 1929, is a first-person account of American Frederic Henry, serving as a Lieutenant in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army. The title is taken from a poem by 16th-century English dramatist George Peele. A Farewell to Arms is about a love affair between the expatriate American Henry and Catherine Barkley against the backdrop of the First World War, cynical soldiers, fighting and the displacement of populations. The publication of A Farewell to Arms cemented Hemingway's stature as a modern American writer, became his first best-seller, and is described by biographer Michael Reynolds as "the premier American war novel from that debacle World War I." |
The Sun Also Rises
The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work", and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel. Hemingway began writing the novel on his birthday (21 July) in 1925, finishing the draft manuscript barely two months later in September. After setting aside the manuscript for a short period, he worked on revisions during the winter of 1926. The basis for the novel was Hemingway's 1925 trip to Spain. The setting was unique and memorable, showing seedy café life in Paris, and the excitement of the Pamplona festival, with a middle section devoted to descriptions of a fishing trip in the Pyrenees. Hemingway's sparse writing style, combined with his restrained use of description to convey characterizations and action, became known as demonstrating the Iceberg Theory. The novel is a roman à clef; the characters are based on real people of Hemingway's circle, and the action is based on real events. In the novel, Hemingway presents his notion that the "Lost Generation", considered to have been decadent, dissolute and irretrievably damaged by World War I, was resilient and strong. Additionally, Hemingway investigates the themes of love, death, renewal in nature, and the nature of masculinity. |
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The Old Man and the Sea
The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Bimini, Bahamas, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Florida. In 1953, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954. |
Lost Generation
The "Lost Generation" was the generation that came of age during World War I. Demographers William Strauss and Neil Howe outlined their Strauss–Howe generational theory using 1883–1900 as birth years for this generation. The term was coined by Gertrude Stein and popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to Gertrude Stein, who was then his mentor and patron. This generation included artists and writers who came of age during the war such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Olaf Stapledon, Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, E.E. Cummings, Hart Crane, Djuna Barnes, Glenway Wescott, Waldo Peirce, Abraham Walkowitz, Ezra Pound, Alan Seeger, Henry Miller, Aldous Huxley, Malcolm Cowley, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Erich Maria Remarque, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and the composers Sergei Prokofiev, Paul Hindemith, George Gershwin and Aaron Copland.
The "Lost Generation" was the generation that came of age during World War I. Demographers William Strauss and Neil Howe outlined their Strauss–Howe generational theory using 1883–1900 as birth years for this generation. The term was coined by Gertrude Stein and popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to Gertrude Stein, who was then his mentor and patron. This generation included artists and writers who came of age during the war such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Olaf Stapledon, Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, E.E. Cummings, Hart Crane, Djuna Barnes, Glenway Wescott, Waldo Peirce, Abraham Walkowitz, Ezra Pound, Alan Seeger, Henry Miller, Aldous Huxley, Malcolm Cowley, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Erich Maria Remarque, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and the composers Sergei Prokofiev, Paul Hindemith, George Gershwin and Aaron Copland.
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Although part of a prominent family with strong ties to its community, Dickinson lived much of her life in reclusive isolation. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst. Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a noted penchant for white clothing and became known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, to even leave her bedroom. Dickinson never married, and most friendships between her and others depended entirely upon correspondence. Dickinson was a recluse for the later years of her life. |
While Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime. The work that was published during her lifetime was usually altered significantly by the publishers to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two recurring topics in letters to her friends.
Although Dickinson's acquaintances were most likely aware of her writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Dickinson's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of her work became apparent to the public. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, though both heavily edited the content. A complete, and mostly unaltered, collection of her poetry became available for the first time when scholar Thomas H. Johnson published The Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1955. Despite some unfavorable reception and skepticism over the late 19th and early 20th centuries regarding her literary prowess, Dickinson is now almost universally considered to be one of the most significant of all American poets.
Although Dickinson's acquaintances were most likely aware of her writing, it was not until after her death in 1886—when Lavinia, Dickinson's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that the breadth of her work became apparent to the public. Her first collection of poetry was published in 1890 by personal acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, though both heavily edited the content. A complete, and mostly unaltered, collection of her poetry became available for the first time when scholar Thomas H. Johnson published The Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1955. Despite some unfavorable reception and skepticism over the late 19th and early 20th centuries regarding her literary prowess, Dickinson is now almost universally considered to be one of the most significant of all American poets.
Beowulf
Beowulf is an Old English epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative lines. It may be the oldest surviving long poem in Old English and is commonly cited as one of the most important works of Old English literature. A date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating pertains to the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025. The author was an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet, referred to by scholars as the "Beowulf poet". The poem is set in Scandinavia. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland (Götaland in modern |
Sweden) and later becomes king of the Geats. After a period of fifty years has passed, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is fatally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a tower on a headland in his memory.
The full poem survives in the manuscript known as the Nowell Codex. It has no title in the original manuscript, but has become known by the name of the story's protagonist. In 1731, the manuscript was badly damaged by a fire that swept through Ashburnham House in London that had a collection of medieval manuscripts assembled by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. The Nowell Codex is currently housed in the British Library.
The full poem survives in the manuscript known as the Nowell Codex. It has no title in the original manuscript, but has become known by the name of the story's protagonist. In 1731, the manuscript was badly damaged by a fire that swept through Ashburnham House in London that had a collection of medieval manuscripts assembled by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. The Nowell Codex is currently housed in the British Library.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere) is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Modern editions use a revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss. Along with other poems in Lyrical Ballads, it was a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner relates the experiences of a sailor who has returned from a long sea voyage. The mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The wedding-guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience to fear to fascination as the mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem. |
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888). His poems include "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" (1919), "The White Man's Burden" (1899), and "If—" (1910). He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature, and one critic described his work as exhibiting "a versatile and luminous narrative gift". Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: "Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known." In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, both of which he declined. Kipling's subsequent reputation has changed according to the political and social climate of the age and the resulting contrasting views about him continued for much of the 20th century. George Orwell called him a "prophet of British |
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imperialism". Literary critic Douglas Kerr wrote: "Kipling is still an author who can inspire passionate disagreement and his place in literary and cultural history is far from settled. But as the age of the European empires recedes, he is recognised as an incomparable, if controversial, interpreter of how empire was experienced. That, and an increasing recognition of his extraordinary narrative gifts, make him a force to be reckoned with."
The Way Through the Woods
The Way Through the Woods is a crime novel by Colin Dexter, the tenth novel in the Inspector Morse series. It received the Gold Dagger Award in 1992.
The plot deals with the search for a beautiful young Swedish woman who went missing a year earlier. An anonymous riddle, in the form of a five-stanza poem, is sent to the police and the case is reopened. The police ask The Times for help with the poem. Morse and Sergeant Lewis are put in charge of the new investigation.
The novel was adapted for television in 1995, as an episode of the Inspector Morse series.
The Way Through the Woods is a crime novel by Colin Dexter, the tenth novel in the Inspector Morse series. It received the Gold Dagger Award in 1992.
The plot deals with the search for a beautiful young Swedish woman who went missing a year earlier. An anonymous riddle, in the form of a five-stanza poem, is sent to the police and the case is reopened. The police ask The Times for help with the poem. Morse and Sergeant Lewis are put in charge of the new investigation.
The novel was adapted for television in 1995, as an episode of the Inspector Morse series.
James Madison
James Madison, Jr., was an American statesman and Founding Father who served as the fourth President of the United States from 1809 to 1817. He is hailed as the "Father of the Constitution" for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Madison inherited his plantation Montpelier in Virginia and therewith owned hundreds of slaves during his lifetime. He served as both a member of the Virginia House of Delegates and as a member of the Continental Congress prior to the Constitutional Convention. After the Convention, he became one of the leaders in the movement to ratify the Constitution, both in Virginia and nationally. His collaboration with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay produced The Federalist Papers, among the most important treatises in support of the Constitution. Madison's political views changed throughout his life. During deliberations on the Constitution, he favored a strong national government, but later preferred stronger state governments, before settling between the two extremes later in his life. In 1789, Madison became a leader in the new House of Representatives, drafting many general laws. He is noted for drafting the first ten amendments to the Constitution, and thus is known also as the "Father of the Bill of Rights." He worked closely with President George Washington to organize the new federal government. Breaking with Hamilton and the Federalist Party in 1791, he and Thomas Jefferson organized the Democratic-Republican Party. In response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson and Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, arguing that states can nullify unconstitutional laws. As Jefferson's Secretary of State (1801–1809), Madison supervised the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the nation's size. Madison succeeded Jefferson as president in 1809, was re-elected in 1813, and presided over renewed prosperity for several years. After the failure of diplomatic protests and a trade embargo against the United Kingdom, he led the U.S. into the War of 1812. The war was an administrative morass, as the United States had neither a strong army nor financial system. As a result, Madison afterward supported a stronger national government and military, as well as the national bank, which he had long opposed. Madison has been ranked in the aggregate by historians as the ninth most successful president. |
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Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo de Rivera, born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón, was a Mexican painter, who mostly painted self-portraits. Inspired by Mexican popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicanidad movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a Surrealist or magical realist. Her work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions, and by feminists for what is seen as its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form. Throughout the 1940s, Kahlo continued to participate in exhibitions in Mexico and the United States. She also began to teach at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda", and became a founding member of the |
Seminario de Cultura Mexicana. Kahlo's always fragile health began to increasingly decline in the same decade. She had her first solo exhibition in Mexico in 1953, shortly before her death the following year at the age of 47.
Kahlo was mainly known as Rivera's wife until the late 1970s, when her work was rediscovered by art historians and political activists. By the 1990s, she had become not only a recognized figure in art history, but also regarded as an icon for Chicanos, feminists, and the LGBTQ movement.
Kahlo was mainly known as Rivera's wife until the late 1970s, when her work was rediscovered by art historians and political activists. By the 1990s, she had become not only a recognized figure in art history, but also regarded as an icon for Chicanos, feminists, and the LGBTQ movement.
Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider, styled as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider between 2001 and 2007, is a media franchise that originated with an action-adventure video game series created by British gaming company Core Design. Formerly owned by Eidos Interactive, then by Square Enix after their acquisition of Eidos in 2009, the franchise focuses on an English archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft, who travels around the world searching for lost artifacts and infiltrating dangerous tombs and ruins. Croft was created by a team at Core Design that included Toby Gard. The gameplay generally focuses around action-adventure exploration of environments, solving puzzles, navigating hostile environments filled with traps, and fighting numerous enemies. |
Black House
Black House is a Stoker Award nominated novel by horror writers Stephen King and Peter Straub. Published in 2001, this is the sequel to The Talisman. This is one of King's numerous novels, which also include Hearts in Atlantis and Insomnia, that tie in with the Dark Tower series. Straub is from Wisconsin, which may be why the story is set there rather than King's frequently used backdrop of Maine. The town of "French Landing" is a fictionalized version of the town of Trempealeau, Wisconsin. There you will find "Chase Street", "Sumner Street", "Queen Street", and the famous "Sand Bar." Also, "Centralia" is named after the nearby small town of Centerville, Wisconsin, located at the intersection of Hwy 93 and Hwy 35. A chapter of the book is written around Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven." |
International Women's Day
International Women's Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8 every year. It commemorates the movement for women's rights. The earliest Women's Day observance was held on February 28, 1909 in New York and organized by the Socialist Party of America. On March 8, 1917, in the capital of the Russian Empire, Petrograd, a demonstration of women textile workers began, covering the whole city. This was the beginning of the Russian Revolution. Seven days later, the Emperor of Russia Nicholas II abdicated and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. March 8 was declared a national holiday in Soviet Russia in 1917. The day was predominantly celebrated by the socialist movement and communist countries until it was adopted in 1975 by the United Nations. |
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist, Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state. Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and Yankee attention to practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs. Thoreau is sometimes referred to as an anarchist. Though "Civil Disobedience" seems to call for improving rather than |
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abolishing government--"I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government"—the direction of this improvement points toward anarchism: "'That government is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."
Walden
Walden is a book by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and (to some degree) manual for self-reliance. First published in 1854, Walden details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau used this time to write his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. The experience later inspired Walden, in which Thoreau compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development. |
By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau's other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the
American Romantic Period.
Dead Poets Society Dead Poets Society is a 1989 American drama film directed by Peter Weir, written by Tom Schulman, and starring Robin Williams. Set in 1959 at the fictional elite conservative Vermont boarding school Welton Academy, it tells the story of an English teacher who inspires his students through his teaching of poetry. The film received critical acclaim and was a box office success. It won the BAFTA Award for Best Film, and César Award and David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Film. Schulman received an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his work. |
WEEK 5
Finding Forrester
Finding Forrester is a 2000 American drama film written by Mike Rich and directed by Gus Van Sant. An African-American teenager, Jamal Wallace (Rob Brown), is invited to attend a prestigious private high school. By chance, Jamal befriends a reclusive writer, William Forrester (Sean Connery), through whom he refines his talent for writing and comes to terms with his identity. Anna Paquin, F. Murray Abraham, Michael Pitt, Glenn Fitzgerald, April Grace and Busta Rhymes star in supporting roles. Although the film is not based on a true story, film critics have compared the character portrayed by Connery with real life writer J.D. Salinger. Connery later acknowledged that the inspiration for his role was indeed Salinger. |
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Plot
Sixteen-year-old Jamal Wallace (Rob Brown) plays basketball with his friends in New York. A recluse, William Forrester (Sean Connery), lives on the top floor of the building across from the court. The kids regularly notice him watching them. One of the boys dares Jamal to sneak into the apartment and retrieve an item. Jamal takes a letter opener only to be surprised by Forrester and inadvertently leaves his backpack behind. Forrester later drops Jamal's backpack onto the street. Jamal returns home to find that Forrester wrote notes in Jamal's journals. Jamal returns to Forrester's apartment and asks him to read more of his writing. Forrester tells him to begin with 5,000 words on why Jamal should "stay the fuck out of my home," which he completes and leaves on the doorstep the following day. |
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Jamal returns the next day, and is invited inside. Forrester knows that a representative from Mailor-Callow, a prestigious private school, offered Jamal a full academic scholarship, partly for his skill on the basketball court and partly for his test scores. Jamal learns that Forrester is the author of a famous book, Avalon Landing, and that he has never published another. Forrester agrees to help Jamal with his writing as long as Jamal does not ask about his personal life.
Jamal's writing improves, which causes Robert Crawford (F. Murray Abraham), a professor at Mailor-Callow, to suspect plagiarism. Jamal convinces Forrester to attend a game at Madison Square Garden, but Forrester cannot handle the crowds and has an anxiety attack. Jamal takes him instead to see Yankee Stadium late at night after everyone has gone where Forrester tells Jamal details about his family, which explains the basis of his book, specifically his brother's post-war trauma, alcoholism and Forrester's indirect role in his death. He also explains how the subsequent deaths of his parents soon after affected him and led to his becoming a recluse. |
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Forrester gives Jamal some of his own private essays to rewrite, with the condition that Jamal is not to take them from the apartment. Nonetheless, Jamal submits one of these exercises to the school writing contest, not realizing that the Forrester original it was inspired from was one of Forrester's rare pieces that he had actually published. Crawford finds the parallels with Forrester's piece and brings Jamal up on plagiarism charges. Jamal must either cite Forrester's work or prove he had Forrester's permission to use the material. He refuses to do either to keep his promise to Forrester. Crawford demands that Jamal write an apology letter to his classmates and read it in front of the class. Jamal tells
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Forrester what he has done and asks him to defend him, but Forrester is angry at Jamal for breaking his promise about
taking the work out of the apartment. Jamal accuses Forrester of being scared and selfish for not helping him. Jamal is told by the school that they will drop the plagiarism charges if he wins them the state championship. Jamal misses two free throw shots at the end of the game, costing the team the championship. Jamal writes an essay to Forrester that discusses the gift of friendship. Jamal's brother, Terrell (Busta Rhymes), finds the essay sealed in an envelope and gives it to Forrester. Jamal attends the school contest. During the readings by other students, Forrester appears, announces himself and receives permission to read an essay that draws overwhelming applause from the students. As Crawford is praising the work, Forrester acknowledges his friendship with Jamal and reveals that the essay he had just read was written by Jamal. He also explains that Jamal had written the contest essay using the published title and first paragraph with permission. Crawford adamantly states that this will not change any of the board's decisions. The board overrules him and drops the plagiarism charges, readmitting Jamal's entry to the competition. After the competition, Forrester thanks Jamal for his friendship and tells him of his desire to visit his native land of Scotland. A year later, Forrester's attorney (Matt Damon) meets with Jamal and tells him that Forrester died of cancer, with which he had been diagnosed before he met Jamal. The lawyer gives Jamal the keys to Forrester's apartment, a package, and a letter in which Forrester thanks Jamal for helping him rekindle his desire to live. The package contains the manuscript for Forrester's second novel, for which Jamal is expected to write the foreword. Sean Connery Sir Thomas Sean Connery (/ˈʃɔːn ˈkɒnəri/; born 25 August 1930) is a retired Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award) and three |
Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award). He was knighted by Elizabeth II in July 2000 after receiving Kennedy Center Honors in the US in 1999.
Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His film career also includes such films as Marnie, The Name of the Rose, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Hunt for Red October, Finding Forrester, Highlander, Murder on the Orient Express, Dragonheart, and The Rock.
Connery has been polled as "The Greatest Living Scot" and "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". In 1989, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine, and in 1999, at age 69, he was voted "Sexiest Man of the Century".
Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His film career also includes such films as Marnie, The Name of the Rose, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Hunt for Red October, Finding Forrester, Highlander, Murder on the Orient Express, Dragonheart, and The Rock.
Connery has been polled as "The Greatest Living Scot" and "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". In 1989, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine, and in 1999, at age 69, he was voted "Sexiest Man of the Century".
The Raven
Ironically, Jamal's public high school literature teacher asks the students if they are familiar with Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven. A cursory examination of The Raven suggests that Poe's poem was Mike Rich's inspiration for FF. In the poem, Poe is distracted from his depression and grief over the death of "the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore." In the poem, an ebony raven comes rapping at Poe's window. In the movie it's Jamal who enters |
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Forrester's window (first) and door (second). When Poe, the recluse writer, lets in the insistent Raven, it perches upon a bust of Pallas, the Greek God of wisdom. Similarly Jamal comes into Forrester's recluse life in search of wisdom. This reference is doubled in the movie when Forrester, a bird watcher, videotapes a bird outside his window that has "strayed from the park" as Jamal has strayed from his urban culture into Forrester's. Poe's raven is a symbol of sadness and depression that will not go away, because the hope that love has offered has gone away. Rich's screenplay explores what would happen if the raven, which enters the sad writer's life, were to renew hope, rather than reinforce sadness. The connection to the moral premise, here, is Poe's (and Forrester's) reluctance to mount the courage to leave the land of destitution and enter the land of hope.
Avalon
Avalon (/ˈævəˌlɒn/; literally meaning "the isle of fruit [or apple] trees") is a legendary island featured in the Arthurian legend. It first appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 1136 pseudo-historical account Historia Regum Britanniae ("The History of the Kings of Britain") as the place where King Arthur's sword Excalibur was forged and later where Arthur was taken to recover from his wounds after the Battle of Camlann. Avalon was associated from an early date with mystical practices and people such as Morgan le Fay. |
In Arthurian legend
According to Geoffrey in the Historia and much subsequent literature which he inspired, Avalon is the place where King Arthur is taken after fighting Mordred at the Battle of Camlann to recover from his wounds. Welsh, Cornish and Breton tradition claimed that Arthur had never really died, but would inexorably return to lead his people against their enemies. The Historia also states that Avalon is where his sword Excalibur was forged. Geoffrey dealt with Avalon in more detail in Vita Merlini, in which he describes for the first time in Arthurian legend the enchantress Morgan le Fay as the chief of nine sisters (Moronoe, Mazoe, Gliten, Glitonea, Gliton, Tyronoe, Thiten and Thiton) who live on Avalon. Geoffrey's description of the island indicates a sea voyage was needed to get there. His description of Avalon here, which is heavily indebted to the early medieval Spanish scholar Isidore of Seville, shows the magical nature of the island: |
The island of apples which men call “The Fortunate Isle” gets its name from the fact that it produces all things of itself; the fields there have no need of the ploughs of the farmers and all cultivation is lacking except what nature provides. Of its own accord it produces grain and grapes, and apple trees grow in its woods from the close-clipped grass. The ground of its own accord produces everything instead of merely grass, and people live there a hundred years or more. There nine sisters rule by a pleasing set of laws those who come to them from our country.
By comparison, Isidore's description of the Fortunate Isles reads:
"The name of the Isles of the Fortunate signifies that they bear all good things, as if happy and blessed in the abundance of their fruits. Serviceable by nature, they bring forth fruits of valuable forests (Sua enim aptae natura pretiosarum poma silvarum parturiunt); their hilltops are clothed with vines growing by chance; in place of grasses, there is commonly vegetable and grain. Pagan error and the songs of the secular poets have held that these islands to be Paradise because of the fecundity of the soil. Situated in the Ocean to the left of Mauretania, very near the west, they are separated by the sea flowing between them."
In medieval geographies, Isidore's Fortunate Islands were identified with the Canaries.
By comparison, Isidore's description of the Fortunate Isles reads:
"The name of the Isles of the Fortunate signifies that they bear all good things, as if happy and blessed in the abundance of their fruits. Serviceable by nature, they bring forth fruits of valuable forests (Sua enim aptae natura pretiosarum poma silvarum parturiunt); their hilltops are clothed with vines growing by chance; in place of grasses, there is commonly vegetable and grain. Pagan error and the songs of the secular poets have held that these islands to be Paradise because of the fecundity of the soil. Situated in the Ocean to the left of Mauretania, very near the west, they are separated by the sea flowing between them."
In medieval geographies, Isidore's Fortunate Islands were identified with the Canaries.
Morgan le Fay
Morgan le Fay /ˈmɔːrɡən lə ˈfeɪ/, alternatively known as Morgan le Faye, Morgen, Morgaine, Morgain, Morgana, Morganna, Morgant, Morgane, Morgne, Morge, Morgue, and other names, is a powerful enchantress in the Arthurian legend. Early works featuring Morgan do not elaborate her character beyond her role as a fay or sorceress. She became both more prominent and morally ambivalent in later texts, in particular in cyclical prose works such as the Lancelot-Grail and the Post-Vulgate Cycle, in which she turns into a dangerous enemy of King Arthur and antagonist of some tales. The earliest accounts of Geoffrey of Monmouth in Vita Merlini and Gerald of Wales refer to Morgan in conjunction with the Isle of Apples (Avalon) to which the fatally wounded Arthur was carried off after the Battle of Camlann. To |
the former, in early chivalric romances by Chrétien de Troyes, she also figures as a healer. Her character may be partially derived from that of the Welsh goddess Modron and other myths. She is often said to be the daughter of Arthur's mother Lady Igraine and her first husband Gorlois, so that Arthur, the son of Igraine and Uther Pendragon, is her half-brother. She becomes an apprentice of Merlin and a vindictive adversary of Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, with a special hatred for his wife Queen Guinevere. In Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and elsewhere, she is unhappily married to King Urien, with whom she has the son Ywain, and her sisters include Morgause. She is also wanton and sexually aggressive, with many lovers including Merlin and Accolon, and an unrequited love for Lancelot. Morgan is an indirect instrument of Arthur's death, though she eventually reconciles with him and retains her original role, serving as one of the sorcerous queens who take him on his final journey to Avalon.
Courtly love
Courtly love (or fin'amor in Occitan) was a medieval European literary conception of love that emphasized nobility and chivalry. Medieval literature is filled with examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing various services for ladies because of their "courtly love". This kind of love is originally a literary fiction created for the entertainment of the nobility, but as time passed, these ideas about love changed and attracted a larger audience. In the high Middle Ages, a "game of love" developed around these ideas as a set of social practices. "Loving nobly" was considered to be an enriching and improving practice. Courtly love began in the ducal and princely courts of Aquitaine, Provence, Champagne, ducal Burgundy and the Norman Kingdom of Sicily at the end of the eleventh century. In essence, courtly love was an experience between erotic desire and spiritual attainment, "a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, |
humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent".
The term "courtly love" was first popularized by Gaston Paris and has since come under a wide variety of definitions and uses. Its interpretation, origins and influences continue to be a matter of critical debate.
The term "courtly love" was first popularized by Gaston Paris and has since come under a wide variety of definitions and uses. Its interpretation, origins and influences continue to be a matter of critical debate.
University-preparatory school
A university-preparatory school or college-preparatory school (shortened to preparatory school, prep school, or college prep) is a type of secondary school. The term can refer to public, private independent or parochial schools primarily designed to prepare students for higher education.
Preparatory school (United Kingdom)
A preparatory school (or prep school) in the United Kingdom is a student selective, fee-paying independent primary school that caters primarily for children up to approximately the age of 13. The term "preparatory school" is used as it prepares the children for the Common Entrance Examination to get them into a private independent secondary schools, including the prestigious English public schools. They are also now used by parents in the hope of getting their child into a good state selective grammar school.
A university-preparatory school or college-preparatory school (shortened to preparatory school, prep school, or college prep) is a type of secondary school. The term can refer to public, private independent or parochial schools primarily designed to prepare students for higher education.
Preparatory school (United Kingdom)
A preparatory school (or prep school) in the United Kingdom is a student selective, fee-paying independent primary school that caters primarily for children up to approximately the age of 13. The term "preparatory school" is used as it prepares the children for the Common Entrance Examination to get them into a private independent secondary schools, including the prestigious English public schools. They are also now used by parents in the hope of getting their child into a good state selective grammar school.
Slang
Slang consists of a lexicon of non-standard words and phrases in a given language. Use of these words and phrases is typically associated with the subversion of a standard variety (such as Standard English) and is likely to be interpreted by listeners as implying particular attitudes on the part of the speaker. In some contexts, a speaker's selection of slang words or phrases may convey prestige, indicating group membership or distinguishing group members from those who are not a part of the group.
Slang consists of a lexicon of non-standard words and phrases in a given language. Use of these words and phrases is typically associated with the subversion of a standard variety (such as Standard English) and is likely to be interpreted by listeners as implying particular attitudes on the part of the speaker. In some contexts, a speaker's selection of slang words or phrases may convey prestige, indicating group membership or distinguishing group members from those who are not a part of the group.
Etymology of the word slang
In its earliest attested use (1756), the word slang referred to the vocabulary of "low or disreputable" people. By the early nineteenth century, it was no longer exclusively associated with disreputable people, but continued to be applied to language use below the level of standard educated speech. The origin of the word is uncertain, although it appears to be connected with thieves' cant. A Scandinavian origin has been proposed (compare, for example, Norwegian slengenavn, which means "nickname"), but is discounted by the Oxford English Dictionary based on "date and early associations". Jonathan Green however agrees with the possibility of a Scandinavian origin, suggesting the same root as that of sling, which means "to throw", and noting that slang is a thrown language - a quick, honest way to make your point. |
Social media and Internet slang
Slang is often taken from social media as a sign of social awareness and shared knowledge of popular culture. This particular branch of slang has become more prevalent since the early 2000s as a result of the rise in popularity of social networking services, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This has created new vocabularies associated with each new social media venue, such as the use of the term “friending” on Facebook, which is a verbification of “friend” used to describe the process of adding a new person to one's list of friends on the website, despite the existence of an analogous term “befriend“. This term is much older than Facebook, but has only recently entered the popular lexicon. Unlike most slang, social media slang is often not spoken aloud in conversation, but rather written, though it is still not viewed as acceptable in a formal setting. Other examples of the slang found in social media include a general trend toward shortened words or acronyms. These are especially associated with services such as Twitter, which has a 140 character limit for each message and therefore requires a briefer, more condensed manner of communication. This includes the use of hashtags which explicitly state the main content of a message or image, such as #food or #photography.
Slang is often taken from social media as a sign of social awareness and shared knowledge of popular culture. This particular branch of slang has become more prevalent since the early 2000s as a result of the rise in popularity of social networking services, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This has created new vocabularies associated with each new social media venue, such as the use of the term “friending” on Facebook, which is a verbification of “friend” used to describe the process of adding a new person to one's list of friends on the website, despite the existence of an analogous term “befriend“. This term is much older than Facebook, but has only recently entered the popular lexicon. Unlike most slang, social media slang is often not spoken aloud in conversation, but rather written, though it is still not viewed as acceptable in a formal setting. Other examples of the slang found in social media include a general trend toward shortened words or acronyms. These are especially associated with services such as Twitter, which has a 140 character limit for each message and therefore requires a briefer, more condensed manner of communication. This includes the use of hashtags which explicitly state the main content of a message or image, such as #food or #photography.
Hermetic (a.) UK /hɜːˈmet.ɪk/ US /hɚˈmet̬.ɪk/
(1.) Specialized engineering (of a container) so tightly closed that no air can leave or enter
● a hermetic seal
(2.) Formal If a particular group is hermetic, the people who live within it don't often communicate with those who live outside it.
● He entered the hermetic world of the monastery at a young age.
(1.) Specialized engineering (of a container) so tightly closed that no air can leave or enter
● a hermetic seal
(2.) Formal If a particular group is hermetic, the people who live within it don't often communicate with those who live outside it.
● He entered the hermetic world of the monastery at a young age.
Long John Silver
Long John Silver is the main villain in the novel Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson. The most colourful and complex character in the book, he continues to appear in popular culture. His one-leggedness and parrot, in particular, have greatly contributed to the image of the pirate in popular culture. Profile His relationship with Jim Hawkins, the novel's protagonist and narrator, is interesting, as he serves as a mentor and eventually father-figure to Jim, creating much shock and emotion when it is discovered that he is in charge of the mutiny, and especially when Jim must confront and fight him later on. Although willing to change sides at any time to further his own interests, Silver has compensating virtues: he is wise enough to pay attention to money management, in contrast to the spendthrift ways of most of the pirates, and is physically courageous despite his disability; for instance, when Flint's cache is found to be empty, he coolly stands his ground against five grown men despite having only Jim, a boy in his teens, to back him. Jim Hawkins James "Jim" Hawkins is a fictional character in Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island. He is both the protagonist and main narrator of the story. |
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Grace (prayer)
A grace is a short prayer or thankful phrase said before or after eating. The term most commonly refers to Christian traditions. Some traditions hold that grace and thanksgiving imparts a blessing which sanctifies the meal. In English, reciting such a prayer is sometimes referred to as "saying grace". Christianity Catholic (before eating) – "Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen." (Preceded and followed by the Sign of the Cross.) Catholic (after eating) – "We give Thee/You thanks, Almighty God, for all Thy benefits, and for the poor souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, may they rest in peace. Amen." (Preceded and followed by the Sign of the Cross.) |
Peephole
A peephole, spyhole or door viewer, is a small opening through a door allowing an individual to look from the inside to the outside. In a door, usually for apartments or hotel rooms, a peephole allows the person behind the door, the security of seeing outside without opening the door. Glass peepholes are often fitted with a fisheye lens to allow a wider field of view from the inside and little to no visibility from the outside. |
Fisheye lens
A fisheye lens is an ultra wide-angle lens that produces strong visual distortion intended to create a wide panoramic or hemispherical image. Fisheye lenses achieve extremely wide angles of view by forgoing producing images with straight lines of perspective (rectilinear images), opting instead for a special mapping (for example: equisolid angle), which gives images a characteristic convex non-rectilinear appearance. |
Foul (basketball)
In basketball, a foul is an infraction of the rules more serious than a violation. Most fouls occur as a result of illegal personal contact with an opponent and/or unsportsmanlike behavior. Fouls can result in one or more of the following penalties: ●The team whose player committed the foul loses possession of the ball to the other team. ●The fouled player is awarded one or more free throws. ●The player committing the foul "fouls out" of the game. ●The player committing the foul is suspended from some number of subsequent games. |
Dribbling
In sports, dribbling is maneuvering of a ball by a single player while moving in a given direction, avoiding defenders' attempts to intercept the ball. Such control may be exercised with the legs (e.g. association football), hands (basketball and handball), stick (ice hockey) or swimming strokes (water polo). A successful dribble will bring the ball past defenders legally and create opportunities to score. |
WEEK 6
The Invention of Hugo Cabret
The Invention of Hugo Cabret is an American historical fiction book written and illustrated by Brian Selznick and published by Scholastic. The hardcover edition was released on January 30, 2007, and the paperback edition was released on June 2, 2008. With 284 pictures between the book's 533 pages, the book depends as much on its pictures as it does on the words. Selznick himself has described the book as "not exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things". The book won the 2008 Caldecott Medal, the first novel to do so, as the Caldecott Medal is for picture books. Hugo Cabret: I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too. (Who am I, What is my place in the universe?) |
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The Cherry Orchard
The Cherry Orchard is the last play by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It opened at the Moscow Art Theatre on 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Konstantin Stanislavski. Chekhov described the play as a comedy, with some elements of farce, though Stanislavski treated it as a tragedy. Since its first production, directors have contended with its dual nature. It is often identified as one of the three or four outstanding plays by Chekhov, along with The Seagull, Three Sisters, and Uncle Vanya.
The play concerns an aristocratic Russian landowner who returns to her family estate (which includes a large and well-known cherry orchard) just before it is auctioned to pay the mortgage. Unresponsive to offers to save the estate, she allows its sale to the son of a former serf; the family leaves to the sound of the cherry orchard being cut down. The story presents themes of cultural futility – both the futile attempts of the aristocracy to maintain its status and of the bourgeoisie to find meaning in its newfound materialism.[citation needed] It dramatises the socio-economic forces in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, including the rise of the middle class after the abolition of serfdom in the mid-19th century and the decline of the power of the aristocracy.
Widely regarded as a classic of 20th-century theatre, the play has been translated and adapted into many languages and produced around the world. Major theatre directors have staged it, including Charles Laughton, Peter Brook, Andrei Șerban, Jean-Louis Barrault, Tyrone Guthrie, Katie Mitchell, Mehmet Ergen and Giorgio Strehler. It has influenced many other playwrights, including Eugene O'Neill, George Bernard Shaw, David Mamet, and Arthur Miller.
The Cherry Orchard is the last play by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It opened at the Moscow Art Theatre on 17 January 1904 in a production directed by Konstantin Stanislavski. Chekhov described the play as a comedy, with some elements of farce, though Stanislavski treated it as a tragedy. Since its first production, directors have contended with its dual nature. It is often identified as one of the three or four outstanding plays by Chekhov, along with The Seagull, Three Sisters, and Uncle Vanya.
The play concerns an aristocratic Russian landowner who returns to her family estate (which includes a large and well-known cherry orchard) just before it is auctioned to pay the mortgage. Unresponsive to offers to save the estate, she allows its sale to the son of a former serf; the family leaves to the sound of the cherry orchard being cut down. The story presents themes of cultural futility – both the futile attempts of the aristocracy to maintain its status and of the bourgeoisie to find meaning in its newfound materialism.[citation needed] It dramatises the socio-economic forces in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, including the rise of the middle class after the abolition of serfdom in the mid-19th century and the decline of the power of the aristocracy.
Widely regarded as a classic of 20th-century theatre, the play has been translated and adapted into many languages and produced around the world. Major theatre directors have staged it, including Charles Laughton, Peter Brook, Andrei Șerban, Jean-Louis Barrault, Tyrone Guthrie, Katie Mitchell, Mehmet Ergen and Giorgio Strehler. It has influenced many other playwrights, including Eugene O'Neill, George Bernard Shaw, David Mamet, and Arthur Miller.
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress." Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and |
premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text".
Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.
Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.
The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden is a children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett first published as a book in 1911, after some version was published as an American magazine serial beginning in 1910. Set in England, it is one of Burnett's most popular novels and is considered a classic of English children's literature. Several stage and film adaptations have been made. |
The American edition was published by Stokes with illustrations by Maria Louise Kirk (signed as M. L. Kirk) and the British edition by Heinemann with illustrations by Charles Heath Robinson.
Public reception
Marketing to both adult and juvenile audiences may have had an effect on its early reception; the book was not as celebrated as Burnett's previous works during her lifetime. The Secret Garden paled in comparison to the popularity of Burnett's other works for a long period. Tracing the book's revival from almost complete eclipse at the time of Burnett's death in 1924, Anne H. Lundin noted that the author's obituary notices all remarked on Little Lord Fauntleroy and passed over The Secret Garden in silence. With the rise of scholarly work in children's literature over the past quarter-century, The Secret Garden has risen steadily in prominence. It is often noted as one of the best children's books of the twentieth century. In 2003 it ranked number 51 in The Big Read, a survey of the British public by the BBC to identify the "Nation's Best-loved Novel" (not children's novel). Based on a 2007 online poll, the U.S. National Education Association named it one of "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children". In 2012 it was ranked number 15 among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily U.S. audience. (A Little Princess was ranked number 56 and Little Lord Fauntleroy did not make the Top 100.) Jeffrey Masson considers The Secret Garden "one of the greatest books ever written for children". In an oblique compliment, Barbara Sleigh has her title character reading The Secret Garden on the train at the beginning of her children's novel Jessamy. |
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Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 – 29 October 1924) was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels Little Lord Fauntleroy (published in 1885–1886), A Little Princess (1905), and The Secret Garden (1911). Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1852, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 immigrated to the United States, settling near Knoxville, Tennessee. There Frances began writing to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines from the age of 19. In 1870, her mother died, and in 1872 Frances married Swan Burnett, who became a medical doctor. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their two sons were born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C., Burnett then began to write novels, the first of which (That Lass o' Lowrie's), was published to good reviews. Little Lord Fauntleroy was published in 1886 and made her a popular writer of children's fiction, although her romantic adult novels written in the 1890s were also popular. She wrote and helped to produce stage versions of Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess. Burnett enjoyed socializing and lived a lavish lifestyle. Beginning in the 1880s, she began to travel to England frequently and in the 1890s bought a home there, where she wrote The Secret Garden. Her oldest son, Lionel, died of |
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tuberculosis in 1890, which caused a relapse of the depression she had struggled with for much of her life. She divorced Swan Burnett in 1898, married Stephen Townsend in 1900, and divorced him in 1902. A few years later she settled in Nassau County, Long Island, where she died in 1924 and is buried in Roslyn Cemetery.
In 1936 a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honour in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon.
In 1936 a memorial sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh was erected in her honour in Central Park's Conservatory Garden. The statue depicts her two famous Secret Garden characters, Mary and Dickon.
A Little Princess
A Little Princess is a children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published as a book in 1905. It is an expanded version of the short story Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's, which was serialized in St. Nicholas Magazine from December 1887. According to Burnett, after she composed the 1902 play A Little Un-fairy Princess based on that story, her publisher asked that she expand the story as a novel with "the things and people that had been left out before". The novel was published by Charles Scribner's Sons (also publisher of St. Nicholas) with illustrations by Ethel Franklin Betts and the full title A Little Princess: Being the Whole Story of Sara Crewe Now Being Told for the First Time. Based on a 2007 online poll, the U.S. National Education Association named the book one of its "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children". In 2012 it was ranked number 56 among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily U.S. audience. It was the second of two Burnett novels among the Top 100, with The Secret Garden number 15. |
Little Lord Fauntleroy
Little Lord Fauntleroy is a novel by the English-American writer Frances Hodgson Burnett, her first children's novel. It was published as a serial in St. Nicholas Magazine from November 1885 to October 1886, then as a book by Scribner's (the publisher of St. Nicholas) in 1886. The illustrations by Reginald B. Birch set fashion trends and the novel set a precedent in copyright law when Burnett won a lawsuit in 1888 against E. V. Seebohm over the rights to theatrical adaptations of the work.
Little Lord Fauntleroy is a novel by the English-American writer Frances Hodgson Burnett, her first children's novel. It was published as a serial in St. Nicholas Magazine from November 1885 to October 1886, then as a book by Scribner's (the publisher of St. Nicholas) in 1886. The illustrations by Reginald B. Birch set fashion trends and the novel set a precedent in copyright law when Burnett won a lawsuit in 1888 against E. V. Seebohm over the rights to theatrical adaptations of the work.
Over the Rainbow
"Over the Rainbow" (often referred to as "Somewhere over the Rainbow") is a ballad, with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Yip Harburg. It was written for the movie The Wizard of Oz (1939) and was sung by actress Judy Garland, in her starring role as Dorothy Gale. The song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and became Garland's signature song, as well as one of the most enduring standards of the 20th century. About five minutes into the film, Dorothy sings the song after failing to get her aunt and uncle to listen to her relate an unpleasant incident involving her dog, Toto, and the town spinster, Miss Gulch. Dorothy's Aunt Em tells her to "find yourself a place where you won't get into any trouble". This prompts Dorothy to walk off by herself, musing to Toto, "'Some place where there isn't any trouble.' Do you suppose there is such a place, Toto? There must be. It's not a place you can get to by a boat, or a train. It's far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain...", at which point she begins singing. |
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Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American singer, actress, and vaudevillian. She was renowned for her contralto vocals and attained international stardom that continued throughout a career spanning more than 40 years as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist, and on concert stages. Garland began performing in vaudeville with her two older sisters and was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. She made more than two dozen films with MGM, including nine with Mickey Rooney. Garland's most famous role was as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Her other roles at MGM included Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Harvey Girls (1946) and Easter Parade (1948). After 15 years, she was released from the studio and made record-breaking concert appearances, a successful recording career, and her own Emmy-nominated television series. Film appearances became fewer in her later years, but included two Academy Award nominated performances in A Star Is Born (1954) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). Garland received a Golden Globe Award, a Juvenile Academy Award, and a Special Tony Award, and at 39, became the youngest and first female recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in the film industry. She was the first woman to win a Grammy for Album of the Year for her live recording of Judy at Carnegie Hall. In 1997, Garland was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Several of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1999, the American Film Institute placed her among the 10 greatest female stars of classic American cinema. |
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic |
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Ocean, with the North Sea to its east, the English Channel to its south and the Celtic Sea to its south-south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres (93,600 sq mi), the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants. Together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union (EU)
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952. The capital of the United Kingdom and its largest city is London, a global city and financial centre with an urban area population of 10.3 million, the fourth-largest in Europe and second-largest in the European Union. Other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries--England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the United Kingdom, being Crown dependencies with the British Government responsible for defence and international representation.
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952. The capital of the United Kingdom and its largest city is London, a global city and financial centre with an urban area population of 10.3 million, the fourth-largest in Europe and second-largest in the European Union. Other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries--England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The nearby Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not part of the United Kingdom, being Crown dependencies with the British Government responsible for defence and international representation.
Finding Family
“Losing family obliges us to find our family. Not always the family that is our blood, but the family that can become our blood. Should we have the wisdom to open our door to this new family, we will find that the wishes we had for the father, who once guided us and for the brother, who once inspired us…”
The inspiration for this piece is from the film, Finding Forrester. At the end of the film, the “J.D. Salingeresque” character, writer William Forrester delivers the essay “Losing Family” to a classroom of students written by one of their classmates. The film dissolves the middle of the piece and we never hear the entire essay, but the beginning and end are poignant, touching and gripped my heart. It also didn’t hurt that Sean Connery played Forrester and was reading the piece written by the character, sixteen year-old Jamal Wallace. I decided to fill in the middle.
“Losing family obliges us to find our family. Not always the family that is our blood, but the family that can become our blood. Should we have the wisdom to open our door to this new family, we will find that the wishes we had for the father, who once guided us and for the brother, who once inspired us…”
The inspiration for this piece is from the film, Finding Forrester. At the end of the film, the “J.D. Salingeresque” character, writer William Forrester delivers the essay “Losing Family” to a classroom of students written by one of their classmates. The film dissolves the middle of the piece and we never hear the entire essay, but the beginning and end are poignant, touching and gripped my heart. It also didn’t hurt that Sean Connery played Forrester and was reading the piece written by the character, sixteen year-old Jamal Wallace. I decided to fill in the middle.
Programme (booklet)
A programme or program is a booklet available for patrons attending a live event such as theatre performances, fêtes, sports events, etc. It is a printed leaflet outlining the parts of the event scheduled to take place, principal performers and background information. In the case of theatrical performances, the term playbill is also used. It may be provided free of charge by the event organisers or a charge may be levied. |
Peer group
A peer group is both a social group and a primary group of people who have similar interests (homophily), age, background, or social status. The members of this group are likely to influence the person’s beliefs and behaviour. Peer groups contain hierarchies and distinct patterns of behavior. Eighteen-year-olds are not in a peer group with 14 year olds even though they may be in school together, just as teachers do not share students as a peer group. During adolescence, peer groups tend to face dramatic changes. Adolescents tend to spend more time with their peers and have less adult supervision. Adolescents’ communication shifts during this time as well. They prefer to talk about school and their careers with their parents, and they enjoy talking about sex and other interpersonal relationships with their peers. Children look to join peer groups who accept them, even if the group is involved in negative activities. Children are less likely to accept those who are different from them. Cliques are small groups typically defined by common interests or by friendship. Cliques typically have |
2-12 members and tend to be formed by age, gender, race, and social class. Clique members are usually the same in terms of academics and risk behaviors. Cliques can serve as an agent of socialization and social control. Being part of a clique can be advantageous since it may provide a sense of autonomy, a secure social environment, and overall well-being.
Crowds are larger, more vaguely defined groups that may not have a friendship base. Crowds serve as peer groups, and they increase in importance during early adolescence, and decrease by late adolescents. The level of involvement in adult institutions and peer culture describes crowds.
Socialization
At an early age, the peer group becomes an important part of socialization as supported by a 2002 study titled "Adolescents' Peer Groups and Social Identity" published in the journal Social Development. Unlike other agents of socialization, such as family and school, peer groups allow children to escape the direct supervision of adults. Among peers, children learn to form relationships on their own, and have the chance to discuss interests that adults may not share with children, such as clothing and popular music, or may not permit, such as drugs and sex.
Crowds are larger, more vaguely defined groups that may not have a friendship base. Crowds serve as peer groups, and they increase in importance during early adolescence, and decrease by late adolescents. The level of involvement in adult institutions and peer culture describes crowds.
Socialization
At an early age, the peer group becomes an important part of socialization as supported by a 2002 study titled "Adolescents' Peer Groups and Social Identity" published in the journal Social Development. Unlike other agents of socialization, such as family and school, peer groups allow children to escape the direct supervision of adults. Among peers, children learn to form relationships on their own, and have the chance to discuss interests that adults may not share with children, such as clothing and popular music, or may not permit, such as drugs and sex.
Peer pressure
The term peer pressure is often used to describe instances where an individual feels indirectly pressured into changing his/her behavior to match that of his/her peers. Taking up smoking and underage drinking are two of the best known examples. In spite of the often negative connotations of the term, peer pressure can be used positively, for example, to encourage other peers to study, or not to engage in activities such |
as the ones discussed above. Although peer pressure is not isolated to one age group, it is usually most common during the adolescent stage. Adolescence is a period characterized by experimentation, and adolescents typically spend a lot of time with their peers in social contexts. Teenagers compel each other to go along with certain beliefs or behaviors, and studies have shown that boys are more likely to give in to it than girls. There has been much research done to gain a better understanding about the effects of peer pressure, and this research will allow parents to handle and understand their children’s behaviors and obstacles they will face due to their peer groups. Learning how peer pressure impacts individuals is a step to minimizing the negative effects it leads to.
Defiant (a.)
UK /dɪˈfaɪ.ənt/ US /dɪˈfaɪ.ənt/ Proudly refusing to obey authority. ● a defiant attitude/gesture ● The protesters blocking the entrance to the offices remained defiant this morning. Not willing to accept criticism or disapproval. ● The CEO was in a defiant mood as she entered the boardroom. |
Oblige (v.)
UK /əˈblaɪdʒ/ US /əˈblaɪdʒ/ To force someone to do something, or to make it necessary for someone to do something. ● The law obliges companies to pay decent wages to their employees. ● The law does not obligate sellers to accept the highest offer. To please or help someone, especially by doing something they have asked you to do. ● We only went to the party to oblige some old friends who asked us to be there. ● We needed a guide and he was only too happy to oblige. oblige sb with sth To help someone by giving them something. ● Could you oblige me with a pen and a piece of paper, please? |
Integrity (n.)
UK /ɪnˈteɡ.rə.ti/ US /ɪnˈteɡ.rə.t̬i/ Approving the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles that you refuse to change. ● No one doubted that the president was a man of the highest integrity. sb's artistic, professional, etc. integrity approving Someone's high artistic standards or standards of doing their job, and that person's determination not to lower those standards. ● Keen to preserve his artistic integrity, he refused several lucrative Hollywood offers. The quality of being whole and complete. ● A modern extension on the old building would ruin its architectural integrity. Baggage reclaim
In airport terminals, a baggage reclaim area is an area where arriving passengers claim checked-in baggage after disembarking from an airline flight. The alternative term baggage claim is used at airports in the USA. |
Claim (v.)
UK /kleɪm/ US /kleɪm/ To say that something is true or is a fact, although you cannot prove it and other people might not believe it. ● The company claims (that) it is not responsible for the pollution in the river. ● He claims to have met the president, but I don't believe him. ● All parties have claimed success in yesterday's elections. |
● An unknown terrorist group has claimed responsibility for this morning's bomb attack.
To ask for something of value because you think it belongs to you or because you think you have a right to it.
● The police said that if no one claims the watch, you can keep it.
When King Richard III died, Henry VII claimed the English throne.
To make a written demand for money from a government or organization because you think you have a right to it.
● The number of people claiming unemployment benefits has risen sharply this month.
● Don't forget to claim (for) your travelling expenses after the interview.
claim damages
To make an official request for money after an accident, from the person who caused your injuries.
claim their friendship
To ask for something of value because you think it belongs to you or because you think you have a right to it.
● The police said that if no one claims the watch, you can keep it.
When King Richard III died, Henry VII claimed the English throne.
To make a written demand for money from a government or organization because you think you have a right to it.
● The number of people claiming unemployment benefits has risen sharply this month.
● Don't forget to claim (for) your travelling expenses after the interview.
claim damages
To make an official request for money after an accident, from the person who caused your injuries.
claim their friendship