SPIAZZI Performer Heritage 2 Idee [PDF]

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Teacher’s Guide and Tests Marina Spiazzi Marina Tavella Margaret Layton

2 Performer Heritage From the Victorian Age to the Present Age UNA SCUOLA PER TUTTI

Presentazione del corso Programmazione per competenze Contenuti dell’eBook Test e soluzioni con Soluzioni degli esercizi del corso

Vai su per scaricare i contenuti online

Per Bisogni Educativi Speciali – guided tests

Marina Spiazzi Marina Tavella Margaret Layton

2 Performer Heritage From the Victorian Age to the Present Age

Copyright © 2017 Zanichelli editore S.p.A., Bologna [19692der] www.zanichelli.it I diritti di elaborazione in qualsiasi forma o opera, di memorizzazione anche digitale su supporti di qualsiasi tipo (inclusi magnetici e ottici), di riproduzione e di adattamento totale o parziale con qualsiasi mezzo (compresi i microfilm e le copie fotostatiche), i diritti di noleggio, di prestito e di traduzione sono riservati per tutti i paesi. L’acquisto della presente copia dell’opera non implica il trasferimento dei suddetti diritti né li esaurisce. Le fotocopie per uso personale (cioè privato e individuale, con esclusione quindi di strumenti di uso collettivo) possono essere effettuate, nei limiti del 15% di ciascun volume, dietro pagamento alla S.I.A.E. del compenso previsto dall’art. 68, commi 4 e 5, della legge 22 aprile 1941 n. 633. Tali fotocopie possono essere effettuate negli esercizi commerciali convenzionati S.I.A.E. o con altre modalità indicate da S.I.A.E. Per le riproduzioni ad uso non personale (ad esempio: professionale, economico, commerciale, strumenti di studio collettivi, come dispense e simili) l’editore potrà concedere a pagamento l’autorizzazione a riprodurre un numero di pagine non superiore al 15% delle pagine del presente volume. Le richieste vanno inoltrate a CLEARedi Centro Licenze e Autorizzazioni per le Riproduzioni Editoriali Corso di Porta Romana, n. 108 20122 Milano e-mail [email protected] e sito web www.clearedi.org L’editore, per quanto di propria spettanza, considera rare le opere fuori del proprio catalogo editoriale. La loro fotocopia per i soli esemplari esistenti nelle biblioteche è consentita, oltre il limite del 15%, non essendo concorrenziale all’opera. Non possono considerarsi rare le opere di cui esiste, nel catalogo dell’editore, una successiva edizione, né le opere presenti in cataloghi di altri editori o le opere antologiche. Nei contratti di cessione è esclusa, per biblioteche, istituti di istruzione, musei e archivi, la facoltà di cui all’art. 71 - ter legge diritto d’autore. Per permessi di riproduzione, anche digitali, diversi dalle fotocopie rivolgersi a [email protected]

Realizzazione editoriale: – Coordinamento redazionale: Federica Gusmeroli (Studio Zebra, Bergamo) – Redazione: Studio Zebra, Bergamo – Impaginazione: Fratelli Sala Contributi: – Rilettura linguistica dei test: Ann Hylands Copertina: – Progetto grafico: Miguel Sal & C., Bologna – Realizzazione: Roberto Marchetti e Francesca Ponti – Immagini di copertina: Wiliam Powell Frith, Ritratto di Charles John Huffam Dickens. Londra, Victoria & Albert Museum. © Victoria & Albert Museum, Londra/The Stapleton Collection/Bridgeman Images/Archivi Alinari William Butler Yeats, Irish poet and dramatist with a book, ca 1920. Photo © PVDE/Bridgeman Images/Archivi Alinari Virginia Woolf, 1902. Photo by George C. Beresford/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. Artwork Miguel Sal & C., Bologna Leemage/Getty Images. Artwork Miguel Sal & C., Bologna Prima edizione: luglio 2017 Ristampa: prima tiratura 5

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File per sintesi vocale L’editore mette a disposizione degli studenti non vedenti, ipovedenti, disabili motori o con disturbi specifici di apprendimento i file pdf in cui sono memorizzate le pagine di questo libro. Il formato del file permette l’ingrandimento dei caratteri del testo e la lettura mediante software screen reader. Le informazioni su come ottenere i file sono sul sito http://www.zanichelli.it/scuola/bisogni-educativi-speciali Grazie a chi ci segnala gli errori Segnalate gli errori e le proposte di correzione su www.zanichelli.it/correzioni. Controlleremo e inseriremo le eventuali correzioni nelle ristampe del libro. Nello stesso sito troverete anche l’errata corrige, con l’elenco degli errori e delle correzioni. Zanichelli editore S.p.A. opera con sistema qualità certificato CertiCarGraf n. 477 secondo la norma UNI EN ISO 9001:2008

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Marina Spiazzi Marina Tavella Margaret Layton

2 Performer Heritage From the Victorian Age to the Present Age

Teacher’s Guide and Tests

Indice 1. Presentazione del corso

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Configurazione del corso . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Struttura degli apparati didattici . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

2. Programmazione per competenze e soluzioni degli esercizi del libro e delle extra activities

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Syllabus planner 5 The Victorian Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Soluzioni capitolo 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Syllabus planner 6 The Modern Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Soluzioni capitolo 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Syllabus planner 7 The Present Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 Soluzioni capitolo 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

3. Contenuti dell’eBook

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From Text to Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256 From Text to Screen y Soluzioni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283 Text Bank y Soluzioni. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Routes y Soluzioni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426 Lezioni in PowerPoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458 Indice analitico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469

4. Tests

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Capitolo 5 Tests Fila A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476 Capitolo 6 Tests Fila A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529 Capitolo 7 Tests Fila A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577 Capitolo 5 Guided tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613 Capitolo 6 Guided tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683 Capitolo 7 Guided tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 748 Tests Fila A e Fila B y Soluzioni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 795 Guided Tests y Soluzioni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 851

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Presentazione del corso

Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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PRESENTAZIONE DEL CORSO

Configurazione del corso Il corso si presenta in due volumi. Volume 1 5 capitoli The Words of Literature: un capitolo di introduzione ai tre principali generi letterari 1. The Origins and the Middle Ages 2. The Renaissance and the Puritan Age 3. The Restoration and the Augustan Age 4. The Romantic Age Study Skills: una sezione di riferimento per lo sviluppo del metodo di studio Volume 2 3 capitoli 5. The Victorian Age 6. The Modern Age 7. The Present Age Study Skills Il corso, con eBook, è accompagnato da una guida per l’insegnante corredata da 6 CD audio per il volume 1 e 9 CD audio per il volume 2, che contengono le attività di ascolto e tutti i testi letterari proposti nel corso. La guida e l’eBook contengono test di verifica di fine capitolo (standard Fila A e Fila B, e guidati per BES). I test di verifica Fila A e quelli per BES si trovano all’interno della guida e del DVD-ROM, dove sono disponibili sia in formato rtf sia pdf; quelli Fila B si trovano solo nel DVD-ROM, sia in formato rtf sia pdf. Ogni capitolo comprende una vasta gamma di test che intendono verificare competenze diverse. La guida contiene le soluzioni di tutte le tipologie di test.

Struttura degli apparati didattici Ogni capitolo è organizzato secondo una struttura ricorrente. Le due pagine di apertura contengono: • una timeline, corredata da immagini, con i principali eventi storici del periodo trattato; • una overall view con una panoramica dei concetti chiave; • un elenco delle study skills presenti nel capitolo.

Sezioni History and Culture Introduzione al contesto storico, sociale e culturale con attività mirate all’acquisizione del lessico specifico e alla costruzione di competenze orali e scritte. Literature and Genres Propone il contesto letterario dell’epoca seguendo l’evoluzione cronologica dei generi letterari. Comprende grafici riassuntivi e testi esemplificativi con analisi visiva. Authors and Texts Dedicata agli autori e alle opere più significativi dell’epoca, con presentazione dell’autore, dell’opera, di un concetto chiave (key idea) e una selezione di testi con schede per la costruzione della competenza di lettura e di analisi testuale. I testi sono presentati secondo la tecnica dello scaffolding, organizzando l’apprendimento in fasi diverse al fine di fornire allo studente il lessico, gli strumenti e le abilità per sviluppare la competenza di lettura (Reading competence), analisi (Visual analysis) e apprezzamento del testo letterario (Literary competence). Le attività proposte guidano lo studente allo sviluppo delle quattro abilità linguistiche.

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Review Due pagine che propongono esercizi di riepilogo (Mastering useful vocabulary; Providing information on a given subject; Thinking maps; Organising information in a chart) dedicati alla preparazione del test finale (scritto/orale) sul capitolo.

Rubriche

PRESENTAZIONE DEL CORSO

Topic Approfondimenti di temi non solo letterari (per esempio come è cambiata nel tempo l’istruzione, la condizione della donna in diverse culture e l’esplorazione di varie forme di arte). Questa sezione fornisce immagini, citazioni, canzoni, articoli di giornale e testi letterari per i quali viene proposta la stessa tipologia di attività prevista per la seconda prova dell’Esame di Stato nei Licei linguistici. Ha il fine di sviluppare competenze di diversa natura tra cui quelle di cittadinanza.

B2 Exams Esercizi di preparazione all’esame Cambridge English: First (FCE) e IELTS (Academic), per abituare gli studenti all’ascolto e alla lettura di brani accademici e all’utilizzo della scrittura in contesti più complessi e articolati. CLIL Presentazione di un argomento non letterario ma relativo a discipline come scienze, filosofia e arte. L’approfondimento monografico è legato al periodo trattato ed è accompagnato da attività per lo sviluppo delle competenze lessicali e comunicative. Internet Point Propone itinerari virtuali guidati in Internet. Questa rubrica si trova nella sezione History and Culture. Across Cultures Ha come obiettivo l’individuazione di temi trasversali che forniscano allo studente spunti per l’elaborazione di percorsi trasversali. Una breve introduzione è seguita da esercizi di completamento relativi a un ampio contesto culturale (letteratura italiana, francese, sudamericana, arte, filosofia ecc.). Link to Contemporary Culture Ha come obiettivo la costruzione della capacità di individuare collegamenti e relazioni tra fenomeni e concetti diversi, anche lontani nel tempo. Sviluppa un tema storico/letterario riguardante un concetto chiave dell’epoca, che continua a mantenere importanza anche nel presente. From Text/History to Screen Mette in relazione il linguaggio letterario e quello cinematografico. L’eBook contiene l’analisi di una sequenza di 1’50” per ciascun film proposto. Cultural Insight Approfondimento di un argomento legato alla cultura dell’epoca. The Portrait Analisi di un ritratto di un personaggio importante dell’epoca. Dictation Attività di comprensione orale e di scrittura su un particolare aspetto storico/sociale/letterario dell’epoca. Beyond the Book Permette di ampliare particolarità relative ad alcuni autori, temi, testi proposti nel volume attraverso Internet.

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PRESENTAZIONE DEL CORSO

eBook Nell’eBook multimediale per lo studente del volume 2 si trovano: • tutte le pagine del libro da sfogliare; • 950 esercizi del libro resi interattivi; • 3 timelines interattive, una per ciascun capitolo; • 10 video sul contesto storico e culturale con esercizi; • Extra activities, tra cui alcune attività di ascolto; • 7 Routes, percorsi tematici multimediali diversi per ogni capitolo (per esempio le donne nel XIX secolo e razzismo e discriminazione nel XX secolo), con brevi introduzioni e brani antologici accompagnati da esercizi interattivi, anche di analisi visuale; • Text Bank di 88 brani in formato pdf accompagnati da esercizi (Reading competence, Visual analysis, Literary competence); • 560 esercizi interattivi online su ZTE. L’eBook dell’insegnante del volume 2 contiene, oltre al materiale presente anche nella versione dello studente: • le sequenze filmiche delle rubriche From Text/History to Screen del volume e ulteriori rubriche From Text/History/Literature to Screen; • 56 presentazioni in PowerPoint, relative al contesto storico-culturale delle diverse epoche, agli autori e alle loro opere principali, che possono essere utilizzate come supporto alla spiegazione o come materiale di riepilogo. Le diapositive sono semplici e schematiche per facilitare la memorizzazione dei concetti chiave da parte degli studenti; • programmazione per competenze in formato pdf e rtf per ogni capitolo; • prove di verifica in formato pdf e rtf.

Bisogni Educativi Speciali Il docente ha a disposizione prove su misura per gli alunni con Bisogni Educativi Speciali (BES). Queste prove hanno gli stessi obiettivi di quelle standard, verificano tutti i contenuti importanti di ogni capitolo e rispettano i criteri di alta leggibilità. Gli esercizi presentano una riduzione di circa il 30% rispetto alle prove standard, con eliminazione o semplificazione delle domande più difficili e articolate. Nelle attività di produzione scritta è minore il numero dei paragrafi o delle parole che gli studenti devono scrivere.

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Programmazione per competenze e soluzioni degli esercizi del libro e delle extra activities

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SYLLABUS PLANNER Programmazione per competenze 5. The Victorian Age Tempo di svolgimento: circa 4 mesi Asse dei COMPETENZE linguaggi Traguardi formativi

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

Utilizzare una lingua straniera per sviluppare la competenza linguisticocomunicativa finalizzata al raggiungimento almeno del Livello B2 e le competenze relative all’universo culturale legato alla lingua di riferimento

A quali “Traguardi per lo sviluppo delle competenze” mirano le attività didattiche del capitolo? Padroneggiare il lessico specifico, gli strumenti espressivi e argomentativi indispensabili per gestire l’interazione comunicativa in vari contesti • usare in maniera appropriata la terminologia relativa al contesto storico, sociale e letterario • leggere e comprendere testi relativi al contesto storico, sociale e letterario • inquadrare nel tempo e nello spazio le problematiche storicoletterarie

CONTENUTI Indicatori

Che cosa ci si aspetta sappia fare lo studente che ha raggiunto questi traguardi? Riflessione sulla lingua • osservare le parole nei contesti d’uso e impararne il significato

Parlato (produzione e interazione orale) • descrivere i principali eventi storici utilizzando in modo Leggere, comprendere e appropriato la terminologia interpretare testi scritti di vario tipo specifica • inquadramento storico-sociale • approfondimenti culturali • testi letterari e giornalistici • utilizzare immagini per spiegare concetti storici Dimostrare consapevolezza della storicità della letteratura • cogliere gli elementi di permanenza e discontinuità nei • spiegare l’evoluzione di un processi storici e letterari genere nel corso del tempo • comprendere le relazioni tra il • fornire informazioni pertinenti contesto storico e culturale e le su un genere o un’opera opere letteraria Produrre testi scritti di vario tipo in relazione a diversi scopi comunicativi • scrivere brevi testi di commento a brani letterari • scrivere testi per esprimere le proprie opinioni Attualizzare tematiche letterarie anche in chiave di cittadinanza attiva • percepire l’importanza della letteratura nella formazione personale • relazionare le caratteristiche • interpretare le variazioni di un di un autore tema nell’ambito di culture diverse e nel corso del tempo

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Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

Su quali conoscenze e abilità si sviluppano le competenze? • abbinare vocaboli relativi al contesto storico-sociale o ai testi letterari alla loro traduzione italiana o alla loro definizione in inglese, anche riflettendo sulla derivazione di parola e sulle collocazioni • descrivere gli eventi principali del regno della regina Vittoria, le correnti filosofiche che hanno caratterizzato il XIX secolo • descrivere i cambiamenti legati alla guerra civile americana • descrivere l’evoluzione della poesia vittoriana • descrivere e analizzare le caratteristiche del dramatic monologue • descrivere le caratteristiche del romanzo vittoriano • descrivere le caratteristiche del Rinascimento americano • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’Estetismo e del Decadentismo • descrivere le caratteristiche del teatro vittoriano • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di A. Tennyson • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di C. Dickens • descrivere le caratteristiche di alcune opere delle sorelle Brontë

ATTIVITÀ DIDATTICHE

STRUMENTI DI VALUTAZIONE

Attività per lo sviluppo delle competenze

History and Culture es. 5 p. 6; es. 2 p. 7; es. 2-5 p. 13; es. 2, 4, 6 p. 19; es. 3-6 p. 21

History and Culture es. 6 p. 6; es. 7 p. 19 History and Culture es. 4 p. 15 Literature and Genres es. 1-2 p. 22 Literature and Genres es. 3 p. 22; es. 4 p. 23 Literature and Genres es. 2, 4 p. 26; es. 1-3 p. 28 Literature and Genres es. 1 p. 27

Con quali strumenti di valutazione (formativa e sommativa) si verificano l’acquisizione dei contenuti e lo sviluppo delle competenze? Nelle Idee per insegnare, prove diversificate (prove standard Fila A e Fila B, prove guidate per BES) • questionario sul contesto storico, sociale e letterario • test su A. Tennyson • test su C. Dickens e le sue opere • test di Reading competence su un brano da Oliver Twist • test sulle sorelle Brontë e Jane Eyre • test su Wuthering Heights • test di Literary competence su un brano da Jane Eyre • test su L. Carroll e Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland • test su N. Hawthorne e The Scarlet Letter • test su H. Melville e Moby-Dick • test su W. Whitman • test su E. Dickinson • test di Reading competence su una poesia di E. Dickinson • test su T. Hardy e le sue opere • test di Literary competence su un brano da Tess of the D’Urbervilles • test su R.L. Stevenson e The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde • test su R. Kipling • test su O. Wilde e le sue opere • test di Reading competence su un brano da The Picture of Dorian Gray • test su G.B. Shaw e Mrs Warren’s Profession • lettura e comprensione di un articolo relativo al Topic 5 (Towards Invalsi) • lettura e comprensione di un articolo relativo al Topic 5 (Esame di Stato Seconda Prova) • test di produzione scritta

B2 Exams First Reading and Use of English – Part 5; First Listening – Part 2; First Writing – Part 2 pp. 8-9 eBook: First Reading and Use of English – Part 2

ZTE online • esercizi di allenamento interattivi • test interattivi

Literature and Genres es. 1-3 p. 30

Literature and Genres es. 1-3 p. 31 Authors and Texts es. 2-3 p. 33 Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 38; es. 2 p. 39; es. 1 p. 46 Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 56; es. 1 p. 62

Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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The Victorian Age

History and Culture es. 1 p. 4; es. 1 p. 7; es. 1 p. 12; es. 1 p. 17; es. 1 p. 20; Literature and Genres es. 1 p. 24; Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 41; es. 1 p. 50; es. 1 p. 57; es. 1 p. 60; es. 1 p. 64; es. 1 p. 71; es. 1 p. 76; es. 1 p. 85; es. 1 p. 92; es. 1 p. 96; es. 1 p. 103; es. 1 p. 105; es. 1 p. 114; es. 1 p. 123; es. 1 p. 134; es. 1 p. 144

Preparazione alle certificazioni

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

Con quali attività didattiche si raggiunge l’acquisizione dei contenuti e si sviluppano le competenze?

Prove autentiche e strutturate

Asse dei linguaggi

COMPETENZE Traguardi formativi Stabilire nessi tra la letteratura e altre discipline o sistemi linguistici • utilizzare il linguaggio visivo per comunicare concetti • comprendere e interpretare opere d’arte

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

Comprendere i prodotti della comunicazione audiovisiva • comprendere brevi testi orali relativi al contesto storico, sociale e letterario • confrontare il linguaggio filmico con il linguaggio verbale Elaborare prodotti multimediali (testi, immagini, suoni ecc.), anche con tecnologie digitali • utilizzare Internet per svolgere attività di ricerca • produrre presentazioni multimediali Utilizzare prodotti multimediali • utilizzare l’eBook per svolgere gli esercizi in maniera interattiva ed esercitarsi a comprendere i prodotti della comunicazione audiovisiva (video di storia, brani di ascolto a livello B2, dettati, percorsi tematici multimediali: Routes) Competenze chiave di cittadinanza • imparare ad imparare • collaborare e partecipare • acquisire ed interpretare l’informazione

CONTENUTI Indicatori

• descrivere le caratteristiche di un’opera di L. Carroll • descrivere le caratteristiche di un’opera di N. Hawthorne • descrivere le caratteristiche di un’opera di H. Melville • descrivere le caratteristiche della poesia di W. Whitman • descrivere le caratteristiche della poesia di E. Dickinson • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di T. Hardy • descrivere le caratteristiche di un’opera di R.L. Stevenson • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di R. Kipling • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di O. Wilde • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di G.B. Shaw • esplorare il tema “lavoro e alienazione” • analizzare l’evoluzione della detective story nel corso del tempo • stabilire legami tra il testo e il • collegare un testo al contesto contesto letterario o dell’autore • analizzare la figura della donna nel corso del XIX secolo • analizzare la pittura dei Preraffaelliti Lettura (comprensione scritta) • comprendere testi descrittivi e • analizzare brani di argomentativi autori vittoriani

• comprendere un articolo di giornale

8

Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

• spiegare e interpretare un testo giornalistico sul concetto di stile di apprendimento

ATTIVITÀ DIDATTICHE Attività per lo sviluppo delle competenze

STRUMENTI DI VALUTAZIONE Prove autentiche e strutturate

Preparazione alle certificazioni

Authors and Texts es. 3 p. 73 Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 78

Authors and Texts es. 3 p. 84

Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 98; es. 1 p. 99; es. 1 p. 106 Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 111

Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 122 Authors and Texts es. 1-2 p. 125; es. 1 p. 126; es. 1 p. 137 Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 141; es. 1 p. 142 Across Cultures pp. 52-53 Link to Contemporary Culture pp. 117-121 Authors and Texts es. 3 p. 36; es. 13-14 p. 51; es. 4 p. 65; es. 5 p. 69; es. 6 p. 71; es. 3 p. 76; es. 5 p. 81; es. 12 p. 92; es. 4 p. 95; es. 6 p. 109; es. 6 p. 123 eBook: Route 8 Women in the 19th century eBook: Route 9 The Pre-Raphaelites

Authors and Texts es. 1-3 pp. 41-42; es. 1-3 p. 44; es. 1-3 p. 48; es. 2-12 p. 51; es. 2 p. 57; es. 2-8 p. 60; es. 2 p. 64; es. 1-3 p. 69; es. 2-5 p. 71; es. 2 p. 76; es. 1-4 p. 81; es. 2-3 p. 85; es. 1-3 p. 87; es. 1-3 p. 90; es. 2-11 p. 92; es. 1-3 p. 95; es. 2-10 p. 96; es. 2 p. 103; es. 2-6 p. 105; es. 1-3 p. 109; es. 2 p. 114; es. 1-3 p. 116; es. 2-5 p. 123; es. 1-2 p. 128; es. 1-4 p. 130; es. 2-6 p. 134; es. 1-3 p. 139; es. 2-10 pp. 144-145 Topic 5 es. 1-4 p. 148

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The Victorian Age

Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 94

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 89

Asse dei linguaggi

COMPETENZE Traguardi formativi

CONTENUTI Indicatori

• comprendere testi di canzoni

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

Ascolto (comprensione orale) • comprendere un breve brano • comprendere un che descrive un evento storico breve testo sulla Great Exhibition • comprendere un breve testo relativo all’epoca vittoriana e alla guerra civile americana • comprendere una breve spiegazione relativa alla trama di un’opera e alla biografia di un autore • comprendere una breve sequenza filmica

• comprendere una sequenza dal film Oliver Twist • comprendere una sequenza dal film Dorian Gray

Scrittura (produzione scritta) • scrivere le idee chiave relative • completare le idee a un periodo storico chiave relative alla prima parte del regno della regina Vittoria • completare una tabella • analizzare le riforme degli anni Trenta del XIX secolo e della prima parte del regno della regina Vittoria • raccogliere dati in un modulo • completare un factfile fornito sulla regina Vittoria, su C. Dickens e le sorelle Brontë • completare una linea del • collocare le tappe tempo e diagrammi con le nell’evoluzione informazioni necessarie della chirurgia e dell’anestesia • scrivere le cause e le conseguenze della guerra civile americana; scrivere le cause dell’egemonia globale della Gran Bretagna • scrivere un commento o un • produrre un breve breve testo testo su brani, opere o particolari temi

Metodo di studio • prendere appunti • prepararsi per una interrogazione • scrivere un commento su un particolare tema • collegare un testo al contesto • esprimere la propria opinione

10

• comprendere il testo della canzone Another Brick in the Wall Part 2

Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

• Study Skill 18: The Cornell note-taking system • Study Skill 19: How to answer oral questions • Study Skill 20: How to write a commentary • Study Skill 21: How to go from text to context • Study Skill 22: How to give your personal response

ATTIVITÀ DIDATTICHE Attività per lo sviluppo delle competenze

STRUMENTI DI VALUTAZIONE Prove autentiche e strutturate

Preparazione alle certificazioni

Topic 5 es. 1-4 p. 149

Dictation p. 5

From Text to Screen p. 135

History and Culture p. 5

History and Culture es. 4 p. 6

History and Culture es. 3 p. 6; Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 38; es. 1 p. 54 CLIL es. 4 p. 11

History and Culture es. 3 p. 15; es. 5 p. 19

Authors and Texts es. 4 p. 42; es. 5 p. 44; es. 5 p. 48; es. 4 p. 58; es. 9 p. 60; es. 7 p. 71; es. 5 p. 87; es. 4 p. 90; es. 3 p. 103; es. 5 p. 109; es. 4 p. 116; es. 3 p. 128; es. 5 p. 139 History and Culture es. 2 p. 4 Authors and Texts es. 3 p. 36 Authors and Texts es. 4 p. 42 Authors and Texts es. 13 p. 51 Authors and Texts es. 15 p. 51; es. 13-14 p. 92; es. 11 p. 96; es. 7 p. 105

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The Victorian Age

Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 39; es. 4 p. 44; es. 4 p. 48; es. 3 p. 58; es. 4 p. 69; es. 2 p. 72; es. 1 p. 77; es. 2 p. 82; es. 1 p. 97; es. 4 p. 109; es. 1 p. 122; es. 4 p. 139; es. 1 p. 140 From Text to Screen p. 45

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

e-Book: History videos

Asse dei linguaggi

COMPETENZE Traguardi formativi

CONTENUTI Indicatori

• confrontare autori diversi

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

• presentare e sviluppare un tema • utilizzare liste di vocaboli, diagrammi, immagini, tabelle per prepararsi a una interrogazione/verifica sommativa Metodo di ricerca • utilizzare Internet per condurre ricerche individuali o a gruppi

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Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

• Study Skill 23: How to compare and contrast different authors • Study Skill 24: How to develop a topic • revisione di fatti, personaggi, generi letterari, autori e testi dell’epoca vittoriana • fare un approfondimento sul personaggio di Abramo Lincoln

ATTIVITÀ DIDATTICHE Attività per lo sviluppo delle competenze

STRUMENTI DI VALUTAZIONE Prove autentiche e strutturate

Preparazione alle certificazioni

Authors and Texts es. 4 p. 95; es. 4 p. 114; Link to Contemporary Culture es. 4 p. 121 Topic 5 es. 3 p. 151 Literature and Genres es. 3 p. 22; es. 3 p. 26; Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 33; Review pp. 152-153

Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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The Victorian Age

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

Internet Point es. 1 p. 16

5. The Victorian Age Teaching tip The interactive timeline can be employed as a support to the introduction of the historical period of this chapter.

COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

2 BEFORE reading the text, look at the Cornell

History and Culture 5.1 The dawn of the Victorian Age PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

Teaching tip The history video The dawn of the Victorian Age can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

1 CHOOSE the correct answer (A, B or C). 1 C; 2 B; 3 B; 4 A; 5 C.

2 CHOOSE the correct alternative to complete the sentences. 1

2

3

4

5

The Opium Wars between Britain and China lasted 21 years and gave Britain access to five Chinese ports and control of Hong Kong. Britain supported Turkey against Russia and took part in the Crimean War, which had direct newspaper coverage for the first time. The Victorian Age saw rapid progress in many fields but real wealth existed alongside great poverty and there was widespread hardship. The Victorian compromise was the situation where there was respectability on the surface but hypocrisy and injustice underneath. New ideas in philosophy included Bentham’s Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill’s idea of progress through education and social reform, and Charles Darwin’s new theory of evolution.

Teaching tip The presentation The dawn of the Victorian Age in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

VOCABULARY: POLITICS AND SOCIETY

1 MATCH the highlighted words about politics and society in the text with their meaning. 1 ballot; 2 regimentation; 3 Amendment; 4 famine; 5 enfranchised; 6 toppled; 7 Charter; 8 boroughs; 9 run; 10 gained.

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note-taking page in the Study Skill reference section and create a similar page to complete as you read. Student’s activity. Teaching tip Give advice about how to use the Cornell note-taking system (→ Study Skill 18, p. 418) and have your students create a similar page to talk about the dawn of the Victorian Age.

DICTATION 1.1 The Great Exhibition TRANSCRIPT The Great Exhibition was the first international exhibition of manufactured products and was held in London in 1851 in a specially built structure named the Crystal Palace. The idea for the exhibition came from Sir Henry Cole, an artist and inventor, but would not have been possible without the support of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband. Albert was convinced that it was an outstanding opportunity to display British goods to the world, from small objects like cameras to huge steam engines. The massive show, with participating countries from all over the world which exhibited their goods, was an enormous success, welcoming over 6 million visitors. It was undoubtedly influential in many sections of society, including trade, education and art. The building itself was considered a marvel designed by Sir Joseph Paxton and covering 19 acres of London’s Hyde Park. It was the first building in iron and glass to be entirely prefabricated. It was later moved to a new site but burnt down in 1936. COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

3 READ the first paragraph on page 4 and complete the factfile about Queen Victoria. Ascended to the throne: 1837 Age: 18 Ruled for: almost 64 years Married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1840 Had nine children Gave her husband the title of Prince Consort in 1857

4 COMPLETE the table about the parliamentary

COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

reforms of the 1830s and the first part of Queen Victoria’s reign. Aim

1832

First Reform Act

Transferred voting privileges from the small boroughs, controlled by the nobility and the gentry, to the large industrial towns, like Birmingham and Manchester.

1833

Factory Act

Prevented children aged 9 to 13 from being employed more than 48 hours a week, and no person between 13 and 18 could work more than 72 hours a week.

1834

Poor Law Amendment Act

Reformed the old Poor Laws, dating from Elizabeth I, with the creation of workhouses which became a deterrent against poverty.

1846

Abolition of the End of tariffs on imported Corn Laws corn.

1867

Second Reform Act

Enfranchised part of the urban male working class in England and Wales.

1872

Ballot Act

Introduced the secret ballot.

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

5 EXPLAIN the following in your own words. 1 With this charter the Chartist movement demanded equal electoral districts, universal male suffrage, a secret ballot, paid MPs, annually elected Parliaments and abolition of the property qualifications for membership. 2 The terrible famine of 1845 following the destruction of potato crops caused by bad weather and an unknown plant disease from America. Many people died and many others emigrated to America. 3 In the mid-19th century, England was involved in the two Opium Wars against China, which was trying to suppress the opium trade. The first Opium War (1839-42) was fought between China and Britain, while the Second Opium War (1856-60), also known as the Anglo-French War in China, was fought by Britain and France against China. England gained access to five Chinese ports and control of Hong Kong. 4 A widespread rebellion against British rule in India in 1857, after which the Indian administration was given fewer responsibilities.

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6 USE the pictures on pages 5-6 to talk about the first part of the Victorian Age. 1

2

3

Look at picture 2. What does it show? The picture represents the moment of dinner in a workhouse. It shows regimentation and the segregation of the sexes. The room is bare and monotonous. Consider the image of the Crystal Palace on page 5. What took place in this building? What was the aim of that event? The Great Exhibition of 1851. To celebrate commercial and technological progress through the display of goods coming from all over the world. Consider picture 3 and explain how the royal family is portrayed. The painting represents the royal couple and their children as the embodiment of the ideal family for the nation. The queen is in evening dress, wears the ribbon and star of the Garter – as the prince also does –, and a head ornament with sapphires. The prince wears court dress and the badge of the Golden Fleece. They are sitting on two chairs while their eldest son, Prince Albert, Prince of Wales, stands close to his mother dressed in a Russian blouse. In front of them Prince Alfred walks towards his sisters Victoria, Princess Royal, and Princess Alice, who are watching over the baby, Princess Helena, lying on an ermine-lined mantle.

Key ideas COMPLETE the key ideas. Queen Victoria’s reign was characterised by economic and scientific progress and social reforms Queen Victoria gave stability to the country Parliamentary reforms granted voting privileges to the large industrial towns and improved the working conditions of children Chartism was a working-class movement asking for the extension of the right to vote to all male adults A terrible famine was caused by bad weather and a plant disease from America The development of the railways greatly changed the landscape and people’s lives Britain avoided revolutions but supported many causes for independence

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The Victorian Age

Reform

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

Year

5.2 The Victorian compromise VOCABULARY: WORD FORMATION

1 READ the text and write the nouns which correspond to the following adjectives. 1 complexity; 2 contradiction; 3 charity; 4 philanthropy; 5 optimism; 6 respectability; 7 chastity; 8 prudery. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

2 READ the text again and explain: 1

2

3

4 5

6

why the Victorian Age was complex; It was a time of unprecedented change but also of great contradictions, an age in which progress, reforms and political stability coexisted with poverty and injustice. Listening to sermons was a popular pastime, yet vices were openly indulged. Modernity was praised but there was a revival of Gothic and Classicism in art. the role of religion in people’s lives; Religion played an important role in people’s lives; Evangelicalism, in particular, encouraged public and political action and created a lot of charities. Philanthropy led to the creation of societies which addressed every kind of poverty and depended especially on the voluntary efforts of middle-class women. the concept of freedom; It was linked with religion as regarded freedom of conscience, with optimism over economic and political progress, and with national identity. what respectability implied; It implied selfrestraint, good manners and self-help. views of women; Women were seen at the same time as physically weaker but morally superior, divine guides and inspirers of men. They controlled the family budget and brought up the children. general attitudes to sex. There was an intense concern for female chastity, and single women with a child were marginalised as ‘fallen women’. Sexuality was generally repressed in both its public and private forms, and moralising ‘prudery’ in its most extreme manifestations led to the denunciation of nudity in art, the veiling of sculptured genitals and the rejection of words with a sexual connotation from everyday vocabulary.

Key ideas WRITE down the key ideas using the prompts. compromise A time of unprecedented change but also of great contradictions: progress, reforms and political stability coexisted with poverty and injustice.

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philanthropy It depended especially on the voluntary efforts of middle-class women, and led to the creation of societies which addressed every kind of poverty. keeping up appearances Self-restraint, good manners and self-help, virtue of asserting a social status. Respectability was a mixture of morality and hypocrisy: the unpleasant aspects of society were hidden under outward respectability. prudery Sexuality was repressed in both its public and private forms, and there was an intense concern for female chastity.

B2 Exams Reading and Use of English – Part 5 1 MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS. You are going to read an article about life in Victorian Britain. For questions 1-6, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text. 1 C; 2 B; 3 D; 4 C; 5 A; 6 B. Teaching tip Shoeblacks were those who set up a block or chair in the street and cleaned and polished the shoes of passers-by for payment. The most common shoe colour was black, which was why they were called ‘shoeblacks’. The shoe colour was produced in blacking factories like the one where Charles Dickens worked as a boy.

Listening – Part 2 2

1.2 SENTENCE COMPLETION. You will hear a History teacher talking about the coming of the railways. For questions 1-10, complete the sentences with a word or short phrase. 1 canals; 2 1825; 3 commercial railway; 4 London to Bristol; 5 2,400 miles; 6 unskilled labourers / navvies; 7 cheaper transportation; 8 day-trips; 9 newspapers; 10 further away.

TRANSCRIPT I have always thought that one of the great achievements of the Industrial Revolution in Britain was the introduction of the railway. British engineers had been looking for a way to improve the transportation of coal for the new steam engines and to provide parts more efficiently for the new textile factories, and then to distribute manufactured goods. Up to this time canals had provided a cheap transportation system, but it was slow and restricted for geographical reasons. The first quarter of the 19th century saw numerous experiments in the field of railway transportation, and by 1825 George Stephenson had shown that a commercial railway was

Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

Writing – Part 2 3 AN ARTICLE. You have been asked by your school’s History Club to write an article about the living conditions in the Victorian Age. Write 140-190 words. Student’s writing activity. Extra Activity

Reading and Use of English – Part 2

1 due; 2 the; 3 that; 4 time; 5 by; 6 over; 7 much; 8 on.

CLIL Science

Discoveries in medicine COMPETENCE: LISTENING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1

1

2

3

4

1.3 LISTEN to a lecture about health and medical treatments in the early 19th century and answer the following questions. Write down what the causes of disease transmission were considered to be in the early Victorian Age. They were inherited weakness and individual lifestyle, made worse by climate and location. Complete the diagram about medical treatments at the time. A ‘change of air’, laxative purgation, poor liquid diets, cold water plunging, and bleeding by cupping or leech. Identify the two kinds of disease mentioned. They were either endemic, like pulmonary tuberculosis, or epidemic, like cholera. State what aggravated male and female death rates. Male death rates were aggravated by occupational injury and toxic substances, those for women by childbirth and violence.

TRANSCRIPT In the early Victorian period, disease transmission was largely understood as a matter of inherited weakness and individual lifestyle, made worse by climate and location. Treatments relied on a ‘change of air’ – to the coast, for example – together with laxative purgation, poor liquid diets, cold water plunging, and bleeding by cupping or leech – a traditional remedy only abandoned in mid-century – to clear impurities from the body. Even after more effective methods of medical treatment had been introduced, several physicians, surgeons and apothecaries were basically

17

The Victorian Age

OPEN CLOZE. For questions 1-8, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

possible with his Stockton and Darlington line. From the very beginning the railways showed their strength, as even on its first run, Stephenson’s locomotive pulled 38 carriages of passengers and freight. Stephenson went on to open a railway line from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830, and in 1831 Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the most famous engineer of his time, began the construction of the line linking London to Bristol for the Great Western Railway. Passengers had been apprehensive of the new iron monster when it first appeared, but soon considerable numbers were using the railways. In the years from 1831-33, for example, the Liverpool to Manchester line carried a daily average of 1,100 people. Once it had begun, transportation by rail became increasingly popular and Parliament authorised 8,000 miles of lines in the years from 1836 to 1847. By 1840 nearly 2,400 miles of railway track connected London with Birmingham, Manchester and Brighton. In spite of opposition from the canal companies, railways continued to expand. Directly or indirectly, the railways employed tens of thousands of engineers, mechanics, repairmen and technicians, as well as unskilled labourers. These labourers, called navvies, were often Irishmen fleeing the famine, and in 1848 an estimated 250,000 navvies were working on the railways. The railway had an important impact on the success of industrialisation as the cheaper transportation costs reduced the prices of goods and allowed for a dramatic increase in demand. Railways were a quicker, cheaper and safer way to carry goods compared to roads or canals, and industrialists could bring raw materials to their factories and send finished goods to their markets more efficiently. The impact of the railways was not only a spur to the industrial progress, however, as its influence was felt in many areas of Victorian life. It suddenly meant people from a wide range of social backgrounds could travel greater distances for work or for leisure and day-trips to the country or the sea became fashionable. This led to the development of seaside resorts like Blackpool or Brighton. Fresh goods such as meat, fish, milk and vegetables were brought into towns from the countryside and newspapers could be sent out from London all over the country. There was also an impact on housing and towns. Railway engineering towns like Swindon and Crewe grew up, and new housing centred around the railway stations appeared all over the country. It meant people could live further away from their place of work or even in another town. All in all the changes brought about by the railways affected everyone, and the protests of those who wanted to preserve the countryside or objected to the smoke pollution were completely drowned out by the immediate and long-lasting advantages of railway travel.

unwilling to try something new. A limited range of medication was employed, and the power of prayer was regularly invoked. Diseases such as pulmonary tuberculosis were endemic; others such as cholera were frighteningly epidemic. Male death rates were aggravated by occupational injury and toxic substances, those for women by childbirth and violence.

3 READ the text on the left and say why surgery advanced in the 1840s. It advanced thanks to the discovery of anaesthetic agents, which began to be used to reduce the sensation of pain during surgery.

4 ANSWER the following questions. 1

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the text above and answer the following questions.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

1

2

3

4

5

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18

What did epidemiological measuring and mapping of mortality lead to? It led to the clear association of pollution and disease, followed by appropriate environmental health measures. What were the symptoms of cholera? The first symptom of cholera was nausea, followed by stomach ache, vomiting and diarrhoea so profuse that it caused victims to die of dehydration. What were miasmas? They were bad smells arising from sewers, garbage pits and other foulsmelling sites of organic decay. Explain Snow’s theory about the spread of cholera. As people did not have running water or modern toilets in their houses, they used to dump their sewage into rivers or town wells. It was this habit which led to a rapid spread of the disease, according to Doctor Snow. He realised that these conditions characterised several London areas and that if cholera epidemics had to be eliminated, wells and water pipes should be kept isolated from drains and sewers. To avoid a clash with most of the physicians of the time, who refused the theory that germs could cause the disease, Snow did not directly state that a living organism could cause cholera. Instead, he spoke about a particular ‘poison’ that could ‘multiply itself’ within the digestive tracts of cholera victims, before being scattered to new victims through polluted food or water. State what the principal cause of cholera contagion was, according to Snow. According to Dr Snow, drinking water was the primary means of contagion. Say what the German physician Robert Koch discovered. He identified the bacterium Vibrio cholerae as the causative agent. He stated that cholera was not contagious from person to person, but it was spread only through unsanitary water or food supply sources. This was a major victory for Snow’s theory.

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What did surgeons use for general anaesthesia in the 19th century? They used nitrous oxide, ether and chloroform. 2 Complete the timeline with the necessary information. Ancient times When patients needed surgery for illness or injury, they had to rely on alcohol, opium (a natural narcotic derived from the opium poppy) or fumes from an anaesthetic-soaked cloth in order to lessen the pain of the surgeon’s knife. 1799 Nitrous oxide was discovered as an anaesthetic by the English chemist Sir Humphry Davy. 1842 The surgeon Crawford Williamson Long was the first to use ether as an anaesthetic during an operation in Georgia. 1846 William Thomas Green Morton made a public demonstration of an operation using ether in a Boston hospital. John Collins Warren removed a neck tumour without the patient feeling any pain thanks to ether. 1847 Chloroform was introduced as a surgical anaesthetic by the Scottish obstetrician Sir James Young Simpson for pain during childbirth. 1853 Chloroform was used by John Snow for Queen Victoria’s eighth confinement. 1869 Antiseptic surgical procedures were developed by Joseph Lister using carbolic acid (phenol) in Edinburgh.

5 GO through the last two paragraphs and say: 1

2 3 4

what anaesthetics enabled surgeons to do; To perform even more sophisticated operations without the patient feeling any pain. what led to fatal infection after operations; The use of unsterile equipment during surgery. who developed antiseptic surgical procedures; Joseph Lister. what aseptic procedures involved. Sterilisation of whole environments. COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

6 GO through the material on these pages again and write down your notes and key ideas in a Cornell note-taking page. Then write your summary in section C of the page. Student’s activity.

Darwin’s theory. 1

VOCABULARY: VERBS

1 MATCH the highlighted verbs in the text with their meaning. 1 maintained; 2 discarded; 3 exerted; 4 headed; 5 suited; 6 conceived; 7 deserved. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the text and complete the key ideas about Evangelicalism. Inspired by the teachings of Methodism Stressed the need for a strict code of morality Dedicated to humanitarian causes and social reform

3 ANSWER the following questions about Utilitarianism. 1 2

3

Whose principles was it based upon? Jeremy Bentham’s. How did it judge all actions? According to their consequences on general welfare. An action was judged as morally right if it had consequences that led to happiness, and wrong if it brought about the reverse. What social class did it suit? The middle class.

4 COMPLETE the following sentences about Mill’s Empiricism. 1

2

3 4

Mill thought that happiness was a state of the mind and the spirit, not a mere search for selfish pleasures. He believed that legislation should try to help men develop their natural talents and personalities. His idea of progress was linked to mental energy, education and art. He supported various reforms including the causes of popular education, trade union organisation, the development of cooperatives, the extension of representation to all citizens, and the emancipation of women.

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According to Darwin, how had existing living creatures, including man, evolved? They had evolved from less highly organised forms through a slow process of change and adaptation in a struggle for survival. What determined the survival of a species? Favourable physical conditions. What impact did Darwin’s theory have on religious belief? It questioned the version of creation given by the Bible.

6 COMPLETE the key ideas about the Oxford Movement. Originated in Oxford Led by the English cardinal John Henry Newman Returned to ancient doctrines and rituals Extra Activity

Listening – Part 4 MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS. You will hear part of a radio interview with an expert about new beliefs on nature and man in the 19th century. For questions 1-7, choose the best answer (A, B or C). 1 C; 2 A; 3 C; 4 B; 5 A; 6 C; 7 B. TRANSCRIPT Interviewer: Good evening, I’d like to welcome Professor Jessica MacFee to this week’s edition of Science Tools. Professor MacFee, it was during the 19th century that the sciences acquired their great cultural authority. Jessica MacFee: That’s right, the sciences developed in contexts shaped by the French and Industrial Revolutions, and the social and cultural changes of the century. I: What were the major transformations which occurred across the Victorian Age? JM: First of all, the change from natural philosophy and natural history to science, the birth of the first professional scientists, the development and spread of belief in natural laws and progress, a growing scientific internationalism and the formalisation of scientific education. I: Transformations also occurred in the beliefs about nature and the place of man in the universe. Who was mainly responsible for this? JM: Without any doubt few Victorians are as well-remembered today as Charles Darwin, who developed a theory of genealogical evolution based on variation, selection and descent or heredity. I: How did Darwin get interested in this field?

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Route 8: Women in the 19th century Teacher’s key on page 426.

5 ANSWER the following questions about

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

5.3 Early Victorian thinkers

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The Victorian Age

JM: He travelled on a survey ship around the world for five years. He spent most of this time investigating the geology and life of the lands he visited, especially South America, the Galapagos Islands and Pacific coral reefs. Gradually he came to believe that organisms were infinitely variable and that species evolve. He concentrated on how new varieties of life might be formed, and his observations of plants and animals led him to affirm that the existing species were all related on a genealogical family tree through ‘descent with modification’. He presented his theory of evolution and natural selection in his essay On the Origin of Species in 1859, and developed it in his work The Descent of Man in 1871. I: Did any man of science disagree with Darwin’s theories? JM: Sure. For example, the British biologist William Bateson. Darwin had stressed that all variation would be subtle and continuous within and between species, while Bateson found that features often appeared or disappeared suddenly in animals and plants. I: Did he carry out any experiments? JM: Yes, he carried out the experimental breeding of plants and animals, such as sweet peas and poultry. In 1900 he discovered a paper written by Gregor Mendel in the 1860s which dealt with the transmission of certain features in successive generations of garden peas. Bateson realised that his own work fitted perfectly within Mendel’s framework. He immediately published it, setting out new terms to describe the results. The language of genetics was born. Extra Activity CLIL: Physics Electromagnetism and Maxwell’s theory of light COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 COMPLETE the sentences about some of the great 19th-century men of science with the words from the box. 1

2

3

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André-Marie Ampère (1775-1836) worked on the interaction between magnets and electric currents, developing a rule for determining the direction of the magnetic field associated with an electric current. Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) worked on the mathematical development of electric and magnetic theory and created a method of neutralising a magnetic field, used to protect ships from magnetic mines. Michael Faraday (1791-1867) produced two important inventions: the dynamo and the electric motor.

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James Clerk Maxwell’s (1831-79) major achievement was in the understanding of electromagnetic waves: his equations brought together electricity, magnetism and light in one set of relations. VOCABULARY

2 MATCH the words with their meaning. 1 E; 2 A; 3 G; 4 J; 5 I; 6 K; 7 C; 8 B; 9 H; 10 F; 11 D. COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING INFORMATION

3 READ the text about James Clerk Maxwell and answer the following questions. 1 For each question (1-7), choose the best answer (A, B, C or D). 1 A; 2 C; 3 D; 4 B; 5 D; 6 A; 7 C. 2 Sum up Maxwell’s contributions to physical science. Maxwell predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves and found that these waves travelled at the speed of light. He concluded that light was a propagating wave of electric and magnetic fields. As a result, he was able to incorporate light, magnetism and electricity into a single theory, which he explained in his work A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism in 1873. 3 Discuss. What do you think Maxwell’s work in magnetism and electromagnetic waves paved the way for? Students should point out that Maxwell predicted the existence of radio waves, paving the way for radio, TV and electronics.

5.4 The American Civil War Teaching tip The history video The American Civil War can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

1 MATCH the words and phrases from the box with their description. 1 Ku Klux Klan; 2 the Republican Party; 3 slave labour; 4 Abraham Lincoln; 5 the Confederates; 6 Jefferson Davis.

3 WRITE down the causes and consequences of the American Civil War.

are true or false.

2 3

4 5 6

The 19th century was one of huge expansion and industrial advance for all the States of the Union. F Most European immigrants settled in the North while most slaves worked in the South. T The Civil War started because the northern States wanted to form an independent parliament. F The war was won by the North and slavery was abolished. T The freed slaves were given equality and economic security. F The gold rush in 1848-49 followed the discovery of gold in California. T

Teaching tip The presentation The American Civil War in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Causes: The economic differences between the northern and southern regions; Abraham Lincoln’s refusal to concede that any American State had the constitutional right to withdraw from the Union. Consequences: It led to the abolition of slavery through the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865; it defined the United States as an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

4 ANSWER the following questions. 1

COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

1 READ the text and complete the table below with the differences between the North and the South in America in the 19th century. North

South

industrialised; growth of white population; emancipation

still based on the vast plantations of tobacco and cotton, and on slavery; inhabited by 4 million black slaves; rigidly divided class system

2 FOCUS on the question of the abolition of slavery and gather information about abolitionists and supporters of slavery.

Who they were

Abolitionists

Supporters of slavery

Northern writers, intellectuals and religious associations.

The southern States.

What they They attacked said the exploitation of slaves, the separation from their families, the cruelty they suffered and the fact that they were given no education.

They held that slavery was an institution which gave the blacks employment, protection and taught them the principles of Christian faith.

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3

How did the lives of the blacks change after the end of the Civil War? They were not granted equality and economic security. They were free but without money and a home. Some migrated to the industrial cities in the North, others remained with their old masters in the South, who, impoverished by the war, could not afford to pay wages, but would share the crops with the workers and provide them with tools and a cabin. A wave of resentment and violence, embodied by the racist ‘Ku Klux Klan’ movement, frightened the blacks and their families. The so-called ‘black codes’ were created, which segregated the blacks in schools, hospitals and means of transport. What was the ‘American dream’? Who embodied it at that time? The myth of the selfmade man who went from ‘rags to riches’. Men like Cornelius Vanderbilt and John Rockefeller who rose from nothing and made big fortunes. What encouraged the expansion and settlement in the West? What were its consequences? The discovery of gold in California in 1848-49, which resulted in the ‘gold rush’; then the Homestead Act (1862), which granted free soil to the first occupants. This migration westwards had two main consequences: it led to the disappearance of the frontier and to the extermination of buffaloes, with the consequent starvation of the American Indians, who were subjugated, mass-deported or brutally exterminated. Cattlemen – the cowboys – became the new Western symbols, so deeply rooted in American tradition.

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1

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

2 DECIDE whether the following statements

Extra Activity

Reading and Use of English – Part 7 MULTIPLE MATCHING. You are going to read an article about slave life in America in the 19th century. For questions 1-10, choose from the sections (A-D). The sections may be chosen more than once. 1 B; 2 C; 3 D; 4 D; 5 A; 6 D; 7 A; 8 B; 9 C; 10 A. Extra Activity

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

READ the lyrics of these African-American spirituals, then surf the Net and look for a live performance for each song. What strikes you the most about each performance? Student’s activity.

INTERNET POINT Abraham Lincoln COMPETENCE: USING TECHNOLOGY TO ACQUIRE AND INTERPRET INFORMATION

1 CARRY out some research about Abraham Lincoln. You can start by browsing the sites www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/ abraham-lincoln and www.history.com/ topics/american-civil-war/gettysburgaddress. Student’s activity. 1

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Collect information about: • Abraham Lincoln’s early life; He was born on 12th February 1809 and brought up in rural poverty in Kentucky and Indiana. In 1830 he moved to Illinois, where he settled in New Salem and served as a Whig in the State legislature. In 1837 he moved to Springfield where he practised as a lawyer for a few years. After a term as US congressman, he largely withdrew from politics. • his road to the White House; The threat of slavery’s spread west awoke Lincoln’s interest in politics again. Helping to organise the anti-slavery Republican Party, he won national recognition in his 1858 debates with senator Stephen Douglas and secured his party’s nomination for the presidency in 1860. • the wartime years and the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863; His election victory prompted the secession of the lower South. In the following resort to arms, Lincoln grew into the role of commander-in-chief and skilfully held together a fragile war coalition. He kept the upper South loyal, prevented the intervention of foreign powers, kept military pressure on the

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Confederacy across a broad front, and proclaimed a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect on 1st January 1863 and freed all of the slaves in the States which rebelled against the Union but left those in the border States (loyal to the Union) in bondage for fear of losing their support. Though Lincoln once maintained that his ‘object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery’, he regarded emancipation as one of his greatest achievements and would argue for the passage of a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery (eventually passed as the 13th Amendment in 1865). • Lincoln’s victory and death. Re-elected to the presidency during the final months of the war, he was shot by the Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth before he could develop and implement his policy of national reconstruction. Surf the Net and listen to the famous Gettysburg Address delivered by Lincoln during the Civil War, in 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It is regarded as one of the most famous and poignant speeches in American history. Then answer the questions below. Student’s activity. Say: • what Lincoln reminds the audience of in the first two lines; He reminds the audience of the basic principles on which their country was founded: liberty and equality. • what he points out in the second sentence; He highlights that those principles are under attack. • what meaning the war acquires; The war takes on a greater significance. In fact, Lincoln extends the significance of the fight beyond the borders of the United States. It is not just a question of whether the United States could survive, but rather a question of whether any nation founded on the same principles of freedom could survive. • who Lincoln wants to remember when he says ‘We are met here on a great battlefield of that war’; He wants to remember those who died for their country during the Civil War, especially those who lost their life at Gettysburg, one of its bloodiest battles. • what rhetorical devices he uses and what their aim is; He uses antithesis (such as ‘those who here gave their lives’ / ‘that nation might live’; ‘living’/‘dead’; ‘The world will little note, nor long remember, what

Teaching tip The history video The later years of Queen Victoria’s reign can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

1 COMPLETE the text with the words and phrases from the box. 1 Queen Victoria; 2 ten; 3 Radicals; 4 William Gladstone; 5 Conservative; 6 Benjamin Disraeli; 7 housing; 8 Factory Act; 9 education; 10 board schools; 11 compulsory; 12 secret ballot.

2 CHOOSE the correct answer (A, B or C). 1 C; 2 A; 3 B; 4 C; 5 A. Teaching tip The presentation The later years of Queen Victoria’s reign in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson. VOCABULARY: PREPOSITIONS

1 READ the text and find the prepositions used with these words or phrases. 1 from; 2 in; 3 for; 4 to; 5 with; 6 over; 7 with.

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2 READ the text on pages 17-18 again and explain what is meant by the ‘regrouping’ of the parties. The term refers to the reorganisation of the political parties that took place during the Victorian Age. The Tory Party had become the Conservative Party in the 1830s, while the Liberal Party was formed by the former Whigs, some Radicals and a large minority of businessmen.

3 COMPLETE the table below with the main facts of Disraeli’s and Gladstone’s governments. Disraeli Home policy Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Act (1875) Æ clearing of the slums and housing for the poor. Public Health Act (1875) Æ sanitation and running water. Factory Act (1878) Æ limited the working hours per week. Foreign policy The Eastern Question Æ European countries were trying to gain power after the decay of the Ottoman Empire. Disraeli encouraged the purchase of more shares in the Suez Canal Company in 1875. Gladstone Home policy Education Act (1870) Æ introduction of board schools, mainly in the poorer areas of the towns. Trade Union Act (1871) Æ legalisation of trade unions. Ballot Act (1872) Æ introduction of the secret ballot at elections. By 1880 elementary education had become compulsory. Third Reform Act (1884) Æ extension of the franchise to all male householders, including miners, mill-workers and farm labourers. Foreign policy Home Rule to Ireland Æ Gladstone tried to get Parliament to pass a bill three times but failed. Anglo-Boer Wars (18801902) Æ fought in South Africa between the British and the Dutch settlers to win control of Transvaal.

4 EXPLAIN the following in your own words. 1 Self-government for Ireland demanded by the Irish Parliamentary Party sitting as a group in Westminster and led by Charles Stewart Parnell. 2 A difficult combination of the duty to spread Christian civilisation, encouraging toleration and open communication and at the same time promoting commercial interests. It was a strongly felt obligation to provide leadership where States were failing or non-existent, especially in Africa and India. 3 Celebrations for Queen Victoria’s 50 and 60 years on the throne.

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5.5 The later years of Queen Victoria’s reign

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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we say here’ / ‘but can never forget what they did here’), alliteration (‘poor’/‘power’) and repetition (‘It is for us […] rather to be dedicated’ / ‘It is rather for us to be here dedicated’). Contrasts are compelling and their aim is to create energy in the audience. Repetitions are an effective way of drawing and keeping their attention. • what the final two sentences of the address sound like; They sound like a call to action. • how Lincoln finishes his speech. He finishes with a powerful repetition that has become famous throughout the world: ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’. Write down the key ideas of this speech. Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality contained in the Declaration of Independence. He claimed that the Civil War was a struggle not merely for the Union, but for ‘a new birth of freedom’ that would bring true equality to all of its citizens and would also create a unified nation no longer dominated by different States’ rights.

Extra Activity

5 DESCRIBE the reasons that led to Britain’s global hegemony. Britain’s naval power, its huge financial and economic strength, and its ability to gain control of many areas of the world characterised by political and cultural fragmentation without major political intervention.

READ the text about education in Victorian Britain and answer the following questions. 1

6 DISCUSS the importance of India to the

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

British Empire and the impact of British imperialism on the Indian economy. India was economically important as a market for British goods and strategically necessary to British control of Asia from the Persian Gulf to Shanghai. In the late Victorian period, the new imperial government became more ambitious and through free market economics it destroyed traditional farming and caused the deindustrialisation of India. At one time the main manufacturer of cotton cloth for the world, India, now became the largest importer of England’s cotton.

3

COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

7 USE the pictures on pages 17-19 to talk about the late Victorian Age. 1

2

Look at pictures 1 and 2. Who are the two men represented? They are Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone. They dominated the British political scene in the second half of the 19th century. Consider pictures 4 and 5 and explain what Queen Victoria represented in the last part of her reign. Although she had withdrawn from society after Prince Albert’s death in 1861, Queen Victoria still remained an important figure. She embodied constitutional decorum, stability, continuity and imperial power.

Key ideas WRITE down the key ideas using the prompts. hygiene and sanitation Some acts in the 1870s allowed for the clearing of the slums and provided running water. education Elementary education was made compulsory with the introduction of board schools. extension of the franchise Voting was extended to all male householders, including miners, mill-workers and farm labourers. global hegemony Britain seemed invulnerable abroad and further extended its power. the British Empire Britain extended its possessions especially in Africa and Asia and created a large empire where ‘the sun never set’.

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Write down the factors that contributed to the spread of literacy in Britain in the Victorian Age. Sunday schools were established by the Church; legislation obliged factory owners to teach their young apprentices; the 1880 Education Act obliged all children between the ages of 5 and 10 to attend school. Point out the aims of schools throughout the 19th century. To ‘train the lower classes in habits of industry and piety’; to inculcate those personal and collective virtues among the labouring people which would fit them for their work and their role in society. Focus on public schools in the 19th century and explain: 1 who attended them; Boys from the privileged classes. 2 what ideals they taught; Ideals of manliness; of physical, sporting endeavour; of valuing team above self; of learning to play the game and not to worry about who won or lost; discipline, obedience and collective endeavour. 3 how they influenced the development of sport in Britain. Schools came to value their pupils’ athletic prowess more than their scholarly achievements. Most of modern Britain’s mass games and sports were perfected and given their present form: football, cricket, athletics, rugby, rowing. Decide whether the following statements are true or false. Correct the false ones. 1 Sporting activity was encouraged among children as an antidote to ill health. F Sport was encouraged because it taught discipline, obedience and collective endeavour. 2 The enthusiasm for the new games was imitated by many foreign countries. T 3 The British Empire and its civilisation were taught as proof of British superiority. T

5.6 The late Victorians VOCABULARY

1 MATCH the highlighted words and phrases in the text with their meaning. 1 public houses; 2 greed; 3 harm; 4 made for; 5 fittest; 6 craft-made; 7 foundation; 8 retail.

2

2 READ the text and complete the mind map about the condition of women in late Victorian society.

3 EXPLAIN what human society and biological species had in common, according to Spencer. Spencer applied Darwin’s theory of natural selection to human society: he argued that races, nations and social classes, like biological species, were subject to the principle of the ‘survival of the fittest’ and that the poor and oppressed did not deserve compassion.

4 WRITE down the key ideas of Ruskin’s and Morris’s thought. John Ruskin He criticised the inhumanity of industrialisation, and the greed, competition and ugliness of industrial society; he looked for a blend of utopianism and nostalgia in which the future in many ways resembled the past; he revived Gothic architecture. William Morris He started a battle against the age he was living in; he reacted against utilitarian mass-produced goods.

5 HIGHLIGHT some examples of the rise of an organised political left in England. The 1880s saw the rise of an organised political left after the foundation of the Fabian society in 1884, whose members aimed at transforming Britain into a socialist State by systematic, progressive reforms. The Independent Labour Party was set up in 1893; it was a non-Marxist socialist party which attracted both male and female intellectuals.

6 ANSWER the following questions. 1

3

Extra Activity

YOU WILL HEAR five short extracts in which people are talking about Victorian architecture in London. For questions 1-5, choose from the list (A-H) the picture that corresponds to each speaker’s description. Use the letters only once. There are three extra letters which you do not need to use. 1 A; 2 H; 3 D; 4 G; 5 B. The extra letters are C, E and F. TRANSCRIPT Speaker 1 This large quadrangular building was first designed by the architect Sir Robert Smirke in 1823 and completed in 1852. The principal façade, facing Great Russell Street with two projecting wings and a majestic portico in the centre, is 370 feet in length. With its stairs and colonnade of 44 Ionic columns in the front, this is one of Britain’s most important neoclassical buildings. The pediment above the portico is adorned with sculptures by Sir Richard Westmacott which follow the theme of the progress of civilisation. Speaker 2 It is probably the most visited site in London and is a good place to meet before heading off to eat, shop or go to a nearby theatre. It is formed by the junction of five streets and is one of the busiest traffic circles in the world. Tourists and Londoners happily crowd around the steps of the statue known as Eros, the Greek god of love, although it was actually meant to be the Christian angel of charity. It was erected in 1892 as a memorial to the Earl of Shaftesbury, the Victorian philanthropist. Speaker 3 The original building burned down in 1834 and was replaced by a neo-Gothic building with an iconic clock tower housing the largest four-faced clock in Great Britain. The clock was put in position in 1858 and contains the enormous 13-and-a-halfton hour bell which it is named after. The building also features two other striking towers – the octagonal Central Tower and the Victoria Tower, named after the queen, on top of which is an iron flagstaff. Guided tours around the building should be booked in advance, and a limited number of tickets are also available for the public galleries to hear debates.

How did the British see their role in the world? They considered themselves the leaders of European civilisation.

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Public life Women became increasingly involved as leaders in campaigns against prostitution, as teachers and as volunteer charitable workers. Education Women’s colleges began to be opened in the 1870s. Taboos A strong taboo remained regarding family issues such as control over property, conditions of divorce and rights over children as well as questions of sex and childbirth. Rights The 1882 Married Women’s Property Act gave married women the right to own and manage their own property independently of their husbands.

What was Jingoism? It was an attitude according to which many believed that God had imposed an obligation on the British to spread their superior way of life, their institutions, law and political system on native peoples throughout the world. What was the Victorian optimistic outlook based on? It was based on colonial power and economic progress.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

Speaker 4 There are 300 acres of botanical delights lying on the south bank of the River Thames. The area used to be owned by the British royal family. It flourished under George III, when botanical collectors were dispatched across the world to gather rare, unusual or simply interesting botanical specimens. The area was neglected for several years until it was given to the State in 1840. It was opened to the public and many new buildings were added, including the Temperate House and the Palm House, which is considered the most important Victorian iron and glass structure in the world. Speaker 5 Designated as a memorial to the consort of Queen Victoria, this huge building was officially opened in 1871. It has a characteristic elliptical form in the Italian Renaissance style, and the red brick and ornate terracotta that make up the façade are typical materials of high Victorian architecture. The larger exterior diameter is 272 feet. Modelled on a Roman amphitheatre, the building is most appropriate for musical performances on a large scale. In fact, it is used for concerts and opera and large scale musical productions.

2 READ the third paragraph and list the most important poets of the age, specifying their main features. They were Alfred Tennyson; Robert Browning, who is remembered for his best ‘dramatic monologues’; Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who wrote beautiful love sonnets; Gerard Manley Hopkins, famous for his unconventional use of rhythm; and Matthew Arnold, who used poetry to express his dissatisfaction with the world he lived in.

3 READ the last paragraph and complete the diagram about the dramatic monologue. narrative poem the speaker is caught in a crucial moment of crisis the speaker is a character, who cannot be identified with the poet himself interest in human psychology different points of view argumentative tone

Literature and Genres Teaching tip The presentation Victorian literature in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the literary context or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

4 READ the poem and answer the following questions. 1

5.7 Victorian poetry COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the first two paragraphs and describe: 1

2

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the features of the two kinds of poetry which emerged in the Victorian Age; Poetry became more concerned with social reality. This led on the one hand to the creation of grand poetry linked to the myth and belief of the greatness of England; on the other hand to the creation of poetry more inclined towards anti-myth and disbelief which had to solve the ethical problems raised by science and progress. the new image of the poet. The poet was seen as a ‘prophet’ and a ‘philosopher’. People expected that he could reconcile faith and progress, as well as sprinkle a little romance over the unromantic materialism of modern life. Optimists believed that the benefits of progress could be reached without altering the traditional social organisation or destroying the beauty of the countryside; they wanted to find a corresponding attitude in poets and to be told that modern life was as susceptible to romantic behaviour as the remote legends of King Arthur or the Italian Renaissance.

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Find out: A what Porphyria’s lover decided to do; He decided to kill her. B how he strangled her; He strangled her by winding her hair around her throat three times. C what he did after the murder. He opened her lids, untightened the tresses about her neck and propped up her head. Focus on the last three lines. Describe the present situation. What is the relationship between the past and the present? After murdering the woman, the speaker feels he has got supreme power over her. Both in the past and in the present the man is sitting with his lover Porphyria (note the use of the personal pronoun ‘we’ in lines 28-29). Concentrate on the two characters: the speaker, whose personality is unwittingly revealed as he speaks, and Porphyria, seen through the eyes of her lover. Describe their moods and personalities. The speaker is mentally alienated, cool, murderous and pitiless. Porphyria is ingenuous, innocent, warm and good.

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5.8 The Victorian novel Text Bank 47: William Makepeace Thackeray Teacher’s key on page 297. Text Bank 64: George Eliot Teacher’s key on page 317.

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VOCABULARY

1 MATCH the highlighted words in the text with their meaning. 1 gripping; 2 binds; 3 humanitarian; 4 texture; 5 Reviewers; 6 fulfil; 7 inquisitive; 8 instalments. 7 COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the text on pages 24-25 and make notes under the following headings. 1

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A close relationship between writers and readers The close relationship between writers and readers was due to the enormous growth of the middle classes who, although consisting of people of many different levels where literacy had penetrated in a heterogeneous way, were avid consumers of literature. Moreover, Victorian writers themselves often belonged to the middle class. Circulating libraries People borrowed books from circulating libraries and read the abundant variety of periodicals. The publishing world A great deal of Victorian literature was first published in instalments in the pages of periodicals, which allowed the writer to feel he was in constant contact with his public and to alter the story whenever necessary. Reviewers also had a strong influence on the reception of literary works and on the shaping of public opinion. A novel with new features The spread of scientific knowledge made the novel realistic and analytical, the spread of democracy made it social and humanitarian, while the spirit of moral unrest made it inquisitive and critical.

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A novel deeply linked to society In the 1840s novelists felt they had a moral and social responsibility to fulfil. They wanted to reflect the social changes that had been in progress for a long time, such as the Industrial Revolution, the struggle for democracy and the growth of towns and cities. The novelists of the first part of the Victorian period described society as they saw it, and, with the exception of those sentiments which offended current morals, particularly regarding sex, nothing escaped their scrutiny. They were aware of the evils of their society, such as the terrible conditions of manual workers and the exploitation of children. They also conceived literature as a vehicle to correct the vices and weaknesses of the age. The role of the narrator The voice of the omniscient narrator provided a comment on the plot and erected a rigid barrier between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ behaviours, light and darkness. Retribution and punishment were to be found in the final chapter of the novel, where the whole texture of events, adventures and incidents had to be explained and justified. A new approach to setting The setting chosen by most Victorian novelists was the city, which was the main symbol of the industrial civilisation as well as the expression of anonymous lives and lost identities. The new characters In their effort to portray the individual motives for human action and all that binds men and women to the community, Victorian writers concentrated on the creation of realistic characters the public could easily identify with, in terms of comedy (especially Dickens’s characters) or dramatic passion (the Brontë sisters’ heroines).

3 COMPLETE the diagram about the main trends in Victorian novels. Novel of manners main representative: William M. Thackeray main features: it dealt with economic and social problems and described a particular class or situation Humanitarian novel main representative: Charles Dickens main features: it could be divided into novels of a ‘realistic’, ‘fantastic’ or ‘moral’ nature according to their predominant tone or issue dealt with Novel of formation main representatives: Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens main features: it dealt with one character’s development from early youth to some sort of maturity

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Think about the epilogue: is it a case of lucid insanity or sublime love? Why? Student’s activity. Suggestion: It may be a case of lucid insanity. Browning gives no answer; therefore, both hypotheses may be acceptable according to the students’ personality. How would you define the tone of the monologue? It is cool and reflective.

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Literary nonsense main representatives: Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll main features: it portrayed a nonsensical universe where the social rules and conventions are disintegrated, the cause-effect relationship does not exist, and time and space have lost their function of giving an order to human experience

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4 EXPLAIN why the output of women writers

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The Victorian Age

increased in the Victorian Age and why women used a male pseudonym. The increase in the output of women writers in the Victorian Age is surprising considering the state of subjection of women at the time, but it is less so if one remembers that the majority of novelbuyers and readers were women. Middle-class women had more time to spend at home than men and could devote part of the day to reading. However, it was not easy to get published, and some women used a male pseudonym in order to see their work in print.

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Extra Activity Link to Contemporary Culture

1 DISCUSS in pairs what a bestseller is and then write down a definition. Students’ activity. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the text and answer the following 1

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questions. Why was there a huge expansion in the world of books in the 19th century? The rise of a mass readership, the invention of machinedriven technologies, new reproduction methods and an astonishing variation in literature, authorship, publishing, periodicals, printing, typography, illustration, marketing, taste and design all contributed to an era of intense complexity and development. Which 19th-century authors can be said to have produced bestsellers? The most typical example of a bestselling author was Sir Walter Scott, whose novel Ivanhoe (1819) sold 10,000 copies in two weeks. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland sold its original edition of 2,000 immediately and has never been out of print. After Charles Dickens’s The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club began appearing in monthly instalments in March 1836, its press run increased from 1,000 copies for the first part to 40,000 for the finale in October 1837. By 1879 the full novel had sold 800,000 copies and had transformed British publishing.

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What different forms of publications were there at this time for those who could not afford books? The monthly pamphlet, the 20-instalment novel, the low-price chapbook (usually printed on a single sheet folded into books of 8, 12, 16 and 24 pages), the ‘yellowbacks’ with their cheap sensational stories, the ‘penny dreadfuls’ (serial stories of adventure or crime and detection appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing a penny) – these were the forms that became a literary reality in the 19th century to suit the changing marketplace. What was a ‘three-decker’ and who was it normally purchased by? Many 19th-century novels appeared in the ‘three-decker’ format, a three-volume edition that would be purchased by circulating libraries. Though generally unaffordable to the average reader, these publications were often read aloud to groups. What other social and economic changes had an impact on expanding the reading public? The power of books grew as new technologies brought down the price of paper, literacy rates greatly increased with compulsory schooling, and distribution became easier thanks to improved transportation systems. It often took just a few months for resourceful publishers to sell more than 100,000 copies of a thriller. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), for example, sold out in days and went back to press repeatedly in England and the USA, selling a million copies in its first year. What are the origins of bestseller lists? The practice of running bestseller lists began in the USA in 1895, when the Bookman magazine compiled the first list of books considered noteworthy for the speed and volume of their sales. Other literary magazines began to publish similar lists, such as the American trade magazine Publishers Weekly, whose list has been commonly considered authoritative ever since 1912. Which was the first American blockbuster? The first example of a blockbuster in the USA was Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind (1936), which sold a million copies in a year.

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Focus on the description of Saifo and his shop. How are they connoted? Saifo is a nearly blind old man, a shoe repairman by profession but also the most famous kite maker in Kabul. His shop is the size of a prison-cell and is located in a dank basement which contrasts with the fame of the kites stored in it. Although Saifo is old and shabby and his shop is difficult to get into and rather damp, it looks attractive to the children because of the wonderful kites it stores. What personal feelings are hinted at by the narrator in the last paragraph? Amir is jealous of Hassan and has a difficult relationship with his father, who seems to consider Hassan his favourite.

5.9 American Renaissance

COMPETENCE: FINDING AND UNDERSTANDING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

3 DISCUSS in pairs. Do you think reading in print will survive in the digitized world? After the discussion, write a 10-line paragraph. Students’ activity.

Getting ready for battle KHALED HOSSEINI

1 READ the text and answer the following questions. 1

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The Kite Runner (2003)

COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

1 READ the text and answer the following

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Where and when is the story set? In Kabul, in winter. Who is the narrator? What other characters are involved in the scene? The first-person narrator is Amir. The other characters are Hassan (Amir’s friend), Baba (Amir’s father) and Saifo, the kite maker. What is the main event? The preparation for the winter kite tournament. Find the similes at the beginning of the text. Then underline the words and phrases which refer to their semantic area. The similes are ‘I felt like a soldier’ and ‘fighting kites was a little like going to war’. The semantic area is that of war. The words and phrases referring to it are: ‘fighting’, ‘trenches’, ‘battle’, ‘gun’, ‘bullet’, ‘battle-ready line’, ‘battle scars’, ‘we’d march in a single file’.

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What did the term ‘American Renaissance’ mean? The term did not indicate the rebirth of something, but the beginning of a truly American literature, with themes and a style of its own. Where could the Puritan heritage still be traced? It could still be traced in the flourishing of symbols and emblems, as well as in the use of allegory that writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville widely employed in their works. Who was Ralph Waldo Emerson? Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) led the Transcendental Club and expressed his philosophy, called ‘Transcendentalism’, in his essay Nature (1836). His ideas developed under various influences, including English Romanticism, German Idealism, political liberalism and eastern mysticism, which Emerson combined in a new, ‘American’ way. What was reality, according to Transcendentalism? All reality was seen as a single unity (oneness and multiplicity were the same thing), a concept which well suited the reality of the ‘melting pot’, of a country where people from all over the world formed a national unity. How did this philosophy interpret nature? Contact with nature was the best means to reach truth and awareness of the unity of all things. Emerson saw nature according to its ‘uses’: as a commodity, as a source of beauty and symbolic images, as discipline in educating man to understanding and reason.

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What changes have occurred in the book market in recent years? Today digitization has had an impact on the book process: from computer printing and inventory control to the electronic bookshop. Bestsellers are increasingly subjects of attention on the blogosphere. There are new web-based discussion boards, whose enthusiasms generate sales. There is another component in this transformation: the physical nature of the book itself, that is, e-Books. Despite being commonly considered techno-loving guys, the typical e-Book readers are actually much more likely to be passionate readers who love downloading the books they like because it gives them instant gratification and they see the possibility to carry many titles with them at any time as priceless.

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What was the over-soul? It was the spiritual principle linking everything together. How did Transcendentalism interpret man? Man was the emanation of the over-soul, and the emphasis lay on his individuality, on his selfeducation. Who were Emerson’s followers? Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau. What did Thoreau state in his essay Civil Disobedience? He stated his belief in the individual’s right to resist the power and the laws of the State when they were in conflict with his own honest, moral convictions.

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3 EXPLAIN what colonial literature was

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characterised by. The most obvious influence of colonialism on Victorian literature can be found in the works of Rudyard Kipling. His novels and short stories are set in the distant lands colonised by Britain: it is the reality of colonialism which makes up the background where an adventurous narrative is made possible. Kipling exalted the British imperial power as a sacred duty in the poem The White Man’s Burden. Here he legitimised the belief that it was the task of the white man, and in particular of the British, to carry civilisation and progress to the savages.

5.10 The late Victorian novel COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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what the late Victorian novel mirrored; It mirrored a society linked to a growing crisis in the moral and religious fields. what Darwin’s evolution theory influenced; It influenced the structure and the organisation of the realistic novel, which started to follow an evolutionist pattern. Coincidences were fully exploited to solve the intricacies of the plot, and chance played a Darwinian role. who the best representatives of the realistic novel were and how they differed. They were Thomas Hardy and George Eliot. While Eliot focused on the psychological and moral complexity of human beings, Hardy presented strong individuals, the manifestations of the strong forces of nature to whom he opposed the strong social forces of history and human civilisation. Hardy’s protagonists are also defined by their native regions and, at the same time, painfully alienated by them.

2 FOCUS on the psychological novel and point

5.11 Aestheticism and Decadence Route 9: The Pre-Raphaelites Teacher’s key on page 428. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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what Stevenson represented in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; He represented the monstrous, illogical aspects of life and described the double nature of Victorian society. when and where most of the action of this novel takes place; Most of the action in the novel takes place at night and much of it in the poorer districts of London, considered the place of evil-doers. Most significantly, Mr Hyde enters and leaves Dr Jekyll’s house through the back door, which seems a metaphor for the evil that lies behind the beautiful façade of civilisation and refinement.

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what the names Jekyll and Hyde have become synonymous with. They have become synonymous with multiple personality disorder.

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where and when the Aesthetic Movement began; It developed in the universities and intellectual circles in the last decades of the 19th century. It began in France with Théophile Gautier. what it reflected and reacted against; It reflected the sense of frustration and uncertainty of the artist; his reaction against the materialism, monotony, vulgarity and restrictive moral code of the bourgeoisie; and his need to redefine the role of art. what its motto was; ‘Art for Art’s Sake’. how the aesthete lived; He lived unconventionally, pursuing sensation and excess, and cultivating art and beauty. what the roots of the movement were in England; It was imported there by the American painter James McNeill Whistler, but its roots can be traced back to the Romantic poet John Keats, the Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the art critic John Ruskin. who its main theorist was in England. Walter Pater.

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The message of his works was subversive and potentially demoralising; it appealed especially to the young. The only way to halt the passage of time was art. Life should be lived as a work of art, filling each passing moment with intense experience, feeling all kinds of sensations. The artist’s task was to feel sensations and to experience beauty. As a result, art did not have to be didactic.

5.12 Victorian drama COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the first paragraph and explain the reasons why English drama did not flourish between 1700 and the late 19th century. The factors that can explain this situation are: the rise of the novel; the power of theatrical managers, who decided what plays might appeal to the audience and give financial returns; the presence of great actors and actresses whose virtuosity often turned very poor plays into great success; and the fact that the rich middle classes did not appreciate drama as a form of art.

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the artist’s attitude; It was hedonistic, sensuous, disenchanted with contemporary society and very much self-centred. his choice of subjects; They were sensual and sometimes perverse. his use of language. It was evocative.

2 ANSWER the following questions about the Victorian theatre. 1

DICTATION 1.4 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood TRANSCRIPT The term ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ came into use when the young painters William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, criticising the style of Raphael and his followers, rejected the academic taste and ‘classic’ doctrines and praised the purity and simplicity of the Italian art of the 14th and 15th centuries. The movement began at the end of the 1840s as an attempt to introduce into visual art not only the qualities of medieval Italian painting, but a concern with naturalistic accuracy of detail. The Pre-Raphaelite painters turned their eyes away from the ugly contemporary industrial and urban world, and conceived the creation of beauty as a duty owed to society. Both a poet and a painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the strongest personality and organiser of the group, while William Morris’s figure was outstanding for the incredibly wide range of his interests. He was a poet, a painter and a designer of furniture, stained glass and tapestry, besides being one of the founders of Socialism in Great Britain. Teaching tip William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) John Everett Millais (1829-96)

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How did the new theatres differ from those of the previous century? They were smaller and more comfortable than the ones built in the previous century, and the new methods of lighting the stage were capable of producing more realistic effects; therefore, actors were given the opportunity of developing a subtler style of performance. Why did the stage directions acquire great importance during the Victorian Age? They were much longer and more detailed, and they served various purposes: they illustrated aspects of the characters’ personalities, they described in detail their actions or gestures and conveyed the author’s comments. The developments in stage techniques meant that theatre productions were far more complicated, and instructions were needed. When the electric lighting was introduced in theatres, it greatly affected how performances were staged; in fact, since then actors have performed in bright light in front of an audience hidden in the darkness. Thus the viewer’s experience has become individual rather than communal. What types of theatrical performances flourished? They were music hall, pantomime, farce, and melodrama with a sensational and romantic plot. Who were the most important Victorian playwrights? They were Oscar Wilde, who wrote brilliant comedies whose main feature was dialogue full of humour and wit intended to expose the faults and hypocrisy of his age, and George Bernard Shaw, who considered drama as a vehicle for presenting his views on social institutions and human experience in a provocative way.

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complete the following sentences.

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2 READ the paragraphs about Walter Pater and

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Why did Ibsen mark a change in drama? Because he encouraged writers to deal with social and personal problems, regardless of the strict Victorian censorship. COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

3 REVISE your knowledge of Elizabethan drama (→ 2.8), Restoration drama (→ 3.6) and Victorian drama. Then analyse similarities and differences.

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Elizabethan drama Playhouse: Permanent theatres were circular or octagonal. Within the outer walls there were three tiers of roofed galleries, looking down on the stage, and the yard, or ‘pit’, where the poorer spectators stood. The stage itself, technically known as an ‘apron stage’, projected into the yard, so that when the theatre was full, the players were surrounded on three sides. Over the stage the ‘shadow’ or thatched roof protected the players from the rain. In the front of the stage there was a trap door used for devilish apparitions and disappearances, and also for burials. The actors’ tiring house was presumably at the back of the stage. There were two doors for entrances and exits. Behind the stage there was an inner stage. There were also an upper stage hidden by a curtain and a balcony. In Shakespeare’s time, the actor came forward on the apron stage into the midst of his audience. Communication was therefore intimate and direct. Plays took place in daylight. Audiences were drawn from all social classes. Plot: Tragedy: serious play with a change in the hero’s fortunes from happiness to misery; comedy: it starts with an unhappy condition of the protagonist/s and ends happily. Characters: Tragedy: kings, princes and warriors; comedy: ordinary people generally belonging to the upper classes. Themes: Universal. Language: Tragedy: solemn and poetic; comedy: formal, witty, mainly in prose. Stage directions: Absence of any scenery effects. The stage relied on conventions using a limited number of props. For night scenes a simple candle or torch represented the night world. Shakespeare’s use of stage directions was very limited and the information they supplied was contained in the dialogue. Restoration drama Playhouse: Restoration theatres were roofed and artificially lit with candles. There were footlights, a drop curtain and painted movable scenery at the back of the stage for the most important Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

scenes in a play. The audience sat in the dark in galleries, and on benches or even on boxes in the pit, which became now a very fashionable place to be seated. The audience belonged to the upper classes. Plot: Realistic picture of life. It often involved clever handling of situation and intrigue, but it was less important than atmosphere, dialogue and satire. Characters: A new type of male character was created: the ‘fop’, who was generally elegant, witty, but cynical, and opposed to the ‘gallant’, or ‘fortunate lover’. The heroine was witty and more interested in fashion than in morals. Themes: Pursuit of sex and money; marriage devoid of any feelings; vices and absurdities of an artificial, highly sophisticated society. Language: Witty, cynical and satirical. The use of prose dialogue, rather than rhymed verse, increased realism on the stage. Stage directions: Limited use. Victorian drama Playhouse: Victorian theatres were smaller than the ones built in the previous century and helped the appreciation both of tragedy and comedy; actors were given the opportunity of developing a subtler style of performance. In the second half of the Victorian era, various improvements made the theatres more comfortable and the new methods of lighting the stage were capable of producing more realistic effects. Actors acted in bright light in front of spectators hidden in darkness. Plot: The ingredients were often the same: virtuous heroines in danger, hard-hearted conspiring villains, and happy endings with the triumph of true love and the punishment of the villain. Characters: The types of theatrical performances which flourished at the time were music hall, pantomime, farce – a play intended to make the spectators laugh –, and melodrama with a sensational and romantic plot. Themes: The faults and hypocrisy of the age. Language: Humorous and witty. Stage directions: They were much longer and more detailed, and they served various purposes: they illustrated aspects of the characters’ personalities, they described in detail their actions or gestures, and conveyed the author’s comments.

Teaching tip The presentation Alfred Tennyson in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson. COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

1 READ about Tennyson’s life and complete the factfile. Born: In Somersby, Lincolnshire, in 1809. Origin: The fourth son of the 12 children of a clergyman.

COMPETENCE: READING, SELECTING AND INTERPRETING INFORMATION

2 READ the rest of the text and highlight the key ideas in one colour and the supporting details in another colour. Key ideas Works

dramatic monologues Morte d’Arthur presents King Arthur’s knights and their brotherhood destroyed by the absence of a true leader

In Memoriam is one of the finest elegies in English literature

Ulysses

Ulysses is an overreacher

Style

Tennyson was a true Victorian

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Supporting details the poet wonders about the existence of outstanding values in his own age, characterised by obsessive materialism and certainty, but he does not succeed in finding an answer (are) complete poems about death and life; the element of unity is the grief of the poet for his friend’s death, that is, the regret for what is no more (who) follows knowledge at any cost, beyond the pillars of Hercules and into dangerous waters; while Ulysses stands for an active, adventurous life, rich in imagination, Telemachus, who embodies the typical Victorian man, stands for a more uneventful life, devoted to responsibilities and social duties he felt the need for balance and regularity; he was a master of onomatopoeia and kennings, that is, pictorial descriptions of something that is not named directly

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5.13 Alfred Tennyson

Education: He was first educated at his father’s rectory, and then at Trinity College in Cambridge, which he left without completing a degree. Family problems: Epilepsy, a disease then thought to be brought on by sexual excess and therefore shameful. Literary career: In 1830 he published his first important collection of verse, Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, followed by another volume two years later; in 1850 he published his long autobiographical work, In Memoriam A.H.H., and he was made Poet Laureate. In 1884 he was given the title of Baron for his literary merits. Political life: He sat in the House of Lords and for some time he took himself seriously as a politician. Death: He died in 1892 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

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Authors and Texts

The spokesman of Victoria’s reign

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Tennyson embodied the spirit of his age

What is the poem Morte d’Arthur concerned with? It presents King Arthur’s knights and their brotherhood destroyed by the absence of a true leader; the poet wonders about the existence of outstanding values in his own age, characterised by obsessive materialism and certainty, but he does not succeed in finding an answer. What are the main themes developed in the elegy In Memoriam? They are death and life, and the element of unity is the grief of the poet for his friend’s death, that is, the regret for what is no more. Why is the protagonist of the dramatic monologue Ulysses an overreacher? Ulysses is an overreacher because he follows knowledge at any cost, beyond the pillars of Hercules and into dangerous waters; he greatly appealed to Tennyson’s and Darwin’s age of ‘terrible muses’, as the poet himself called astronomy and geology. What are the main features of Tennyson’s style? He was a master of onomatopoeia and kennings, that is, pictorial descriptions of something that is not named directly. These linguistic images differ from the old Anglo-Saxon ones, since they are longer, complex phrases and not mere compound nouns; they derive, however, from the same desire to secure dignity, richness and variety, and to slow down the pace of reading by making the reader stop and study them carefully. Why did Tennyson become the spokesman of his age? Because he expressed the national pride and the love of order of the Victorians, the conventional sentimentality of the middle class, and the optimistic belief in the progress of mankind. But like so many men of his time, he worried and doubted about God, nature, man, the meaning of life, and science.

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he expressed the national pride and the love of order of the Victorians, the conventional sentimentality of the middle class, and the optimistic belief in the progress of mankind; he worried and doubted about God, nature, man, the meaning of life, and science; (he) looked for a compromise between science and religion and considered faith the result of a battle, always susceptible to doubts, and not a permanent possession; his idea of nature was that of a scientist

Ulysses Alfred Tennyson, Poems

READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the poem and do the following activities. Lines 1-32 1 Who is the ‘I’ in line 3? Ulysses. 2 What does he reveal about his present life? Tick as appropriate. Dissatisfaction. Contempt. 3 Where is he now? He is in Ithaca among ‘barren crags’. 4 What does he feel for his past adventures? He feels a deep nostalgia. 5 What does the sentence ‘I am a part of all that I have met’ (line 18) imply? A His life has been moulded by his past experiences. Lines 33-43 6 Who is introduced by Ulysses? His son Telemachus. 7 What is the meaning of ‘A rugged people’ (line 37)? B A rough people. 8 What policy does Telemachus embody? He embodies the kind of policy in which Tennyson believed: the gradual civilisation of a ‘rugged people’. 9 What different things have father and son devoted themselves to during their lives? Ulysses has devoted himself to an active, adventurous life, rich in imagination; Telemachus, who embodies the typical Victorian man, has devoted himself to responsibilities and social duties and has led an uneventful life.

12 What reason does he give for this? He still believes they can do great things since it is never too late to go in search of new lands and experiences (line 57). 13 What do the sentences ‘you and I are old’ (line 49), ‘Death closes all’ (line 51), ‘We are not now that strength’ (line 66), ‘Made weak by time and fate’ (line 69) connote? Tick as appropriate. Melancholy. 14 Underline all the time references in this section. What do they point out? The time references are ‘ere the end’ (line 51), ‘The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: / The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep / Moans round with many voices’ (lines 54-56), ‘the sunset’ (line 60). They point out Ulysses’s awareness of his approaching death. 15 The last line of the poem is made up of a succession of verbs and sums up Tennyson’s motto for life. How would you interpret these words? B A desire for a life of action, courage and determination. 16 Ulysses becomes the poet’s alter ego and a metaphor for human existence. What does he give expression to? B The poet’s doubts about man’s role and his destiny after death. 17 Why is Ulysses a metaphor for human existence? Because the optimism linked to intellectual progress is never separated from the melancholic awareness of mortality. 18 Tick the features of the dramatic monologue in this poem. It is a narrative poem. The first singular person ‘I’ is different from the poet himself. The speaker is caught in a crucial moment of crisis. Great interest in human psychology. The use of pronouns, verbs and expressions referring to a non-speaking listener.

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1.6 LISTEN and complete the summary of the text. 1 dissatisfaction; 2 meaningless; 3 nostalgia; 4 civilisation; 5 anarchy; 6 imagination; 7 uneventful; 8 duties; 9 challenge; 10 nothingness; 11 melancholy; 12 determination.

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COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

3 DISCUSS. Refer to 5.7 and state the main similarities and differences between Robert Browning’s Porphyria’s Lover and Alfred Tennyson’s Ulysses. Consider the setting, characters and theme. Teaching tip Give advice about how to answer oral questions (→ Study Skill 19, p. 419) and have your students answer the question to talk about the similarities and differences between the two monologues.

Student’s speaking activity. Suggestion: Students should develop the following notes: Browning Setting: A room where the two characters meet at night. Characters: Porphyria and her lover, by whom she is killed. Theme: A case of lucid insanity. Tennyson Setting: Next to the port of Ithaca. Characters: Ulysses, who represents a romantic, past world, and Telemachus, who stands for the Victorian rational world. Theme: The desire for a life of action, courage and determination.

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11 What does he urge them to do? To leave with him on a sea voyage into the unknown.

TRANSCRIPT Ulysses opens his monologue by revealing dissatisfaction and contempt for his present life, which is boring and meaningless. He is in Ithaca among ‘barren crags’ and he feels a deep nostalgia for his past adventures and glory. In the second part of the poem Ulysses introduces the character of his son Telemachus as ideally qualified to develop the kind of policy in which Tennyson believed: the gradual civilisation of a ‘rugged people’. Thus, Ulysses is now free to leave home, without fear of precipitating the anarchy that prevailed on the island during his previous absence. Tennyson uses the characters of Ulysses and Telemachus to represent two kinds of life: while Ulysses stands for an active, adventurous life, rich in imagination, Telemachus, who embodies the typical Victorian man, stands for a more uneventful life, devoted to responsibilities and social duties. In the last part of the monologue Ulysses is aware that death will soon put an end to everything, and yet he issues his proud challenge to the oncoming nothingness, openly turning to his mariners and proposing to them a voyage into the unknown. This gives a note of melancholy to the poem. The last line – ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’ – is made up of a succession of verbs and sums up Ulysses’s unrestrained desire for a life of action, courage and determination.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

Lines 44-70 10 Who does Ulysses address? His mariners.

5.14 Charles Dickens Teaching tip The presentation Charles Dickens in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 48-49: A Christmas Carol Teacher’s key on page 299. Text Bank 50-51: David Copperfield Teacher’s key on page 301. Text Bank 52: Hard Times Teacher’s key on page 304.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ about Dickens’s life and works on page 37 and complete the factfile. Born: In Portsmouth, on the southern coast of England, in 1812. Childhood: He had an unhappy childhood. His father was imprisoned for debt and 12-year-old Charles was put to work in a factory. Education: He attended a school in London; at 15 he studied shorthand at night. Beginning of literary career: In 1833 his first story appeared and in 1836, still a newspaper reporter, he adopted the pen name ‘Boz’, publishing Sketches by ‘Boz’, a collection of articles and tales describing London’s people and scenes, written for the periodical Monthly Magazine. It was immediately followed by The Pickwick Papers, which revealed Dickens’s humoristic and satirical qualities. Works: Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, American Notes, A Christmas Carol, Martin Chuzzlewit, David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, Bleak House, Hard Times, Great Expectations. Political ideas: Although he was a republican, he took strongly against the United States when he visited the country in 1842. He advocated the abolition of slavery. Reputation: He wrote several enormously successful Christmas books. By the time of his death, he had drawn adoring crowds to his public appearances in England, Scotland and Ireland; he had met princes and presidents and had amassed a fortune.

2 READ the rest of the text and answer the following questions. 1

36

2

What characters did Dickens create? He created caricatures by exaggerating and ridiculing freely – though without sarcasm – the social peculiarities, vanity and ambition of the

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3

4

5

6

London middle and lower classes. He shifted the social frontiers of the novel: the 18th-century realistic, upper-middle-class world was replaced by the one of the lower orders. He was always on the side of the poor, the outcast and the working class. Children are often the most important characters in his novels. By giving instances of good, wise children and worthless parents or hypocritical adults he illustrates in fiction the reverse of the natural order of things: children become the moral teachers instead of the taught. What was the aim of his work? Dickens had a didactic aim as he wanted to make the ruling classes aware of the social problems without offending his middle-class readers. He aimed at making the wealthier classes acquire knowledge about their poorer neighbours, of whom they previously knew little or nothing. What were the most important features of his style? He employed the most effective language and accomplished the most graphic and powerful descriptions of life and character ever attempted by any novelist. He did so with his careful choice of adjectives, repetitions of words and structures, juxtapositions of images and ideas, hyperbolic and ironic remarks. What were the main sources of his novels? They were the Bible, fairy tales, fables and nursery rhymes, the 18th-century novelists and essayists, and Gothic novels. Where were his novels set? London was the setting of most of his novels: he always seemed to have something new to say about it and showed an intimate knowledge of it. What was the writer’s attitude towards society? Dickens created middle-class characters that he satirised freely. He gradually developed a more radical social view, although he did not become a revolutionary thinker. He was aware of the spiritual and material corruption caused by industrialism and became increasingly critical towards his society. In his mature works he succeeded in drawing popular attention to public abuses, evils and wrongs by mingling terrible descriptions of London misery and crime with the most amusing sketches of metropolitan life.

Oliver Twist 1

1.7 LISTEN and complete the plot of Oliver Twist with the missing information. 1 insecurity; 2 experienced; 3 reversals; 4 unknown; 5 brought up; 6 starving; 7 undertaker; 8 cruelty; 9 run away; 10 pickpockets; 11 caught; 12 stricken; 13 charging; 14 kidnapped; 15 burglary; 16 wounded; 17 Investigations; 18 half-brother.

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the texts and answer the following 1

2 3

4

5

questions. What does the novel Oliver Twist fictionalise? It fictionalises the economic insecurity and humiliation Dickens experienced when he was a child. Where is Oliver brought up? He is brought up in a workhouse in an inhuman way. Who eventually kidnaps him? He is eventually kidnapped by a gang of young pickpockets and forced to commit burglary; during the job he is shot and wounded. Who adopts him? Mr Brownlow, a middle-class man who shows kindness and affection towards him. What is discovered at the end of the novel? It is discovered that Oliver has noble origins. In the end the gang of pickpockets and Oliver’s half-brother, who paid the thieves in order to ruin Oliver and have their father’s property all for himself, are arrested.

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8

What is the setting of the novel? Which social classes are depicted? The most important setting of the novel is London, which is depicted at three different social levels: the parochial world of the workhouse, the criminal world and, finally, the world of the Victorian middle class. What were Victorian workhouses like? They were run by parishes and built all over England to give relief to the poor. However, the conditions prevailing in the workhouses were appalling and they did not provide any means for social or economic advances. What did Dickens criticise about this social institution? He criticised the fact that instead of alleviating the sufferings of the poor, the officials who ran workhouses abused their rights as individuals and caused them further misery.

T59

The workhouse Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the text and find the words which mean the following. 1 inconvenience; 2 overload; 3 sickened; 4 inquest; 5 surgeon; 6 behold; 7 establishment; 8 striving.

2 READ the text again and do the following activities. 1 Decide which paragraphs make up the following parts of the story-pattern. 1 Oliver completed nine years in the workhouse. Fourth paragraph. 2 Religious authorities did not effectively control the way children were treated. Third paragraph. 3 Oliver was looked after by an elderly woman in the workhouse. First paragraph. 4 The conditions in the branch-workhouse were really miserable. Second paragraph. 2 Underline words and phrases used to describe Oliver and the children. Oliver: ‘the victim of a systematic course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by hand. The hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan’ (lines 1-3); ‘a pale thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and decidedly small in circumference’ (lines 46-47); ‘a good sturdy spirit’ (line 48). The children: ‘juvenile offenders’ (line 10); ‘culprits’ (line 12); ‘miserable little being’ (line 31); ‘young gentlemen’ (line 52).

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6

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

TRANSCRIPT Oliver Twist first appeared in instalments in 1837 and was later published as a book. The novel fictionalises the economic insecurity and humiliation Dickens experienced as a child. The name ‘Twist’, though it is given to the protagonist by accident, represents the outrageous reversals of fortune that he will experience. Oliver Twist is a poor boy of unknown parents; he was born in a workhouse in a small town near London in the early 1800s. His mother dies almost immediately after his birth and he is brought up in a workhouse in an inhuman way. The boy commits the unpardonable offence of asking for more food when he is close to starving, so the parish official offers five pounds to anyone willing to take Oliver on as an apprentice. In fact, he is later sold to an undertaker, but the cruelty and the unhappiness he experiences with his new master make him run away to London. There he falls into the hands of a gang of young pickpockets, trained by Fagin, who runs a school for would-be thieves. Unfortunately, Oliver is not a successful student: he is caught on his first attempt at theft. Mr Brownlow, the victim, is stricken by the ragged and unhealthy appearance of Oliver and rather than charging him with theft, he takes him home and takes care of him. Oliver is eventually kidnapped by Fagin’s gang and forced to commit burglary; during the job he is shot and wounded. Oliver is adopted by Mr Brownlow and at last receives kindness and affection. Investigations are made about who Oliver is and it is discovered that he has noble origins. In the end the gang of pickpockets and Oliver’s half-brother, who paid the thieves in order to ruin Oliver and have their father’s property all for himself, are arrested.

1 A C 2 A C

What images of childhood emerge from this description? The image of innocent childhood. These children have become puppets in the hands of adults. What are the functions of this description? To build up a realistic picture of the scene. To make the reader side with the poor children.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

3 What is the relationship between the parish authorities and the workhouse ones? The parish authorities B check the situation with only apparent thoroughness. D let the workhouse authorities exploit the children. 4 Dickens makes fun of the most distinguishing features of the characters by exaggerating a particular element or using absurd analogies. 1 Go through the text and underline with different colours any exaggerations and absurd elements linked to the world of the children and to that of the adults. The world of the children: ‘juvenile offenders’ (line 10); ‘culprits’ (line 12); ‘a parish child … in the farm’ (lines 33-36). The world of the adults: ‘The elderly female … to her own use’ (lines 15-18); ‘Everybody knows … her system’ (lines 21-27). 2 What feelings characterise the two worlds? Choose from among the following. Fear, submission and starvation characterise the world of the children. Power and lack of humanity characterise the world of the adults. 5 Say if the narrator is a voice outside or inside the text. Whose point of view is adopted? Is the narrator impartial or does he feel pity for the boys, showing an ironical dislike for the adults? The narrator is a voice outside the novel. The children’s point of view is mainly employed. The narrator feels pity for the boys, showing an ironical dislike for the adults’ world (lines 6-15, 25-27, 36-46). 6 Here are some linguistic devices used by Dickens in his novels. Provide examples of their use in this passage. 1 He repeats the same word(s) and sentence structure. ‘sevenpencehalfpenny’ (lines 12-14). 2 He expresses the same concept more than once using different words. The exploitation of children is described in the 1st and 2nd paragraphs using different words.

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3

4

He makes a list of details, not always necessary. The parable of the experimental philosopher (lines 21-25). He uses contrasting images. The children’s world / the adults’ world, submission / power.

7 Identify the theme of the passage. Dickens attacked the contemporary workhouses run by parishes; they had been created to give relief to the poor, but they really exploited them and made them live in appalling conditions.

3 COMPLETE the summary with the words from the box. 1 birthplace; 2 branch-workhouse; 3 inadequacy; 4 looked after; 5 elderly; 6 pockets; 7 parish; 8 malnourished; 9 beadle. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

4 WRITE a 10/12-line commentary about the theme of the exploitation of children. Teaching tip Give advice about how to write a commentary (→ Study Skill 20, p. 419) and have your students write one about the theme of the exploitation of children in Dickens’s time.

During the first decades of the 19th century, children were forced to work in factories under harsh circumstances for eight/twelve hours a day, six days a week. Children and orphans generally worked for food and accommodation and did not work for wages. They worked inside a workhouse and had to follow its strict rules. They were also sold to new employers for money. The practice of selling children and the issue of their poor miserable condition can be found in Oliver Twist. Oliver disobeyed the rules of the workhouse in which he lived when he asked for more food. A bill was pasted outside the gate offering a reward of five pounds to anybody who would take Oliver. The upper class used to exploit not only the child labourers, but the poor in general. The government had all the power, while the poor orphans and the other children had none. This was an ideal situation for the wealthy, as they had complete control of the lower social classes and of the labour market.

T60

Oliver wants some more

4

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

1.10 LISTEN and complete the summary of the text. 1 denounces; 2 hunger; 3 ask for; 4 insistent; 5 master; 6 charge; 7 board; 8 request; 9 criminal; 10 confined.

VISUAL ANALYSIS

Part 1 (lines 1-19) The setting and the description of the boys’ hunger. Part 2 (lines 20-32) The main event: Oliver asks for more food. Part 3 (lines 33-48) The consequences of Oliver’s request.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Green words: description of the room Highlighted in yellow: visual details linked to the boys’ conditions and their hunger Red dots: exaggerations and absurd elements linked to the world of the boys Highlighted in light blue: exaggerations and absurd elements linked to the master, the assistants, Mr Bumble and the board Underlined in blue: the word ‘more’ is repeated seven times in this extract What does this word refer to? It refers to food. Highlighted in green: description of the dinner at the workhouse which recalls a ritual What are these expressions associated with? What atmosphere do they create? They are associated with a religious ceremony. They create a sacred atmosphere.

TRANSCRIPT The extract from Oliver Twist takes place in a workhouse and denounces the boys’ greatest problem, hunger. One evening the boys decide that one of them, Oliver Twist, should ask for more food. At his insistent demand for more food, the master hits Oliver and goes to look for Mr Bumble, the man in charge of the workhouse. Every member of the parish board is astonished and considers Oliver’s request as a sign of his criminal nature. Therefore, the boy is confined to his room and five pounds are offered to anyone who wants to take him away. 7

5 WRITE 10-12 lines about this topic: ‘Does this episode merely draw attention to the conditions of poor orphans or does it call for political action? If you think it calls for political action, what action do you think it is?’ Student’s writing activity.

From Text to Screen

Oliver Twist

From Text to Screen: Oliver Twist Photocopiable lesson on page 256. Teacher’s key on page 283. COMPETENCE: WATCHING AND UNDERSTANDING A FILM

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1 2

3

4

How is the story developed? It is developed through dialogue, description and narration. Is the description detailed or vague? What is its function? The description is detailed. It arouses pity in the reader, since it builds up a realistic picture of the scene and makes the reader side with the poor boys. What is the function of the narration? And that of the dialogues? The narration compares the world of the boys with that of the institutions. The dialogues increase the reader’s interest in the scene. What antithetical images and ideas can you find in the passage? They are: the boys’ world / the adults’ world, the poor / the rich, starvation / fatness, submission / power.

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COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

1 WATCH the first part of the sequence and answer the following questions. 1 2 3

4 5 6

Where does the scene take place? It takes place in a large, dark room. What light characterises the scene? A dim light, everything seems to be greyish. What are the children doing? What have some of them just done? They are looking at Oliver. Some of them have just finished their supper. What are they like? They are sad and still very hungry. What are they wearing? They are wearing a ragged grey uniform. What does Oliver, the protagonist, decide to do? He rises from the table, goes to the master and asks for more food with a faint voice.

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Then write a caption to describe the content of each section.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

1 READ the text and identify its three parts.

7 8

9

What feeling does his expression communicate to the viewer? It communicates desperation, fear. What is the reaction of the master? He is astonished; he hits Oliver with his stick and runs after him. What decision does he take? He decides to inform the beadle.

6 DESCRIBE the pervading atmosphere. It is miserable, linked to the boys’ condition.

7 SAY what kind of music is used as soundtrack. Is it appropriate? It is a sinister music, which increases the overall sense of sadness and desolation.

2 WATCH the second part of the sequence and

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

complete the sentences with the words from the box. 1 2

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

3 4 5 6 7 8

The beadle is a healthy and fat man. All the men at the table are surprised at the sight of the master. The table is full of every kind of food. These men are wearing rich clothes. The room is richly furnished and lit by the warm light of the candles. The man in the uniform declares that Oliver Twist has asked for more. The beadle repeats Oliver’s request disdainfully. One of the assembled men decides Oliver’s future destiny.

8 DISCUSS in pairs your reaction to this sequence. Is it consistent with the text you have analysed (→ T60)? Students’ activity.

Hard Times COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ about Hard Times and answer the following questions. 1

3 IDENTIFY the contrasts the sequence is built on. The main antithesis is linked to the semantic areas of the world of the adults – lack of humanity, fatness, wealth, power – and that of the children – fear, starvation, poverty, submission.

2

COMPETENCE: USING DIFFERENT TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

3

4 FIND where: 1

2

3

the camera moves from right to left; At the beginning of the sequence when there is a pan of the room where the children are having supper. the camera follows the movements of the characters; The camera follows Oliver’s approach to the master and, in the second part, the master’s progression to the beadle’s dining room. the camera is fixed. When Oliver asks his master for more supper and, in the second part, when the beadle talks to the man in the uniform.

5 IDENTIFY these shots and say what they emphasise. 1 High-angle shot. It shows Oliver’s determination and emphasises the power of the master. 2 Low-angle shot. It highlights the distance between the master, an adult, and Oliver, a child. 3 Close-up on Oliver. It points out his courage and determination.

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4

Where is the novel set? It is set in an imaginary industrial town named Coketown, which is a sort of brick jungle where all the buildings are the same and which seems to be some kind of magical but hellish land. Who are the protagonists? They are Thomas Gradgrind, an educator who believes in facts and statistics; his two children, Louisa and Tom; and Josiah Bounderby, a rich banker of the city. How many sections is the novel divided into? It is divided into three sections, or books, and each book is divided into separate chapters. Book One, ‘Sowing’, shows us the seeds planted by the Gradgrind/Bounderby education: Louisa, Tom and Stephen Blackpool. Book Two, ‘Reaping’, reveals the harvesting of these seeds: Louisa’s unhappy marriage, Tom’s selfishness and criminal ways, Stephen’s rejection from Coketown. Book Three, ‘Garnering’, is linked to a dominant symbol – instability – which is no longer the solid ‘ground’ upon which Mr Gradgrind’s system once stood. How do the characters of Mr Gradgrind and Mr Bounderby illustrate the ideas of Utilitarianism? They embody the belief that human nature can be measured, quantified and governed entirely by reason, and that children should be taught through facts without compassion and imagination. As Mr Gradgrind tries to turn children into little machines, Mr Bounderby treats the workers in his factory as emotionless objects that are easily exploited for his own self-interest.

T61

Mr Gradgrind

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

2

3

4

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

Which aspects of the speaker’s personality are highlighted in this text? His rigidity, his narrowmindedness and his being extremely concrete and fact-oriented. What is the function of the similes used in the speaker’s physical description? They create a caricature of the speaker. What is the speaker’s idea of education? Education must be linked to ‘Facts’ and must not leave any space for creativity. Which verb tense ironically underlines the speaker’s concept of education? The imperative.

VISUAL ANALYSIS

4 1 READ the text and identify its three parts. Then write a caption to describe the content of each section. Part 1 (lines 1-8) Presentation of the speaker’s ideas. Part 2 (lines 9-29) The speaker’s physical description. Part 3 (lines 30-34) The three men’s interest.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in yellow: the speaker’s physical appearance Highlighted in green: his voice Highlighted in pink: his clothes Which overall impression do these details create? They create an overall impression of a threatening, unattractive person. Red dots: words and phrases belonging to the semantic area of ‘farming’ Who uses these words? What are they related to? The speaker uses these words. They are related to Mr Gradgrind’s intention to ‘cultivate’ his children. Underlined in blue: words belonging to the semantic area of geometry Underlined in green: words and phrases belonging to the semantic area of regularity and monotony Pink words: repetition of the same word What does it underline? It underlines the speaker’s concept of education, which must be abstract and rigid.

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1.12 LISTEN and complete the summary of the text. 1 classroom; 2 introduces; 3 Facts; 4 rooted; 5 proof; 6 to sow; 7 fancy; 8 square; 9 coat.

TRANSCRIPT The scene takes place inside a classroom, which is as austere and plain as the teacher’s teaching style. The teacher, Mr Thomas Gradgrind, introduces himself to the schoolchildren with the exclamation ‘Now, what I want is, Facts’. He states that the formation of a child’s mind must be rooted in the study of facts. There is only proof, not poetry for him. He wants to sow the seeds of fact, not fancy; of sense, not sentimentality. His very description is essentially factual: ‘square forefinger’, ‘square wall of a forehead’, ‘square coat’, ‘square legs’ and ‘square shoulders’. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

5 WRITE a 10/12-line paragraph to summarise Dickens’s attitude to education. Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should point out that Dickens’s primary aim in Hard Times is to illustrate the dangers of the ‘object lesson’, originally conceived as a method of education arising from children’s own experiences and suited to their particular stage of development, but distorted in its introduction to English schools. There, form acquired more importance than subject matter, leading to lessons where humans were actually turned into machines and dehumanised.

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6

What does the novel focus on? It focuses on the difference between the rich and the poor at Dickens’s time, between factory owners and workers, who were forced to work long hours for low pay in dirty, loud and dangerous factories. What does it denounce? It denounces the gap between the rich and the poor and criticises the materialism and narrow-mindedness of Utilitarianism, which was the basic Victorian attitude to economics.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

5

T62

is that the school gives the children so many unnecessary facts that it ‘chokes’ them – not only do they not learn anything useful, but that experience actually damages them. This is an example of the writer’s satire.

Coketown Charles Dickens, Hard Times

LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

VOCABULARY

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words and phrases with their Italian translation. 1 rattling; 2 outdoing; 3 be set off; 4 brick; 5 tune; 6 furnish; 7 town-hall; 8 purchaseable; 9 pursuing; 10 inducement.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

7

6 READ the sixth paragraph again and answer the following questions. 1

2

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ lines 1-20 again and say what kind of town Coketown was and what it contained. It was ‘a town of red brick’, full of machinery and tall chimneys. It had a canal and a river, ‘vast piles of building full of windows’. It contained several large streets that were ‘all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another’ who had a monotonous life.

3

4

5

3 FIND the colours used to describe this town. Then underline the words referring to smell and sound. The colours used to describe the town are red and black (bricks), black and purple (water), black and white (writing on notices). Not gold, which is mentioned in line 38 as a noun but not as a colour adjective. The words referring to smell and sound are ‘ill-smelling’ (line 8), ‘rattling’ and ‘trembling’ (line 9), and ‘the same sound’ (line 13).

7 CONSIDER the last few lines. Dickens seems to agree with Mr Gradgrind and Mr Bounderby that the poor had good lives and were ungrateful, but by exaggerating, he actually shows that it is not true. Which words exaggerate the diet of the poor? At Dickens’s time it was well known that the poor lived on weak tea (which was cheap, while coffee was expensive) and bread with little or no protein, certainly not butter or good meat. The words which exaggerate the diet of the poor are ‘the best’ (line 66), ‘fresh butter’ (line 67), as poor people in towns never got really fresh agricultural products, ‘insisted on Mocha coffee’ and ‘prime parts of meat’ (line 67), as the poor rarely ate meat and never the ‘prime’ parts.

4 STATE which two words in the third paragraph are used to describe how the products of the industry of Coketown improved the lives of those who bought them. How do these two words contrast with the description of the town and its people? The two words are ‘comforts’ (line 17) and ‘elegancies’ (line 18). Dickens shows the hypocrisy of the ‘fine lady’ who enjoys these things but despises the place where they are made, and describes the town and its people negatively, which is the total opposite of anything elegant or comfortable.

5 CONCENTRATE on the name of the school in the fourth paragraph. It is made up and sounds like the phrase ‘choke the child’. Explain why this name is a kind of joke. ‘To choke’ means to stop breathing because something is blocking your throat. Dickens’s joke

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How many different churches were there and who attended the Sunday services? There were eighteen different churches. Everybody in Coketown, except the labouring people, attended the Sunday services. How did the other residents of Coketown wish to change the behaviour of the workers? The other (middle-class) residents of Coketown wished to force the workers to go to church by ‘indignantly petitioning for acts of parliament’. What did the working classes do on Sundays? They ‘lounged’ in the streets, watching the church-goers, showing no interest or concern. What did the statistics of the Teetotal Society show? They showed that these people were used to getting drunk. What sort of evidence did the chemist, the druggist and the chaplain of the jail provide? They provided evidence of opium addiction and attendance of ill-reputed places.

7

COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

8 DEFINE the type of narrator. Is he obtrusive or unobtrusive? Third-person omniscient narrator. He is obtrusive since he openly intervenes in the narration (lines 35-40, 63-64).

9 DECIDE. What is the key word of this passage, in your opinion? ‘Fact’, which stresses the value of factual, practical knowledge.

•

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similes; Lines 5-6, 10-11. The red brick stained with black (of the soot from the coal-burning steam engines which powered the factories) is likened to the ‘painted face of a savage’ (line 6); this image is negative, describing something alien and frightening. The elephant image (lines 10-11) is difficult and will be helped with a diagram of a beam engine – it was very large and swung up and down pulling and pushing pistons – thus seeming to be an enormous animal with a long trunk, but performing a movement which was unnatural, hence melancholy and mad. metaphor. Line 7. The serpent is the coils of smoke from the chimneys of the factories; once again the image is negative and suggests something animate and evil (it goes on forever, therefore never dies) rather than the product of machinery. What do they share? Is the process of industrialisation approved of or criticised? All three images are negative; they are animate images describing an inanimate process – and can also be described as unnatural nature. The process of industrialisation is therefore criticised.

11 UNDERLINE the mechanical repetitions of words and phrases, and of the syntax. Then show how they combine to express the main psychological features of the inhabitants of Coketown. What aspects of the inhabitants of Coketown do these linguistic devices underline? Tick as appropriate and explain your choice(s). Repeated words: ‘fact’ (lines 1, 30-33, 36), ‘like’ (lines 5, 10, 12-13, 26, 38), ‘same’ (lines 13-14, 49, 54, 64), ‘anything’ (line 29), ‘everywhere’ (lines 30-31). Repeated phrases: ‘like one another’ (lines 12-13), ‘tabular statements’ (lines 49, 52-54, 62). Repeated syntax: ‘it was a town’ (lines 4-6), ‘might have been’ (lines 27-28), ‘Then, came’ (lines 48, 51, 53, 59). Monotony. Alienation. Everything in Coketown seems monotonous and repetitive. People seem dehumanised beings, the parts of machinery which are always repeating the same actions.

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COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS WITH THE CONTEXT OF THE AGE

13 DISCUSS the effects of Utilitarianism and of the Industrial Revolution on the people of Coketown. Refer to 5.3. Teaching tip Give advice about how to go from text to context (→ Study Skill 21, p. 420) and have your students discuss about Utilitarianism and the Industrial Revolution in relation to the people of Coketown.

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Student’s speaking activity. Suggestion: Students should develop the following notes: Utilitarianism supported the Industrial Revolution since it could enrich the nation; the evils of progress and the negative living conditions of workers were criticised by idealists.

14 COMPARE Dickens’s view of an industrialised town with William Blake’s one (→ T41). Write 10-12 lines. Use the worksheet below to make your notes. Student’s activity. Students should concentrate on the description of the two towns, the tone employed by the writers, and the novelist’s and the poet’s attitudes. 7

COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

15 DISCUSS. Ignorance and fear caused the 12 EXPLAIN how Dickens emphasises the materialism and inhumanity of the town with his words and phrases. He repeats the word ‘fact’ and shows that it is applied to both the material and the immaterial, in other words that the ‘immaterial’ (the spiritual, emotional) side of life in Coketown is non-existent. He even says Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

Victorians to write about the poor as if they were an inferior race and about industrial towns as places of horror and iniquity. Dickens is satirising this in his novel. Do newspapers and TV programmes depict modern towns and cities as places of horror and crimes today? Can you think of any modern examples?

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in the second paragraph and group them according to:

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

quite clearly that nothing is considered important unless it can be ‘purchaseable’ (bought) or ‘saleable’ (sold). He further underlines this by making it sound like a religious truth, using the phrase ‘world without end, Amen’ (line 35). In addition, he uses the repetition of ‘would’ inferring the inevitability of the workers’ bad habits, and the phrase ‘tabular statements’ to refer to the statistics which the various pressure groups presented in order to justify their own attitude to the workers as drunkards or drug takers. Statistics can always be used to advantage and Dickens satirises them by making them ‘statements’, as if they were facts. Finally, Dickens has Mr Gradgrind and Mr Bounderby speak as if to other ‘gentlemen’ like themselves – repeating this word, showing that they are talking about the working classes as if they were a worthless race apart.

10 FIND the images used to describe Coketown

Teaching tip Give advice about how to give one’s personal response (→ Study Skill 22, p. 420) and have your students discuss about the depiction of modern towns and cities.

Student’s activity. Suggestion: Newspapers and TV programmes frequently add to people’s fear of these places and increase attitudes of racism and prejudice by exaggerating or emphasising the crime of the inner cities.

Across Cultures

Work and alienation PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

COMPETENCE: EXPLORING A LITERARY THEME IN DIFFERENT CULTURES

1 LOOK at the pictures on these pages and read the quotes below. Discuss in small groups the importance of work in people’s lives. What effect does work have on people’s health and happiness? How can work be an alienating force? Students’ activity.

2 READ the text on the right and answer the following questions. 1

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What created a new relationship between the workers and their work in the 19th century? The building of the first factories brought alterations in the interaction between the individual and his work. Why did the new industrial towns bring a sense of alienation? They brought a sense of alienation because, unlike the countryside, they became overcrowded, busy and grimy centres where people lived on the brink of starvation and disease. Which writer best described the social problems of the new industrialisation? The writer who best described the social problems of the new industrialisation was Charles Dickens, in particular with his work Hard Times. Which philosophers influenced the literature of the time? The philosophers who influenced the literature of the time were the French Auguste Comte and the German Karl Marx. Which kind of philosophy grew up as a reaction against Romanticism? The philosophy that grew up as a reaction to the irrationality of Romanticism was Positivism. This school of thought brought about a renewed faith in reason and science, a deterministic conception of human life, the application of the experimental method to new fields and the foundations of new disciplines, such as biology and psychology.

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Why was factory work more intense than agricultural work? Factory work was more intense than agricultural work because it was regulated by the expensive machinery and the employers’ determination to keep the machines working, while agricultural work was regulated by the weather, which allowed labourers some respite.

3 COMPLETE the summaries about the relationship between philosophy, literature and industrialisation with the words from the box. 1 Philosophy (Germany): 1 conflict; 2 class; 3 exploitation; 4 evolution; 5 social; 6 alienation. 2 Literature (France): 1 chronicles; 2 individuals; 3 myths; 4 conclusion; 5 justice. 3 Literature (Italy): 1 scientific; 2 pessimistic; 3 fishermen; 4 lower classes; 5 reproduce.

4 DISCUSS in small groups how the rules and regulations regarding working conditions have changed since the 19th century. After the discussion, write a paragraph about how work has changed and is continuing to change. Students’ activity.

5.15 The Brontë sisters Teaching tip The presentation The Brontë sisters in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the authors or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 53-54: Jane Eyre Teacher’s key on page 306. Text Bank 55: Wuthering Heights Teacher’s key on page 308. COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

1 READ the text and the caption of picture 1 and complete the factfile about the Brontë sisters. Family members: Charlotte, Emily and Anne had a brother, Branwell, and were the daughters of an Anglican clergyman of Irish origin. Father’s role: He influenced their artistic inclinations. Education: They did not receive a formal education. Apart from brief periods at school, they were mainly self-educated, reading widely from their father’s library and drawing inspiration from the local public library or from periodicals.

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Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ about Jane Eyre on pages 54-56 and answer the following questions. 1

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What are the settings of the novel? Set in the early decades of the 19th century, the novel is structured around five separate locations probably in northern England: Gateshead, Lowood School, Thornfield, the Moor House and Ferndean. What phases of the heroine’s life do they correspond to? Gateshead (which stands for ‘gateway’) is the place of her childhood, where she spends her unhappiest moments but also reaches her ethical awakening with her imprisonment in the red room. ‘Lowood’ means ‘low wood’ because the school was built in a low valley beside a wood, but also because it coincides with a ‘low’ time in Jane’s life. Thornfield is an allegorical name: a ‘field of thorns’, the place of mystery and temptation, of independence and young love. Moor House is ‘out on the moors’, in the wilderness, the place where Jane tries to give a sense to her life again; it is the place of temporary banishment. Ferndean, or ‘fern hill’, is Mr Rochester’s rural mansion, the new Eden where Jane finds mature love. What kind of woman is Jane Eyre? She is moderately plain but she can also be intense, imaginative, passionate, rebellious and independent, yet always looking for warmth and affection. She undergoes many struggles such as the conflicts between spirit and flesh, duty and desire, denial and fulfilment. What kind of hero is Mr Rochester? He has the quality of a ‘Byronic hero’, but the stereotyped seducer becomes a kind of lost nobleman of passion who is attracted to Jane’s soul and personality rather than to her physical appearance.

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What themes are linked to Jane’s character? The themes of childhood and education; of autonomy and economic independence; of marriage as a relationship between equals, not as a social compromise; of the strict Victorian social class system and gender relationships, which Charlotte Brontë clearly criticises. How is the story narrated? In the first person, through Jane’s point of view. What is the language like? It is straightforward and develops differently according to the style and mood of each character. It is used emotionally by the author and is rich in motifs, symbols and images which are repeated throughout the novel. What new element did Jane Eyre add to the tradition of the English novel? It is the voice of a woman who speaks with perfect frankness about herself. The novel described passionate love from a woman’s standpoint in a way that shocked many readers.

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Women feel just as men feel Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words with their Italian translation. 1 lot; 2 wayward; 3 cherished; 4 longed for; 5 smooth; 6 restlessness; 7 flatter; 8 storey; 9 dim; 10 efforts; 11 freaks; 12 acquaintance.

2 READ the text again and do the following activities. 1 Where is the narration set? At Thornfield Hall. 2 What does the word ‘inmates’ in line 2 mean? B Inhabitants. 3 Who are the characters mentioned in the text? Mrs Fairfax She is the housekeeper at Thornfield; she is a ‘placid-tempered, kindnatured woman’ (line 3). Adele She is Jane’s pupil; she is a ‘lively child’ (line 4), who had been spoilt but became ‘obedient and teachable’ (lines 7-8). 4 What was Jane Eyre’s aim in raising up the roof of the house? C To extend her power of vision. 5 How would people define Jane’s character? How does she define herself? People would define her ‘discontented’ (line 33). She defines herself as restless (line 34).

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5

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

Beginning of literary career: They began to write chronicles of imaginary countries and, in 1846, they published a volume of poetry, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, using pseudonyms. Works: Wuthering Heights (Emily), Agnes Grey (Anne), Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette (Charlotte). Death: Emily and Anne died very young of consumption: Emily in 1848 and Anne in 1849; Charlotte died in 1855 probably of an illness due to pregnacy.

6 Why does Jane say that ‘It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity’ (line 42)? Because they need action, and they will create it if they cannot find it. 7 What does the phrase ‘millions are in silent revolt against their lot’ (line 44) mean? It means that a lot of women do not accept their destiny passively, although they do not protest loudly.

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Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

1 rescuer; 2 worth; 3 frail; 4 injured; 5 cast a glance; 6 solace; 7 charged; 8 harm; 9 gave an involuntary sigh; 10 unsustained; 11 indomitable; 12 stringent.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

7

1

12 Jane’s character is presented through B her thoughts and actions.

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COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

4 WRITE a 10/12-line paragraph about Jane Eyre as a narrator and as a character. Consider how she represents her feelings and actions as well as her attitude. Student’s writing activity. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the text again and answer the following

11 Jane narrates B focusing on a retrospective unterstanding of the events.

TRANSCRIPT Thornfield meets up to Jane’s career expectations. She gets to know Mrs Fairfax’s and Adele’s real characters. Even if Adele is a lively girl, she is also obedient and teachable. Jane becomes much involved with Adele’s welfare and Mrs Fairfax’s pleasant company, but restlessness is part of her nature. She at times takes a walk up to the gate of Thornfield Hall or climbs to the attic to have a wider view of the surroundings. She walks up and down the corridor on the third floor and makes up tales with her imagination. She wishes she could see the busy world of the city, she longs for variety and contact with different people. Thus Jane criticises the conventional perception of women as second-class citizens.

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words and phrases with their meaning.

10 Whose point of view does the reader share? Jane’s point of view.

2.2 LISTEN and complete the summary of the text. 1 expectations; 2 lively; 3 obedient; 4 restlessness; 5 walk; 6 attic; 7 corridor; 8 city; 9 conventional; 10 second-class.

VOCABULARY

1 READ the text and match the highlighted

8 What do men and women share? They have the same feelings, they need to exercise their faculties and find a field for their efforts, they suffer restriction and stagnation. 9 What does the adjective ‘narrow-minded’ (line 49) mean? A Closed to new ideas.

Jane and Rochester

questions.

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Did Jane accept to become Mr Rochester’s mistress? Why/Why not? No, she did not accept because she could not live without self-respect. What did she hold on to? She held on to her principles, to her integrity. What were principles for, according to Jane? They were for the times when one had to resist temptation, when body and soul rebelled against them. How did she describe her state of mind? She described herself as mad, as insane because fire ran in her veins and her heart beat fast. How did Mr Rochester react? He was furious, he seized Jane’s arm and grasped her waist. How did Jane feel in his hands? She felt weak and exhausted but she was still in control of her soul. What did Mr Rochester really want to have from Jane? He wanted her spirit – ‘with will and energy, and virtue and purity’ –, not merely her body. What did Jane do at the end? She left Mr Rochester because she did not want to give in, but could not stand his sorrow.

Teaching tip With Jane’s reply, Rochester’s attempted seduction crumbles; he has no argument to oppose it. He is answered by an equal in judgement and a superior in honour. Teachers may point out that by so doing, Jane takes the first decisive step in English literature since Clarissa Harlowe towards redressing the inequality between the sexes. A good woman, according to Samuel Richardson (→ 3.8), could not survive the loss of her virtue. Charlotte Brontë declared that a good woman, like any decent man, could live only if she respected herself.

8 EXPLAIN how the tension between reason and passion is developed in the text. Why do you think Jane finally leaves Mr Rochester? The first two paragraphs deal with the tension between reason and passion which is a theme running throughout the novel. Charlotte’s work skilfully reveals much of the condition concerning women during the Victorian Age. Jane has the qualities of endurance, valour and vitality, yet she has refused self-contentment by the confined society in which she lives. She oscillates between duty and desire, denial and fulfilment. She is presented as a free spirit struggling for recognition and self-respect in the face of rejection by a class-ridden and moneyoriented society. This explains why she finally leaves Mr Rochester.

3 IDENTIFY the lines where the reader has direct access to the narrator’s thoughts. Lines 1-2, 10, 12-17, 19-21, 29-32, 48-49, 56.

4 SAY what dramatic technique is used to convey Mr Rochester’s thoughts in lines 35-43. Mr Rochester utters a sort of monologue where he speaks of Jane in the third person, as if she were not present and he were speaking to an audience.

5 DEFINE the features of Mr Rochester’s character and behaviour that make him a Romantic hero. Justify your answer by quoting from the text. Mr Rochester is moody and restless. In the text he is connoted by anger (lines 19-20, 23-25, 33, 49), physical strength (lines 33-34), passion (lines 44-46) and despair (lines 54-55, 60-62). John Milton’s Satan (→ 2.13) and the Byronic hero (→ 4.13) are probably his most illustrious antecedents, and offer useful parallels.

6 EXPLAIN what Mr Rochester seems to desire more from the woman he wants to love. He seems to desire more from the character of the woman he wants to love than from her physical appearance. Mr Rochester’s actions reinforce Jane’s belief that mental beauty surpasses physical beauty. He seeks a woman with inner splendour, and sees something special in Jane which attracts him much more than anything visible to the eye. She holds something unique and special deep in her soul and personality, hidden from the outside.

7 FOCUS on Jane’s character. 1

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How would you define her attitude to Mr Rochester? She seems to care for him a great deal and her behaviour at the end shows that she is truly in love with him. Trace the sequence of Jane’s feelings and reactions. Where is the climax in this passage? At first, Jane feels physically powerless (lines 25-26) but in control of her soul and dignity (lines 27-29); then, she defies Mr Rochester by looking into his eyes (line 32) even if she feels exhausted (lines 33-34); later on, she walks to the door (line 65) but turns back, kisses him and blesses him (lines 66-69). However, when he tries to embrace her, she avoids the contact (line 73). The climax is in lines 65-74. Describe Jane’s personality. Choose from the following adjectives. Passionate, analytical, selfrevealing, determined, sensitive.

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COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

9 WRITE a 10/12-line commentary to answer the following questions about Jane Eyre. Does Jane’s behaviour define her as a Victorian or an anti-Victorian heroine? What do you think shocked the Victorian public about her? Charlotte felt deeply about the oppressed status of women at the time, especially women endowed with intelligence but devoid of fortune or looks, like herself. She made their predicament her own when she chose to write a novel about a governess with a mind infinitely superior to her employer’s. The text develops the theme of spiritual equality regardless of social rank; though not a new theme, it is asserted with an unusual force in this novel, leading some readers to see Jane (and her creator) in feminist terms and as opposed to the strict Victorian social class system. Jane’s aggressively independent nature certainly seemed unwomanly (and un-Christian) to some of Charlotte’s contemporaries. This text also brings to a climax the theme of moral conflict through Jane’s struggles between passion and principle, flesh and spirit. Jane certainly comes of age in Charlotte’s classic education novel. At the beginning Jane is a lonely, dependent orphan girl, but she battles the constraints of her harsh upbringing and becomes educated, not only intellectually, but also socially and spiritually. She develops into a strong, confident and independent woman, who neither has to give up her spiritual beliefs nor her human desire for love to be genuinely happy. She becomes the epitome of the modern woman, as she manages a perfect balance between the spiritual and the physical, which is what she really wanted in life.

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COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

7

Emily Brontë

7

Wuthering Heights COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the texts on pages 61-62 and answer the following questions. 1

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

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What do the two houses represent? Wuthering Heights is severe and gloomy, firmly rooted in local tradition and custom; it is the appropriate background for the life of unrestrained and primitive passion led by its owner, Heathcliff. Thrushcross Grange, the home of the bourgeois Lintons, reflects their conception of life, based on stability, kindness and respectability. So the two mansions stand for two opposing forces: the principle of storm and energy on the one hand, and the principle of calm and settled assurance on the other. Though opposed, they are complementary and ideally tend to unity. What kind of characters are Heathcliff and Catherine? Heathcliff is described as a sort of ‘Byronic hero’, moved by irresistible passion, doomed to the despair of a solitary life and finally tending to a total identity with his love, Catherine. He also appears as a Gothic villain in his inhuman treatment of his wife and even his son. Catherine is driven partly by her social ambitions, which finally lead her to marry Edgar, but she is also prompted to violate social conventions. She embodies a wild and Romantic nature. What passions does the novel deal with? It explores basic human emotions, such as love and hatred, which are presented in a state of purity and concentration. The spirit of Romanticism and its concern with the human soul are still present in the correspondence between the violent passions of the characters and the wild natural landscape. How is the theme of death presented? It is not an end, but a liberation of the spirit. What Gothic elements are there in the story? What is their function? They are the sinister atmosphere of Wuthering Heights – surrounded by the wilderness –, Catherine’s ghost, and the dreams and superstitions often mentioned.They are not used to frighten the reader, but to convey the struggle between the two opposed principles of love and hate, of order and chaos. What is the structure of the novel? The narrative mode is a system of Chinese boxes, a ‘concentric’ system of narratives. There are two major narrators, male and female, outsider (Mr Lockwood) and insider (Nelly Dean). Other characters occasionally narrate to Nelly.

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What characterises its style? The narration does not proceed according to chronological time; it starts almost at the end of the story and develops a narrative within the narrative, including the use of flashbacks. This complex structure creates a sense of verisimilitude and, at the same time, a feeling of suspense. There are moments of intense poetry and mysticism, which are balanced by the concreteness and common sense of Nelly’s language. Why is the novel a unique achievement in Victorian literature? It marked a departure from the observation of society towards the description of the individual personality, and anticipated the novelists of the early 20th century in narrative technique. What is the dual aspect of the moors for the children of the first generation? These spaces are at once attractive and threatening to them. How does the novel relate culture and nature? It holds them in constant dialogue, thanks to the interaction of binary oppositions, until culture finally tames nature in the children of the second generation.

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Catherine’s ghost Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words with their Italian translation. 1 wrist; 2 grip; 3 knuckles; 4 yelled; 5 rage; 6 owing to; 7 gusty; 8 mourned; 9 soaked; 10 shiveringly; 11 closet.

2 READ the text again and do the following activities. 1 Write down what the two settings are. 1 The oak closet. 2 The moor. 2 The verb ‘resolved’ in line 3 means B decided. 3 Complete the sentences about Lockwood. 1 When he streched his arm out of the window, he touched a little, ice-cold hand. 2 He could not draw his arm back because the hand clung on to it. 3 A voice asked to be let in. 4 He could see the face of a child through the window. 5 He pulled its wrist until it began to bleed. 6 He piled some books against the hole in the window.

4 Describe Lockwood’s feelings. Intense horror, terror, fear.

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Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

5 Who does the ghost say she is? Catherine Linton.

8 Where does Lockwood say he has found Cathy’s name? He says he has read it scratched on the windowsill. 9 The passage is narrated in A the first person.

3 COMPLETE the summary with the words from the box. 1 Gothic; 2 locked; 3 wax; 4 unfriendly; 5 nails; 6 ghost; 7 rest; 8 more; 9 manners; 10 reliable. 7

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS BETWEEN TEXT AND GENRE

4 DISCUSS. Point out similarities and differences between the Gothic tradition (→ 4.6) and the way Emily Brontë uses it. The passage from Emily’s Wuthering Heights and the Gothic tradition share several elements, such as the setting in time and place, the atmosphere of gloom and mystery, the exaggerated reactions, the presence of supernatural elements, the dark and melancholy hero. However, these Gothic conventions are not used by the writer for their own sake, as a sensational contemplation of ‘taboo’ subjects, but to express and describe extreme, peculiar states of mind and feelings, to convey the struggle between the two opposed principles of love and hate, of order and chaos. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

1 READ the text and write a heading to each section. 1 2 3 4

Catherine explains the reasons why she has decided to marry Edgar Linton. Catherine’s dream. Nelly is aware of Heathcliff’s presence but Catherine is not. Catherine’s love for Heathcliff.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces privided. Highlighted in pink: words and phrases referring to Catherine’s behaviour and reactions; they denote a highly sensitive and emotional nature Highlighted in light blue: Nelly’s attitude is very rational and pragmatic: she encourages Catherine to consider things in a rational way and to reflect on the reasons of her choice. Nelly thinks the ‘worst motive’ is to marry Edgar in order to use his money and position to help Heathcliff (Heathcliff will resent it and so will Edgar), it is naive of Catherine to think that it would work Pink words: Catherine lists her reasons for marrying Edgar. At first they sound like the conventional motivations of a young girl: because he is handsome, nice, young, rich and respectable. Lines 24-26 sound ironic, as if Emily Brontë were mocking the sentimental heroines of previous literature. However, as Catherine goes on speaking, the reader realises her real motivations: she is concerned with Heathcliff’s recent condition of servitude due to her brother’s treatment of him. By marrying Edgar and acquiring a higher social status, she might help Heathcliff to improve his condition Highlighted in yellow: words referring to Edgar Linton: their connotation is cold Highlighted in green: words referring to Heathcliff: their connotation is heat and passion Green dots: similes used by Catherine to describe her love for the two men. Her love for Edgar will change with time, just as the trees and leaves change from one season to another. Her love for Heathcliff is eternal, like the ‘rocks beneath’ which are of little visible delight but necessary

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7 Decide whether the following statements about the text are true or false. 1 Lockwood’s shout brings Heathcliff to the door. T 2 Heathcliff is holding a torch in his hand. F 3 The light falls off his hand when he hears a noise. T 4 Lockwood tells him he screamed because of a bad dream. T 5 Heathcliff is pleased that someone let Lockwood sleep in that room. F

VISUAL ANALYSIS

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

6 How long does Lockwood think he has been listening to her? How long does she say she has been waiting? Lockwood thinks he has been listening to her cries for 15 minutes (‘a quarter of an hour’, line 21). Catherine says she has been waiting for 20 years (line 24).

I am Heathcliff

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

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The Victorian Age

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Who is the narrator? Does the narration proceed only in the past? The narrator is Nelly Dean, the housekeeper. No, it does not; there is a shift into the present tense in line 73 (‘I was superstitious about dreams then, and am still’). What are Cathy’s and Nelly’s different opinions about dreams? For Cathy dreams are ‘like wine through water’ (line 62), they alter the colour of her mind, they change her ideas and stay with her. Nelly is superstitious about dreams and fearful of what they may foresee. What happens in Cathy’s dream? She is in heaven but she feels unhappy and cries, so the angels fling her back to the earth, on top of Wuthering Heights, where she wakes up sobbing for joy. How does Cathy try to describe her bond to Heathcliff? She feels that she is a part of Heathcliff and feels his pains as he does. She thinks that if he did not exist, then she would not be the same person. Part 3 and 4 of the text contain examples of dramatic irony, that is, the reader perceives something which a character does not know. Identify the lines where this happens. Just before Catherine unforgettably identifies herself with Heathcliff (‘I am Heathcliff’, line 134), her own words have driven this ‘other self’ away (‘He had listened till he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him’, line 96). The climactic moment of supreme dedication and poetic grandeur therefore marks a void. As in Greek and Shakespearean tragedies, every sublime claim Catherine utters predicts her doom: ‘He quite deserted! we separated!’ (line 111), ‘Who is to separate us, pray? They’ll meet the fate of Milo!’ (lines 111-112). At this moment Heathcliff has understood himself to be deserted; the two are separated, and the transgressor who will ‘meet the fate of Milo’ is Catherine herself. Has Cathy’s love for Heathcliff something to do with physical attraction? It seems to have nothing to do with sexual attraction and physical desire. Their relationship is one of the soul, it is as eternal as ‘the rocks beneath’ because it transcends time and material existence (lines 132-135). It is concerned with a breaking through beyond the self, metaphysical and impersonal (lines 125-127). How is Cathy’s idea of love connected with death in lines 129-136? Its nature is somewhat religious, not only in its mysticism, but also in the awareness of the incompleteness of all the elements that make up human nature. In Catherine and Heathcliff the desire to lose the self in otherness is pure, and opens up the prospect of disintegration into death, that is, into anonymous natural energy.

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Consider Cathy’s conflict between a condition which offers few advantages and a socially acceptable one. Would you define her as a Victorian girl? Her love for Heathcliff offers her no material advantage. She feels the pressure of social conventions and wants to improve her social position. In this respect she is a Victorian woman, even though her character is Romantic. 2.6 LISTEN and complete the summary of the text. 1 is listening; 2 marriage proposal; 3 material; 4 respectable; 5 heaven; 6 missed; 7 has degraded; 8 leaves the room; 9 to desert; 10 kindred.

TRANSCRIPT Catherine speaks to Nelly in the kitchen. Neither of them is aware at first that Heathcliff is listening to their conversation. Catherine tells Nelly about Edgar’s marriage proposal and that she accepted. Nelly asks her if and why she loves Edgar, and she replies she does for a variety of material reasons: he is rich, handsome and respectable. Nelly disapproves, and Catherine admits that she is doing the wrong thing. Then she tells Nelly that she had a dream in which she went to heaven and was unhappy there because she missed Wuthering Heights. She compares her marriage to Linton to being in heaven. She explains that, although she loves Heathcliff very much, she cannot marry him because Hindley has degraded him too much and she would be degraded too. Heathcliff leaves the room full of shame, humiliation and despair, and so he is not present to hear Catherine say that she loves him more deeply than anything else in the world. Nelly emphasises that Heathcliff would be deserted if she marries Linton, and Catherine indignantly replies that she is not going to desert Heathcliff, but will use her influence to raise him up in society. She adds that they are such kindred spirits that they are the same person. 7

COMPETENCE: DEVELOPING A THEME

5 DISCUSS. Describe Emily Brontë’s treatment of the theme of love. The love between Catherine and Heathcliff is Romantic because it is intense, passionate and absolute. It fascinates us since it is not easily found or achieved in ordinary life.

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

4 FOCUS on the character of Heathcliff. 1

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VOCABULARY

1 READ the text and match the highlighted verbs with their meaning. 1 stamping; 2 thundered; 3 leant; 4 resumed; 5 howled; 6 endeavoured; 7 dashed; 8 groaning. 7

2 COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

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2 READ the text again and decide whether the following statements are true or false. Correct the false ones. 1

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Heathcliff was sitting by a tree waiting for Nelly. F He was leaning against a tree and had been standing in that position for a long time. He already knew about Catherine’s death. T Nelly felt sorry for Heathcliff. T Heathcliff was perfectly in control of his emotions. F He could not manage to control his emotions and fought against his inner agony. He wanted to know the details of Catherine’s death. T He was sure she had mentioned him before dying. F He asked Nelly whether Catherine had mentioned his name and was afraid of what Nelly might reply. Nelly said Catherine died in her sleep. T Heathcliff cursed Catherine. T He appeared resigned and defeated. F He had a violent reaction and tried to hurt himself by dashing his head against the trunk of a tree. Nelly tried to console him. F She gave up any attempt when he ordered her to go away. COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

3 IDENTIFY the narrator. Find the lines where he/she expresses personal remarks or inner thoughts. How would you define his/her attitude in the last paragraph? Nelly Dean. Lines 1-2, 11-14, 25-27, 47-48, 50. Rational and resigned.

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Consider his name, which is made up of two words: ‘heath’ and ‘cliff’. With the help of your dictionary, write down the denotation and connotation suggested by the two words. Heath: Denotation: An area of open land where rough grass and heather grow, but where there are few trees and bushes. Connotation: Wild character and love of freedom. Cliff: Denotation: A high area of rock with a steep side, especially at the edge of the sea. Connotation: Strength, loneliness, danger. How many people does he address his words to? To Nelly and Catherine. What elements of nature is he compared to? To a piece of timber (line 7), a wild beast (lines 44-45), a thunder (line 49). What aspects of his personality are underlined? His fierceness, determination and wildness.

5 EXPLAIN what Catherine is compared to. What is Heathcliff’s life without her like? To a lamb (line 28). An abyss where he cannot find her, who is his own life and soul (lines 42-43). 7

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS BETWEEN TEXT AND CONTEXT

6 DISCUSS. Identify the Romantic elements in the texts you have analysed from Wuthering Heights. Student’s speaking activity. Suggestion: Students should underline the exploration of human passions; the link between the characters and nature; the themes of love and death; Heathcliff’s passionate and wild behaviour, very much like that of a ‘Byronic hero’; the belief in ghosts; the bloody details; the transgression of social conventions and moral codes. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

7 WRITE 10-12 lines. Are Emily Brontë’s ‘opposing forces’ similar to William Blake’s ‘complementary opposites’ (→ 4.9)? Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Yes, they are similar to Blake’s complementary opposites (see Blake’s The Lamb and The Tyger): the principle of storm and energy and that of calm and settled assurance are opposed but complementary, and they ideally tend to unity.

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Heathcliff ’s despair

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COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

8 DISCUSS. What do you think of Heathcliff’s attitude? Would you define him as a selfish or a caring person? Student’s activity.

9 DISCUSS. Do you think Emily Brontë succeeds in expressing the mystical and passionate nature of a certain kind of love? Do you think that it is possible to have a ‘soul mate’? Student’s activity.

TRANSCRIPT Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tells the story of a young girl, Alice, who dreams that she follows a White Rabbit down a small hole into an amazing world where everything that happens is fantastic and illogical. Here she meets strange things and animals, characters like the Duchess, the Cheshire Cat, the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, and the King and Queen of Hearts. The novel, which describes her adventures with these creatures, is enclosed in a dream. In the end Alice wakes up coming back to reality and leaving the dreamy dimension.

3 READ about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

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5.16 Lewis Carroll Teaching tip The presentation Lewis Carroll in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

and answer the questions. 1

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COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ about Carroll’s life and works and answer the following questions. 1

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What was Carroll’s childhood like? It was an intensely happy one, described as a true ‘wonderland’ by the writer himself. Which novels gave him popularity? Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871). What was his reputation? Critics have often spoken of a dual nature in connection with the pedantic personality of the mathematician Dodgson and the delightful one of the writer Carroll, since poetry and logic were to him linked rather than opposed. Others have said that he had ‘the brain of a clever and abnormal man with the heart of a normal child’. What world did he create in his novels? He created a ‘nonsensical world’, where the principles that govern the common social and moral universe are questioned and carried to their logical extremes. He showed the inevitable absurdity of the world.

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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 2

2.8 LISTEN and complete the plot of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. 1 dreams; 2 White Rabbit; 3 amazing; 4 fantastic; 5 Duchess; 6 Hare; 7 wakes up; 8 reality; 9 dimension.

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What does this novel describe? It describes Alice’s adventures with the characters she meets in Wonderland during a dream. Where does it take place? The main setting of the novel is Wonderland, a strange and apparently crazy world, which Alice explores while sleeping and dreaming. She enters this world by following a strange rabbit and falling into its hole. The story also takes place in the ‘real’ world: in fact, Alice starts her adventures by dreaming while sitting next to her sister. What are the main themes? The main themes of the novel are growing up and the child’s struggle to survive in the adults’ world. When entering Wonderland, Alice gets to know a way of living and reasoning that is quite different from her own. During this journey she starts to understand the creatures that live here. In the end she loses most of her childish imagination: she has grown up and she cannot stay in Wonderland, the world of the children, any longer. The theme of identity is linked to that of growing up. In Wonderland, Alice is constantly ordered to identify herself by the creatures she meets, but she herself has doubts about her identity, raised by her physical appearance: she grows and shrinks several times, which she finds ‘very confusing’. What characterises the style? The story is carried forward through a series of puns and subtleties of typography, like spacing, odd usage of parentheses and capital letters, italics, margins and bindings. It also incorporates poetic language, in the form of parodies of nursery rhymes and songs. The resulting text is a harmonious whole. Who inspired the character of Alice? Alice’s character was inspired by and dedicated to Alice Liddell, the daughter of a friend of Lewis Carroll’s.

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words with their Italian translation. 1 mournfully; 2 dropped; 3 laid; 4 grumbled; 5 pinch; 6 dipped; 7 whiles; 8 raven; 9 gloomily; 10 bawled out.

2 READ the text again and do the following activities. 1 Where is the story set? Under a tree in front of the March Hare’s house (line 1). 2 Who is sitting at the table at the beginning? A The March Hare. C The Hatter. D The Dormouse. 3 Is Alice welcomed? No, she is not (lines 5-6, 13). 4 What time does the Hatter’s watch tell? C The day of the month. 5 How do the March Hare and the Hatter spend their time? By asking riddles that have no answers (lines 57-62). 6 What/Who does ‘him’ (line 63) refer to? C Time. 7 What female character is quoted at the end of the passage? The Queen of Hearts (line 80). 8 Who has the Queen of Hearts accused of killing the time? The Hatter (lines 91-92). 9 Does the time seem to pass for the characters present at this tea party? No, it does not (lines 94-95). 10 Time does not move regularly forward, since it is always six o’clock. What device have the three characters found to face time? Where have they transferred time movement? They keep moving around the table to a new set of places. They have transferred time movement to space (lines 96-101). 11 Is the narrator who describes the scene of the tea party a character in the story or a voice outside it? Is the point of view neutral or does it coincide with the point of view of one or more characters? The narrator is a voice outside the story. The point of view coincides with Alice’s.

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12 What effect does the choice of a limited point of view have for the reader? B It causes the reader’s identification with Alice. 13 Underline with different colours the words uttered by the March Hare, the Hatter, the Dormouse and Alice. Student’s activity. 1 What do their speeches have in common? They belong to a nonsensical world. 2 What problem creates a sort of anguish both in the March Hare and in the Hatter? The fact that time has been stopped, and now it is always six o’clock. 14 What kind of language is used in this passage? Choose from among the following. Surrealistic and absurd. 15 In lines 24-30 there are examples of false syllogisms. Square them. What is their function? ‘[I] say what [I] mean’ / ‘I mean what I say’, ‘I see what I eat’ / ‘I eat what I see’, ‘I breathe when I sleep’ / ‘I sleep when I breathe’. A To point out the importance of logic in everyday speech. 16 What is the key idea of the passage? A The mad reversal of logic concepts. 17 Reorder the main events of the text. 1 The March Hare and the Mad Hatter are having tea at a large table under a tree in front of the house. 2 The Hare offers Alice some wine, but there is only tea. 3 The Hatter tells Alice she needs a haircut and asks the riddle ‘Why is a raven like a writing-desk?’ 4 The Hatter complains that his watch is two days’ wrong. 5 Alice tells the Hatter and the Hare that they should not waste time by asking riddles with no answers. 6 It is forever six o’clock. 7 As this is tea-time, they must always have tea and thus they never have time to wash the cups. 8 So they just keep moving around the table to a new set of places.

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A mad tea party

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COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS WITH THE CONTEXT OF THE AGE

3 DISCUSS. Refer to 5.8 and state if Carroll was in line with the other Victorian novelists.

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Carroll was the creator of a ‘nonsensical world’, where the principles that govern the common social and moral universe are questioned and carried to their logical extremes. The strict education system of the Victorian Age limited the thoughts, speech and actions of the individual. Some Victorian novelists, such as Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë, highlighted the mechanisation of human beings, which affected especially children. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Carroll showed the likeliness of Victorian society to discourage the use of the imagination and highlighted the inevitable absurdity of the world he himself was part of, where personal and collective realities were in doubt and where the children and the poor were wondering whether their lives belonged to them or depended on others.

by the Puritan code and gained him a local reputation. However, the money he earned was not enough for a living, so he got a job in the Boston Custom House, which enabled him to marry Sophia Peabody in 1842, and to go on writing. For a while Hawthorne and his wife lived in Concord, then a lively intellectual centre thanks to the presence of the Transcendentalist thinkers Emerson and Thoreau. Financial problems forced Hawthorne to return to Salem, where he took up a job at the Custom House in 1846. His masterpiece The Scarlet Letter appeared in 1850, followed the next year by The House of the Seven Gables and by The Blithedale Romance in 1852. Now famous, Hawthorne wrote a campaign biography for his old college friend, Franklin Pierce, who won the presidential elections in 1853. Hawthorne was appointed US consul in Liverpool, England. After four years he resigned and travelled to France and Italy. While in Italy, he wrote the novel The Marble Faun (1860). He spent the last years of his life in Concord; his creativity declined, he worked at three novels but left them unfinished. He died in 1864.

The Scarlet Letter COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

5.17 Nathaniel Hawthorne Teaching tip The presentation Nathaniel Hawthorne in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

1 READ the texts on pages 77-78 and answer the following questions. 1

Text Bank 56: The Scarlet Letter Teacher’s key on page 309.

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3.1 LISTEN and complete the life and works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 1 ancestors; 2 witch trials; 3 poor health; 4 allegorical; 5 moral conflicts; 6 Custom House; 7 thinkers; 8 Financial; 9 campaign biography; 10 declined.

TRANSCRIPT Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. His Puritan ancestors had settled there during the 17th century and had been involved in some of the town’s main historical events, including the infamous witch trials of 1692. Hawthorne lost his father at the age of 4 and spent the early years of his life in domestic seclusion because of his poor health. After attending Bowdoin College in Maine, he returned to Salem and published his first novel, Fanshawe (1828), which he later rejected. He also started to write short stories, which were later collected in Twice-Told Tales (1837) and Mosses from an Old Manse (1846). These allegorical stories focused on the theme of the moral conflicts imposed

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Where is the story set? What is the first chapter about? It is set in Boston, in the Puritan New England of the 17th century. The first chapter is a long preamble on the Salem Custom House where, in a deserted room, the narrator finds a piece of gold-embroidered scarlet cloth in the shape of the letter ‘A’. There is also a manuscript telling the story of Hester Prynne. The narrator decides to take this narrative as the starting point for the novel. What kind of woman is Hester? Hester Prynne is impulsive and passionate, she lives in public shame like an outcast, but she gains strength and purity from this isolation. What do Dimmesdale and Chillingworth represent? Reverend Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth represent two sides of the human will: the active side and the passive one. Chillingworth is the villain of the story; he joins intellect and will to achieve his revenge. His only aim is to guide and observe Dimmesdale’s and Hester’s agony. He commits what the author considers the worst of sins, that is, the violation of the human heart. Dimmesdale, on the other hand, is all intellect without any will. He is passive, sensitive and refined; he lives under the pain of the shame deriving from his having sinned in the face of God.

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Public shame

Highlighted in green: description of the scarlet letter embroidered on Hester’s bosom and its effect on the crowd Highlighted in light blue: the attitude of the crowd of Puritan citizens gathered around the scaffold. The crowd has no individual faces or comments, they are a group, all behaving in the same way. They have no active role, they are merely a presence Red dots: description of Hester’s childhood and youth, her parental house and parents. She used to live in a decaying house with anxious parents Highlighted in grey: Hester’s memory of her husband, Chillingworth. He was a scholar, with the power to penetrate the human soul, and had a slightly deformed, unattractive appearance

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

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Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a heading to each section. Part 1 (lines 1-12) Opening of the prison door, and appearance of the beadle and Hester with her baby in her arms. Part 2 (lines 13-45) Hester and her baby are on the scaffold in front of the crowd. Part 3 (lines 46-58) Hester bears the eyes of the crowd. Part 4 (lines 59-83) Hester’s memories of her childhood and youth. Part 5 (lines 84-87) Hester comes back to her reality on the scaffold.

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2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in yellow: description of the beadle Highlighted in pink: description of Hester. She is tall, dark-eyed, with a rich complexion and shining hair; she is beautiful, elegant and ladylike in her manners; she has a strong character and dignity Pink words: Hester’s actions on the scaffold Light blue words: Hester’s feelings and character Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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How does the description of the beadle convey the Puritan atmosphere? He represents the strictness, the ‘dismal severity’ of the Puritan laws. He is ‘grim and grisly’ and prepared to see the law fulfilled in all its details – one assumes with no compassion or discrimination. This is the first time Hester appears in the book. How does Hawthorne tell the reader about her past while staying in the present? At first, she is only a young woman and a mother, but eventually she is named. By describing the changes that have taken place in her character and looks during her imprisonment, Hawthorne is able to show ‘the before’ (her ‘reckless spirit’) and ‘the after’ (her ladylike elegance and beauty). By having her imagine her past in order to block out the horrible present of the public shaming, he is able to give her history in pictorial flashbacks. Hester had sewn her own dress in prison. What aspects of her character does Hawthorne express in the description of this dress? The dress is so gorgeous and extravagant, compared with what would be expected, that we know that Hester is an exceptional character. Her skill is shown, as well as the passion and spirit to have made her dress of shame into a spectacular ornament. Which character(s) do(es) not behave as expected? This question can be answered at various levels. The simplest is that Hester does not behave with the shame expected by the crowd. The crowd, in turn, does not behave as Hester expects, in fact they remain silent. Finally, Hester herself does not behave as she expected – she would have preferred to disdain the shouting crowd, but finds their silence disconcerting and has to counter it with her memories.

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What does Pearl stand for? Little Pearl is a strange, elf-like creature with incredible energy. She represents freedom, intuitiveness and a poetic view of the world. She is the image of innocence and acts as a saviour to her mother. How did Hawthorne deal with the theme of sin? His main concern was not simply with sin, but with its relation to guilt; he observed and portrayed the torments of a guilty conscience, he focused on the moral and psychological effects of sin: isolation, morbidity, the distortion and frustration of emotional life, secrecy and twofaced appearance. What symbols did he use? He used traditional symbols derived from the Bible, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton: light and darkness; the dark forest where witches practise their rites and illicit lovers meet, opposed to the severe Puritan town; the mirror; the sea; the snake; fire. The central symbol is the letter ‘A’ worn on Hester’s bosom, which is intended as a symbol of Hester’s shame but finally becomes the symbol of her personal identity.

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The old, scholarly man whom Hester imagines has an unusual feature, what is it? Is it positive or negative? Explain your answer. The unusual feature is the eyes: they could ‘read the human soul’ (line 73). This is a mysterious comment but also sinister, as all the other features of the man are negative – he is unpleasantly old and slightly deformed. How and why does Hawthorne deliberately exaggerate the description of the letter ‘A’? He exaggerates the description by using words and phrases like ‘fine red cloth’, ‘elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread’, ‘artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy’, ‘fitting’, ‘of a splendour’, ‘greatly beyond […] sumptuary regulations’ (lines 20-25), ‘so fantastically embroidered and illuminated’ (line 43). This serves to make the letter ‘A’ stand out as a symbol, not merely of the Puritan adulteress, but of Hester’s beauty, skill and individuality. In addition to this, the type of language contrasts with the narrow and drab Puritan culture. What opposing images are described at the beginning and towards the end of this extract? In what way is the letter ‘A’ an image of opposites? At the beginning of the extract light and darkness are contrasted – the prison and freedom, Puritan law and Hester’s individuality. Towards the end Hawthorne contrasts reality and Hester’s imagination. (Students might pick the more concrete opposition of the young, beautiful and fertile Hester with the deformed old figure of her husband.) The letter ‘A’ is a thing of beauty, pride and individuality – the essence of Hester –, but it is also the symbol of shame and sin.

Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Herman Melville. The philosophy of Transcendentalism encouraged man to transcend the materialistic world of experience and facts through reflection and intuition in order to discover and become aware of eternal truths in the natural world. Hawthorne’s importance to American literature is mainly due to three reasons. First, he was a skilled novelist with an impressive talent for form. For instance, the four characters in The Scarlet Letter are so tightly linked together that the plot is given a unity of action rising slowly up to the scene of Dimmesdale’s public confession. A second reason is Hawthorne’s moral insight. He was deeply concerned with the concepts of original sin and guilt and the claims of law and conscience. He did not share the Transcendentalists’ optimism about the potentialities of human nature; instead, he looked more honestly into life, finding in it much suffering and conflict but also finding the redeeming power of love. A third reason is Hawthorne’s mastery of allegory and symbolism. His work started the tradition in American fiction of the symbolic romance that analyses the complexities and ambiguities of man’s choices.

5.18 Herman Melville Teaching tip The presentation Herman Melville in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 57: Moby-Dick Teacher’s key on page 310. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

4 COMPLETE the summary with the words from the box. 1 punishment; 2 surprise; 3 embroidered; 4 scaffold; 5 noble; 6 face; 7 worry; 8 scholarly; 9 Puritan; 10 sinner. 7

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS WITH THE LITERARY CONTEXT OF THE AGE

5 DISCUSS. Refer to 5.9 and to Hawthorne’s life and works. Explain how Hawthorne contributed to the development of a truly American literature.

1 READ about Melville’s life and works and find 1

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4 Student’s speaking activity. Suggestion: Hawthorne’s work has been at the centre of the American canon since the first publication of The Scarlet Letter. During his life he came in touch with the leading literary and philosophical minds of his day: Ralph Waldo

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out: why Melville gave up his studies; He left school because of his father’s death and the subsequent difficult financial conditions of his family. what job he took up; After taking various jobs, in 1839 he signed on as crew on a merchant ship and from then on he travelled widely and experienced all kinds of adventures. where he found the material for his writings; His experience at sea provided the material for almost all his novels and stories. who influenced him; Nathaniel Hawthorne encouraged him to adopt a more complex and symbolical narrative form. his masterpiece and its reception. His masterpiece Moby-Dick was published in 1851. The novel met with a cool reception and marked the beginning of the decline of Melville’s popularity.

3.3 LISTEN and complete the plot and the setting of Moby-Dick with the missing information. 1 whaling ship; 2 hunting down; 3 had bitten; 4 mixed races; 5 first mate; 6 skill; 7 narrator; 8 three days; 9 rage; 10 sinking ship.

TRANSCRIPT The story takes place in the 1830s or 1840s aboard the whaling ship Pequod in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Ahab, the captain of the ship, has devoted his life to hunting down and killing a white sperm whale, called Moby Dick, which had bitten off his leg during a previous whaling expedition. The crew of the ship consists of human types of mixed races and religions, like the wise and cautious first mate, Starbuck; the superstitious Queequeg, a Maori whom Ahab has hired because of his skill with the harpoon; and the cabin boy, Pip. Ishmael, the narrator, joins them in Nantucket before the departure of the ship. The story is based on the hunt for the whale, which is finally seen and hunted for three days. Ahab eventually wounds Moby Dick, but in its rage the animal destroys the Pequod and its crew. Only Ishmael is not caught in the vortex of the sinking ship and manages to float upon a coffin. He survives to tell the story. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

3 READ about Moby-Dick on pages 82-83 and answer the following questions. 1

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Where does the story take place and what is it based on? It takes place in the 1830s or 1840s aboard the whaling ship Pequod in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans. It is based on the hunt for a white sperm whale, called Moby Dick, which is finally seen and hunted for three days. What does Ahab embody? He embodies the American Prometheus, a tragic hero who has been viewed by critics in two different perspectives: either as an overreacher who equals himself to God and makes a pact with the devil or as the voice of the instinctive spirituality of the New World, which rejects the tyranny of nature over man. Does Melville share Whitman’s attitude towards the American experience? Melville’s work lacks the optimistic, patriotic tone of Whitman’s poetry, and is rather marked by pessimism arising from the destruction of illusions, the clash between the ideal and the real.

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What literary echoes are present in the novel? The novel is full of literary and religious echoes; Ahab’s quest reminds us of the wanderings of Ulysses, and there are parallels with the biblical history of Jonah, who, like Ahab, refused to obey the destiny God had decided for him and was punished. Another influence can be found in the English Romantic poets. What language and narrative technique did Melville employ? The language of the novel ranges from everyday, colloquial speech to a highly symbolical and figurative style. The book contains some dictionary definitions of the whale, together with what the animal is called in 13 different languages, as well as a detailed description of the anatomy of the whale, and of the tools needed to hunt, kill and then cut it up. The first-person narrative is complemented by the omniscient impersonal narrative. What interpretations have been given of the white whale? Moby Dick is far more than a natural creature; Ahab hates him as the personification of the evil in the world – an active, impersonal force that man has to contend with. It could also represent a sort of mirror in which Ahab and his crew look for their own image, the embodiment of mankind’s quest for a reason for existence. But the white whale is also a symbol of the hidden and mysterious forces of nature, a wonderful and powerful nature, capable of sudden and incredible acts of destruction. Therefore the hunt stands for the archetypal conflict between man and nature in an age in which nature was seen as a ‘commodity’ and whales were considered a source of oil, meat, whalebone and the valuable spermaceti oil.

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Captain Ahab Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words with their meaning. 1 thrusting; 2 indignity; 3 deed; 4 naught; 5 yonder; 6 Hark; 7 Reckon; 8 outrageous; 9 billow; 10 mouldings.

2 READ the text again and do the following activities. 1 What does the phrase ‘the little lower layer’ in line 1 mean? C The deepest word. 2 What image does Ahab use to refer to visible reality? ‘pasteboard masks’ (lines 1-2).

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3 What does ‘shoved’ in line 5 mean? A Pushed roughly.

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4 What does Ahab identify the whale with in lines 4-7? He identifies it with the wall thrust upon man by nature with terrible strength and inscrutable malice.

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VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a caption to describe

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7 What is Stubb’s reaction? He laughs (line 19).

the content of each section.

8 How do you interpret Ahab’s words about Sturbuck in his aside in lines 25-27? He thinks he has him in his power.

Part 1 (lines 1-12) Identification of the whale as a spiritual symbol. Part 2 (lines 13-31) Discussion of its possible meanings.

9 Tick the elements that make Captain Ahab a titanic hero. He defies fate in a state of mad exaltation. He tries to go beyond human limits. He has arrogant ambition.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in pink: the nature described in the first paragraph is an alive, wild, sublime nature that frightens man Highlighted in blue: the contrasting images on which the passage is built: nameless/sign, visible/invisible, love/fright, colour / absence of colour, blankness/meaning Highlighted in yellow: the white whale is a symbol of spiritual things for those who believe and, at the same time, the symbol of void, annihilation and absence for the atheist. It may be interpreted at once as the principle of light and colour or its total absence Highlighted in green: the similes referred to nature (‘as the shaking of that buffalo robe to the frightened colt’, line 3; ‘like the harlot’, line 23), the universe (‘a leper’, line 28) and man (‘wilful travellers in Lapland’, line 28)

10 Melville makes use of poetic language in this extract. Find examples of: Student’s activity. Some examples: • simile; ‘All visible objects […] are but as pasteboard masks’ (lines 1-2). • archaism; ‘Hark ye’ (line 1), ‘hath’ (line 12), ‘thou reddenest and palest’ (line 13). • metaphor. ‘the white whale is that wall’ (line 5). 11 The imagery of the last part of the monologue draws upon nature. What ideas are implied? Complete the table below. Images from nature Meaning suggested the sun (line 9) leopards (line 17) hurricane (line 20) sapling (line 21) billow (line 24)

the source of life and energy the instinctual, primitive creatures force, strength youth, tenderness force, energy

12 Use the words from the box to complete the vision of mankind and its relation to the universe which emerges in Ahab’s monologue. 1 pessimistic; 2 walls; 3 power; 4 mask; 5 evil; 6 universe; 7 destiny. 7

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

2

3

3 DISCUSS the following questions. 1

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The whiteness of the whale Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

5 How does he feel about it? He feels oppressed, he hates it (lines 6-9). 6 What is the crew’s attitude? B They stare at Ahab in a stupefied way.

What do you think of Ahab’s obsession to chase Moby Dick? Can you justify it? Do you understand his reasons? Student’s activity.

The border between the villain and the victim is made deliberately ambiguous by Melville. On whose side do you think he is, Ahab’s or Moby Dick’s? Who is the victim and who the villain? Student’s activity.

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4

5

What does Ishmael believe as regards the world and its creation? He believes that the visible things were created in love, while the invisible ones were formed in fright. What is still to be understood? The reasons behind the appeal that the whiteness has on the soul. What does the whiteness apparently hide? The ‘heartless voids and immensities of the universe’ (lines 13-14). What does the theory of the natural philosophers state? It states that all the colours and visible things are just ‘deceits’. What is the effect of the whiteness on the infidel? He is made blind by staring at it.

8

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3.6 LISTEN and complete the summary of the text. 1 whiteness; 2 power; 3 purity; 4 dimension; 5 shadows; 6 supernatural; 7 absence; 8 universe; 9 search; 10 symbolic.

TRANSCRIPT Ishmael thinks about the whiteness of Moby Dick, which he believes adds to the whale’s dreadful power. Apart from the characteristics that are most commonly associated with the colour white, such as purity or even holiness, Ishmael says that there is another dimension to whiteness. It is that of shadows. He underlines that white has a supernatural quality, it is the absence of colour, because it is seldom found in nature in its purest form and because by its indefiniteness it hints at the heartless voids and immensities of the universe. Ishmael concludes that it is both the beautiful, attractive quality of white and its disturbing, terrible, supernatural quality that give the search for the white whale a symbolic meaning. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

5 WRITE a 10/12-line commentary to explain the use of symbolism in Melville and Hawthorne (→ 5.17). Hawthorne’s use of symbols draws on traditional sources such as the Bible, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton: light and darkness; the dark forest where witches practise their rites and illicit lovers meet, opposed to the severe Puritan town; the mirror; the sea; the snake; fire. The most important symbol in his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter is the letter ‘A’ worn on Hester’s bosom, which provided Hawthorne with the combination of moral and material he was looking for. The letter ‘A’ is intended as a symbol of Hester’s Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

shame but it finally becomes the symbol of her personal identity. In Melville’s novel the white whale could represent a sort of mirror in which Ahab and his crew look for their own image. But it is also the personification of the evil in the world and a symbol of the hidden and mysterious forces of nature, a wonderful and powerful nature, capable of sudden and incredible acts of destruction. Therefore, the hunt stands for the archetypal conflict between man and nature in an age in which nature was seen as a ‘commodity’ and whales were considered a source of oil, meat, whalebone and the valuable spermaceti oil.

5.19 Walt Whitman Teaching tip The presentation Walt Whitman in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 58: I Hear America Singing Teacher’s key on page 311. Text Bank 59: Song of Myself Teacher’s key on page 312. COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

1 READ about Whitman’s life and works and complete the factfile. Place of birth: West Hills on Long Island, New York. Education: He had little formal education and acquired a self-taught culture. Readings: The Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Carlyle, Goethe, Hegel, Emerson, Eastern religion and philosophy. Job experiences: At the age of 11 he started to work as an office boy for some Brooklyn lawyers and then became a printer’s apprentice for a local newspaper. Journalism became his career. Beliefs: He supported radical democratic causes, was in favour of the abolition of slavery and the national integrity promoted by Lincoln, and believed in the value of democracy and technological progress. Journeys: He travelled from New York to New Orleans, returning via Chicago. Public reaction to his works: His third edition of Leaves of Grass aroused the indignation of puritanical readers and gained him a reputation for obscenity and homosexuality. Reputation: Popular in Europe in the 1870s, he was especially appreciated by the Aesthetic Movement. In America he had Ralph Waldo Emerson’s support during his lifetime, and

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How does Ishmael’s vision of the whale compare to Ahab’s one in T70? Both views see in Moby Dick the embodiment of the invisible forces of nature. In Ahab’s view, however, there is a more precise identification of the whiteness with evil, while Ishmael underlines the principle of ‘indefiniteness’. What is the allegorical meaning of ‘the fiery hunt’ (line 31)? It becomes the attempt to find a meaning to fill the void in life, the embodiment of mankind’s quest for a reason for existence. Do you think that Ishmael’s reflection is modern in spirit? Can you find such a powerful symbol as Moby Dick which might embody evil or the absence of meaning in the contemporary world? Students’ activity.

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influenced later poets such as Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg and, more recently, the Beat Generation. He is generally regarded as the father of American poetry, as the first voice distinctly new and ‘American’. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

T72

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the poem and write a caption to describe the content of each stanza. Stanza 1 Lincoln’s assassination. Stanza 2 The victory of democracy. Stanza 3 The poet’s mourning.

2 READ the rest of the text and answer the 1

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2 3

4

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6

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following questions. Why is Leaves of Grass unique? Because it is a life-long poem in whose various editions all of Whitman’s poetry was incorporated. This implied a process of development and expansion resulting from the fact that Whitman never lost a transcendental sense of the unity of all things. How did Whitman view reality? As a process, a continuing, all-embracing flow. Why did he reject traditional poetic forms? Because they imposed rigidity and completeness upon the reality, which is in fact constantly unfolding. How did his approach to nature differ from his contemporaries’? He rejected the pastoral trend and treated the natural world as the body of the earth, a material entity with a character that attracted the poet’s curiousity. How did he conceive of the human body? The human body, with its sensual impulses, was treated as continuous with nature. Whitman discovered in himself the same energies and materials that brought the earth to life. What was the self identified with? Whitman’s relation to the earth was also mystical because it identified the self with this larger, more powerful, and only partially knowable entity. What new kind of line did he use? He used free verse. He rejected rhymes and regular lines with a fixed number of syllables or stresses in favour of long lines where rhythm is naturally determined by the thought or emotion expressed. His poems proceed by accumulation and addition, the participle often replaces the finite verb, and the overall impression is one of fragmentation and lack of unity. What new themes did he choose? He celebrated America in all its variety – the land itself, its people, its natural life, the idea of democracy and the ‘American dream’. Another main theme is himself, his task, as a poet, to respond to the spirit of his country, to give voice to the common man, to reveal the truth, like a prophet, mixing with the crowd and embracing mankind in brotherly love. He also dealt with physical love and the theme of sex. What he valued most was the dignity of the individual, conceived as the unity of body and soul, and with a right to self-expression and personal experience.

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O Captain! my Captain!

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in yellow: terms referring to President Lincoln. He is seen as a great leader, a father who can guide the country Highlighted in pink: symbolic images: the ‘trip’ stands for the journey towards freedom, which is fearful because it is connected with the war; the ‘rack’ is slavery; the ‘prize’ is the union; the ‘port’ is the victory of freedom and democracy; the ‘vessel’ is the guide represented by the leader Highlighted in grey: the American people are exulting and celebrating the victory of freedom and democracy Green dots: the prevailing sentence form in the poem is exclamation Red dots: use of repetition

3 DISCUSS the following questions. 1 2

3

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5

What does the speaker exhort his captain to do? To ‘rise up and hear the bells’ (line 9). How does the speaker’s mood vary throughout the poem? It varies from excitement (lines 1-4, 9-12) to sorrow and mourning (line 17-18, 22). Whitman’s poems try to break down the barriers of form between prose and poetry through the use of free verse. Does this poem employ this device? No, it does not. There is a rhyme scheme (AABBCDED). What tense prevails? What is the effect? The present tense. It gives the poem a dramatic quality of immediacy. Is the poet simply celebrating a great statesman or is he also speaking in terms of personal loss? Both. Whitman’s poem testifies to his passionate patriotism, to his belief in the American dream, as well as to his appreciation of Lincoln both as a politician and a man, a ‘father’.

4 WRITE a 10/12-line commentary to explain

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3 DESCRIBE Whitman’s freedom in the use of verse. He rejects rhymes and regular lines with a fixed number of syllables or stresses in favour of long lines where rhythm is naturally determined by the thought or emotion expressed.

the link between Whitman’s poem and American history. Student’s writing activity with reference to 5.4. Suggestion: President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 had a deep impact on the nation since the last bloody battles of the Civil War were still a recent memory. There was widespread mourning and grief across the country, and Whitman, who was a great admirer of Lincoln, wrote this poem. The poet thought that Lincoln embodied the American virtues of honesty and courage, and his death inspired a simple, three-stanza poem of sorrow that little resembled his other, more experimental writings. O Captain! my Captain! became one of the most popular poems Whitman would ever write and the poem’s evocation of triumph overshadowed by despair spoke to readers throughout the shattered nation.

T73

COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

4 EXPLAIN why the poet uses brackets in lines 12-15. He uses them to stress the contrast between the positive feelings he has expressed so far in the poem and the burdens he still carries from the past. He refers to the old troubles and worries he thought he had got rid of, which he probably wants to separate from his new state of mind.

5 FIND examples of enumeration and cataloguing in the poem. Lines 4-6, 19, 22, 27-31, 34-40.

6 FOCUS on the title of the poem. What does it suggest to you? The title suggests the width and vastness of the American landscape, the chance to enlarge one’s horizon and views, the sense of freedom given by the close contact with the land.

Song of the Open Road Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

7 DEFINE the tone of the poem with the words from the box. Then point out the syntactic features that justify your choice. Assertive, bold, energetic. The use of the reflexive pronoun ‘myself’ (lines 4, 16, 20, 27-28, 40), the volition future ‘I will’ (lines 15, 27-29), exclamatives and exhortations (lines 32-38).

VOCABULARY

1 READ the poem and find the words which mean the following. 1 whimper; 2 complaints; 3 querulous; 4 suffice; 5 burdens; 6 loos’d; 7 undeniable; 8 toss; 9 detain’d; 10 mind not. 7

8 UNDERLINE the words and phrases referring to the setting. How is it connoted? ‘[open] road’ (lines 1, 7, 32), ‘world’ (line 2), ‘long brown path’ (line 3), ‘The earth’ (line 8), ‘great draughts of space’ (line 21), ‘The east and the west’, ‘the north and the south’ (line 22). The setting, which is wild and vast, evokes the values of liberty, freedom and brotherly union.

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the poem again and briefly summarise the content of each stanza. 1 2 3

The narrator sets out on a journey around his country on foot. He declares himself free from any limitation and constraint. He exhorts other people to join him during his journey.

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9 FOCUS on the pronoun ‘I’. 1 2

How many times does it occur? Thirty-four times. Identify and discuss the adjectives and phrases connected with the speaking voice and define its attitude. ‘light-hearted’ (line 1), ‘Healthy, free’ (line 2), ‘I myself am good-fortune’ (line 4), ‘Strong and content’ (line 7), ‘loos’d of limits and imaginary lines’ (line 16), ‘my own master total and absolute’ (line 17), ‘Gently, but with

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COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

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undeniable will’ (line 20), ‘larger, better’ (line 23), ‘I held so much goodness’ (line 24), ‘a new gladness and roughness’ (line 29), ‘my love more precious than money’ (line 39). The attitude is one of open-mindedness, of optimism and faith in a dynamic future and brotherly love.

5.20 Emily Dickinson Teaching tip The presentation Emily Dickinson in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 60: Wild Nights – Wild Nights! Teacher’s key on page 313.

10 IDENTIFY the ‘you’ and the ‘others’, who are mainly defined through their occupations, and complete the table below pointing out the categories they belong to.

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Occupations

Categories

line 34 line 35 line 36 line 37

clerks craftsmen students, teachers the clergy; the men of the law (lawyers, judges)

Whitman uses two expressions that refer to all these people. What are they? What does this imply? ‘men and women’ (line 13), ‘Camerado’ (line 38). They imply the idea of brotherhood, the sense of belonging to mankind.

Text Bank 61: A narrow Fellow in the Grass Teacher’s key on page 314. Text Bank 62: I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – Teacher’s key on page 315. Text Bank 63: As if the Sea should part / Time feels so vast that were it not Teacher’s key on page 316. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the texts on pages 93-94 and answer 1

11 THE ROAD is a central symbol in American culture and the journey along it is at the same time real and metaphorical. What are these two elements associated with in the poem? They are associated with freedom; meeting new people; having the time to think, listening, searching, receiving, contemplating, giving and sharing with other people. 7

2

COMPETENCE: CONTRASTING TEXTS

12 DISCUSS. Compare this poem with the other works by Whitman you have read as regards verse, images, choice of theme and aim. Student’s speaking activity. 3 7

COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

13 DISCUSS. ‘Being on the road’ is a very common situation not only in American literature but also in films and music. 1 2

Have you seen any ‘road movies’? Can you think of any songs dealing with this topic? Class discussion. 4

14 DISCUSS. What is your idea of freedom? Is Whitman’s poem close to your feelings or not? Student’s activity.

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the following questions. What kind of education did Emily Dickinson receive? Born into a middle-class Puritan family, she received her university education at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, where she refused to declare her faith in public, as was required by the Puritan tradition, and then decided to interrupt her studies and return home. How did she live her whole life? She lived a life of seclusion, she only wore white clothes, as ambiguous emblems of spiritual marriage and singleness, and never left her father’s house except for some walks in the garden. She hid her mind, as well as her person, from all but the members of her family, especially her sister Lavinia and a few friends to whom she wrote wonderful letters. Letter-writing became her only form of contact with the world, and her poems also seem to have been written for the purpose of communication rather than for publication. When and how were her poems published? Four years after her death, the literary critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson was asked to make a selection from her work. Poems by Emily Dickinson appeared in 1890 with some corrections and changes meant to suit the taste of a public accustomed to more traditional rhythms and images. A complete edition of her poems appeared in 1955, edited by Thomas Johnson, who re-established the form in which she wrote them, with the original and eccentric punctuation. What issues did Dickinson deal with? She dealt with the eternal issues of life: death and loss, love and desire, time, fear, sorrow, despair, God, nature and man’s relation to the universe.

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2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in pink: the central metaphor of the poem is that of a soft songbird standing for hope Highlighted in yellow: the human soul is the place where hope is Underlined in blue: other metaphors: the ‘storm’ stands for the difficulties and the chaos that sometimes affect life; the ‘chillest land’ stands for hardship or suffering; the ‘sea’ is a metaphor for life; a ‘crumb’ is an everyday detail which represents friendship and love Highlighted in light blue: repetition Green letters: assonance Pink letters: alliteration

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

2

3 4

7

Provide evidence that hope is personal, tireless, resilient, fearless and heroically strong. Personal: ‘perches in the soul’ (line 2); tireless: ‘And never stops – at all’ (line 4); resilient: ‘in the chillest land’ (line 9); fearless: ‘on the strangest Sea’ (line 10); heroically strong: ‘never, in Extremity – / It asked a crumb’ (lines 11-12). The vehicle of the metaphor for hope is stated only at the end of the second stanza. What word does the author use at first? Try to explain why. The word ‘thing’ (line 1). To leave the image of hope indefinite and therefore more evocative. What semantic area does Dickinson draw upon to create her metaphors? Nature. What can you infer about her approach and attitude to nature? She is fond of the little, trifling details of the natural world. COMPETENCE: CONTRASTING AUTHORS

4 DISCUSS the similarities and differences T74

Hope is the thing with feathers Emily Dickinson, Poem 254

VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the poem and write a caption to describe the content of each stanza. Stanza 1 Description of hope. Stanza 2 Hope is sweet and keeps warm. Stanza 3 Even the smallest portion of oneself can provide an entire meal for hope. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

between Dickinson’s and Whitman’s (→ 5.19) poetry. Teaching tip Give advice about how to compare and contrast different authors (→ Study Skill 23, p. 421) and have your students discuss the similarities and differences between Dickinson’s and Whitman’s poetry.

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From what distinct points of view did she convey death, love and nature? She wrote about death from the point of view of the person dying or of a witness. She sometimes felt horror or compassion, and she even wrote about her own death. She explored the theme of love through a full range of emotions: from ecstatic and sensual celebration to the despair due to separation. She presented nature in three ways: through an objective description; by juxtaposing the thing observed and the soul of the observer, so that the natural object leads to philosophical speculation; as a source of imagery to emphasise an abstract concept or theme. In what sense did she break with the stereotypes of poetry? Her poems are generally short and organised in simple quatrains. They do not have a title. Their language is characterised by monosyllabic words, by terms from various sources – law, geometry, engineering –, by common words that come alive in unusual contexts. She uses the dash, which breaks lines apart. What is the function of the dash in her poems? It forces the reader to pause and reconsider, and provides a visible, physical space for thought. What were the main influences on her poetry? Her poetry was influenced by the reading of the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, the Metaphysical poets and contemporary writers like Emily Brontë and Robert Browning. The same forces that had long dominated New England – the Puritan tradition and Emerson’s Transcendentalism – also contributed to shaping her mind. How does she compare to Whitman? They both broke with poetic conventions, but Dickinson’s poetry, unlike Whitman’s, is concerned with questions, intuitions and moods rather than statements and assertions. Her limited vision is the poetic antithesis of Whitman. If Whitman was the poet of wholeness, she was the poet of what is broken and absent.

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Student’s speaking activity. Suggestion:

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Whitman

Dickinson

Structure of poems

free verse; long lines; rejected rhymes

short lines; simple quatrains; free use of rhymes

Language

dialect and common speech mixed with the jargon of science and philosophy; accumulation of details; avoids similes and metaphors

elliptical; use of rhetorical devices and dashes

Themes

freedom and democracy; the American dream; the poet’s task to give voice to the common man; physical love; the dignity of the individual

exploration of universal issues through trivial, everyday images: death and loss; love and desire; time; fear; sorrow; despair; God; hope; nature; man’s relation to the universe

The poet’s attitude

broke away from convention; optimistic attitude

broke away from stereotypes; lived a life of isolation

T75

Because I could not stop for Death Emily Dickinson, Poem 712

LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

VOCABULARY

1 READ the poem and find the words which mean the following. 1 but just; 2 haste; 3 Civility; 4 Chill; 5 before; 6 surmised. 7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

7

COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

3 ANALYSE the rhyme scheme of the poem. What conclusions can you draw? There is no rhyme scheme. The poet breaks away from the conventions of poetry and anticipates modern experimentation.

4 POINT out what is unusual in the punctuation of the poem. What effect do you think Dickinson wanted to create using these devices? The poem is characterised by the lack of punctuation and the use of dashes. In this way Dickinson creates suspense, emphasises certain words and forces the reader to pause and reconsider. As a result the emotion expressed in the poem is highlighted.

2 READ the poem again and single out the main idea in each stanza. Stanza 1 Death kindly stopped to visit the speaker. Stanza 2 The speaker had to give up what she was doing. Stanza 3 Death and the speaker rode through the village. Stanza 4 The sun went down and the weather was cold. Stanza 5 They stopped at a strange house. Stanza 6 The speaker understood she was riding towards eternity. Now suggest possible titles for the poem, supporting your choice(s) with references to the text. Student’s activity.

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5 FIND an example of repetition and say what it adds to the poem. The repetition of ‘We passed’ (lines 11-12) creates a sort of trance-like atmosphere and conveys the sense of inevitability of the journey towards eternity.

6 UNDERLINE the familiar, everyday images present in the poem applied by Dickinson to the exploration of deep spiritual experiences. ‘labor’, ‘leisure’ (line 7); ‘School’ (line 9); ‘Fields of Gazing Grain’ (line 11); ‘Setting Sun’ (line 12); ‘Gown’ (line 15); ‘Tippet’ (line 16); ‘Roof’ (line 19); ‘Cornice’ (line 20).

7 WRITE down the expressions referring to death. What device does Dickinson use to introduce death? What kind of image does she turn the traditional cliché of death into? ‘kindly’ (line 2); ‘Carriage’ (line 3); ‘slowly’ (line 5);

is it connoted? What features does the poet insist on? It is connoted like a house. On its architectural features.

9 HOW would you describe the mood of the poem? Choose from the following adjectives. Mocking, gentle, ironical, witty.

10 EXPLAIN how life, death and eternity are connected in the poem. The idea of the last journey is connected with the concept of another life in eternity. At the same time it is contrasted with the idea that life on earth will continue around us even after our departure.

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the texts on pages 97-98 and answer 7

COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

1

11 DISCUSS. In another poem Dickinson referred to impending death as a ‘homely Anguish’: what may this phrase imply? Which words or concepts do you associate with death? Class discussion.

5.21 Thomas Hardy Teaching tip The presentation Thomas Hardy in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

2

Text Bank 65-66: Tess of the D’Urbervilles Teacher’s key on page 319. Text Bank 67: Jude the Obscure Teacher’s key on page 322.

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3.11 LISTEN and complete the life and works of Thomas Hardy. 1 humble; 2 violin; 3 music; 4 reader; 5 architect; 6 London; 7 poetry; 8 issues; 9 devoted; 10 tragic; 11 scandalised; 12 pessimism; 13 give up.

TRANSCRIPT Thomas Hardy was born of humble parents at Higher Bockhampton, near Dorchester, in June 1840. As a boy he learned to play the violin, and he always loved music and dancing. He was also a voracious reader. When he left school in 1856, he was apprenticed to a local architect and church restorer. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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the following questions. How did Hardy conceive of man and his place in the universe? He had a deterministic view, deprived of the consolation of divine order. He could see no intelligent direction of the universe, only the control of ‘insensible chance’ over everything. So human life was a purely tragic process upon which man had no power. Hardy was not a total pessimist, however. He expressed the need for altruism through cooperation and loving kindness, and the application of scientific knowledge. What does ‘being alive‘ mean in his novels? Being alive involves being ‘an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations’. But also being in a place, an environment, and surrounded by a set of circumstances which modify and partly determine the individual existence. What was his view of nature? Nature is presented as a co-protagonist with the characters. Indifferent to man’s destiny, it sets the pattern of growth and decay which is followed by human life. Nature also implies regeneration, expressed through the cycle of seasons. Some of Hardy’s characters, especially Tess, have the same life urge which is found in natural creatures, and their life is set against the seasonal background to counterpoint the main events and phases of experience. What was his attitude to Victorian values? He criticised the most conventional, moralistic, hypocritical aspects of Victorian society. His attitude to religion was also critical: he believed Christianity was no longer capable of fulfilling the needs of modern man.

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8 FOCUS on the description of the grave. How

By 1862 he was working and studying architecture in London, and he began to write poetry. He also read the works of Comte, Mill, Darwin and Schopenhauer. In 1872 he published a novel, Under the Greenwood Tree, but he gained fame thanks to Far from the Madding Crowd, which appeared in serial form throughout 1874 in the monthly issues of The Cornhill Magazine. After this success he devoted his life to writing. His second great work of fiction was The Return of the Native (1878), followed by a sequence of four remarkable tragic novels: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887), Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), and his last one, Jude the Obscure (1895). This book scandalised Victorian public opinion with its pessimism and immorality; one copy was even burnt publicly by a bishop. After publishing Wessex Poems in 1898, Hardy decided to give up fiction and turn to poetry. He died in 1928.

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‘He knew no haste’ (line 5); ‘His Civility’ (line 8). Dickinson uses personification; she modifies the traditional frightening image of death and turns it into the figure of a gentleman who takes his lady for a ride in his carriage.

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What kind of language did he use? Hardy’s language is detailed and rich in symbolism. His characters speak naturally and effectively within their social register; some even use dialect. The language of sense impressions plays an important role in his art. The use of colour is strongly linked to emotion and experience, especially connected with natural landscape. What narrative techniques did he employ? He emphasised the importance of strict, rigorous form, stressing symmetry and a blend of dialogue, description and narration. He employed the Victorian omniscient narrator, who sometimes comments on the action or introduces his opinions and his view of life. Hardy often presents action through the eyes of a hypothetical observer, with whom the reader is implicitly invited to identify himself. He even anticipates the cinema in his use of narrative techniques similar to ‘the camera eye’ and ‘the zoom’. What were the reasons for his choice of Wessex as the setting of his novels? In Hardy’s stories characters are defined through their environment. In his major novels there is the progressive mapping of a semi-fictional region, in the southwestern corner of England and his native county of Dorset. In the ‘Preface’ to Far from the Madding Crowd he called this area ‘Wessex’, by which he meant the old Saxon kingdom of Alfred the Great. Therefore Hardy’s Wessex transcends topographical limits, combining the imaginative experience of the individual with a sense of man’s place in the universe.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the text and answer the following questions. 1

2

3

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What two events change the course of Tess’s life at the beginning of the novel? Her father finds out that he is a descendent of a rich and aristocratic family, the D’Urbervilles, and the horse which is the only means of sustenance of Tess’s family dies. How does the novel end? Tess agrees to become Alec’s mistress but when Angel returns, she kills Alec and flees with Angel. She is arrested at Stonehenge and finally executed. Who are the male protagonists and what are they like? They are Alec D’Urberville, a rich young man who thinks his social status gives him the right to seize what he wants regardless of any morality, and Angel Clare, a young man of modern and liberal ideas who, however, fails to understand Tess’s situation.

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How does Hardy present Tess? She is presented as a victim and embodies the qualities of affection and trust, the powers of suffering and survival. In spite of her misfortunes, she has the energy to endure and go on living. She is presented through symbolic images – often drawn from the natural world – that stress her beauty, innocence and vulnerability. How does he deal with the issues of morality? He deals with issues of morality in two ways: one is the relativity of moral values, which vary according to time and place; the other is the opposition between man-made laws and nature. What is his view of religion? Religious belief is constantly questioned: Hardy regards Christianity as a worthless degradation of primitive spiritual ideas such as sun-worship. His view is that modern man is in a spiritually hopeless state.

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Alec and Tess Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words with their meaning. 1 couch; 2 stooped; 3 coarse; 4 reprisal; 5 cursory; 6 drowsiness; 7 ruthlessly; 8 treacherous; 9 absent-mindedness; 10 awkwardness.

2 READ the text again and do the following activities. 1 Complete the following notes. 1 Setting in time Evening, September. 2 Weather Foggy. 3 Characters Alec and Tess. 2 Does Tess know that she is being taken in the wrong direction? No, she does not. 3 What reasons does the narrator give for this in the first paragraph? The reasons suggested are the moonlight, fog, absent-mindedness, sleepiness. 4 Find the line where Tess realises where they are. Line 35, when Alec and she are in the wood. 5 What is Alec trying to do? B He is trying to have physical contact with her.

7 Tess passes through several states of mind. Put them in the correct order. 1 Absent-mindedness. 2 Weariness. 3 Suspicion. 4 Uneasiness. 5 Indignation. 6 Embarrassment. 7 Distress. 8 Passivity and helplessness. 8 Collect the details of the wood in the table below. Animals

the horse (line 1), birds (line 107), rabbits and hares (line 108)

Plants

bushes (line 53), yews and oaks (lines 106-107)

9 How is the natural world described? A It goes on regardless of the activity of human society. 10 Match the realistic scenes and details (1-5) with their symbolic meaning (A-E). 1 C; 2 D; 3 A; 4 B; 5 E. 11 The act of seduction is not described. What lines tell us that it has happened? Lines 108-111. 12 Is Tess responsible for what happens to her? How does Hardy present her? No, she is not. Hardy presents her as a victim. 13 The word ‘chasm’ in line 124 means C gap. What kinds of ‘chasms’ is Tess going to experience? Tess and Alec belong to two very different social classes and their relationship is not acceptable to either class. Moreover, it is the woman who pays the social price of her lost reputation, so Tess will be a ‘fallen woman’; she will no longer be simple and joyful but will have a darker side to her personality. 14 From line 112 to the end, the narrator addresses the reader directly. How does he do it? Tick as appropriate and justify your answers. Putting the activities of the humans into the context of nature and the supernatural powers. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

15 What does the phrase ‘It was to be’ in line 123 mean? B Man’s life is regulated by chance and as such it cannot be changed. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

3 WRITE 10-12 lines. Hardy was a creative genius writing in the late Victorian period. Think of what you know of the historical context, and decide how much he represented his period and where he seemed to be outside his time. In the late Victorian period, simple certainty of progress had faded and religious faith had been eroded by the view of a universe controlled by ‘insensible chance’. So there was increasing pessimism and concern that social problems were growing, not being solved. Great social changes had taken place for middle- and working-class men, and the position of women was being debated. Hardy reflects all this. However, he wrote about agricultural labourers and rural life at a time when most people lived in towns and their lives were dominated by factories and commerce – Hardy emphasises the rural calendar and the changing seasons, which had been forgotten in urban life. In this way, he confronts the social dilemmas that Victorian society had created with the timeless tragedy of human existence. He used the omniscient narrator, which was a typical feature of the Victorian novel, to expose Victorian hypocrisy and to present a view deprived of the consolation of faith.

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The narrator describes the birds and animals in the wood going about their business; he asks where Tess’s ‘guardian angel’ was and why she was not protected. He is placing human activity in a context in which it is less significant. Trying to analyse the causes of events. In lines 116-121 he considers that the past affects the present (‘sins of the fathers’, line 119). He makes it clear that neither of these fully gives the answer as to why this has happened. Considering the belief in fate. In considering Tess’s people saying ‘It was to be’, an acceptance of fate. Making a moral judgement on what has happened. The narrator does not do this. He does not blame any of the parts, not even Alec. He does not say that Tess herself was sullied, only that a ‘coarse pattern’ was printed on her dress – she was simply changed, a chasm divided her from her former self.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

6 Explain why Tess is unable to reject Alec’s advances completely, and even feels guilty at her treatment of him. Alec is her master. She feels guilty that she has suspected his motives and pushed him (which would have been rude for a servant). Then she is put into an embarrassing position when she realises that Alec has been giving her family gifts.

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Tess’s baby

acceptance of her child into society without the public declaration of the Church. The baptism of Sorrow is thus a baptism for Tess as well, marking a new sense of self and self-worth that she has lacked. This can further be seen in the confrontation with the parson that follows: Tess demands that Sorrow be given a Christian burial, despite the objection of the parson.

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

VOCABULARY

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words with their Italian translation.

4 DEFINE the kind of narrator used. Then

1 duly; 2 waif; 3 plea; 4 piped; 5 doomed; 6 sexton; 7 willingness; 8 christen; 9 layman; 10 sprinkled. 1

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the text again and provide each section with a title (lines 1-16; lines 17-25; lines 2658; lines 59-68). Then summarise the content of each section. Part 1 (lines 1-16) The baptism. Tess performs the ceremony of her baby’s baptism herself and calls him Sorrow. Part 2 (lines 17-25) Poor Sorrow’s sad destiny. The baby dies and the obtrusive narrator comments on his unlucky short life. Part 3 (lines 26-58) Tess and the vicar. Tess asks the vicar if her baby has the right to be buried in holy ground. Part 4 (lines 59-68) The burial of the baby. The baby is buried in a forgotten part of the churchyard among infants who had not been baptised, drunkards and suicides. 7

COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

3 FOCUS on lines 1-16 and explain Tess’s behaviour, the choice of the baby’s name, and the symbolic meaning the baptism acquires for Tess. Tess’s behaviour: She is very serious and worried about performing the ceremony in the correct way. The words ‘grave’ (line 2), ‘fervently’ (line 12) and ‘duly’ (line 14) underline her attitude. The choice of the baby’s name: The baby is the living representation of Tess’s sin. The name that she gives him, Sorrow, represents the aftermath and consequences of her sin. The symbolic meaning the baptism acquires for Tess: By baptising her child, Tess rejects the social structure around her that perceives the mother of an illegitimate child as an outcast, performing the ceremony that marks the

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consider his words in lines 17-25. Hardy employs a third-person omniscient narrator who occasionally gets obtrusive. How is the baby referred to? He is referred to as ‘Poor Sorrow’, ‘fragile soldier and servant’, ‘Sorrow the Undesired’, ‘intrusive creature’, ‘bastard gift of shameless Nature’, ‘a waif’. Describe the contrast in lines 22-25. It is the contrast between the baby’s short, meaningless life and the eternity and vastity of the universe. In this respect the baby represents man’s littleness before insensible chance. Another contrast is that between the baby’s existence and the refusal opposed to it by society. What does the narrator mean in line 17? Define his tone in this section. He underlines the inevitability of man’s fate. The tone is ironical and critical.

5 ANALYSE the figure of the parson. 1

2

What conflict does he experience while he is speaking with Tess? Justify your answer by quoting from the text. The parson experiences the conflict between his nature and feelings as a man and his duties as a clergyman. The quotes from the text are in lines 35-38 and 55-58. What is Hardy implying about religion? Religion is undergoing a crisis: the parson has to work hard to convince people to trust in their Christian belief in the face of growing scepticism due to new scientific theories. Another point he makes is that religion is no longer capable of fulfilling the needs of modern man because its rules are too strict.

6 POINT out the most striking examples of irony in the scene of the baby’s burial. The ironical details are the fact that the burial takes place thanks to the compliance of a drunk sexton (line 60), and that the choice of the place is shocking: the baby is buried in a ‘shabby corner of God’s allotment’ among sinners and outcasts (lines 61-63). Irony is also directed against God (‘where He lets the nettles grow’, line 61). The adverb ‘bravely’ (line 63) referred to Tess is also ironical: hers is a crusade against society. The final ironical touch is the brand of the marmalade over the flower jar (lines 66-67).

7 DISCUSS. Do you think that total adherence to religious principles can survive in contemporary society? Do religion’s ‘technical beliefs’ respond to the new social needs? Students’ activity. This discussion can be carried out in pairs and then with the whole class. It would be interesting to compare different religions as regards situations that are common in our present society, such as illegitimate children, divorce, gay couples, etc.

Jude the Obscure COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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Little Father Time Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

From Text to Screen: Jude Photocopiable lesson on page 258. Teacher’s key on page 284. VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a heading to each section. Part 1 (lines 1-15) Jude’s discovery of the children’s corpses. Part 2 (lines 16-31) Sue’s despair. Part 3 (lines 32-50) The doctor’s explanation and the features of the new generation. Part 4 (lines 51-86) Jude’s and Sue’s attempts to find an explanation to what has happened.

1 READ the texts and answer the questions. 1

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In what sense does the story deal with the contrast between an ideal life and real life? The protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a boy from a poor village who has ambitions to become a student at the University of Christminster. His attempt to improve himself fails in the face of centuries of accumulated class prejudice: his ambitions and sensibility separate him from his own class while winning him no place in any other. His tragedy is mainly of frustration and loneliness due to his uprooting. Is the novel set in rural Wessex? No, it is not. Hardy sets the novel in different towns or villages to show the alienation of modern life. What are Sue’s contradictions? She represents Jude’s ideal, the intellectual woman. She seems to promise freedom and strength, but in the end she frustrates him and retreats into her conventional life as the wife of Mr Phillotson. She is unconventional but fragile and finally accepts the rules of society even if they make her unhappy. Can the novel be defined as ‘Victorian’? Jude the Obscure is anti-Victorian in the choice of themes (the questioning of marriage and the issue of divorce) and represents a departure from Victorianism with its portrayal of weakened vitality and grey despair, in a bleak urban setting characterised by a sense of anxiety and selfdestruction. Hardy develops the story through the characters’ repetitive dialogues, denying the narrator the possibility to explain and interpret things. Why is Jude ‘obscure’? Because he does not ‘exist’ for others, is never ‘seen’ by them. Hardy takes him from defeat to defeat and to the denial of any form of life, love or peace.

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2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in yellow: these lines provide an example of cinematic technique since the character of Jude is virtually converted into a camera, focusing on the main object, followed by a close-up of a detail Highlighted in pink: Jude’s immediate reaction to the scene. His actions are quick and rational Highlighted in green: Sue’s first reactions to the macabre scene are opposite to Jude’s ones: she breaks down and cannot find consolation Highlighted in orange: these lines describe the features of the ‘last generation’ that Little Father Time embodies. These children have no hope, they have been deprived of the faith in progress and of the wish to live Highlighted in light blue: the reasons for Little Father Time’s choice. They are linked to what Victorian society regards as Sue’s and Jude’s mistakes. Victorian society judged their choice of living together outside marriage as obscene and irresponsible since it affected their children Underlined in blue: the reference to God’s love for His people is here ironical since God seems to have forgotten Jude and Sue. The Church condemns them as sinners or does not recognise their sorrow because it is busy with sterile arguments about rite Highlighted in grey: Sue’s sense of guilt due to the Victorian strict moral code. The loss of faith in man’s power: man is only a puppet in the hands of fate. This view characterises the last decades of the Victorian Age

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COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

7

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1 2

3

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

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6

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How long had the children been dead? For more than an hour. What could the reason for Little Father Time’s act be? Jude and Sue reach the conclusion that the elder boy had acted out of despair finding himself alone on waking the morning after having talked with Sue about her pregnancy: he had hanged his brother and sister and then hanged himself. They also find a piece of paper with the note ‘DONE BECAUSE WE ARE TOO MENNY’ written on it. Why wasn’t Sue allowed to see the children at first? Because ‘if there were any hope, her presence might do harm’ (lines 33-34); moreover, she was pregnant and too strong an emotion might be dangerous for the unborn child. How did Jude’s view of their union differ from Sue’s? He thought that their union had been shadowed by death; she thought their perfect union had been stained with blood and therefore ruined. How did Sue feel about what had happened? Did Jude agree with her? She felt responsible and guilty for what she had told Little Father Time about the new baby she was expecting. Jude did not agree with her; he thought that chance had worked cruelly on her good intentions. What is your reaction to the passage? Do you find it shocking, upsetting, unrealistic, melodramatic or other? Students’ activity. 3.15 LISTEN and complete the summary of the text. 1 wake; 2 closet; 3 hanging; 4 lays; 5 note; 6 guilty; 7 springing; 8 failures; 9 pregnancy.

TRANSCRIPT While Jude is making breakfast for the children, Sue goes to wake them. Jude hears her shriek and he rushes into the closet; he finds that Sue has fainted and the three children are hanging from clothes hooks. There is an overturned chair near Little Father Time’s feet. Jude cuts the children down immediately and lays them on the bed, and then he runs off to call a doctor. When they come back, on the floor they find a note from Little Father Time where he wrote ‘DONE BECAUSE WE ARE TOO MENNY’. Sue feels guilty and falls in distress. After talking to the doctor, Jude informs Sue that there is no hope for the children. The doctor had remarked that acts like this have been springing up among the next generation and that there seemed to be a ‘universal wish not to live’. The expression on Little Father Time’s face is a compression of all Jude’s bad luck and failures. Jude and Sue hear an organ in a nearby church playing

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‘Truly God is loving unto Israel’. Sue weeps and tells Jude about her conversation concerning her pregnancy with Little Father Time the night before. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

5 WRITE 10-12 lines to explain how Hardy’s children differ from Dickens’s (→ 5.14). Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Unlike Dickens’s children, who suffer hardship, misery and exploitation but always maintain their wish to survive and to improve their condition through their qualities, Hardy’s children have no hope, they have been deprived of the faith in progress and of an optimistic view of life. 7

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

6 DISCUSS. Explain which aspects of Jude the Obscure make a departure from the traditional novel. Hardy’s novel employs a third-person omniscient narrator, but the writer denies him the possibility to explain and interpret things by focusing on the relationship between Jude and Sue, and developing the story through the characters’ repetitive dialogues. Unlike his other works, which are mainly set in a rural environment, Jude the Obscure takes place in a bleak urban setting. It does not have a happy ending and it is characterised by weakened vitality and grey despair. Hardy’s language is detailed and realistic but also rich in symbolism and linked to the language of sense impressions. As regards themes, he dealt with contemporary issues but his reading public did not tolerate his scepticism and criticism of marriage and religion.

5.22 Robert Louis Stevenson Teaching tip The presentation Robert Louis Stevenson in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 68: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Teacher’s key on page 324.

justify the following statements. 1 2

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He spent most of his childhood in bed. He suffered from poor health. He travelled a lot. He travelled a lot in search of a friendlier climate; he lived in the South of England, Germany, France and Italy. He married an American woman and since his health was deteriorating, they moved to Australia and Tahiti, settling down at Vailima in Samoa. He graduated in law. He took up Engineering at university, following in his father’s footsteps, but he gave it up and graduated in law in 1875. He rejected his family’s principles. He openly rejected his family’s religious principles and their love for respectability. He was in conflict with the Victorian world; he grew his hair long, his manners were eccentric and he became one of the first examples of the bohemian in Britain. He wrote his best works in the 1880s. He became popular as a novelist in the 1880s, when he published Treasure Island (1883), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Kidnapped (1886) and The Master of Ballantrae (1889). His short stories, pervaded by a sense of suspense and supernatural worthy of Edgar Allan Poe, were collected as New Arabian Nights (1882). He died young. He died of a brain haemorrhage in 1894.

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ about Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and answer the following questions. 1

2

Where does the novel take place? It takes place in London in the 1870s. At that time London had a ‘double’ nature and reflected the hypocrisy of Victorian society: the respectable West End was in contrast with the appalling poverty of the East End slums. Most scenes of the novel take place at night: there is no natural daylight, but only the artificial lighting of Jekyll’s house and of the nightmarish street lamps. The most important events are wrapped up in darkness and fog. What is the narrative technique employed? Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has a multi-narrative structure, in which a complex series of points of view is presented. There are four narrators,

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T79

Story of the door Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words with their Italian translation. 1 sneering; 2 kinsman; 3 cane; 4 lean; 5 thriving; 6 dreary; 7 sweat; 8 dingy; 9 rambles; 10 thoroughfare; 11 demeanour; 12 thrust forward.

2 READ the text again and do the following activities. 1 Focus on lines 1-36 and answer the questions. 1 What was Mr Utterson’s job? He was a lawyer (line 1). 2 Who was Mr Enfield? He was a friend and a distant relative of Mr Utterson’s (lines 18, 21).

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1 READ about Stevenson’s life and works and

through whom almost the whole action is seen and filtered: Utterson, who has the role of a detective since he follows clues and draws hypotheses; Enfield, a distant relative of Utterson’s; Dr Lanyon, a friend and a colleague of Dr Jekyll’s who is the first person to see his friend enact his transformation; and finally Dr Jekyll himself, who speaks in the first person. His narrative and final confession takes up the last chapter. Who are the main characters? They are Jekyll and Hyde. As Jekyll has lived a virtuous life, his face is handsome, his hands are white and well-shaped, his body is larger and more harmoniously proportioned than Hyde’s. Since Hyde is pure hate and evil, he is pale and dwarfish, his hands are dark and hairy, he gives an impression of deformity, and the good Mr Utterson reads ‘Satan’s signature’ in his traits. What was the origin of the novel? The novel had its origin in a dream: afflicted with tuberculosis and haunted by sleeplessness and melancholy, Stevenson wrote down in his diary that he had dreamed of a man in a laboratory who had swallowed a drug and turned into a different being. It was the Gothic aspect of this story that excited him, and he produced a first draft. What are the most important themes? They are the antithesis between good and evil, the duality of man’s nature, the double nature of Victorian society with its antithetical values. The novel may also be considered a reflection on art itself, as a kind of psychological search, and Jekyll’s discovery may symbolise the artist’s journey into the unexplored regions of the human psyche.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

3 4

What was Mr Utterson’s relationship with Mr Enfield like? It was like ivy (line 19). Where did they happen to wander one Sunday? They happened to wander down a ‘by street’ in a busy area of London (lines 28-29).

2 Describe the features of the ‘by street’ on weekdays and on Sundays. How do they differ? The ‘by street’ was quiet on Sundays but crowded on weekdays (lines 29-30).

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

3 Consider the description of the house in lines 37-45 and complete the following notes. Height Two storeys high (line 39) Number of windows No windows (line 39) Number of doors One (line 39) The façade Discoloured; it showed the marks of prolonged and sordid negligence (lines 40-41) The door Blistered and disdained; it had neither a bell nor a knocker (lines 41-42) The panels Matches were struck on them (lines 42-43) The steps Children kept shops on them (line 43) The mouldings Knives had been tried by the schoolboys on them (lines 43-44) 4 Focus on the final part of the text and decide whether the following statements are true or false. 1 Mr Enfield had spent the night at his usual place. F (lines 51-52) 2 The street he was walking along was dull. T 3 He felt uneasy. T 4 The little man was crippled. F (lines 56-57) 5 He hurt the little girl. T 6 He ran away with her. F (line 60) 7 He was not frightened at all. T 8 The doctor was very sensitive. F (lines 70-72) 9 Mr Enfield and the doctor decided to kill the man. F (line 74) 5 Say who the narrator is. Whose points of view are adopted? First part (lines 1-50): third-person narrator; neutral point of view. Second part (lines 51-81): first-person narrator (Mr Enfield); Mr Enfield’s point of view. 6 Complete the table about Mr Utterson.

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Physical appearance

‘of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile’ (lines 1-2); ‘lean, long, dusty’ (line 2)

Way of speaking

‘embarrassed’ (line 2)

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Behaviour

‘cold, scanty’ (line 2); ‘backward in sentiment’ (line 2); ‘dreary, and yet somehow lovable’ (line 3); ‘eminently human’ (line 4); ‘austere with himself’ (line 6); ‘modest’ (line 17)

Interests

‘vintages’ (line 7); ‘the theatre’ (line 7)

Attitudes

‘tolerance for others’ (lines 8-9); ‘inclined to help’ (line 10); ‘it was frequently ... men’ (lines 12-13); ‘never marked a shade of change in his demeanour’ (line 14)

7 Underline all the expressions about ‘the little man’. Lines 56-57, 60-64, 69, 72-73, 79-81. 1 What do they connote? They connote the very horrid nature of the man, who is also ironically referred to as ‘my gentleman’ by Mr Enfield. 2 What kind of person do you think he is? He is a monster. 3 What feelings does this creature provoke in the others? Repulsion. Fright. Disgust. 8 Lines 58-59 contain the expression ‘two […] into one’, which has a symbolic meaning. Can you explain it? It suggests one of the main themes of the novel: the double nature of the human soul, the good and the evil sides.

3

4.2 LISTEN and complete the summary of the text. 1 respectable; 2 relative; 3 cane; 4 reminds; 5 discomfort; 6 stepped; 7 screaming; 8 hellish; 9 seized; 10 had gathered; 11 devilish; 12 calm.

TRANSCRIPT The novel opens with two men, Mr Utterson – a quiet, respectable lawyer – and his distant relative Richard Enfield. They are out for their customary Sunday walk in London. On their way, Enfield raises his cane and indicates a particular door, which reminds him of a strange experience he had on this very street. Enfield says that at about three o’clock on a black winter morning, he was coming back home feeling a vague sense of discomfort because the street was deserted. Suddenly, he saw two figures, a man and a little girl. They ran into each other, and the man stepped heavily on the child’s body leaving her screaming on the ground. Enfield describes the scene as hellish. He tells Utterson that he seized the man by the collar, dragged him back, and by that time a crowd had gathered. Like Enfield, they all seemed to hate the devilish man, who, on the contrary, was very calm and cool.

Highlighted in pink: Jekyll’s ambition makes him an overreacher Highlighted in green: the mirror is an important detail because it is the symbol of the duality of man’s nature

COMPETENCE: CONTRASTING AUTHORS

4 DISCUSS. Compare the figure of Hyde

Student’s speaking activity. Suggestion: Students should develop the following notes: Similarities: Both Hyde and the monster are different from the common man and they are rejected by mankind because of their diversity. Differences: Hyde is pure evil. The monster was naturally good; it was society that made him a devilish creature.

T80

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

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Jekyll’s experiment Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

4

VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a caption to describe the content of each section. Part 1 (lines 1-18) The fundamental truth Jekyll thinks he has discovered. Part 2 (lines 19-45) The effects of the drug and Hyde’s evil nature. Part 3 (lines 46-55) The effects of the drug are reversible.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Green words: Jekyll’s double nature Highlighted in light blue: Jekyll’s wish to separate the two different identities of his soul Pink words: the composition and preparation of the drug Blue words: the immediate effects of the drug Orange words: the second effects of the drug Highlighted in yellow: description of Hyde’s feelings and sensations after the transformation; they are quite different from those experienced by Jekyll What does this difference underline? The double nature of the human soul. Underlined in blue: the setting in time: night, a typical Gothic setting; the setting in place: a laboratory, a place outside Jekyll’s respectable house Highlighted in grey: Edward Hyde, the evil side of Jekyll’s soul Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

5

What is the fundamental truth Jekyll thinks he has discovered? He thinks he has learned to recognise the primitive duality of man (lines 2-3). How did he dream of making life more pleasant and free from evil? He dreamt of doing it by housing the two natures of the human soul, one wholly good and one wholly bad, in separate identities (lines 6-8). How did he prepare the drug? He used a large quantity of particular salt and added it to other components; he watched them boil and, finally, when the ebullition had subsided, he drank off the potion (lines 15-18). What kind of narrator is used in this passage? Whose point of view is adopted? A first-person narrative is used. Dr Jekyll’s point of view is adopted. What are the opposing terms the narrator uses? Underline them. Why do you think Stevenson uses so many oppositions in the description of Jekyll’s experiment?

Good

Evil

‘more upright twin’, ‘the just’ (line 9) ‘good things’ (line 10) ‘morning’ (line 31) ‘good’ (line 44)

‘the unjust’ (line 8)

‘Henry Jekyll’ (line 50)

‘extraneous evil’ (line 11) ‘night’ (line 30) ‘evil’ (line 44), ‘pure evil’ (line 45) ‘Edward Hyde’ (line 37)

Stevenson uses so many antithetical terms to underline the opposite identities inside man’s soul. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

4 WRITE 10-12 lines about this topic: ‘Most Victorian novels are based on the presence of sound and respectable personalities.’ Do you think the ambiguous Jekyll/Hyde relationship fits into this category or not? Justify your answer. Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should develop the following notes: There is always a dark side in the character of each human being, there is always ‘a Hyde’, the symbol of vice and evil, in our soul. The good and the evil are two different aspects of the same personality.

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with that of the monster created by Dr Frankenstein (→ 4.10) and point out similarities and differences.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

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Link to Contemporary Culture

The detective story

1 DISCUSS in pairs. Do you read detective stories? Do you enjoy watching crime series on the television? Who are the bestknown detectives? Why are crime stories so popular? Students’ activity. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

5

How did the detective story develop in the 1920s and 1930s in the USA? In the 1920s and 1930s some American writers introduced a different kind of detective story, aiming at more realism. The pioneer of the so-called ‘hardboiled’ detective fiction was Dashiell Hammett, who introduced more cynical characters and a more complicated plot. He created a short, overweight, unnamed detective, employed by the San Francisco branch of the Continental Detective Agency, who became known as the Continental Op (from ‘operator’). His method is characterised by real-life private-eye investigation.

2 READ the text on page 117 and answer the

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1

2

3

4

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following questions. Who wrote the first detective story in English and what characteristics did his fictional detective have? The first detective story in English is considered to be Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), which introduced the eccentric but brilliant detective Auguste Dupin. He used observation, logical deduction and intelligence to unravel crimes which the police often left unsolved. What are the main features of a typical detective story? They are a mysterious crime; a professional detective; sometimes, the detective’s companion, who is slower and thus provides a contrast to the detective (he can also be the narrator of the story); an inefficient local police force; numbers of false suspects and false clues; the detective’s investigation, which starts after the crime and gradually unwinds the mystery; an unexpected final twist showing the importance of reasoning and psychological analysis; and a detailed reconstruction of the crime. Why was the detective story popular in the second half of the 19th century? It developed in the second half of the 19th century as a popular genre due to the social and cultural changes of the age – the industrialisation, the birth of slums characterised by poverty and crime, and the reorganisation of police forces combined with the interest of the press in crime news. Other important influences were the scientific progress and the spread of a scientific method based on observation and the collection of data. Who is probably the best-known fictional detective? Who invented him and how did he solve crimes? The most famous fictional detective is Sherlock Holmes, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887. Based on a real medical colleague of Doyle’s in Edinburgh, Holmes has become the symbol for detection through minute observation of detail and intellectual powers of deduction. He is the perfect example of an ‘armchair detective’, who feels superior thanks to his intellectual skills rather than to his physical strength.

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The hound from hell SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, The Hound of the Baskervilles

Teaching tip Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was born in Edinburgh. He attended the Jesuit college at Stonyhurst and then enrolled at Edinburgh University to study Medicine. Sherlock Holmes and his faithful friend Dr Watson first appeared in A Study in Scarlet (1887). Later followed The Sign of Four (1890), a long series of short stories collected as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1890), The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893), and another long story, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). These works met with immediate success and allowed their author to live on his income as a writer. COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

1 READ the first paragraph and say what time of day it is. What is the weather like? Look for the words describing the fog and find an example of a simile. We know it is night time because the paragraph describes a ‘clear, starlit night’ (line 4). The weather is foggy at a lower level because Sir Henry Baskerville is walking up a slope and comes out of the fog into the clear night. It is described as a ‘silver-tipped bank’ (line 2). The simile is in lines 2-3 where the fog is compared to a curtain.

2 POINT out how Sir Henry Baskerville is feeling. Why is he in this state? He is obviously nervous and tense as he keeps looking over his shoulders. He is probably in this state because he is frightened, terrified at the thought of the hound.

3 LOOK for words describing the senses and sensations in this paragraph. Hearing: ‘sound’, ‘quick steps’, ‘broke the silence’, ‘grew louder’, ‘stepped’; sight: ‘stared’, ‘silver-tipped’, ‘through a curtain’, ‘looked round’, ‘emerged’, ‘clear, starlit’, ‘glanced’. Sensations: ‘surprise’, ‘ill at ease’.

B

The hound.

5 READ the third paragraph and explain how an atmosphere of tension is created. It is created by a gradual build-up of suspense. It begins by creating an atmosphere of uncertainty using phrases like ‘from somewhere’, ‘uncertain what horror’. Holmes’s face is described as ‘pale and exultant’; after this he rushes forward with a ‘rigid, fixed stare’ showing amazement. Then the tension is further increased by the ‘yell of terror’ from Lestrade and by Watson, who is ‘paralyzed by the dreadful shape’. Finally, there is the terrifying description of the savage hound.

I’m a manhunter DASHIELL HAMMETT, The Gutting of Couffignal

Teaching tip Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was born in Maryland. He never finished high school and at the age of 14 he began to work to help support his family. At 21 he was hired by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency as an ‘operative’. He served in the Motor Ambulance Corps in World War I but tuberculosis kept him in fragile health for the rest of his life. In 1922 he started to write for Black Mask Magazine. In the mid-1940s he became an active supporter of the Civil Rights Congress of New York. In 1951 he refused to give information about four members of the group who were communists and was sentenced to jail for six months. His later years were marked by failing health and financial problems. He died of lung cancer at the age of 67. COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

6 EXPLAIN how the creature in this paragraph is given a ‘hellish’ appearance. The ‘hellish’ appearance comes from the coal-black hound’s enormous size and the description of fire bursting from its open mouth, its eyes glowing with a smouldering glare, its head and neck outlined in a kind of flickering flame.

7 EXPLAIN what happens in the next paragraphs and say in which way Holmes has ‘laid the family ghost’. The huge hound leaps on after Sir Henry Baskerville and, at first, the three men watching are too shocked to do anything, but then Watson and Holmes both fire at the dog and one of them hits him. The hound howls in pain but continues to follow Sir Henry and attacks him. The cry of pain from the creature, however, has shown Holmes and the others that the dog is vulnerable and not immortal, so they race after him and shoot him again, killing him and saving Sir Henry. Holmes has laid the family ghost because he has shown that the hound was not an immortal ghost or hound from hell but a real dog used by a wicked man for his own evil purposes.

8 IDENTIFY the type of narrator used in this text. What does this narration add to the story? The narration is a first-person narration but not by Holmes. It is related through the eyes and mind of Dr Watson. This narration makes it possible for the reader to follow the action and participate as an observer watching the great detective at work. It also means the reader always has an incomplete picture that has to be finally explained by the detective, in a denouement that would not be possible if the detective were relating the story.

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1 READ lines 1-34 and answer the following questions. 1

2

3 4

What is Princess Zhukovski trying to do at the beginning of the passage? She is trying to corrupt the detective by offering to share some of the ‘wealth’ with him. What is the Continental Op’s reaction? Why? He rejects the offer because he is honest and loyal to his employers; he likes his job even if it does not make him rich. What does he like about his job? He likes catching crooks and solving riddles. How does he define himself? He defines himself as a manhunter.

2 READ the rest of the passage and note down the main actions of the two characters. Did you expect this ending? The girl stands up and jumps to the door, stops, laughs, provokes the detective, takes a step toward the door and finally sits down in surprise; the detective sits up with a gun in his hand, orders the girl to stop, threatens to shoot her and finally shoots the calf of her left leg. Student’s activity. Suggestion: The ending is surprising because the detective shoots the woman in spite of her conviction that he will not and despite the fact he has maybe never shot at a woman before.

3 POINT out the narrative technique and the features of the language used by Hammett. The text is written in the first person and the language is colloquial. Hammett builds up his plot mainly on action.

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‘we glared at it’ (line 9)?

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

4 WHAT does the word ‘it’ refer to in the phrase

7

COMPETENCE: CONTRASTING AUTHORS

4 DISCUSS the different styles of Conan Doyle and Hammett. Compare Sherlock Holmes and the Continental Op as regards their attitude towards the case they are dealing with. Which method of investigation do you prefer, Doyle’s or Hammett’s?

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The Victorian Age

Student’s speaking activity. Suggestion: Students should point out the different narration – Hammett in the first person through the detective himself, whereas Doyle uses the first person but the narrator is Dr Watson, not Holmes himself. The other difference lies in the language. Hammett’s is colloquial whereas Doyle’s is refined and literary. While Hammett builds up his plot mainly on action, Doyle develops the plot through the dialogue between Watson and Holmes concerning hypotheses and discoveries. Holmes relies on his intellectual skills and power of deduction to solve his crimes, while the Continental Op is a man of action and determination and uses force where necessary.

was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. During the First World War he worked as a correspondent. He died in 1936 and his ashes were buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. His last work was an autobiography, Something of Myself, published posthumously in 1937, from which the figure of a man and an artist of great dignity and integrity emerges. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the texts and explain: 1

2

5.23 Rudyard Kipling Text Bank 69: Kim Teacher’s key on page 325.

1

4.4 LISTEN to a radio programme about Rudyard Kipling’s life and works and complete the text. 1 Bombay; 2 attend school; 3 journalist; 4 short stories; 5 settling; 6 beast fable; 7 Nobel Prize; 8 correspondent; 9 autobiography.

TRANSCRIPT Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, in 1865. There he was able to learn the Hindi language more easily than English and observe Indian life. At the age of 6 he was sent to England to attend school, as was the custom among upper-class Anglo-Indians, and returned to India in 1882. While working as a journalist in his native country, he began to publish collections of poems and short stories about Indian life: Departmental Ditties (1886), Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) and Wee Willie Winkie (1890). In 1889 he returned to London, where he wrote The Light That Failed (1890), his first attempt at a full-length novel, a genre which he was never too happy with, apart from Kim (1901). After settling in the USA with his American wife, he added to his reputation with the two volumes of The Jungle Book (1894-95), which are an excellent modern version of the ancient genre of the beast fable. He returned to England in 1896, where he continued to write, and in 1907 he

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why Kipling is regarded as an imperialist writer; In his work the British Empire acquired almost a mythical status. He exalted imperial power and believed in the ‘burden’ of the British, who, as the elected race, had to carry civilisation all over the world, to provide order and stability among the natives and to establish their government based on honour and dignity. his contribution to the short story. He often employed the device of the ‘frame story’, a narrative form popular at the turn of the century consisting of a story in which several tales are related. This technique was a reaction against the omniscient narrator in favour of a more ambivalent vision of the world. The story is told by a fictional character in different situations: in an army camp, on board ship, in an Indian hut. The ‘frame situation’ is well described and this generally allows the writer to provide an ironic comment on the central story that follows.

T81

The mission of the coloniser Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden

LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

VOCABULARY

1 READ the poem and match the highlighted words with their meaning. 1 abide; 2 tawdry; 3 gain; 4 burden; 5 check; 6 toil; 7 nought; 8 tread; 9 harness; 10 sullen. 7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the poem again and find out what Kipling actually means by ‘burden’ in each stanza. Stanza 1: ideas of predestination, exile, sacrifice and dedication; stanza 2: an exercise of patience and humility; stanza 3: to put an end to wars, hunger and disease; stanza 4: hard work.

3 POINT out how the colonised peoples are described. Native peoples are described as wild and immature, lazy and inclined to evil (lines 5-8).

4 SAY what advantages are brought to them by imperialism, according to the poet. Peace, improvement in health and the creation of facilities (see the hints at ports and roads in lines 29-30).

5 EXPLAIN whether the mission of the coloniser implies reward. Although Kipling’s imperialism was supported by the belief in the innate superiority of the British race, he regarded it primarily as a moral responsibility. It might also be profitable but its main aim was to pursue the natives’ advantage and happiness. The English should not call upon their own glory but try to defend and protect their colonies from the rival world powers or the threats of home rebellion (lines 9-16).

COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

1 READ the first paragraph and use the pictures on these pages to provide evidence of the most important events of Wilde’s life and the main features of his works. Picture 1: The novelist, playwright and poet Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 and lived in Merrion Square, Dublin, as a child. He is remembered for his extensive writings, his extraordinary wit and his flamboyant style of dress. This unconventional sculpture is a fitting memorial to his life and art. Teaching tip Wilde is wearing a green smoking jacket with a pink collar, long trousers and shiny black shoes, with an unusual two-sided expression on his face, depicting both joy and sadness. The two stone pillars which accompany the statue are covered in quotations from Wilde’s writing, setting out his thoughts, opinions and witticisms on art and life. At the top of the pillars, you can see two small bronze sculptures. One is a pregnant woman. This depicts Wilde’s wife, Constance, and represents the theme of life. The other sculpture represents Dionysus, the God of wine, youth and theatre – all of great interest to Wilde, who kept a statue of Dionysus in his studio in London. (Adapted from www.dublincity.ie)

7

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS WITH THE CONTEXT OF THE AGE

6 DISCUSS how the poem can be interpreted in the Victorian context. It can be read as a celebration of the British Empire, which achieved its greatest expansion during the Victorian Age. The author defines the task of the British coloniser as a ‘burden’, that is, the duty, the responsibility to bring civilisation to the colonised and to improve their lives.

5.24 Oscar Wilde Teaching tip The presentation Oscar Wilde in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

From Literature to Screen: Wilde Photocopiable lesson on page 261. Teacher’s key on page 285. Text Bank 70: The Picture of Dorian Gray Teacher’s key on page 327. Text Bank 71: The Importance of Being Earnest Teacher’s key on page 328. Text Bank 72: The Ballad of Reading Gaol Teacher’s key on page 329. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

Picture 2: After attending Trinity College in Dublin, Wilde was sent to Oxford, where he gained a first-class degree in Classics and distinguished himself for his eccentricity. He graduated in 1878. Picture 3: Wilde became a disciple of Walter Pater, the main theorist of the Aesthetic Movement in England, accepting the theory of ‘Art for Art’s Sake’. After graduating in 1878, he moved to London, where he soon became a celebrity for his extraordinary wit and his characteristic style of dress as a ‘dandy’. In 1881 he was invited to undertake a speaking tour in the United States: his lectures amazed the American audiences and he became famous for his irony, his attitudes and his posing. Picture 4: Wilde published his first and only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1891. Picture 5: Wilde developed an interest in drama and revived the comedy of manners. In the late 1890s he produced a series of plays which were successful on the London stage: Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). However, both the novel and Salomé (1893), a tragedy written in French, damaged the writer’s reputation: the former was considered immoral, and the latter was prevented from being performed on the London stage due to its presumed obscenity.

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COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

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The Victorian Age

Picture 6: In 1891 Wilde’s years of triumph ended dramatically due to a public scandal concerning his relationship with the young poet Lord Alfred Douglas, ‘Bosie’. After the subsequent trial on charges of homosexuality, then illegal in Britain, Wilde was sentenced to two years’ hard labour. Picture 7: While in prison, Wilde wrote De Profundis, a long letter to Bosie which was published posthumously in 1905. When he was released, he was a broken man; his wife refused to see him, and he went into exile in France, where he lived out his last years in poverty. The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), originally published under his prison identity, ‘C.3.3’, was his last published work before he died of meningitis in 1900 in a hotel in Paris.

3

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the rest of the text and answer the following questions. 1

2

3

4

5

What ideal did Wilde adopt throughout his life? He adopted the ‘aesthetic ideal’, as he affirmed in one of his famous conversations: ‘My life is like a work of art’. Who is Wilde’s dandy? He is an aristocrat whose elegance is a symbol of the superiority of his spirit; he uses his wit to shock and he is an individualist who demands absolute freedom. What does the writer reject in the ‘Preface’ to his novel? He rejects the didacticism that had characterised the Victorian novel in the first half of the century. What is art, according to Wilde? It is the cult of beauty which can prevent the murder of the soul. Who is the artist? He is an alien in a materialistic world, he writes only to please himself and is not concerned about communicating his theories to his fellow-beings. His pursuit of beauty and fulfilment is the tragic act of a superior being inevitably rejected as an outcast.

The Picture of Dorian Gray COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the texts and answer the following questions. 1

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2

Where and when does The Picture of Dorian Gray take place? The novel takes place in London at the end of the 19th century.

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4

5

6

7

Who is Dorian Gray? He is the protagonist of the novel. He is a young man whose beauty fascinates a painter, Basil Hallward, who decides to paint his portrait. He represents the ideal of youth, beauty and innocence. When he first appears in the novel, he is rather immature, but the reader is made aware of his purity and innocence through the narrator’s words. Dorian is considerably influenced by Lord Henry, who teaches him about hedonism, and starts to look for a life of pleasure and sensations. In the end, his vanity and selfishness ruin him, and the portrait provides a visual representation of the degradation of his soul. Who is Lord Henry Wotton? He is an intellectual, a brilliant talker, apparently superficial but extremely sharp in his criticism of institutions, considered sacred by his contemporaries, such as marriage and the Church. He is able to influence Dorian and as the story goes on, Dorian’s speech seems to mimic Lord Henry’s style. Why does Basil Hallward not want to exhibit his picture? What does he become a symbol of at the end of the novel? Because he is afraid that it reflects the strange attraction he feels for Dorian. At the end of the novel he becomes a sad example of how a good artist can be destroyed in a sacrifice for art. What narrative technique is employed? This story is told by an unobtrusive third-person narrator. The perspective adopted is internal, since Dorian’s apparition is in the second chapter, and this allows a process of identification between the reader and the character. What does the picture symbolise? It is not an autonomous self: it represents the dark side of Dorian’s personality, his double, which he tries to forget by locking it in a room. At the end of the novel the picture, restored to its original beauty, illustrates Wilde’s theory of art: art survives people, art is eternal. What is the moral of the novel? It is that every excess must be punished and reality cannot be escaped. When Dorian destroys the picture, he cannot avoid the punishment for all his sins, that is, death. The horrible, corrupted picture could be seen as a symbol of the immorality and bad conscience of the Victorian middle class, while Dorian and his pure, innocent appearance are symbols of bourgeois hypocrisy.

2 SUMMARISE Wilde’s thoughts in your own words. According to Wilde, the artist is the creator of beautiful things. He might consider the moral or immoral lives of people as part of the subject matter of his work, but art itself is not meant to teach the public anything. The true artist does not aim at proving anything and he makes no judgements of right or wrong. What people call ‘vices’ or ‘virtues’ are merely materials for the artist. Those who attempt to go beneath the surface of a work, or to find a particular meaning in a symbol, do so at their own risk. Wilde concludes the ‘Preface’ by saying that ‘All art is quite useless’, that is, art exists for its own sake (‘Art for Art’s Sake’) and not for any moral purpose.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the text and do the following activities. 1 Match the following concepts with the corresponding lines. 1 The artist Lines 1, 18, 20-25, 34. 2 The critic Lines 3-5, 32-34. 3 Art Lines 2, 11-17, 18-19, 26-31. 4 Beauty Lines 6-10. 5 Art for Art’s Sake Lines 35-39. 2 What does a writer generally express in a preface? Tick as appropriate. He expresses his intentions. He gives guidelines to the reader. 3 What may Wilde’s ‘Preface’ be considered? Why? C The manifesto of the English Aesthetic Movement. Because it speaks about the subject of art and the figure of the artist.

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3 WRITE 10-12 lines. Refer to the ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads (→ T45) written by William Wordsworth and highlight the main differences from Wilde’s ‘Preface’. Students should point out that Wilde, in his ‘Preface’, praises beauty and repudiates the notion that art serves a moral purpose. He concludes by saying that it is fine to create something useful as long as it is not admired as art. The only reason for creating something useless is to admire it a great deal. Thus, ‘All art is quite useless’, that is, it exists only for its own sake (‘Art for Art’s Sake’) and not for some moral purpose. On the contrary, the Romantic poet points out the didactic role of poetry, whose object should be events from everyday life, particularly the life of humble, rustic people, because in that condition the passions of men are more spontaneous and durable, and they are expressed in a simple and direct way. Wordsworth also refers to the language to be used and claims that poetry has its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.

4 Decide what the most relevant stylistic element of the whole passage is. It is the great number of repetitions: ‘art(s)’ and ‘artist’ are repeated 11 times each; ‘beautiful’ is repeated six times; ‘glass’, which is an anticipation of Dorian’s use of the mirror (the symbol of his double personality), appears twice. Anaphoric structures of some clauses, like ‘Those who…’, are used several times. 5 Recognise the aim of this linguistic device. B To emphasise the writer’s theme. 6 How would you define the language employed in this text? Choose from the following adjectives. Epigrammatic, abstract, witty. 7 State the aim of the inversion used by the writer in the second statement ‘To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim’ (line 2). Wilde inverts the usual syntactic order to stress the importance of the complement. 8 What is the significance of using the personal pronoun ‘We’ (line 35)? It aims at C giving a universal value to the sentence. 9 Explain the role of the artist, according to Oscar Wilde. The artist is the creator of beautiful things, he is not interested in communicating his own ideas to mankind and he writes only to please himself. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

7

COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

4 DISCUSS. What is your idea of art? Is there anything in art that you would censure? Support your answer with examples taken from your own world. You may also consider the field of music. Student’s activity.

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The preface

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

T82

T83

The painter’s studio

3

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a heading to each section. 1 2 3

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and

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write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Blue words: the setting in place and the description of the room furniture What does the window represent? The huge window is the connecting element between the room and the outside. Highlighted in light blue: the characters’ actions Highlighted in yellow: the two characters are talking about the portrait of a handsome young man done by the painter and the fact that he does not want to exhibit it Highlighted in green: phrases linked to the sense of hearing Underlined in blue: phrases linked to the sense of touch Highlighted in grey: phrases linked to the sense of sight Highlighted in orange: phrases linked to the sense of smell What atmosphere is conveyed? The atmosphere conveyed is sensuous and decadent. Pink words: paradoxes voiced by Lord Henry

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

2

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4

Basil’s studio. The portrait of a young man. Basil Hallward and Lord Henry Wotton.

Who is the narrator? Does he openly intervene in the narration? This story is told by a thirdperson narrator who is unobtrusive, since he never intervenes in the narration and he never addresses the reader directly. Consider the character of Lord Henry. How do we learn that he is languid and he smokes opium, that he is cynical and thinks that beauty is shallow? A From the character himself we learn that he thinks that beauty is shallow. B From the narrator we learn that he is languid and smokes opium. C From Basil Hallward we learn that he is cynical.

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7

Consider Basil Hallward and explain how we learn the following information. A He is a talented artist. We learn this from Lord Henry. B He is mysterious and once disappeared. We learn this from the narrator. Before Dorian Gray appears, what do we learn about him? What are our expectations of the plot? We know he is strikingly beautiful. Lord Henry comments that such beauty can only be without intellect, so we suspect someone naive. By presenting so much in the dialogue, Wilde is involving the reader in character assessment and speculation about the plot. The reader is also invited to laugh at the ideas expressed at the same time as accepting some element of seriousness. Does Wilde succeed in drawing you into this decadent world in the opening of the book? Why/Why not? Students’ activity. Suggestion: Students will hopefully say that they are drawn into the decadent setting of the novel by the sensuous description, by the witty, cynical dialogue and by the mystery of the ideas of beauty and secrecy. If they are not, then they should be able to explain that, perhaps, the setting is too extreme and the dialogue unbelievable or unnatural. COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

4 REFER to 5.11 and list the typical elements of Aestheticism which you have found in the text. Student’s activity. Suggestion: The description of Basil’s studio linked to a rare and sensuous atmosphere; the character of Dorian Gray, whose physical features are the only important things for the painter; the aesthetic isolation of the artist and the idea of art having no reference to life. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

5 WRITE a 10/12-line paragraph about this topic: ‘John Keats (→ 4.15) exalted beauty above all human qualities and was greatly admired by such artists as the Pre-Raphaelites and Oscar Wilde.’ State the difference between Keats’s cult of beauty and Wilde’s. The Romantic poet John Keats exalted beauty, which could be both physical (that of women and all other nature’s forms) and spiritual (that of love, friendship and poetry/art). These two aspects of beauty are closely interwoven in his poetry: the former, which is the expression of

6

7

COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

6 DISCUSS. What do you think about the suggestion that beauty and intellect are mutually exclusive? Give examples to support your point of view. Student’s activity.

8

9

T84

Dorian’s death

Does he blame himself for the deaths of Basil Hallward and Alan Campbell? No, he does not. Basil’s murder did not ‘weigh most on his mind’ and he describes it as a moment of madness. Campbell committed suicide, so Dorian does not consider himself guilty of that act. What is the one good thing that he has done? He has ‘spared’ an innocent girl and decided that he will never tempt innocence again. Dorian hopes that the portrait will show some improvement, but it does not. Why not? The look of ‘cunning’ and ‘the hypocrite’ on the portrait tells Dorian that his act of goodness had merely been vanity, or even just another curious search for a new sensation or a consequence of his passion ‘to act a part’ – and his reaction is one of pain and indignation, not of remorse. Why does he reject the idea of confession? He does not think people will believe him as he has been so careful to get rid of evidence. How did the servants identify the body of the dead man in front of the picture? Only by his rings.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

VOCABULARY

7

COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

3 CONCENTRATE on the character of Dorian Gray.

1 READ lines 1-38 and match the highlighted

1

words with their Italian translation. 1 sickly; 2 strolled; 3 shame; 4 iniquities; 5 teardimmed; 6 carved; 7 unsullied; 8 white-limbed; 9 flinging; 10 heel; 11 loathed; 12 unstained. 2 7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the whole text and answer the following questions. 1

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Do the first lines of the extract begin in a positive/happy or a negative/sad way? In a positive/happy way – it is a lovely warm evening and Dorian is walking home in a leisurely way. Why did the girl refuse to believe that Dorian was wicked? Because he was not as old and ugly as wicked people always were in her opinion. Would Dorian like to change in the first part of the extract? Yes, he would like to be able to change. What does he blame for his situation? First he blames his own pride and passion, then the fact that he has received no punishment to purify him, and finally his own youth and beauty.

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Say what feelings he shows while he is looking at the picture. How does he judge his own behaviour? He considers his portrait loathsome (lines 64-65), and he feels sorry and guilty towards his way of behaving. What does the portrait mean to Dorian? Does he see it as the reflection of his own soul or as an independent being, extraneous to himself? He sees it as a reflection of his own soul. Before reaching the final decision to destroy the picture, Dorian’s thought follows different steps. Match each of them with the corresponding lines in the text. A Nostalgia for his pure boyhood Lines 15-16. B Awareness of his corruption Lines 16-20. C Recollection of his pact to keep eternal youth Lines 21-23. D Wish for repentance and purification Lines 23-25. E Awareness that youth and beauty have caused his ruin Lines 34-38. F Wish to free himself from the past Lines 39-40, 50. G Understanding that repentance was pure illusion Lines 62-76. H Decision to destroy the picture Lines 96-99.

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the latter, is linked to life, enjoyment, decay and death; the latter is related to eternity. Thus an artist can die but his work of art lives forever and can communicate his feelings and its sense of beauty to men. Moreover, Keats identified beauty and truth as the only true types of knowledge. According to Oscar Wilde, the value of any work of art lies in its beauty, and not in the message that the artist wants to convey. The artist writes only to please himself since he is not interested in communicating his feelings and thoughts to his fellow-beings.

4 STATE why Dorian kills himself in stabbing the portrait. What does the portrait symbolise? He kills himself in stabbing the portrait because the portrait symbolises the dark side of his own soul.

5 EXAMINE the language of the passage. 1

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

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Consider the examples of associations in lines 7-89 and complete the scheme below. An example has been provided. A wicked people: always very old and very ugly (lines 8-9) B Dorian’s beauty: but a mask (lines 35-36) C Dorian’s youth: but a mockery (line 36) D youth: a green and unripe time, a time of shallow moods and sickly thoughts (lines 36-37) E the picture: an unjust mirror, the mirror of his soul (line 81) F the picture: evidence (line 89) The first association is the creed that has inspired Dorian’s whole life, which seems to be contradicted by the other statements. Why? Beauty and youth have only caused his ruin. Underline the sentences which express Dorian’s doubts about his salvation. They are in lines 50-56. Find the references to the mirror. Comment on the meaning of this suggestive detail in the story. References to the mirror are in lines 26-27 and 33-34. It is the symbol of Dorian’s double personality.

Teaching tip Teachers may expand the topic dealt with in this text by asking the students to connect Wilde’s work with that of his contemporaries in Italy – Gabriele D’Annunzio and his novel Il piacere (1889) – and in France – Joris-Karl Huysmans and his work À Rebours (1884). The students should focus on the setting, the main character, his tastes and experiences. Suggestion: Dorian Gray, Andrea Sperelli and Jean Des Esseintes are the protagonists of the three novels, they all are typical dandies who live looking for beauty and elegance; they despise whatever is trivial and mediocre. Their provoking, amoral experiences are described in a refined language. 7

8 DISCUSS. Are we also today too dependent upon what things look like rather than what they really are? Do we also value beauty and youth above talent, achievement or experience? Student’s activity. Suggestion: It should be easy to answer this with both yes and no, so it could spark an interesting debate. Content could include: fashion models becoming film and pop stars because their looks are more important than their talent; the pressure on all of us to concentrate on our looks rather than other qualities; our fear and rejection of what is not attractive (for example food, sensible clothing… not only people!); being constantly surrounded with people who do not look like us on the TV and in advertising.

From Text to Screen

Dorian Gray

6 CIRCLE the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs which describe the picture in lines 61-71. Which semantic area do they belong to? Some examples: ‘purple’, ‘loathsome’, ‘the scarlet dew that spotted’, ‘like blood newly spilt’, ‘red stain’, ‘to have crept like a horrible disease’, ‘had dripped’. They belong to the semantic area of mystery. 7

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS WITH THE CONTEXT OF THE AGE

COMPETENCE: WATCHING AND UNDERSTANDING A FILM

1 WATCH the sequence and say where the scene takes place. In a dark room in the attic of Dorian’s house.

2 DESCRIBE the character who is in the middle of the scene at the beginning of the sequence. What/Who else can you see in the foreground? He is Basil Hallward, the man who painted Dorian’s portrait; he is wearing a black suit, a white shirt and a yellow scarf. He seems to be seen through an oval lock; he is out of focus. An arm and the left side of the other character’s body can also be seen in the foreground.

7 CONSIDER the conclusion of the book. Do you think the Victorian Age, with its taste for purity and respectability, might have influenced Wilde or do you think that this ending is consistent with Wilde’s theories of art and life? Student’s activity. Suggestion: The ending is consistent with Wilde’s theories, according to which art is more important than life. In fact it is art that wins at the end of the book, since Dorian Gray dies and the picture recovers all its past perfection.

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COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

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how Basil reacts to the sight of the painting; He is shocked and frightened, he has become pale and seems to stumble.

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6 STATE what the prevailing colours of the sequence are. What atmosphere do they create? The prevailing colours are dark ones. The atmosphere is mysterious and frightening.

7 IDENTIFY the prevailing movement of the camera. What is the effect of this choice? The camera is mainly fixed because what matters most are the words spoken by the two characters. COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

8 REFER to this sequence and to the texts you have read from The Picture of Dorian Gray and discuss Dorian’s attitude towards the picture. Student’s activity. Suggestion: Throughout the novel Dorian shows a twofold attitude towards the picture. Sometimes he sees it as a reflection of his own soul (as in the film sequence), and sometimes he sees it as endowed with an autonomous life (as in the text from the last chapter of the novel).

4 CORRECT the mistaken words and then say who utters them. Choose D for Dorian and B for Basil. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

What’s the matter? D Don’t you recognise me? D That thing… It isn’t what… B Together, we’ve created something beautiful. D It’s a miracle. D Because of your painting this will never age, will never scar. D Can you even imagine being able to do anything you please… D … and live out every whim and impulse, while the world till sees you gleam? D Don’t you see that this must be destroyed? B We’ll find a priest or a spirit-worker. B

The Importance of Being Earnest COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the texts and answer the following questions. 1

COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

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5 LOOK for examples of the following shots in the sequence. 1

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Long shot: At the beginning of the sequence, when Basil seems to be seen through an oval lock; towards the end of the sequence, when Dorian moves closer to the mirror and Basil says ‘Don’t you see that this must be destroyed?’. Medium shot: When Dorian says ‘Look at me. Because of your painting…’; when Dorian says ‘and live out every whim and impulse’. Close-up: At the end of the sequence, the closeup on Dorian when Basil says ‘this devil’.

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Who are the protagonists of the play? Which social class do they belong to? They are two young men, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff; the girls the two men wish to marry, Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew; Cecily’s governess, Miss Prism; and Gwendolen’s mother, Lady Bracknell. They all belong to aristocracy. What comedy did Wilde create? He created a new sort of the Restoration comedy of manners, in which the problems of his age were reflected through his witty remarks. His social drama was a mirror in which fashionable audiences could see reflected the images of their own fashionable world of dinner parties and country-house weekends; a world in which everyone knew very well that the life they led was not as stable, as exclusive or as moral as it pretended to be. What are the main themes of The Importance of Being Earnest? They are the institution of marriage, and criticism about the Victorian prudery and exaggerated seriousness, hypocrisy and absurdity. Appearance is another important feature of this play.

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what Dorian explains to his friend; He explains that they both have created something beautiful because Dorian has succeeded in keeping his beauty and youth, while it is his painting which shows his sins and the signs of time. how the relationship between the painting and Dorian is described by the young man himself; It is something miraculous. where Dorian looks at himself; In a broken mirror. what Basil wants to do; He wants to destroy the picture and, in so doing, help Dorian. who he recognises in the painting; The devil. how Dorian answers; He states that he has become a god. how the scene ends. Dorian stabs the painter with a shard of the broken glass.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

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What are the main dramatic techniques adopted? The whole play is built on witty dialogues, amusing puns, misunderstandings and paradoxes which help deal with the complexity of social and personal identification. The title is a pun in itself: the name ‘Earnest’ (a misspelling for ‘Ernest’) evokes the adjective ‘earnest’, that is, honest or sincere, while none of the characters is truthful. What is important to them is not what they say, but how they say it; thus Wilde’s social satire comes from the ironic use of solemn language in situations that are utterly ridiculous and frivolous.

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The Victorian Age

T85

The interview Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

VISUAL ANALYSIS

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Lady Bracknell’s most important topics are smoking and money. Lady Bracknell’s least important topic is family.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided.

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

How would you describe Lady Bracknell? She is frivolous, arrogant, class-conscious and clever in her wit.

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4.10 LISTEN and complete the summary of the text. 1 satire; 2 aristocratic; 3 conservative; 4 marriage; 5 planning; 6 business; 7 interviews; 8 suitable; 9 income; 10 handbag.

1 READ the text and write a heading to each

Highlighted in yellow: the topics of Jack and Lady Bracknell’s conversation are: smoking, age, education, income, possessions and family Highlighted in pink: social clichés revealed by the dialogue Which social class do the two characters belong to? They both belong to the aristocracy. Green dots: the woman’s point of view on Jack’s origin Underlined in blue: Lady Bracknell’s remarks What do they reveal about Lady Bracknell? She is bossy and snobbish (lines 2-3), narrow-minded (lines 7-8), thoughtless (lines 11-12) and cynical (lines 16-17, 21, 26-27). Highlighted in light blue: paradoxes used by Lady Bracknell Highlighted in green: Jack’s concern for upperclass values Red dots: what Jack has to do if he wants to marry Gwendolen

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What do Jack’s words reveal about him as a person? He is ambitious, frivolous, emptyheaded and privileged. What kind of humour do these two characters reflect? They reflect verbal humour. The most surprising example of this is in lines 39-40. Its comic effect is created by the confusion of the common meaning of ‘to lose’ and its idiomatic sense in ‘to lose one’s parents’, that is, ‘to be left an orphan’. What information do the stage directions provide? They give information about facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice. How would you define the language used in this scene? It is sophisticated, artificial and fit for characters belonging to the upper classes.

TRANSCRIPT The action and satire in Act 1 are highlighted by the arrival of Lady Bracknell, Gwendolen’s mother. She is an aristocratic, arrogant and conservative Victorian woman. This character is used to satirise Victorian attitudes towards marriage, which has been transformed into a process of careful selection and planning by parents. Social status and wealth make marriage a business proposition that brings together two parties. Lady Bracknell interviews Jack to decide whether he is suitable as a possible son-in-law. She asks Jack about his habits and income. Jack seems to give all the right answers, until she asks him about his family background. He admits that he is an orphan, found in a handbag. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

5 WRITE a 10/12-line paragraph about this topic: ‘Wilde presents a frivolous milieu, where wit is the most important instrument of survival.’ Do you think the writer intended to make any social criticism? Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should point out that Wilde’s two main targets in this play are social hypocrisy and the mercenary marriage-market of the high society of his age. His satire is of a good-humoured kind; the plot makes fun of the dramatic conventions of the day, the education, the relations between romantic love and the simplicity of the country.

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Text Bank 73: Arms and the Man Teacher’s key on page 330.

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4.11 LISTEN and complete the life and works of George Bernard Shaw. 1 failed; 2 singer; 3 critic; 4 joining; 5 city slums; 6 audiences; 7 ideological; 8 dishonesty; 9 heroism; 10 hierarchy; 11 impulse; 12 selfrealisation.

TRANSCRIPT George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856, the youngest child of a failed corn-merchant. His education was musical rather than literary since his mother was a professional singer. At the age of 20 he moved to London and became a critic of music and art and contributed to several periodicals. Later he took an active part in the Fabian Society, joining debating clubs and lecturing on social questions. In 1892 his first play, Widowers’ Houses, was performed; this text dealt with the problem of city slums. At first, Shaw’s comedies were generally more successful outside England, and only gradually did he make an impression on London’s audiences and critics. In 1898 the collection Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant was published. These plays were ideological attacks on the evils of capitalism, and explorations of moral and social problems. The collection included, among others, Mrs Warren’s Profession (1893), about the dishonesty of those who benefited from prostitution, Arms and the Man (1894), a parody of military heroism, and Pygmalion (1912), about social hierarchy in Victorian Britain. In 1905 his play Man and Superman, whose title echoes Nietzsche, firmly established his reputation. In this play Shaw expressed his theory of ‘Life Force’, according to which life is a vital impulse that strives to gain a greater power of contemplation and selfrealisation through woman, who is not an inferior being but the main instrument of procreation. In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 1950. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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Mrs Warren’s Profession COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the texts and make notes under the following headings. 1

The playwright’s task according to Shaw. Shaw described himself as a Puritan reformer who used drama to present his ideas and criticise Victorian institutions. He believed he had a

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1 READ about Mrs Warren’s Profession and answer the following questions. 1

Where does the play take place? The action of most of the play takes place in and around a country cottage in Surrey.

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Teaching tip The presentation George Bernard Shaw in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

mission – the improvement of society –, and therefore he was concerned about creating social awareness, through ethical themes and lucid characterisation. The aspects of contemporary drama that had disgusted Shaw. One aspect was a mental tendency he called ‘sentimentalism’ or ‘idealism’, which prevented man from facing up to unpleasant facts; another aspect was the uncritical adulation of Shakespeare. He suggested replacing ‘idealism’ by ‘realism’ and Shakespeare by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), who, according to Shaw, had presented real life on the stage and had introduced discussion into his plays. The main stylistic devices he adopted. Shaw’s writing followed upon his long experience as a platform speaker, so that it was as effective when spoken as when read. Facts and arguments are skilfully ordered, and although sentences are usually long and contain several statements, the whole effect is one of speed and simplicity and the tone is generally one of vitality and gaiety. His main devices are the paradox, the inversion of traditional ideas and values, the unexpected, the outspoken truth and exaggeration: his characters say exactly what they think, instead of what is conventionally expected they should say. Stage directions are written in narrative style and are extremely detailed. The alphabet he created. Shaw tried to create a simple, phonetic orthography alphabet, known as the Shavian alphabet, in order to remove some of the difficulties of conventional spelling. The originality of his plays. Shaw invented the ‘drama of discussion or ideas’, where he combined contemporary moral problems with comic, ironic tones and paradoxes. His originality lies in infusing the discussion play with the spirit of the English comedy. The contemporary issues he was interested in. He was interested in the consequences of capitalism as well as other contemporary problems, such as militarism, the equality of women, the relationship between husband and wife, and religion.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

5.25 George Bernard Shaw

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The Victorian Age

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Who are the main characters? They are Kitty Warren and her daughter Vivie, a 22-year-old Cambridge graduate. The other characters include Kitty’s friends Sir George Crofts and Mr Praed; Frank Gardner, a young man who is in love with Vivie, and his father, the local vicar. What does the audience gradually learn about Mrs Warren? The audience gradually learns that Mrs Warren’s life is not ‘respectable’ and that there is some doubt as to the identity of Vivie’s father. How does the second act end? It ends with the brilliant scene in which Vivie confronts her mother with a demand for information about her past. In this exchange the girl learns that Mrs Warren chose prostitution as a trade because it offered more security and better conditions than any others which were open to her as an uneducated working-class girl. This act ends with Vivie having gained new respect for her mother. How do mother and daughter differ? Mrs Kitty Warren was born in poverty. Over the years she was able to become a financially secure lady thanks to her work in prostitution, which was the result of economic necessity, not of moral weakness. She has a daughter, Vivie, but does not have much contact with her. Because of her profession, Kitty is separated both from her family and from respectable Victorian society. Vivie Warren has received an excellent education paid for by her mother. She is an emancipated woman; she is rational and self-reliant. She is different from her mother because she does not need money to buy beautiful dresses and go to parties, but to be successful and gain independence. Did the audience welcome the play when it was performed in 1902? Why? The public was shocked by the content of this play. Reviewers condemned the play as immoral, because of its thesis that prostitution was forced on women by the economic system rather than being the product of corrupt self-indulgence. What is the main theme developed by this play? It is a deliberately provocative attack on the 19thcentury issue of sexual morality in marriage. What is the playwright’s aim? It is to cause his mainly middle-class audience to reconsider all their accepted ideas about the employment of women, who were widely exploited at that time. What does Vivie’s relationship with her mother symbolise? It symbolises the relation of the individual to society.

T86

George Bernard Shaw, Mrs Warren’s Profession LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

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VOCABULARY

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words and phrases with their Italian translation. 1 starvation wages; 2 pick; 3 disagreeables; 4 confident; 5 want; 6 drop; 7 turn; 8 minded; 9 pitied; 10 despise; 11 plain; 12 set yourself up above. 7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ lines 1-18 again and answer the following questions. 1

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How does Mrs Warren speak to Vivie? She suddenly breaks out in her natural dialect speaking with heartfelt inspiration and scorn (lines 1-4). What language does she use? She uses the dialect of a woman from the slums (lines 1-2). What is the cause of Mrs Warren’s indignation? It is Vivie’s presumptuous attitude towards her (lines 1, 4-7). How does she call her daughter? She calls her ‘bad daughter’ and shows all the passionate dislike and scorn of a woman of the people for those stuck-up prudes as she calls Vivie (lines 6-7). How does Vivie react to her mother’s words? Vivie’s self-possession begins to break down (lines 8-10). What is Mrs Warren about to tell her daughter? She is about to tell her the story of her life.

3 READ lines 19-36 again and complete the

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sentences about their content. Use your own words. Women who have a turn for music, or the stage, or newspaper-writing can get the money to keep themselves dressed as well. (Lines 19-22) Neither Mrs Warren nor her sister Liz had any turn for those things. (Line 22) They only had their appearance and their turn for pleasing men. (Line 23) Therefore, they decided to trade themselves and get all the profits instead of starvation wages. (Lines 23-26) Respectable women could only aspire to catch some rich man’s fancy and get the benefit of his money by marrying him. (Lines 28-30)

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Why Mrs Warren has often pitied poor girls. She has often pitied poor girls as they always have to please some man even if they are tired and in low spirits (lines 38-41). Where she and her sister Liz would be now if they had minded the clergyman’s foolishness, who had preached morality at them at church school. They would be scrubbing floors for one and sixpence a day and they would have nothing to look forward to but the workhouse infirmary (lines 60-62). What the only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is. It is to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her (lines 63-64). How Vivie looks at her mother at the end of their exchange. She gazes at her ‘fascinated’ (line 68).

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COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

5 SAY which adjectives describe the conversation between the two women. Tick as appropriate.

7 FOCUS on Vivie. In the first act of the play, Shaw presents this woman as a character who has planned her life; who is going to make her money by doing actuarial calculations and watching the Stock Exchange; who is used to spending her evenings drinking whisky, smoking cigars and reading detective stories; who has no time for holidays, friends and love.

Aggressive. Informal.

6 CONCENTRATE on the character of Mrs Warren. The extract you have just read explores the woman’s emotional world. 1

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Look back at the text and complete the table about Mrs Warren’s past life conditions and her reactions to them.

Mrs Warren’s past

Mrs Warren’s reactions

She was not brought up like her daughter. She had harsh experiences during her youth and she refused to work as a shop girl, barmaid and waitress.

She accepted her sister’s advice on how to become a financially secure lady. She started to trade on her appearance and her ability to please men. She did everything she could to reach independence and self-respect in order to become a ‘conventional’ mother.

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What kind of woman is Kitty Warren? She is a second-class mother: she has money, so she entrusts Vivie’s education and upbringing to the people whose business it is to make distinguished scholars and proper young ladies. Her ambitions are conventional, but she represents the women’s struggle for independence and self-respect at a time when women were widely exploited. She also wants her daughter to have a better chance in life than the one she has had. Shaw uses this female character as a metaphor for his diagnosis of the malaise in society. Explain this statement quoting from the text. Shaw is not only attacking the pitiful and degrading level of women’s wages which forces them to consider prostitution, but he is also making a direct comparison between prostitution and its respectable counterpart in marriage equating them with a similar economic dependence of women on men. This is shown in the text by Mrs Warren’s speech and in particular when she says ‘The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her. If she’s in his own station of life, let her make him marry her; but if she’s far beneath him she can’t expect it: why should she?’ (lines 63-65).

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This scene presents a peculiar side of her personality. Tick as appropriate to describe it. She is aggressive. She is extremely rational and full of contempt for whatever cannot be justified by her practical reasoning. She represents the literary type of the emancipated woman. At the end of the exchange, after an unexpected explosion of feelings on Mrs Warren’s side, Vivie’s certainties are shattered. What does she now accept? She succeeds in respecting, admiring, loving Kitty as her mother even if she decided to take to prostitution rather than accept the economic slavery of a ‘respectable’ working-class life.

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Kitty Warren also states that she despises respectable people because of their want of character. (Lines 31-34)

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

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Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should develop the following notes: The Importance of Being Earnest Dramatic techniques: irony; witty remarks; limited stage directions Characters: static and flat; stereotypes Themes: social snobbery; the institution of marriage as a practice surrounded by hypocrisy and absurdity Language: witty, brilliant dialogues; amusing puns; misunderstandings; paradoxes; solemn language in situations that are utterly ridiculous and frivolous Mrs Warren’s Profession Dramatic techniques: irony; very long, detailed stage directions written in narrative style Characters: realistic; mouthpieces of the playwright’s ideas Themes: criticism against Victorian values, the consequences of capitalism, the equality of women Language: realistic; witty; aggressive; paradoxes; exaggerations; the Shavian alphabet

8 STATE the functions of the stage directions in this text. They highlight the two characters’ feelings and reactions, their moods and way of speaking.

9 DEFINE the language used in this scene. You can choose from the following adjectives or add any other you consider suitable. Natural, simple, realistic, modern.

10 FOCUS on the two most important semantic areas developed in the text, that of conventional morality and that of the real state of things.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

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Complete the table below with examples from the text. Student’s activity. Some examples:

Conventional morality

Real state of things

‘conventional authority of a mother’ (line 11); ‘conventional superiority of a respectable woman’ (lines 11-12); ‘I shall always respect your right to your own opinions’ (lines 13-14)

‘a bad daughter and a stuck-up prude’ (lines 6-7); ‘if youre a plain woman … pleasing men’ (lines 20-23); ‘to catch some rich man’s fancy … by marrying him’ (line 29)

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Which character embodies the code of conventional morality and hypocrisy? Which one embodies the code of the real state of things? Vivie embodies the code of conventional morality and hypocrisy, Mrs Warren that of reality. COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS WITH THE CONTEXT OF THE AGE

11 REFER to 5.12 and to the introduction to Mrs Warren’s Profession. Then sum up some of Shaw’s favourite themes and dramatic techniques. The characters are identified with particular ideas and social institutions and say exactly what they think, instead of what is conventionally expected they should say. The dialogue is skilfully employed by the playwright to present his views on contemporary problems, like the exploitation of working-class women. The stage directions are very long and detailed. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

12 WRITE a 10/12-line paragraph to compare Shaw’s play with The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (→ T85) as regards dramatic techniques, characters, themes and language.

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COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

13 DISCUSS. If you had to choose the cast for a performance of Shaw’s play, what sort of actors or actresses do you envisage for each part? Student’s activity.

Topic 5 Education COMPETENCE: CONNECTING PICTURES TO TOPICS AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

1 LOOK at the pictures and discuss in small groups. When did schooling for all begin? Who received education before then? What changes have happened to the teaching methods since the 19th century? Make a short list of the changes and share it with the rest of the class. Students’ activity.

2 READ the quotes and write a sentence about what you think education should be. Share your sentence with the rest of the class. Students’ activity.

COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A JOURNALISTIC TEXT

1 READ the article and match the highlighted words with their meaning. 1 overarching; 2 adamant; 3 flawed; 4 floundered; 5 shortage; 6 catered; 7 thrive on; 8 yielded; 9 relished; 10 outspoken.

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2 COMPREHENSION AND INTERPRETATION

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Answer the following questions by using complete sentences and your own words. What did Ken Gibson realise when he was in his elementary school? He realised that different students can have different difficulties at school. In fact, while he was very good at reading on his own but found it hard to read in front of his classmates, other pupils in his class were good at oral presentations but had difficulty in reading a text on their own or in following lectures. Which idea about learning styles has ‘taken off’ in recent years? The idea that has become increasingly widespread in recent years is that there are different learning styles, which can vary from student to student. What does David Kolb believe? He believes that learners can be divided, according to their personality, into those who learn best actively and those who learn best by observing. He also says that some need concrete concepts while others learn through abstract ones. How do holistic learners normally learn best, according to the article? According to the article, holistic learners learn best from seeing something in its entirety, not in stages, one point at a time. What were the findings of a study by the University of London? In a research project to find similarities between all the different theories about learning style, the University of London discovered that only three tests stood up to their criteria and no overall model for learning styles. What is LearningRx? Who founded it and what idea is it based on? LearningRx was founded in 2002 by a pediatric optometrist called Ken Gibson and is a tutoring organisation that bases its educational assistance on the individual learning styles of the students, which can vary according to their specific cognitive strengths.

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Which are the three learning styles described in the fifth paragraph? The three different learning styles described in the fifth paragraph are: visual learning for those who need to see images or slideshows; auditory for those who need to listen to information; and kinaesthetic for those who need something practical, like building a model, in order to learn efficiently. Which comparison does Daniel Willingham use to discredit the theory of learning styles? He uses the comparison of a basketball team where different players may play in a different way but the learning process has been similar. His point is that cognitive ability is the key, not the learning style. What does he suggest as the best way of teaching about South America? According to Willingham, teaching styles should depend on the object of the lesson. He gives as an example a lesson about the geography of South America: in this case, he explains, it is much more efficient to use a map than to describe the continent in words. Is the article convincing about the need in teaching to take into account different learning styles? Justify your answer. The article explains clearly that there are different learning styles but does not conclude that teaching should be catered to match these styles. The point that emerges from the article is that although students undoubtedly learn in different ways, it is the material used in teaching and the cognitive ability of the students that count most.

3 PRODUCTION Choose one of the following questions. Either 1

Education inevitably changes over time. Do you think the next generation will learn from home using online classes and material? Will schools as we know them disappear? What do you consider the advantages or disadvantages of online learning? Write a 300-word essay.

Or 2

Many educators agree that education should not be limited to academic subjects, but more space should be given to activities such as sport, music or drama. Are these additional skills useful? Do they enhance the learning experience for all or some of the students? Write a 300-word composition making reference to your own experience. Student’s writing activity.

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Is teaching to a student’s ‘learning style’ a bad idea?

4 DISCUSS in pairs. Which do you think is your learning style? Do you think teaching should change to cater for different needs or is the material more important than the style? Students’ activity.

Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 PINK FLOYD COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A SONG

A teacher’s testament GRAHAM SWIFT,

COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A LITERARY TEXT

ESAME DI STATO: SECONDA PROVA

1 COMPREHENSION AND INTERPRETATION

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Victorian Age

1 DESCRIBE what is ungrammatical in the first

1

two lines and why this adds strength to the message. It is ungrammatical to use a double negative. Using it here makes an even stronger negative impression and is also ironic because education is all about teaching children to use grammar correctly. Another layer of meaning is also added because this is a common mistake made by small children, so it conveys the point of view of a child.

2

3

2 SAY what the singer means by ‘the wall’. The wall could have different meanings. It obviously represents obstacles in life and the metaphorical wall that can exist between children and teachers or children and adults in general. It may also represent the lack of understanding in society towards those in difficulty, or represent what is expected of children – the idea that education is all about building up a wall of respectability.

4

5

3 IDENTIFY the message of the song. The song is about the lack of understanding and tolerance in society. It is a cry of alarm and a cry for help as the phrase ‘We don’t need no education’ is so blatantly untrue. It is especially those who feel isolated or emarginated who need to be helped, educated and accepted.

6

7

4 GIVE your opinion on the following. Student’s activity. Suggestion: •

•

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‘We don’t need no thought control’ This is a comment on how schools teach children to conform and try to stamp out original or imaginative initiatives. ‘dark sarcasm in the classroom’ This is a comment on teaching styles where teachers use sarcasm as a tool to discipline their difficult classes.

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Waterland

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9

Answer the following questions by using complete sentences and your own words. What does Tom believe that education is not? He believes that education is not just the filling of empty minds, or teachers talking about useless things or even preparing students for the world outside school. What does he think it is? According to Tom, education is about students resisting teachers, opposing them. It is a difficult and long process that has no magic solution but a slow fight, an uphill battle. Why did he become a teacher? He decided to become a teacher after his experiences in the Second World War. He loved history and, seeing so much destruction around him, he wanted to do something to rebuild civilisation. Why does he refer to civilisation as an ‘artifice’? He refers to it as an artifice because it is something that he believes has to be constructed and built up again and again when it is knocked down. How do we know that Price is a rebel? We know that he is a rebel because Tom refers to his ‘skull-face’ and to the ‘Holocaust Club’ that Price has set up. What does history teach children, according to Tom? According to Tom, history teaches children that they will grow up to be like their parents and to make the same mistakes that their parents made. What should the young try to resist in Tom’s view? Tom believes that the young should try to resist the inevitable and even if they do end up like their parents, their struggle to resist is important. Why does the headmaster think Tom has been teaching too long? He is concerned that Tom does not seem to have any of his ideals or enthusiasm about teaching left and feels that children inevitably go on to make the same mistakes as their parents. In which ways is education a ‘fight against fear’? The fear which is referred to is that it is all meaningless, so the point of education is to find a meaning through all channels including history.

Review ONLINE Interactive exercises

The ZTE exercises can be employed to review the chapter. COMPETENCE: MASTERING USEFUL VOCABULARY

1 TRANSLATE into English the following words and phrases to talk about history. 1 constitutional monarchy; 2 universal suffrage; 3 secret ballot; 4 famine; 5 crops; 6 exhibition; 7 steel; 8 charities; 9 respectability; 10 self-restraint; 11 chastity; 12 prudery; 13 humanitarian causes; 14 exert influence; 15 maintain; 16 conceive; 17 survival of a species; 18 slavery; 19 gold rush; 20 mourning; 21 regrouping of the parties; 22 slums; 23 purchase of shares; 24 compulsory education; 25 franchise; 26 white man’s burden; 27 jubilee.

2 PRODUCTION Choose one of the following questions. Either 1

How is education a ‘struggle’? What are the challenges faced by teachers and by students? Discuss different views of education by referring to other texts you have read. Write a 300-word essay.

COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

Or 2

What is your own experience of learning? What makes a good teacher and a good teaching environment? Write a 300-word composition making reference to your own experience. Student’s writing activity.

2 LOOK at the pictures and answer the questions as completely as possible. 1

COMPETENCE: DEVELOPING CITIZENSHIP SKILLS

3 DISCUSS. Is education a basic right? Discuss the reasons why in many parts of the world it is a struggle to obtain even the minimum, while in the most highly developed countries lifelong learning gives unlimited opportunities to all.

2

Teaching tip Give advice about how to develop a topic (→ Study Skill 24, p. 421) and have your students develop the topic of education.

Student’s activity.

3

Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

Who were the Chartists and what did they ask for? The Chartists were a group of working-class radicals who, in 1838, drew up a People’s Charter demanding equal electoral districts, universal male suffrage, a secret ballot, paid MPs, annually elected Parliaments and abolition of the property qualifications for membership. No one in power was ready for such democracy and the Chartist movement failed. However, their influence was later felt when, in 1867, the Second Reform Act enfranchised part of the urban male working class in England and Wales for the first time and, in 1872, the secret ballot was introduced with the Ballot Act. What are the characters doing? What values are embodied here? A typical Victorian family is shown in their garden. The values embodied are respectability and the importance of the family. The middle and upper classes liked to see themselves as respectable following the example set by the royal family, where Victoria and Albert became the living image of respectability. There was general agreement on the virtues of asserting a social status, keeping up appearances and looking after a family. These things were ‘respectable’. This picture of Queen Victoria was taken in 1893. What situation does it describe? It shows Queen Victoria Empress of India with her personal attendant. She was given this title in 1877. In the last decades of the 19th century,

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How would you summarise Tom’s view of teaching from this passage? The headmaster calls Tom a ‘tired old cynic’ but Tom’s view seems very realistic and practical. He entered the profession with the specific idea of rebuilding a civilisation that he believed in and he sees the role of his students as that of preserving in some way this state of affairs, or at least not letting it get worse. He avoids all the clichéd expressions about education and ends up by saying it is merely a way to find a meaning to life.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

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4

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The Victorian Age

5

the British Empire was an immense collection of colonies and was becoming more difficult to control. By 1850 the East India Company directly ruled most of northern, central and south-eastern India. In the late Victorian period the new imperial government became more ambitious and through free market economics it destroyed traditional farming and caused the deindustrialisation of India. Why did Britain fight the Boer Wars? The struggle with France at the beginning of the 19th century had led to Britain’s global hegemony. However, since Waterloo, Britain’s foreign policy had been defensive. Many areas of the world were characterised by political and cultural fragmentation and it was there that Britain began to gain control without major political intervention. This was the situation in South America, in Asia and most of all in Africa, where Britain competed with the other European countries to divide up the continent. In South Africa, by the 1870s, the British controlled two colonies, Cape Colony and Natal, while the Dutch settlers, the Boers, had the two republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. When Britain took over Transvaal in 1877, the Boers rebelled and war broke out. The Boer Wars (1880-1902) ended in 1902 with a British victory. Describe the living conditions of the people in the picture. They were miserable due to poverty, overcrowding and the lack of hygiene.

4 COMPLETE the diagram about the question of slavery in 19th-century America and the Civil War. • •

• •

• •

5 EXPLAIN the thoughts expressed by the people shown in the pictures. Student’s activity. Students should report what they have studied in 5.3 and 5.6.

COMPETENCE: PROVIDING INFORMATION ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

3 COMPLETE the timeline to sum up the reforms enacted in the late Victorian Age. Match the reforms with the corresponding dates and explain what they introduced. 1870 The Education Act started a national system by introducing ‘board schools’, mainly in the poorer areas of the towns. 1871 The Trade Union Act introduced the legalisation of trade unions. 1872 The Ballot Act introduced the secret ballot at elections. 1875 The Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Act allowed local public authorities to clear the slums and provided housing for the poor. A Public Health Act provided sanitation as well as running water. 1878 A Factory Act limited the working hours per week. 1884 The Third Reform Act extended voting to all male householders, including miners, millworkers and farm labourers. This extension of the franchise gave public opinion an important role as a political force.

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Gap between the North and the South Constant increase of white population in the North due to immigration 4 million black slaves in the South Æ Several northern States adopted emancipation The international demand for cotton meant the economy of the South continued to rely on slave labour Northern abolitionists organised themselves into the Republican Party, which demanded that slavery be excluded from all territories of the Union Æ The Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election in 1860 Soon after, 11 southern States seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America War followed because Lincoln, supported by a majority of northerners, refused to concede that any American State had the constitutional right to withdraw from the Union. The Civil War broke out in 1861 and lasted four years. Slavery was abolished in 1865

6 DESCRIBE the key ideas of the Victorian novel as regards: •

• •

•

•

the relationship between the writer and his readers; There was, for the first time, a communion of interests and opinions between writers and their middle-class readers. Novels were first published in instalments, which allowed the writer to have an immediate feedback from his public. the novelist’s aim; Didactic. the setting; Mainly urban – the city was the main symbol of the industrial civilisation as well as the expression of anonymous lives and lost identities. the characters; Realistic characters the public could easily identify with, in terms of comedy – especially Dickens’s characters – or dramatic passion – the Brontë sisters’ heroines. the narrator. The omniscient narrator provided a comment on the plot and erected a rigid barrier between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ behaviours.

Main Representative(s) Features

The novel of manners

William M. Thackeray

It dealt with economic and social problems and described a particular class or situation.

The humanitarian novel

Charles Dickens

It combined humour with a sentimental request for reform for the less fortunate. It could be divided into novels of a ‘realistic’, ‘fantastic’ or ‘moral’ nature according to their predominant tone or issue dealt with.

The novel of formation

Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters

It dealt with one character’s development from early youth to some sort of maturity.

Literary nonsense

Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll

It created a nonsensical universe where the social rules and conventions are disintegrated, the cause-effect relationship does not exist, and time and space have lost their function of giving an order to human experience.

The realistic novel

Thomas Hardy, George Eliot

It mirrored a society linked to a growing crisis in the moral and religious fields. Coincidences were fully exploited to solve the intricacies of the plot, and chance played a Darwinian role.

The psychological novel

Robert Louis Stevenson

It tried to capture the monstrous, illogical aspects of life and described the double nature of Victorian society.

8 LIST the key ideas of Transcendentalism and

2

say how they affected the American writers of the period. The key ideas of Transcendentalism were: •

• • •

all reality was seen as a single unity (oneness and multiplicity were the same thing), a concept which well suited the reality of the ‘melting pot’, of a country where people from all over the world formed a national unity; contact with nature was the best means to reach truth and awareness of the unity of all things; the ‘over-soul’ was the spiritual principle linking everything together; man was the emanation of the over-soul, and the emphasis lay on his individuality, on his selfeducation. This philosophy encouraged an optimistic and self-reliant point of view, which found expression particularly in the poems of Walt Whitman and the works of Henry David Thoreau, who, in 1849, published his essay Civil Disobedience, where he stated his belief in the individual’s right to resist the power and the laws of the State when they were in conflict with his own honest, moral convictions.

9 FOCUS on what you know about Aestheticism and answer the following questions. 1

Where and when did the Aesthetic Movement begin? It developed in the universities and intellectual circles in the last decades of the 19th century. It began in France with Théophile Gautier.

Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

3 4

5

6

What did it reflect and react against? It reflected the sense of frustration and uncertainty of the artist; his reaction against the materialism, monotony, vulgarity and restrictive moral code of the bourgeoisie; and his need to redefine the role of art. What was its motto? ‘Art for Art’s Sake’. How did the aesthete live? He lived unconventionally, pursuing sensation and excess, and cultivating art and beauty. What were the roots of the movement in England? It was imported there by the American painter James McNeill Whistler, but its roots can be traced back to the Romantic poet John Keats, the Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the art critic John Ruskin. Who was its theorist in England? Walter Pater.

10 EXPLAIN how Aestheticism affected: 1

2 3

the artist’s attitude; It was hedonistic, sensuous, disenchanted with contemporary society and very much self-centred. his choice of subject; He chose sensual and sometimes perverse subjects. his use of language. It was evocative. COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING LITERARY TEXTS

11 HIGHLIGHT the main ideas linked to the novels and plays you have studied as regards setting, characters, themes and style. Support your ideas with details from the texts you have studied. Student’s activity.

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Types

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7 COMPLETE the table about Victorian novels.

SYLLABUS PLANNER Programmazione per competenze 6. The Modern Age Tempo di svolgimento: circa 4 mesi Asse dei COMPETENZE linguaggi Traguardi formativi

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Modern Age

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Utilizzare una lingua straniera per sviluppare la competenza linguisticocomunicativa finalizzata al raggiungimento almeno del Livello B2 e le competenze relative all’universo culturale legato alla lingua di riferimento

A quali “Traguardi per lo sviluppo delle competenze” mirano le attività didattiche del capitolo? Padroneggiare il lessico specifico, gli strumenti espressivi e argomentativi indispensabili per gestire l’interazione comunicativa in vari contesti • usare in maniera appropriata la terminologia relativa al contesto storico, sociale e letterario • leggere e comprendere testi relativi al contesto storico, sociale e letterario • inquadrare nel tempo e nello spazio le problematiche storicoletterarie

CONTENUTI Indicatori

Che cosa ci si aspetta sappia fare lo studente che ha raggiunto questi traguardi? Riflessione sulla lingua • osservare le parole nei contesti d’uso e impararne il significato

Parlato (produzione e interazione orale) • descrivere i principali eventi storici utilizzando in modo Leggere, comprendere e appropriato la terminologia interpretare testi scritti di vario tipo specifica • inquadramento storico-sociale • approfondimenti culturali • testi letterari e giornalistici • utilizzare immagini per Dimostrare consapevolezza della spiegare concetti storici e storicità della letteratura filosofici, la tecnica espressiva • cogliere gli elementi di di un artista o autore; per permanenza e discontinuità nei riassumere la biografia di un processi storici e letterari autore; per spiegare simboli • comprendere le relazioni tra il letterari contesto storico e culturale e le opere

Su quali conoscenze e abilità si sviluppano le competenze? • abbinare vocaboli relativi al contesto storico-sociale o ai testi letterari alla loro traduzione italiana o alla loro definizione in inglese, anche riflettendo sulla derivazione di parola e sulle collocazioni

• descrivere gli eventi principali dell’Edwardian Age, della Prima e della Seconda guerra mondiale; la storia degli Stati Uniti nella prima metà del XX secolo • descrivere l’Edwardian Age • descrivere la teoria dell’inconscio di S. Freud • collegare la tecnica di P. Picasso a quella di T.S. Eliot • descrivere gli eventi principali della vita di Produrre testi scritti di vario J. Joyce, V. Woolf, tipo in relazione a diversi scopi G. Orwell comunicativi • spiegare i simboli del • scrivere brevi testi di commento a romanzo The Great brani letterari Gatsby • scrivere testi per esprimere le • fornire informazioni pertinenti • descrivere le proprie opinioni su un genere o un’opera caratteristiche del letteraria Modernismo Attualizzare tematiche letterarie • analizzare e descrivere anche in chiave di cittadinanza le caratteristiche della attiva poesia moderna • percepire l’importanza della • descrivere le letteratura nella formazione caratteristiche del personale romanzo moderno • interpretare le variazioni di un • descrivere le tema nell’ambito di culture diverse caratteristiche del e nel corso del tempo monologo interiore • descrivere le caratteristiche di una nuova generazione di scrittori americani • analizzare l’evoluzione di un • esplorare il tema della tema in diverse letterature memoria in culture diverse

Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

ATTIVITÀ DIDATTICHE

STRUMENTI DI VALUTAZIONE

Attività per lo sviluppo delle competenze

History and Culture es. 3-4 p. 157; es. 3 p. 160; es. 3-4 p. 169; es. 2-4 p. 175

History and Culture es. 5 p. 157 CLIL es. 2 p. 165 Authors and Texts es. 3 p. 205 Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 250; es. 1 p. 265; es. 1 p. 275 Authors and Texts es. 3 p. 286

Con quali strumenti di valutazione (formativa e sommativa) si verificano l’acquisizione dei contenuti e lo sviluppo delle competenze? Nelle Idee per insegnare, prove diversificate (prove standard Fila A e Fila B, prove guidate per BES) • questionario sul contesto storico, sociale e letterario • test sui War Poets • test di Reading competence su una poesia di S. Sassoon • test su W.B. Yeats • test su T.S. Eliot e The Waste Land • test su W.H. Auden e Another Time • test su J. Conrad e Heart of Darkness • test su D.H. Lawrence e Sons and Lovers • test su E.M. Forster e A Passage to India • test di Literary competence su un brano da A Room with a View • test su J. Joyce e le sue opere • test di Reading competence su un brano da A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • test su V. Woolf e Mrs Dalloway • test su G. Orwell e Nineteen Eighty-Four • test di Literary competence su un brano da Nineteen Eighty-Four • test su F.S. Fitzgerald e The Great Gatsby • test su E. Hemingway e A Farewell to Arms • test su L. Hughes • test su J. Steinbeck e The Grapes of Wrath • lettura e comprensione di un articolo relativo al Topic 6 (Towards Invalsi) • lettura e comprensione di un articolo relativo al Topic 6 (Esame di Stato Seconda Prova) • test di produzione scritta

B2 Exams IELTS Academic Reading; IELTS Listening – Section 3; IELTS Academic Writing – Task 1 pp. 170-172 eBook: IELTS Listening – Section 1

ZTE online • esercizi di allenamento interattivi • test interattivi

Literature and Genres es. 2-4 p. 177 Literature and Genres es. 2-4 p. 179 Literature and Genres es. 1-3 p. 181 Literature and Genres es. 2 p. 182 Literature and Genres es. 1-5 p. 187

Across Cultures pp. 262-263

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History and Culture es. 1 p. 156; es. 1 p. 158; es. 1 p. 161; es. 1 p. 166; es. 1 p. 168; es. 1 p. 173; Literature and Genres es. 1 p. 176; Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 201; es. 1 p. 215; es. 1 p. 243; es. 1 p. 272; es. 1 p. 282

Preparazione alle certificazioni

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

Con quali attività didattiche si raggiunge l’acquisizione dei contenuti e si sviluppano le competenze?

Prove autentiche e strutturate

Asse dei linguaggi

COMPETENZE Traguardi formativi Stabilire nessi tra la letteratura e altre discipline o sistemi linguistici • utilizzare il linguaggio visivo per comunicare concetti • comprendere e interpretare opere d’arte

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Modern Age

Comprendere i prodotti della comunicazione audiovisiva • comprendere brevi testi orali relativi al contesto storico, sociale e letterario • confrontare il linguaggio filmico con il linguaggio verbale Elaborare prodotti multimediali (testi, immagini, suoni ecc.), anche con tecnologie digitali • utilizzare Internet per svolgere attività di ricerca • produrre presentazioni multimediali Utilizzare prodotti multimediali • utilizzare l’eBook per svolgere gli esercizi in maniera interattiva ed esercitarsi a comprendere i prodotti della comunicazione audiovisiva (video di storia, brani di ascolto a livello B2, dettati, percorsi tematici multimediali: Routes) Competenze chiave di cittadinanza • imparare ad imparare • collaborare e partecipare • acquisire ed interpretare l’informazione

CONTENUTI Indicatori

• relazionare le caratteristiche di un autore

• descrivere le caratteristiche della poesia dei War Poets • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di W.B. Yeats • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di T.S. Eliot • descrivere le caratteristiche della poesia di W.H. Auden • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di J. Conrad • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di D.H. Lawrence • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di E.M. Forster • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di J. Joyce • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di V. Woolf • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di G. Orwell • descrivere le caratteristiche di un’opera di F.S. Fitzgerald • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di E. Hemingway • descrivere le caratteristiche della poesia di L. Hughes • descrivere le caratteristiche di un’opera di J. Steinbeck • stabilire legami tra il testo e il • collegare un testo al contesto letterario o contesto dell’autore

• collegare un testo all’esperienza personale

• confrontare autori e testi

Lettura (comprensione scritta) • comprendere testi descrittivi e • analizzare brani di argomentativi autori moderni

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ATTIVITÀ DIDATTICHE Attività per lo sviluppo delle competenze

STRUMENTI DI VALUTAZIONE Prove autentiche e strutturate

Preparazione alle certificazioni

Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 188; es. 1 p. 190 Authors and Texts es. 3 p. 197 Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 203

Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 228; es. 1 p. 229 Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 235; es. 1 p. 237 Authors and Texts es. 3-4 p. 250; es. 1-2 p. 252; es. 1 p. 259 Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 265; es. 1 p. 267 Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 275; es. 1 p. 277 Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 286

Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 291; es. 2 p. 292 Authors and Texts es. 1-2 p. 297 Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 302 Authors and Texts es. 3 p. 200; es. 15 p. 215; es. 3 p. 231; es. 12 p. 243; es. 7 p. 261; es. 14-15 p. 273; es. 15 p. 283; es. 12 p. 299 Authors and Texts es. 4 p. 213; es. 6 p. 280; es. 4 p. 295 Authors and Texts es. 4 p. 200; es. 9 p. 201; es. 17 p. 215; es. 13 p. 243; es. 17 p. 283; es. 5 p. 289; es. 5 p. 305 Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 189; es. 1-3 p. 191; es. 2-8 pp. 193-194; es. 2 p. 199; es. 2-8 p. 201; es. 2 p. 206; es. 1-3 p. 209; es. 1-3 p. 213; es. 2-14 p. 215; es. 1-3 p. 222; es. 2-8 p. 225; es. 2 p. 231; es. 1-3 p. 233; es. 1-3 p. 239; es. 2-11 p. 243; es. 2-7 pp. 255-256; es. 1-3 p. 258; es. 2-6 p. 261; es. 1-4 pp. 269-270; es. 2-13 pp. 272-273; es. 1-3 p. 279; es. 2-14 pp. 282-283; es. 1-3 p. 289; es. 2-3 p. 295; es. 2-11 p. 299; es. 1-3 p. 305 Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 217; es. 1-2 p. 219

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 211; es. 1 p. 212

Asse dei linguaggi

COMPETENZE Traguardi formativi

CONTENUTI Indicatori

• comprendere un articolo di giornale

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The Modern Age

• comprendere testi di canzoni

• analizzare due visioni moderne della condizione umana (la pittura di Hopper e Bacon) • analizzare il tema della distopia • analizzare il fascino dell’Est • spiegare e interpretare un testo giornalistico sul rapporto tra felicità ed emancipazione femminile • comprendere il testo della canzone Woman’s Work

Ascolto (comprensione orale) • comprendere un breve brano • comprendere un breve che descrive un evento storico testo sulle Suffragette • comprendere un breve brano relativo alla storia dell’epoca moderna • comprendere una breve spiegazione relativa alla trama di un’opera e alla biografia di un filosofo o un autore • comprendere una breve sequenza filmica

• comprendere una sequenza dal film Heart of Darkness

Scrittura (produzione scritta) • scrivere le idee chiave relative • completare le idee a un periodo storico chiave relative all’Edwardian Age, al periodo tra le due guerre mondiali, agli Stati Uniti nella prima metà del XX secolo • completare una tabella • analizzare le nuove visioni dell’universo e dell’uomo all’inizio del XX secolo • raccogliere dati in un modulo • completare un factfile fornito su F.S. Fitzgerald • completare o creare una linea • collocare le tappe della del tempo e diagrammi con le Prima e della Seconda informazioni necessarie guerra mondiale • scrivere gli effetti della Prima guerra mondiale • spiegare le caratteristiche dell’id, ego e super-ego • scrivere le caratteristiche della poesia moderna • scrivere le caratteristiche del monologo interiore • scrivere un commento, breve • produrre un breve testo o saggio testo su brani, opere o particolari temi

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ATTIVITÀ DIDATTICHE Attività per lo sviluppo delle competenze

STRUMENTI DI VALUTAZIONE Prove autentiche e strutturate

Preparazione alle certificazioni

eBook: Route 10 Two modern visions of the human condition

Dictation p. 157 eBook: History videos CLIL es. 1 p. 164; es. 6 p. 165; Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 192; es. 1 p. 195; es. 2 p. 197; es. 1 p. 204; es. 3 p. 207; es. 1 p. 227; es. 1 p. 234; es. 1 p. 248; es. 4 p. 258; es. 1 p. 285; es. 1 p. 292; es. 1 p. 300 From Text to Screen p. 226

History and Culture p. 157; es. 2 p. 167; p. 175

History and Culture es. 3 p. 163

Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 284 History and Culture es. 2 p. 160; es. 2 p. 169 History and Culture es. 2 p. 163 CLIL es. 3 p. 165 Literature and Genres es. 1 p. 178 Literature and Genres es. 1 p. 182 Authors and Texts es. 4 p. 191; es. 4 p. 207; es. 4 p. 209; es. 16 p. 215; es. 4 p. 222; es. 4 p. 233; es. 4 p. 239; es. 8 p. 256; es. 5 p. 258; es. 5 p. 270; es. 16 p. 273; es. 5 p. 280; es. 16 p. 283; es. 4 p. 289; es. 4 p. 305 Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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Topic 6 es. 1-4 p. 309

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eBook: Route 11 Dystopia, the shadow of utopia Link to Contemporary Culture pp. 244-247 Topic 6 es. 1-3 p. 308

Asse dei linguaggi

COMPETENZE Traguardi formativi

CONTENUTI Indicatori

Metodo di studio • scrivere un saggio • utilizzare liste di vocaboli, diagrammi, immagini, tabelle per prepararsi a una interrogazione/verifica sommativa Metodo di ricerca • utilizzare Internet per condurre ricerche individuali o a gruppi

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• Study Skill 25: How to write an essay • revisione di fatti, personaggi, generi letterari, autori e testi dell’epoca moderna • fare un approfondimento sulle nuove armi della Prima guerra mondiale, sulla guerra marittima e aerea

ATTIVITÀ DIDATTICHE Attività per lo sviluppo delle competenze

STRUMENTI DI VALUTAZIONE Prove autentiche e strutturate

Preparazione alle certificazioni

Authors and Texts es. 9 p. 225 Review pp. 312-313

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Internet Point es. 1 p. 160

6. The Modern Age Teaching tip The interactive timeline can be employed as a support to the introduction of the historical period of this chapter.

VOCABULARY: WELFARE

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words and phrases about social welfare with their meaning.

History and Culture

1 wages; 2 health insurance; 3 self-help; 4 hunger strike; 5 sickness benefits; 6 protest marches; 7 Welfare State.

6.1 From the Edwardian Age to the First World War PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Modern Age

Teaching tip The history video The Edwardian Age and the First World War can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

1 DECIDE whether the following statements are true or false. 1

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Edward VII succeeded his mother in 1901 when Britain had the wealthiest towns in Europe and the British Empire covered a fifth of the globe. T The Liberal government in Britain brought in a socialist State with old-age pensions and free meals in parliament. F The Suffragettes were a political party founded by women who wanted the right to vote. F In 1910 Edward VII died and was succeeded by his son George V. T There was an important rebellion in Dublin in 1916 which was brutally repressed. T The Bolshevik revolution in Russia, the bombing of London and the horrors of trench warfare persuaded the Americans to stay out of the war. F The war ended with an Allied victory on a day now remembered as Armistice Day. T

2 FIND the words which mean the following. 1 alignment; 2 militants; 3 triggered; 4 blockade. DICTATION 5.1 The Suffragettes TRANSCRIPT Suffragettes was the name given to members of women’s organisations in the late-19th and early-20th centuries who wanted the ‘franchise’ or right to vote to be given to women. It is particularly associated with members of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), which was founded by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903. It was not the first organisation of this kind, as the National Union of Women’s Suffrage had been formed in 1897, but Emmeline and her daughters, who were very active in the cause, considered the progress made by this organisation too slow. They rejected its peaceful campaign in favour of violent tactics, interrupting political meetings, vandalising shops and churches, and chaining themselves to railings outside Buckingham Palace. In one famous protest a Suffragette threw herself in front of the king’s horse at a race meeting and was killed. The campaign ended when Britain entered World War I, and it was the women’s role in supporting their country at this difficult time that gained them the right to vote in 1918. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 MATCH the people (1-6) with their field of study (A-F).

3 READ the text again and answer the following

1 C; 2 A; 3 E; 4 F; 5 D; 6 B. Teaching tip The presentation The Edwardian Age and World War I in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

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questions. 1

What was the situation of Britain when Edward VII came to the throne? The British Empire covered a fifth of the total land of the globe, British towns were the wealthiest in Europe and British ships carried 80 per cent of world trade. However, British power was being challenged by technical innovation in France and Germany, and growing industrial competition in America, especially in the emergent industries of cars, cinema and aviation. Moreover, other European countries had imperial ambitions.

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4 EXPLAIN the following in your own words. 1 Signed with France in 1904, this agreement established that Britain could pursue its interests in Egypt, and France in Morocco. 2 Passed in 1911, this act made it impossible for the Lords to veto money bills passed in the Commons; they could only delay them for two years. The act also stated that general elections would be held at least every five years. 3 It was an organisation, founded by Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903, that wanted women to have the vote and soon won massive publicity for its cause.

COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

5 USE the pictures to talk about the Edwardian Age. 1

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Look at picture 1. Who is there in the picture and what is he doing? The British Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister David Lloyd George is delivering a speech, probably a patriotic one. Consider picture 2 and explain the methods employed by the Suffragettes to fight for women’s rights. The picture shows a Suffragette – Una Dugdale – campaigning in front of a small crowd of men in 1908. Several militants chained themselves to railings and were arrested by the police. When sent to prison, they often went on hunger strike.

Key ideas COMPLETE the key ideas. British power was threatened by emerging European economies Britain’s supremacy at sea was contrasted by the German navy King Edward VII’s diplomacy created a new alignment of European countries The Welfare State began through a series of measures against sickness and unemployment The House of Lords could not reject a bill about money The Suffragettes held marches so as to gain support to their cause Austria attacked Belgrade after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist

6.2 Britain and the First World War VOCABULARY: WAR

1 MATCH the highlighted words and phrases about war in the text with their Italian translation. 1 infantry; 2 withdrawal; 3 desertions; 4 trenches; 5 submarine; 6 barbed wire; 7 shells; 8 war of attrition; 9 casualties; 10 tanks; 11 Conscription; 12 armistice; 13 machine guns; 14 wear down. COMPETENCE: BEING AWARE OF THE CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS

2 READ the text on pages 158-159 and complete the timeline with the necessary information. 1914 September Great battle on the River Marne in France which stopped the German advance.

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What was Edwardian society like? It was similar to Victorian society. Class distinctions were well defined and preserved, and serious poverty affected a large proportion of the population. Who were the Liberals and what did they believe in? The Liberals were divided into two groups: those who supported the traditional liberal values of laissez-faire and self-help, and those who supported New Liberalism, which was in favour of certain forms of State intervention in social life. What social reforms did Lloyd George pass? He laid down the foundations of the Welfare State through a series of measures bringing in an old-age pension of one to five shillings for people over 70, free meals and regular medical inspections in schools, minimum wages, free medical treatment and sickness benefits for workers, unemployment benefits and health insurance for the workers of important industries. How was the power of the House of Lords changed? The 1911 Parliament Act removed the Lords’ right to veto money bills passed in the Commons: they could only delay them for two years. How did women attempt to gain more rights? They held large protest marches in London, chained themselves to railings, broke windows, hit and spat at policemen. What did the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne bring about? Austria began bombing Belgrade, the German Kaiser declared war on Russia and then on France. When did Britain declare war on Germany? Britain declared war on Germany when Germany violated Belgian neutrality. In fact Britain, which had participated in the creation of Belgium in 1831 and had guaranteed its neutrality, now faced the threat of a commercial blockade due to the aggressive presence of the German navy in the North Sea and the Channel.

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1915 May The British passenger liner Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat; Italy joined France and Britain; London was bombed by the German Zeppelin airship. 1916 April Easter Rising in Dublin regarding the fight for Irish independence. July Battle of the Somme – the bloodiest battle in British history and a perfect example of the war of attrition. 1917 April The USA joined the war. July George V changed the name of the British royal family from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha into Windsor. October The Bolsheviks seized power in Russia; the Italian army collapsed at the Battle of Caporetto. 1918 September Attack of British artillery on the German Hindenburg Line. October The Germans began to retreat along the Western Front. November Armistice and end of the war. 1919 Peace treaty of Versailles, which stipulated the Allied occupation of the Rhineland, unilateral disarmament and heavy financial reparation of ‘war guilt’ for Germany. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

What was the League of Nations? It was an international organisation proposed by President Woodrow Wilson, with its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, which was to act as a forum for resolving international disputes.

Key ideas WRITE down the key ideas using the prompts. volunteering At the beginning of the war the British army was enlarged thanks to volunteers. Conscription was introduced in 1916. Irish nationalism Irish nationalists organised an insurrection in Dublin, the so-called Easter Rising, because Home Rule had been suspended until the end of the war. war of attrition Huge battles were fought not to win strategic objectives or seize resources, but to kill soldiers and wear down the enemy. modern warfare New weapons were introduced, like tanks, machine guns and poison gas, and war was fought in the trenches. Hindenburg Line It was a series of German trenches believed to be impenetrable. It was conquered by the Allies in the autumn of 1918. Armistice Day It commemorates the day the guns fell silent, on 11th November 1918. It is also called ‘Remembrance Day’ or ‘Poppy Day’.

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Who fought in the British army before 1916? Mainly volunteers. The Empire made its contribution sending troops from the dominions as well as volunteers from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. What was the cause of the Easter Rising? How did it impact on Irish political life? Home Rule had been voted by the Commons in 1914 but had been suspended until the end of the war. The leaders of the insurrection received support from Germany and seized the General Post Office and other buildings in the centre of the city. The rebellion was repressed. The Irish Republican party Sinn Féin, which was fighting for the reunification of Ireland, began to grow in popularity exploiting the fear the Irish had that military conscription might extend to Ireland. Why was WWI labelled a ‘war of attrition’? Because huge battles were fought which aimed at killing soldiers and wearing out the enemy rather than winning strategic objectives or seizing resources. What was life in the trenches like? It was very stressful because of mud, lack of hygiene, boredom and fear of gas. So the soldiers relieved the stress by means of superstition, religion, poetry, letters and drink. What did the armistice imply for Germany? It brought about German withdrawal from occupied territory and allowed national self-determination, but included no punishment for the country.

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INTERNET POINT New warfare COMPETENCE: USING TECHNOLOGY TO ACQUIRE AND INTERPRET INFORMATION

1 LOOK at the picture below. New technology

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made WWI a more horrible and more complex war than ever before. Browse the sites www. bbc.com/news/magazine-31042472 and www. ncpedia.org/wwi-technology-and-weaponswar, and answer the following questions. Focus on chemical warfare and find information about: • when and where the German troops launched the first chlorine gas attack, defying an international treaty that banned the use of chemical weapons; German troops used chlorine gas for the first time on a mass scale during combat on the Western Front near the Flemish city of Ypres in Belgium in April 1915. • the consequences of gas weapons. The most widely used, mustard gas, could kill by blistering the lungs and throat if inhaled in large quantities. Its effect on masked soldiers, however, was to produce terrible blisters all over the body as it soaked into their woollen uniforms. Contaminated uniforms had to be stripped off as fast as possible and washed – not exactly easy for men under attack on the front line.

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6.3 The age of anxiety Teaching tip The presentation A cultural crisis in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the cultural context or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Route 10: Two modern visions of the human condition Teacher’s key on page 432. VOCABULARY: WORD FORMATION

1 READ the text on this page and write the corresponding noun/adjective from the text near each adjective/noun. Adjective

Noun

anxious certain disillusioned cynical rootless frustrated

anxiety certainty disillusionment cynicism rootlessness frustration

COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

2 READ the text on pages 161-163 and list the effects of the First World War on the rationalist self-confidence of the British people. Disillusioned and cynical mood due to the loss of many lives; frantic search for pleasure; sense of guilt for the horrors of trench warfare; loss of purpose; widening of the gap between the generation of the young and the older one, regarded as responsible for the terrible waste of lives during the war; increasing rootlessness and frustration, due to the slow dissolution of the Empire into the Commonwealth, led to a transformation of the notions of imperial hegemony and white superiority.

3 COMPLETE the table below with the new views of the universe and of man which emerged or were very influential at the beginning of the 20th century. Name: Sigmund Freud. Main concern: The human psyche. New theory: The power of the unconscious to affect behaviour; the importance of infantile sexuality; the interpretation of dreams; the concept of free associations. Name: Carl Gustav Jung. Main concern: The collective unconscious. New theory: Cultural memory containing the universal images and beliefs of the human race, which operates on a symbolic level.

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Collect information about guns, rifles and grenades employed by soldiers on both sides and state what harm artillery caused between attacks. Between attacks, the snipers, artillery, and poison gas caused misery and death. Both the Allies and the Germans used a variety of big guns. Artillery shells killed more men in the war than any other weapon. Hidden miles behind the front line, field guns fired millions of shells into enemy trenches before big battles. The most significant technological advance during World War I was the improvement of the machine gun. The Germans recognised its military potential and had large numbers ready to use in 1914. They also developed air-cooled machine guns for aeroplanes and improved those used on the ground, making them lighter and easier to move. The weapon’s full potential was demonstrated on the Somme battlefield in July 1916 when German machine guns killed or wounded almost 60,000 British soldiers in only one day. Find information about the role of the tank in WWI. The tank was the answer to standstill in the trenches. Tanks were equipped with machine guns and sometimes light cannon. They worked effectively on dry ground and they were able to crush barbed wire and cross trenches. Focus on air warfare and explain: • what aeroplanes were first used for; At first they were used only to observe enemy troops. • what the Germans and the Allies armed planes with; In 1916 the Germans started to arm planes with machine guns. The Allies soon armed their aeroplanes the same way, and war in the air became a deadly business. • what the wild air battles were called. They were called ‘dogfights’. Collect information about naval warfare and state: • what the British scientists developed to locate and sink the German submarines, the U-boats; They developed underwater listening devices and underwater explosives called ‘depth charges’. Warships became faster and more powerful than ever before and used newly invented radios to communicate effectively. • how the British naval blockade of Germany was made possible; It was made possible by developments in naval technology. • what its consequences were. The blockade caused a famine that brought about the collapse of Germany and its allies in late 1918. Starvation and malnutrition continued to take the lives of German people for years after the war.

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Name: Albert Einstein. Main concern: The concepts of time and space. New theory: Theory of relativity: time and space are seen as subjective dimensions. Name: William James. Main concern: The concept of time. New theory: The mind records every single experience as a continuous flow of ‘the already’ into ‘the not yet’. Name: Henri Bergson. Main concern: The concept of time. New theory: Distinction between historical time, which is external, linear and measured in terms of the spatial distance travelled by a pendulum or the hands of a clock, and psychological time, which is internal, subjective and measured by the relative emotional intensity of a moment. Name: Sir James George Frazer. Main concern: Anthropology; primitive societies. New theory: Relativist standpoint applied to religious and ethical systems. Name: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Main concern: Rejection of Christian morality. New theory: ‘God is dead’ and therefore people are free to create their own values; belief in human power and perfectibility. Extra Activity

1 LOOK at the painting and complete the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

following sentences. The line of the road traverses the canvas from left to right. The road surface has been lost and is difficult to distinguish it from the surrounding ground. Here and there what was once an avenue is pocked with shell-craters. It is marked by mutilated trees. The sky is menacing and cloudy. Some men move towards an unseen objective. Stagnant water lies in the deep ruts of tanked tracks. Only two plants are alive.

2 ANSWER these questions about The Menin 1

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Road. What shade of colour prevails in the painting? What mood does it convey? Sombre tones of sepia prevail in the painting. They convey desolation and suffering. What do the rigid simplification of nature and the deliberate elimination of everything nonessential communicate? It communicates the cruelty of war and the anxiety of modern man who has to face and overcome all the tragedies surrounding him.

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Nash wrote in a letter to his wife: ‘I have seen the most frightful nightmare of a country more conceived by Dante or Poe than by nature, unspeakable, utterly indescribable.’ How are these words related to the painting? What vision of war emerges? Nature has been totally upset by war: bare trees and stagnant water seem to represent Dante’s hell. Nash’s war is not that of burning patriotism, but that of suffering and corporate endurance. The picture has to rouse people to a full and vivid realization of what war was.

3 DISCUSS the way man and the landscape are related in the painting. Human suffering, and therefore by implication human hope, is linked to the vast suffering of nature.

CLIL Philosophy

A window on the unconscious COMPETENCE: LISTENING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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5.2 LISTEN to a radio programme and complete the summarising chart about Sigmund Freud’s biography. The founder of psychoanalysis: He tried to treat mental illness by focusing on the contents of the mind rather than the workings of the brain. Birth: He was born in 1856 to a Jewish family in Freiberg, a city now in the Czech Republic, but then part of the Austrian Empire. Family life: He did not get on well with his father; his half-brothers were considerably older and his closest childhood companion was his nephew John. The love-hate relationship, such as the one between the young John and Sigmund, is a central part of Freud’s theories. Neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot: He introduced Freud to the idea that mentally-ill patients might have a problem with their mind, rather than their brain functions. In the 1900s Freud’s work in psychoanalysis began. He came up with several concepts such as the id, the ego and the superego, as well as Freudian slips, free association and the Oedipus complex. In 1938 he decided to leave Vienna after it was annexed by Nazi Germany. He died the following year in London.

TRANSCRIPT Sigmund Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis. He tried to treat mental illness by focusing on the contents of the mind rather than the workings of the brain. Even if many of Freud’s theories are now

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

4 GO through the paragraph about the Oedipus complex and highlight: 1

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COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

2 USE the picture of the iceberg on page 164 to explain Freud’s theory of the unconscious. The picture shows a symbolic representation of the human mind as an iceberg according to Freud’s view of the conscious and unconscious mind. Freud studied the importance of the unconscious in the understanding of conscious thought and behaviour. He called dreams the ‘royal road to the unconscious’ because they were a means of revealing the workings of the unconscious mind. He developed his first theory of the psyche in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), in which he stated that the unconscious is where dreams and all the automatic thoughts that arise spontaneously without a recognisable cause are formed. The unconscious is where the forgotten memories lie in a dormant state and they may become accessible to the conscious mind at a later time. It is also the container of implicit knowledge that has been passed down from generation to generation.

3 USE the diagram below to explain the characteristics of the id, ego and superego. Freud believed that our personality develops through interaction between the three main parts of the human mind – the id, ego and superego –, which are in constant conflict. Here are their characteristics: Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

Freud’s theory of psychic conflict; He believed that a common source of psychic conflict derived from sexual fantasies in childhood. the main points behind the Oedipus complex. All small boys between the ages of 3 and 5 choose their mother as their primary object of desire. They subconsciously wish to usurp their father and become their mother’s lover. This stage is an important point in the formation of sexual identity. The analogous experience for girls is known as the Electra complex. The child suspects that acting on these feelings would lead to danger, thus he/she represses his/her desires. This leads to anxiety. In order to resolve the conflict, the boy then identifies with his father and the girl with her mother. It is at this point that the superego is formed.

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what Freud and his disciples founded in Vienna; They founded the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1908. what Adler stressed in his studies. He stressed the importance of the aggression with which those people who lack some quality they desire express their discontent. ‘Inferiority complex’, a much abused term, is Adlerian. COMPETENCE: LISTENING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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5.3 LISTEN to a lecture about Carl Gustav Jung and state: what the psyche is made of; It is divided into three main parts: the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious.

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Id: the most primitive; contains the inherited components of personality; operates entirely unconsciously; not related to the external world; does not change with time or experience. Ego: rational, pragmatic part; less primitive than the id; both conscious and unconscious; ‘reason’ and ‘common sense’; a set of psychic functions. Superego: social rules and morals; ‘conscience’; develops around the age of 3-5; consists of two systems: the conscience (which can make the ego feel guilty) and the ideal self (which creates an imaginary picture of how you ought to be and behave in society).

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regarded as outdated, his work is considered a turning point in human civilisation. Freud was born in 1856 to a Jewish family in Freiberg, a city now in the Czech Republic, but then part of the Austrian Empire. For a man who wrote so much about the meaning of childhood relationships, it is fascinating to have an insight into Freud’s family life. He did not get on well with his father; his half-brothers were considerably older and his closest childhood companion was his nephew John. The love-hate relationship, such as the one between the young John and Sigmund, is a central part of Freud’s theories. In 1873 he started to study Medicine at the University of Vienna and he specialised in the brain. In 1885 he spent a few months in Paris, where he met the neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. Charcot introduced him to the idea that mentally-ill patients might have a problem with their mind, rather than their brain functions. Freud’s work in psychoanalysis started in the 1900s. It was at that time that he came up with several, now well-known concepts such as the id, the ego and the superego, as well as Freudian slips, that is, mistakes in speech or writing revealing a person’s unconscious wishes. Other important concepts were free association and the Oedipus complex. In 1938 Freud decided to leave Vienna after it was annexed by Nazi Germany. He died the following year in London.

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what the ego represents; It represents the conscious mind, since it includes the thoughts, memories and the emotions a person is aware of. what the personal unconscious consists of; It is essentially the same as Freud’s unconscious: it contains memories that have been suppressed for some reason but it does not include the instincts that Freud included. what the collective unconscious is; It is a reservoir of our experiences as a species, a knowledge we are all born with but which we can never be directly conscious of. It influences all human experiences and behaviours. what the archetypes are; They are the contents of the collective unconscious. They have a universal meaning and are linked to dreams, literature, art or religion. the importance of our primitive past; It is the basis of the human psyche, influencing present behaviour. how the four most important archetypes differ. The ‘persona’ (or mask) is the public face or role a person presents to the world. Another archetype is the ‘anima’/‘animus’, which refers to the female aspect of man psyche and the male aspect of woman psyche. Next is the ‘shadow’, sex and life instincts (like the id in Freud). It is the source of both our creative and destructive energies. Finally there is the ‘self’, which is the ultimate unity of the personality and is symbolised by the circle. For Jung, the ultimate aim of every individual is to achieve a state of self-actualisation.

TRANSCRIPT Like Freud, Jung divided the psyche into three main parts: the ego, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The ego is identified with the conscious mind, since it includes the thoughts, memories and the emotions a person is aware of. The personal unconscious is basically the same as Freud’s unconscious: it contains memories that have been suppressed for some reason but it does not include the instincts that Freud included. The most remarkable difference between Jung and Freud is Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious, which is a reservoir of our experiences as a species, a knowledge we are all born with but which we can never be directly conscious of. It influences all human experiences and behaviours (but we only know about it indirectly). The contents of the collective unconscious are called archetypes, which have a universal meaning and are linked to dreams, literature, art or religion. According to Jung, symbols from different cultures are often very similar because they have emerged from archetypes shared by all human beings. He thinks our primitive past is the basis of the human

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psyche, influencing present behaviour. Jung focused on four archetypes. The ‘persona’ (or mask) is the public face or role a person presents to the world. Another archetype is the ‘anima’/‘animus’, which refers to the female aspect of man psyche and the male aspect of woman psyche. Next is the ‘shadow’, sex and life instincts (like the id in Freud). It is the source of both our creative and destructive energies. Finally there is the ‘self’, which is the ultimate unity of the personality and is symbolised by the circle. For Jung, the ultimate aim of every individual is to achieve a state of self-actualisation. COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

7 DISCUSS. For good or ill, Sigmund Freud, more than any other explorer of the psyche, has shaped the mind of the 20th century. Note down all the arguments for psychoanalysis and those points against it. Then have a debate. Student’s activity. Students should consider the following points about Freud’s psychoanalysis: •

• • • • • • • • •

it helps individuals to become aware of the factors determining their emotions and behaviour; it helps overcome unhappiness; it increases self-esteem; it helps trace back one’s origins; it is a method for learning how the mind works; it contributes to child education; it creates an intimate relationship with the therapist; it creates dependence; it can be more easily replaced by talking to friends or relatives; it creates a sort of spiral which is difficult to get out of. Moreover, students could be encouraged to mention and quote the authors or artists they have studied on whom Freud’s influence is most evident. Changes within society should also be highlighted.

6.4 The inter-war years Teaching tip The history video The inter-war years and the Second World War can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

1 CHOOSE the correct answer (A, B or C). 1 B; 2 C; 3 B; 4 A; 5 C; 6 A.

Teaching tip The presentation The inter-war years and World War II in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

From History to Screen: Michael Collins; The Wind That Shakes the Barley Photocopiable lesson on page 262. Teacher’s key on page 286. VOCABULARY: PHRASAL VERBS AND COLLOCATIONS

1 MATCH the highlighted phrasal verbs and collocations in the text with their meaning. 1 aimed at; 2 went bankrupt; 3 took on; 4 set up; 5 turned to; 6 declared war on. COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

2 READ the text and complete the summarising chart about the inter-war years. The Empire: The effort the dominions of the British Empire had made during the war created expectations of reward. In 1926 an imperial conference created a new entity from the dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa with the name of ‘Commonwealth’. In 1931 the Statute of Westminster formally granted the sovereign right of each dominion to control its own domestic and foreign affairs and to establish its own diplomatic corps. India suffered regional and religious tensions and saw a rising support for the Nationalist Congress Party; the Government of India Act in 1935 established self-government at a provincial level. Ireland: The Sinn Féin party set up an independent Parliament in Dublin in 1919. The nationalist Irish Volunteers became the IRA and then declared open war on Britain in 1920. In 1921 the Irish Free State was established, and after the civil war of 1922 the anti-Treaty faction, who wanted the inclusion of the six counties of Ulster in the Republican Ireland, was defeated. Unemployment: It was a consequence of the failure of banks due to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, but it was also due to the war, which had damaged Britain’s position as the biggest exporter of manufactured goods. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

3 EXPLAIN the following in your own words. 1 Following an imperial conference that had established the Commonwealth in 1926, in 1931 this statute formally granted the sovereign right of each dominion to control its own domestic and foreign affairs and to establish its own diplomatic corps. 2 The independent Parliament set up in Dublin by Sinn Féin after their victory at the 1918 election in Ireland. 3 The Irish Republican Army which replaced the Irish Volunteers. It organised terrorist attacks that were brutally met by a special British police force, the ‘Black and Tans’. 4 A day in 1920 when the ‘Black and Tans’ shot 12 dead at a football match in Dublin. 5 The popular young king, Edward VIII, who had succeeded his father George V, wanted to marry a twice divorced American woman. Prime Minister Baldwin forced his abdication on the grounds that he could not marry her and keep the throne. The king’s brother succeeded as George VI.

6.5 The Second World War From History to Screen: The King’s Speech; Pearl Harbor Photocopiable lesson on page 266. Teacher’s key on page 288. VOCABULARY: WAR

1 MATCH the highlighted words and phrases about war in the text with their Italian translation. 1 retreat; 2 aircraft carriers; 3 civilian targets; 4 counter-attacked; 5 overran; 6 release; 7 oilfields; 8 shelters; 9 weakening; 10 codebreaking; 11 iron ore supply; 12 aloof.

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the Second World War. The Battle of Britain; the Battle of Stalingrad; the Yalta Conference; D-Day; the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Operation Barbarossa.

Gap between North and South: The once powerful industrial North became depressed and challenged by new growing automobile, chemical and electrical goods industries in the South and the Midlands. Restoring demand to the iron and steel industries began with rearmament in 1936. Funding rearmament: The British government shifted spending onto the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy at the expense of the army. Threats to peace: Benito Mussolini’s attack on Abyssinia; Hitler’s Nazi Party’s rise to power; the Civil War in Spain; the Japanese attack on China; Hitler’s invasion of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

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2 HIGHLIGHT the events that were part of

Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin made important decisions concerning the future progress of the war and the post-war world.

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the text and list the most important events of the Second World War in chronological order.

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1940 Norway, Denmark, Holland and Belgium fell; the Germans headed for Paris; British retreat to Dunkirk; Japan overran Hong Kong and Burma and began to threaten Singapore and India; Battle of Britain; the ‘Blitz’. 1941 British retreat in Africa; Germany declared war on the Soviet Union; the USA joined the conflict after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; Germany declared war on America. 1942 Battle of Midway Island; victory of Montgomery’s army at El-Alamein in North Africa. 1943 The Allies landed in Italy; Battle of Stalingrad. 1944 Rome fell; Allied troops landed in Normandy, an event known as ‘D-Day’; Battle of the Bulge in the Belgian Ardennes. 1945 The Soviet Red Army liberated Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Austria and the eastern fringes of Germany; Hitler committed suicide; the Germans surrendered; Yalta Conference in Crimea; explosion of two atomic bombs on the Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan surrendered.

B2 Exams Academic Reading 1 READ the passage and answer questions 1-14. The passage has seven paragraphs, A-G. Which paragraph contains the following information? 1 C; 2 E; 3 F; 4 A; 5 D. Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage? Write: TRUE if the statement agrees with the information; FALSE if the statement contradicts the information; NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this. 6 TRUE (paragraph A); 7 TRUE (paragraph D); 8 FALSE (paragraph B); 9 NOT GIVEN. Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. 10 air force; 11 U-boats; 12 to Britain; 13 starvation; 14 the positions.

Listening – Section 3

3 IDENTIFY the key points that led to German defeat. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The failure to get control of the air over Britain. The decision to invade the Soviet Union. The US entry into the war. Montgomery’s success in Africa. The Battle of Stalingrad. D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. The advance of the Soviet Red Army.

2

4

4 EXPLAIN the following in your own words. 1 Hitler’s ambitious plan of invading Britain in 1940: Germany’s air force had to defeat Britain’s in order to open the way for the sea invasion. 2 The fight between the RAF and the Luftwaffe bombers in the skies over Sussex and Kent in 1940. It was won by Britain. 3 Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which consumed Germany’s resources for the rest of the war. 4 The Allied invasion of Western Europe which began with the opening of a front in France in 1944. 5 The day of the landing of a large Allied amphibious force on the beaches of Normandy, on 6th June 1944. 6 The meeting in Crimea in February 1945 where US President Franklin D.

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5 6

7

5.4 ACADEMIC DISCUSSION. You are going to hear a History tutorial about spying in WWII. Read the questions below carefully. Then listen and answer questions 1-10. Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer. 1 three; 2 really enjoyed; 3 of Sicily. Choose the correct letter (A, B or C). Operation Mincemeat was organised to give B false information to the Germans about an Allied landing. The spy that Sarah chose for her story was C a jazz singer. Josephine Baker used two methods to pass on her information. These were C using invisible ink and hiding material in her clothing. Sarah admired her chosen spy because A she risked her life for something she believed in. Complete the flow chart about Christine Granville. 8 1915; 9 England (with her husband); 10 medals.

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Mary: She was given many medals but found it hard to find an interesting job and in the end was murdered by a rejected lover in 1952. Tutor: What a sad ending… Well, all three are great stories, well done!

Academic writing – Task 1 information about US shipping during WWII and the activity of the secret code-breaking agency at Bletchley Park from 1941 to 1945. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words. Student’s writing activity. Extra Activity

Listening – Section 1 DIALOGUE. You will hear a telephone conversation about a trip to see the D-Day landing beaches. Read the questions below carefully. Then listen and answer questions 1-10. Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS in each space. 1 Robert; 2 year 12; 3 Mrs Price; 4 school trip; 5 History teacher. Complete the table below, using NO MORE THAN ONE WORD OR NUMBER in each space. 6 May; 7 Portsmouth; 8 7.30; 9 Memorial; 10 £40. TRANSCRIPT Secretary: Good morning, Cuthbert’s senior school. Mr Paterson: Good morning, it’s Mr Paterson here. I have a son, Robert, in year 12. Secretary: Oh yes Mr Paterson, this is the school secretary, Mrs Price speaking. How can I help? Mr Paterson: I hear from Robert that there’s a trip being organised to see the D-Day landing beaches and I wondered if there were still places available. Secretary: Yes, we do have a few places left. The trip is being organised by the History teacher, Miss Harding, and the French teacher, Madame Canaud. Mr Paterson: Can you give me a few details? Secretary: There’s an information sheet that I can give to Robert to bring home with a form for you to sign that you should send back as soon as possible with the deposit that will guarantee Robert a place. Mr Paterson: When will the trip take place? Secretary: The trip will be from 10th-11th May and the students will leave by coach from school at 7.30 in the morning. They will return in the evening of the next day.

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3 DESCRIPTION. The graphs below give

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TRANSCRIPT Tutor: Good morning Sarah, Mary, Tom. For today’s tutorial on WWII, I asked you to prepare some spy stories. Tom, shall we start with you? Tom: I really enjoyed looking up some of the spy stories and I have chosen one about the Allied landing in Sicily in 1943. It was an operation nicknamed Operation Mincemeat. The Allies were preparing an invasion of Sicily but wanted the Germans to think they were landing somewhere else. So the British spy agency took the body of a dead tramp and dressed him as a Royal Marine. They put false identity papers on him and chained a briefcase to his wrist containing documents about a fictitious Allied invasion of Greece. The body was then floated in the sea off Spain. As expected, the body was found and the documents handed over to the German Command, who believed all the coded information and reinforced their military positions in Greece instead of Sicily. Tutor: Interesting choice, Tom. What about you, Sarah? Sarah: I was fascinated by the story of a famous jazz singer. Her name was Josephine Baker. She was born in America but moved to France and became a French citizen before the war. When Paris was occupied by the Germans, she stayed on and convinced the Nazis that she was on their side. She had access to very high ranking German officers and gained a great deal of important information for the Allies. When she needed to communicate, she would arrange to sing in a neutral country and write the information in invisible ink on her music sheets, which she then handed over. If she needed to pass on any photos, she would often pin them to her underwear and smuggle them over the border. I think she was really brave: she chose to put herself in danger for something she believed in. Tutor: Brave lady! Mary, what is your story? Mary: I have also chosen a woman spy, an extraordinary woman for her intelligence, bravery and sheer nerve! She was born in Poland in 1915 and was noted for her beauty. Her name was Krystyna Skarbek originally, although later she was given an English name, Christine Granville. When Poland was invaded in 1939, she and her husband escaped to England. He joined the free Polish army and was killed, but Christine became a spy. She spoke several languages and after special training she was sent on a series of missions. She was in Budapest to help Polish refugees cross the border. She was parachuted into German-occupied France and on many missions between England and Poland. She was fearless. In one of her most daring episodes she was working with the French Resistance when her commander and two Allied officers were captured. Christine went to the Gestapo-controlled prison and persuaded the Nazi commandant that she was General Montgomery’s niece. She promised payment and free passes in return for his releasing them. He agreed! Tutor: Amazing! What happened to her after the war?

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Mr Paterson: I know they’ve been studying the Second World War in class as I’ve been following it with Robert. I was very interested as my grandfather used to talk about the D-Day landings often. I have never seen the beaches. I don’t suppose there are places for parents on the trip, are there? Secretary: No, I’m afraid not. It’s proving a very popular choice. There are two coaches leaving and they are booked on a ferry from Portsmouth to Cherbourg. They will visit the beaches, the Overlord Museum and the Omaha Memorial Museum on the first day and stay overnight in a youth hostel. The next morning they’ll go around Cherbourg before leaving. Mr Paterson: What about the cost? Secretary: The total cost, including the coach travel, ferry, overnight stay and all entrance fees is just £140 per head. The deposit is £40 to be paid straight away and the rest a week before the trip. There should be all the information you need in the sheet I’ll give to Robert and the teachers are organising a meeting for participants and parents on 28th April. Mr Paterson: It sounds really interesting, I think it’s a great experience for the students to actually see the places where such important events happened. It makes it all real. Secretary: I couldn’t agree more. The teachers have also arranged for the group to see Saving Private Ryan in the youth hostel to give their imaginations a bit of help. Mr Paterson: Thank you very much Mrs Price for taking the time to explain it all so well. You’ve really been very kind and helpful. Secretary: It’s a pleasure Mr Paterson. If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to phone me or to make contact with one of the teachers involved. Mr Paterson: I will, thank you. Goodbye.

6.6 The USA in the first half of the 20th century Teaching tip The history video The USA in the first half of the 20th century can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

5

6

2 CHOOSE the correct alternative to complete the sentences. 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

VOCABULARY

1 MATCH the highlighted words in the text with their meaning. 1 annexed; 2 plough; 3 drought; 4 charge; 5 assembly plant; 6 pursued; 7 bootleggers; 8 choked; 9 toiled; 10 relief; 11 output.

are true or false.

2 3 4

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At the end of the 19th century the USA was the richest country in the world. T Its wealth came from agriculture, industry and trusts. T The economic boom brought a better quality of life to the industrial areas of the North. F The social problems and government corruption were ignored by the muckraker journalists. F

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The Twenties saw a growth in the US economy except for mining towns in the South-west or farmers of the Midwest. It was also a period of growth for reactionary attitudes, fear of Socialism and restrictions on immigration. Prohibition was introduced to limit alcohol consumption but led to illegal traffic, bootleggers and gangsterism. The collapse of the American stock market led to the Wall Street Crash and a worldwide economic crisis known as the Great Depression. There was widespread unemployment and in the Great Plains region drought forced 60 per cent of the farmers to migrate to California. In 1932 the new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, promised a New Deal and billions of dollars were spent on relief for the unemployed. The Second World War brought an increase in industrial activity and the Manhattan Project was funded to produce the first atomic bomb.

Teaching tip The presentation The USA in the first half of the 20th century in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

1 DECIDE whether the following statements 1

The Republican President Theodore Roosevelt brought in some radical social reforms. F The US government carried out a programme of imperial expansionism but gave all the dominions independence. F

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the text on pages 173-175 and explain: 1

the contradictions within American society at the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th century; By the end of the 19th century the United States had become the richest country in the world, with its economic power based on agricultural prosperity, massive industrial

3

3 ANSWER the following questions about the 1920s and the 1930s. 1

2

3

Why were the 1920s a good time for many Americans? Because the economy grew quickly, vast resources were invested to create new industries, there was little competition from Europe, the population was increasing and taxes on profits and industries were cut by the Republican government. The economic prosperity gave rise to a feeling of euphoria and experimentation in music, dance and fashion, from which the name ‘Roaring Twenties’. What was the so-called ‘Red Scare’? It expressed the fear of Socialism in the 1920s that led to the imprisonment and persecution of political activists with radical or labour backgrounds. Why was the manufacture of alcohol prohibited? A revival of puritanical attitudes banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol. This drastic step, known as ‘Prohibition’, was taken to fight the problem of alcohol addiction among the poor.

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5

What were the consequences of the Wall Street Crash and the Dust Bowl? The 1929 Wall Street Crash marked the end of the prosperous Twenties and the beginning of the Great Depression. Thousands of businessmen were ruined, and millions of common people who had invested their savings in shares found themselves facing debt and ruin. Factories shut down, banks crashed, goods piled up in warehouses. Nearly 8 million Americans were unemployed in the 1930s and spent hours in ‘breadlines’, where they received rations of food. In that period the Great Plains region was devastated by drought. The Dust Bowl forced 60 per cent of the farmers to migrate to California and helped to lengthen the Depression. How did Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal try to solve the problem of unemployment? By giving financial support to the unemployed. The three aims of Roosevelt’s New Deal were in fact ‘relief, recovery, reform’. The federal government spent billions of dollars on relief for those unemployed, on public works and on the conservation of natural resources. It also promoted farm rehabilitation where farmers were instructed to plant trees and grass to anchor the soil, to plough and terrace in order to hold rainwater, and to allow portions of farmland to lie uncultivated each year so that the soil could regenerate.

4 EXPLAIN the following in your own words. 1 Investigative journalists whose reports, in the early years of the 20th century, brought to light many national problems, like the conditions of life in the city slums or corruption in government. 2 Amendment to the American Constitution that prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcohol. 3 A research project to produce and test the first atomic bomb. Among the scientists working in the nuclear field was the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (1901-54). The main assembly plant was built at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Key ideas COMPLETE the key ideas. At the beginning of the 20th century, the press brought the conditions of life in the city slums and the corruption in government to the attention of the Americans Although the USA pursued a policy of imperial expansion, it gradually granted independence to its dominions except for Cuba In the 1920s, quick economic growth was due to investments in industry, little competition from Europe, population growth and cuts in taxes Prohibition encouraged the illegal traffic of ‘bootleggers’ and gangsterism The Wall Street Crash in 1929 marked the beginning of the Great Depression The New Deal had three aims: relief, recovery and reform

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4

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2

output, the rich mineral resources available and the rise of ‘trusts’, the huge corporations of firms in the same trade, which gradually came to dominate the market. The economic boom, however, had not prevented the spread of poverty. In the industrial areas of the North workers lived in dirty, overcrowded slums, and toiled long hours for low wages. In the early years of the 20th century many national problems, like the conditions of life in the city slums or corruption in government, were brought to light by books and articles written by investigative journalists called ‘muckrakers’. the key points of Theodore Roosevelt’s home and foreign policy; He made the navy stronger, insisted on the regulation of trusts and carried out a moderate programme of social legislation. He pursued a policy of imperial expansion. After the Spanish-American War (1898) the United States acquired most of its overseas empire, including Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. In the same period the USA also annexed Hawaii and supported the revolt for independence of Panama from Colombia. The territory was finally granted to the Americans. Imperialism, however, was regarded as contrary to the democratic values of the American Constitution. This is why the United States gradually began to grant independence to its dominions except for Cuba, where it maintained the control of Guantánamo Bay to build a large naval base. the reasons for America’s involvement in World War I. The reasons for America’s entry into the war can be found in the attacks the German submarines were making on American ships.

Extra Activity

1 LOOK at the photographs and describe the people’s faces. Think about the emotions they express. What do you think the artists wanted to convey? Student’s activity.

2 BROWSE the following websites and carry out a research project on the American social realist photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. Then present your findings to the rest of the class. Student’s activity.

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Extra Activity

Listening – Part 2 SENTENCE COMPLETION. You will hear a lecture about Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. For questions 1-10, complete the sentences with a word or short phrase. 1 1932; 2 federal aid; 3 landslide; 4 fear/terror; 5 confidence; 6 the resources; 7 were checked; 8 were safe; 9 flowed; 10 American society. TRANSCRIPT During his campaign for the 1932 presidential election, the Democratic candidate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, promised the Americans government schemes to provide jobs and revive industry and agriculture, federal aid to the poor and unemployed, protection for workers from employers and the end of Prohibition. The election was a landslide victory for Roosevelt with a 7 million majority. In his inaugural speech Roosevelt said: ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.’ When he was President, Roosevelt introduced a new direct form of communication. He spoke directly to the American people in ‘fireside chats’ and his quiet optimism inspired confidence in the financial markets and among the poor. Confidence was fundamental in restoring normality on the Stock Exchange and in financial life generally. In another move that would be considered modern today, he brought together a group of experts – the Brain Trust – to decide on specific measures that needed to be taken. He persuaded the whole country that he would take measures irrespective of party or class loyalties. He put all the resources of government into the creation of the reform programme that would come to be called the New Deal. In a move to restore lost confidence in the banking system, in 1933 Roosevelt ordered all the banks to shut for a ‘four-day holiday’. Their accounting books Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

were checked and the government decided which of the banks were safe to reopen. This action brought back a renewed belief in the system so that money flowed into the banks again. Another electoral promise that the President carried through was the end of Prohibition. The law to decrease alcoholism, particularly in the working classes, had actually encouraged the rise of gangsterism, and the end of Prohibition deprived organised crime of its profits and allowed the alcohol industry to be taxed again bringing extra money to the government. The New Deal was like a breath of fresh air to the country still recovering from the effects of the economic depression. While everyone agrees about the importance of its measures and the stimulating effect psychologically, not all historians see it as necessarily promoting recovery for everyone. In fact, many parts of American society were hardly touched by it. The blacks continued to suffer severe discrimination regarding housing and employment, and women were not employed to any significant degree in the manual labour programmes although their employment rose during the 1930s as they provided cheap labour. adapted from A. Scadding, C. Shepherd, Revise GCSE

Literature and Genres 6.7 Modernism VOCABULARY: WORD FORMATION

1 READ the text and write the corresponding noun/adjective from the text near each adjective/noun. Adjective

Noun

investigational technological narrative objective allusive dissolutive

investigation technology narrative objectivity allusiveness/allusion dissolution

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the first paragraph and state: 1

2

what the term ‘Modernism’ refers to; It refers to an international movement which involved Western literature, music, the visual arts and the cinema in the first decades of the 20th century. what it is associated with; Modernism as a literary movement is typically associated with the period after World War I. The horror of the

A

B

C

3 READ the second paragraph and highlight the traditional features subverted by Modernist writers. The traditional features subverted by Modernist writers were the limitations in space and time, the linear flow of narrative or conventional verse, the objectivity provided by an omniscient third-person narrator.

4 FOCUS on the last paragraph and say why there was a progression towards a cosmopolitan literature. Absorbing the influences of the past and contemporary ascendancy coming from abroad, in the attempt to build a new system of references, English modern literature was becoming cosmopolitan, thus moving away from the upper-middle-class milieu of Victorian society. Extra Activity CLIL: Art Henri Matisse and Fauvism

1 SAY what the actual subject of the painting is. The actual subject of the painting is a woman arranging a bowl of fruit on the table.

2 DESCRIBE the setting in detail. There are some still-life objects on the table, a chair on the left and another behind the table; arabesques can be seen both on the tablecloth and on the wall.

3 LOOK ‘out the window’. What can you see in the background? A landscape with branches and tree trunks can be seen in the background.

4 DEFINE the dominant colours used in the composition. Are they linked to any descriptive function? Primary red, blue and yellow are the dominant colours used in the composition. Their function is to create a decorative harmony. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

why the sense of traditional perspective within the room is minimised; The sense of traditional perspective within the room is minimised because the table and the wall are of the same red. where the linear perspective is confined; The linear perspective is confined to the chair and the window frame. if a sense of depth is created. The demarcation between the table and the wall is indicated not by a constructed illusion of space, but by a dark outline, and by the bright still-life arrangements that lie on the table’s surface. The effect is reinforced by the tilting plates and bowls.

6 COMPLETE the following statements about the shape and spaces of the painting. 1

2

3 4

5

The forms and spaces are determined primarily by colour and only secondarily by line. The design is built largely on black curved lines, which Matisse referred to as his ‘arabesques’. The exterior landscape is related to the interior by the repetition of black curves. The inside ‘arabesques’ create branch-like forms, both on the table and on the wall, while those outside form branches and tree trunks. Smaller ‘arabesques’ define the flower stems and the outline of the woman’s hair.

7 DISCUSS. In his A Painter’s Note, published in 1908, Matisse wrote: ‘If upon a white canvas I set down some sensations of blue, of green, of red […] it is necessary that the various marks I use be balanced so that they do not destroy each other… From the relationships I have found in all the tones, there must result a living harmony of colours, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition.’ Explain Matisse’s aim in painting Harmony in Red, and what his ‘living harmony’ is based on. Harmony in Red refers to the predominant colour, whose flat planes harmonise the wall and table into a shared space. Matisse builds a second, more animated movement in the arabesques, harmonising the interior with the exterior. Finally, the bright patches on the woman, the still-life objects and the floral designs create a more staccato beat composed of individual accented forms.

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5 SAY:

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3

war had shaken the certainties of the pre-war society, which were replaced by a sense of disillusionment and fragmentation. New ideas in the field of psychology, philosophy and political theory encouraged a search for new modes of expression. what it expressed. It expressed the desire to break with the past and find new fields of investigation, such as urbanisation, technology, war, speed and mass communication. It gave shape to the modern consciousness and contributed to express the nature of modern experience through creative forms of experimentation.

8 TICK as appropriate. What strikes you most

7 DESCRIBE. What colours are used in the

about this Fauve picture? What sensations does Harmony in Red communicate to you?

picture? What sensations do they convey? The colours are almost monochromatic, restricted to a narrow range of ochres, greys and greens. They convey harmony and unity of effect.

harmony peace Georges Braque and Analytic Cubism

8 DISCUSS. The elements of reality in a composition such as this appear only in fragmented form and are often indicated only in the most allusive way. Where does the attention required for a successful reading of the painting lead to? It leads to a heightened awareness of the realities depicted.

1 LOOK at the painting. The references to the visible world are few:

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A B C D

E F

A pitcher can be seen in the centre. A table is placed vertically next to the pitcher. Towards the bottom on the right a violin can be recognised. At the top of the picture is one of Braque’s famous Cubist jokes, a nail of the kind used for hanging pictures, painted with its shadow. A sheet of paper is under it. The form on the right is a horizontal picture frame but it also suggests a baseboard of a wall.

9 READ Braque’s definition of art: ‘Art is meant to disturb, science reassures.’ Does this picture express its creator’s aim? Yes, it does, because each object is seen from different points of view; they are perceived and analysed by senses and not by reason.

10 DISCUSS. Violin and Pitcher is one of many Cubist pictures which refer to music. Which other analogies of painting and music in the last decades of the 19th century have you analysed? What do they reflect? Other analogies of painting and music in the last decades of the 19th century can be found in Whistler’s pictures. They reflect the painters’ delight in music.

2 DESCRIBE the structure of the painting. Tick as appropriate. All the lines are combined with stippled areas of paint applied in short stabbing strokes.

3 DEFINE what the objects are composed of. The objects are composed of geometric shapes.

11 COMPARE Braque’s rendering of the space with that of Picasso. They both fragmented the space and did not follow the traditional rules of perspective.

4 DECIDE. Several different characteristic aspects of the same object are sometimes combined together. What spatial relationship exists among the different objects? The violin is both on the table and inside it; the sheet of paper is both on the wall under the nail and placed on the table. No spatial relationship exists among the different objects.

5 BRAQUE stated: ‘I am not interested in the traditional perspective.’ Explain why the objects of the composition do not follow the rules of perspective. The objects of the composition do not follow the rules of perspective because the artist’s point of view continually shifts.

6 DECIDE. The nail’s shadow shows it to be illuminated from the left. Where is the rest of the imagery lit from? The rest of the imagery is lit from the right.

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Wassily Kandinsky and Abstract Art

1 LOOK at the painting and complete the sentences. A B C

D

In the centre there is a blue mountain crowned by a building suggesting a fortress. Three figures, all dressed in white cloaks and red hats appear in front of the mountain. Two of them are carrying two long black lances and the third has his arm extended and is leaning on his sabre. The sky is full of many coloured clouds.

2 LOOK at the painting and complete the sentences. A

The most naturalistic shape on the left side is a rainbow.

B C

It is surmounted by a gigantic white horse. This animal is turning on the left and carrying a rider with a red head and whose body is in the shape of a black arc.

3 LOOK at the painting and complete the sentence. In the foreground of the third area there is a reclining couple.

Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism

1 LOOK at the painting. The composition is made up of pictures within a picture. These include: A B C

the tiny abstractions, less than six inches high, on the right; the large scene of uniformed figures taking up the lower left corner; the two ‘crowd’ scenes at top centre.

4 THE COMPOSITION is mainly based on the

in Art, Kandinsky stated that colours were able to reveal the true essence of the world. What associations do the colours of the picture suggest? The heavy black lines express movement, while the elements of strong colour, the hats, the rainbow and the clouds, distract the eye and reinforce the disturbing effect.

6 DISCUSS. One day in Munich, Kandinsky came into his studio and suddenly saw an ‘indescribably beautiful painting, that was saturated with an inner glow’. He saw in it nothing but forms, no subject matter at all. It was a picture he seemed to have made. The next day the spell was gone and he recognised the objects represented in it with painful distinctness. Thus he realised that the object harmed his painting. Although the objects in this composition are barely recognisable, feelings are vividly expressed. Comment on the feelings and sensations conveyed by Composition IV. Student’s activity.

7 DEFINE the theme of the painting. The theme of the painting is a violent collision between different worlds that are destined to create a new world by fighting each other.

8 DISCUSS. Why do you think Kandinsky’s abstract painting has been defined as ‘musical’? Student’s activity.

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the mass? What is it carrying? Look for another figure with the same object. Yes, this tiny figure is separated from the mass; it is carrying a flag. Another figure with the same object is at the top.

3 TRY to guess the setting of the picture. The setting is a city.

4 TICK as appropriate. What kind of lines does Lewis employ in this painting? harsh angles What impression does this technique convey? It conveys vigour, dynamism and movement.

5 DECIDE. What do the repeated rectangles of the painting suggest? The repeated rectangles of the painting suggest girders, ladders and windows.

6 DEFINE the colour scheme of the image. Cold greys, browns, reds with a patch of brilliant yellow are the dominant colours of the image.

7 EXPLAIN why this composition evokes the forms of the modern urban and industrial environment. In a city sky, segments appear and disappear as street perspectives dictate; strips of buildings are linked together by networks of road and railway.

8 IDENTIFY the two worlds which seem to be opposed to each other in the picture. The stillness of the architecture clashes with the human flurry.

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5 DECIDE. In the essay Concerning the Spiritual

2 DECIDE. Is this tiny figure separated from

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use of two vertical lines and diagonal ones. Identify them and state their function. The two lances are the vertical lines, while the diagonal ones tilt and clash and intersect throughout the composition conveying restlessness, dynamism and action.

aim: to achieve precision, discipline, ‘dry hardness’, ‘the exact curve of the thing’; no moral comment The Symbolists themes: the escape from emotion as well as from personality; the collapse and fragmentation of civilisation style: indirect statements; use of allusive language and images; importance given to the sound of words; quotations from other literatures; free verse aim: to evoke rather than to state; to create rich patterns of meaning that were not made easy for the superficial reader The poets of the 1930s themes: the social and political aspects of human life style: turned away from the Symbolists’ complexity and allusiveness; slang and jazz rhythms; images drawn from the world of technology aim: to communicate with their fellow men and encourage them to follow certain morally right courses of action The new Romantics themes: individual themes such as love, birth, death and even sex style: appeal to emotions aim: to react against the intellectualism and commitment of the 1930s

9 LEWIS proclaimed in the first issue of ‘Blast’: ‘The New Vortex plunges to the heart of the Present... we produce a New Living Abstraction.’ What social and artistic aspects of the first decade of the present century do you think Lewis wanted to attack? He wanted to attack the flatness, the sense of emptiness of British art and culture.

10 COMPARE Lewis’s painting to Braque’s Violin and Pitcher; focus on: A

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The Modern Age

B

C

the subject; The trivial and small objects of Braque’s painting are in antithesis with Lewis’s big ones. the rendering of the space; Braque’s objects are seen from different points of view simultaneously and they are fragmented; Lewis’s space mirrors dynamism and movement. the theme. Braque employs a revolutionary technique and his aim was to represent the fourth dimension, time. Lewis pictured his own society.

6.8 Modern poetry Teaching tip The presentation Modern poetry and free verse in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the literary context or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 88-89: Dylan Thomas Teacher’s key on page 352. COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

2 READ Pound’s poem and choose the correct answer.

1 READ the text and create a diagram to

1

summarise the main trends in modern poetry. The Georgian poets themes: the English countryside as an idyllic place style: still influenced by the Victorian Romantic tradition; used the convention of diction aim: to express the English sensibility The War Poets themes: the horrors of modern warfare style: experimentalism which emerged in the choice of violent, everyday language aim: to deal with war in an unconventional, anti-rhetorical way The Imagists themes: any subject matter; the poet’s response to a scene or object style: usually short poems; hard, clear and precise images; free verse

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2

Where does the emphasis shift? It shifts towards A the single word. What is the reader expected to do? B To find connections between the units of the text.

3 READ Williams’s poem and state: 1

2

3

the length of the lines; They are of different length, though they are all very short; line 7 consists of one word only. the features of punctuation; The poem has no punctuation except for the full stop at the end of line 12. the main characteristics of the language. It is non-poetic, made up of words taken from everyday reality which convey very clear, discrete images.

4 SUM up the features of free verse. In free verse the traditional metre and rhyme scheme are absent. Its only unifying element is the use of the poetic line. The free verse line might consist of a complete sentence or of a single word, whose relation to the syntactic structure of preceding and succeeding lines is flexible. Alliteration and assonance compensate for the absence of the other traditional musical devices.

6.9 The modern novel

2

3

what the modern novelists were mainly interested in; They were mainly interested in experimenting with subjective narrative techniques, exploring the mind of one or more characters and giving voice to their thoughts. what the writers of the 1930s laid emphasis on. They laid emphasis on the society around them. Many British intellectuals had Marxist sympathies and tended to become didactic and take a political stance.

3 MATCH the names of the novelists with the

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 B; 2 C; 3 E; 4 A; 5 F; 6 D.

6.10 The interior monologue COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the first two paragraphs and complete 1 READ the text and complete the table below with the differences between the traditional and the modern novel. Traditional novel

Modern novel

Main theme

Society and outward actions of the characters (the gain or loss of social status).

The individual and the psyche.

Novelist’s role

To mediate between the characters and the reader.

To mediate between the unquestioned values of the past and the confused present, highlighting the complexity of the unconscious.

Use of time

Chronological order.

Subjective and internal.

Narrative technique

Omniscient narrator; external viewpoint; wellstructured plot.

Stream-ofconsciousness technique; epiphany; interior monologue; internal point of view.

the diagram about the main features of the interior monologue. It is the verbal expression of a psychic phenomenon, the stream of consciousness It does not follow a chronological order The action takes place within the character’s mind Speech is immediate because it is not addressed The narrator may be present It often lacks a formal logical order

2 FOCUS on the third paragraph and identify the different kinds of interior monologue. There are four kinds of interior monologue: the indirect interior monologue, where the narrator never lets the character’s thoughts flow without control, and maintains logical and grammatical organisation; the direct interior monologue with two levels of narration – one external to the character’s mind, and the other internal; the direct interior monologue with the mind level of narration, where the character’s thoughts flow freely, not interrupted by external events; and the extreme interior monologue, where words and free associations are fused to create new expressions.

2 READ about the three groups of novelists and state: 1

what the psychological novelists concentrated on; They concentrated on the development of the character’s mind and on human relationships.

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Text Bank 104-105: Aldous Huxley Teacher’s key on page 380.

key idea concerning their works.

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Teaching tip The presentation The modern novel in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the literary context or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

6.11 A new generation of American writers

5 SAY what mood characterised the literature of the Thirties and Forties. Much of the literature of the period was characterised by a resentful and bitter pessimism, a new social consciousness, a feeling of political responsibility and a deeper interest in psychology.

From Literature to Screen: Midnight in Paris Photocopiable lesson on page 271. Teacher’s key on page 290. Text Bank 114: Robert Frost Teacher’s key on page 395. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the text and describe the mood of the

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The Modern Age

Jazz Age. The so-called ‘Jazz Age’ of the 1920s was an age full of excitement and contradictions due to the radical changes in the way people behaved and thought. The new manners were a reaction against the strict Puritan morality of the previous century. They were especially evident among young people, with their roaring cars and the new daring dances like the Charleston. In spite of Prohibition, parties and cocktails became fashionable and women began to wear their hair and dresses short, looking boyish.

2 EXPLAIN why the writers who emigrated to Europe were called the ‘Lost Generation’. They were aware of the moral desert hiding behind the glamour of the Jazz Age and they attacked its superficial hedonism. They knew that many good, young men had gone to war and died, or returned home physically or mentally wounded, and their faith in the moral ideals that had earlier given them hope, was ‘lost’.

Extra Activity

Listening – Section 2 MONOLOGUE. You are going to hear an expert talking about American music. Before you listen to the audio, read through the questions below; then try to answer them while you listen. Listen to part 1. You are going to hear about the blues. Choose the correct answer (A, B, C or D) to complete the sentences (1-3). 1 D; 2 A; 3 B. Listen to part 2. You are going to hear about American jazz. Complete the sentences (4-7) with NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS in each gap. 4

5

6

7

3 POINT out the contributions to the modernisation of American poetry as regards style. With the exception of a few traditionalists, American poets wrote in free verse, abandoning conventional verse forms, experimenting with syntax, punctuation and typography.

4 EXPLAIN how black artists contributed to the development of an American literary identity. Afro-American literature found its fullest expression in Harlem Renaissance, a movement which concerned the literary and artistic fields as well as the cultural and intellectual ones. This movement raised important issues affecting the lives of African Americans; its writers exalted their heritage and tried to use their unique culture as a means to redefine African American literary expression. Afro-American writers had to face the problem of self-definition through a new evaluation of their past, relying in particular on the rich folk tradition – oral culture, black dialect, jazz and blues composition – to create unique literary forms.

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New Orleans was considered to be the birthplace of jazz because of the mixture of Creole and black subcultures. The Creole community spoke French and Spanish and became an important part of New Orleans upper class / society although they had originally come from the West Indies. Jazz began when the upper-class, educated Creole community, with their sophisticated knowledge of European music, moved into the black section of New Orleans. The conditions needed to produce jazz were the mixture of ethnic, cultural and musical conditions that were only to be found in the United States.

Answer the following questions (8-10) after listening to the complete audio. 8 9

10

What was enacted in 1894? A racial segregation law in New Orleans. What was specific to New Orleans? The mixing of the Creole and black subcultures. The Creoles were free, French and Spanish speaking blacks, originally from the West Indies. They rose to the highest levels of New Orleans society during the 19th century and had formal knowledge of European music, precise technique and a soft delicate tone. What kind of freedom was essential to produce jazz? The freedom of individual expression supported by group interaction. It came from the multiplicity of ethnic, cultural and musical conditions and the necessary philosophical impetus.

Part 2 Tracing the origins of jazz in the formative years (1895-1917) is not easy. Even the geographic location of the earliest jazz experiments has been the subject of controversy because the forms of black music from which jazz was formed were known in dozens of cities in the United States. Why then was New Orleans chosen as the birthplace of jazz? This was due to the mixing of the Creole and black subcultures. The Creoles were free, French and Spanish speaking blacks, originally from the West Indies. They rose to the highest levels of New Orleans society during the 19th century and had formal knowledge of European music, precise technique and a soft delicate tone. Their social and cultural values were those of the upper class. In sharp contrast were the newly freed blacks who were poor and uneducated. They knew the blues, Gospel music and work songs which they sang or played mostly by ear. Memorisation and improvisation characterised their bands, whereas Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

Authors and Texts 6.12 The War Poets Teaching tip The presentation The War Poets in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the authors or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 74: A Soldier’s Declaration Teacher’s key on page 332. Text Bank 75: Break of Day in the Trenches Teacher’s key on page 332. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the text and answer the following questions. 1

2

3

4

How did the view of war change during the conflict? When WWI broke out, thousands of young men volunteered for military service because they regarded the war as an adventure undertaken for noble ends, but after the slaughter on the Somme this sense of pride and exhilaration was replaced by doubt and disillusionment. What was life in the trenches like? It was hell because of the rain and mud, the decaying bodies that rats fed on, the repeated bombings and the use of poison gas in warfare. Who were the War Poets? They were a group of poets who volunteered to fight in the Great War, actually experienced the fighting and in most cases were killed in the conflict. They managed to represent modern warfare in a realistic and unconventional way, awakening the conscience of the readers back home to the horrors of the war. In what sense was their poetry modern? Because its subject-matter could not be conveyed in the 19th-century poetic conventions, and forced them to find new modes of expression.

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Part 1 The blues is an American musical and verse form. Its roots were in various forms of AfricanAmerican slave songs such as work songs and spirituals. The blues reflected the sadness and the tribulations of the Afro Americans on a secular level, as opposed to religious Gospel songs. The blues was the philosophical expression of the individual contemplating his situation in relation to the conditions surrounding him. The most charming peculiarity of the blues was its individual character, which made it unique, and, at the same time, the universality of its content which could be understood by everybody and was thus collective. Though composed under the pressure of improvisation, the blues has a rigid pattern which demands simple diction, repetition and an elementary rhyme scheme; it is arranged into three lines of verse, the second line repeating the first, and the third rhyming with the first two. As the African-American community that created the blues began moving away from the South to escape systematic racial prejudice, blues music evolved to reflect new circumstances. The thousands of African-American farm workers who migrated north to cities like Chicago and Detroit during both World Wars wanted to hear music that reflected their new urban surroundings. In response, transplanted blues artists such as Muddy Waters, who had lived and worked on a Mississippi plantation before moving to Chicago in 1943, replaced acoustic guitars with electric ones and expanded their sound with drums, harmonica and stand-up bass. This gave rise to an electrified blues sound with an emotional beat that drove people onto the dance floor and paved the way to ‘rhythm and blues’ and rock ’n’ roll.

reading music and correct performance were characteristic of Creole bands. In 1894 a racial segregation law was enacted in New Orleans, forcing the Creoles to live in the black section of the town. The combination of their musical techniques marked the beginning of jazz and was specific to New Orleans. The multiplicity of ethnic, cultural and musical conditions needed to produce jazz was unique to the United States and the necessary philosophical impetus for jazz became freedom of individual expression supported by group interaction.

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TRANSCRIPT

Rupert Brooke

4 He says his dead body will enrich the soil because it will become dust, a richer dust than the earth around it because that dust will be of a son of England’s who died honourably for his beloved country.

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the text and make notes about the

5 List the images connected with England in the table below.

following. 1

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The Modern Age

2

3

4

Brooke’s education. He was educated at Rugby School, where his father was a master, and then went to King’s College, Cambridge. He was a good student. He was also familiar with literary circles like the Bloomsbury Group and came to know many important literary figures before the war. His experience of the war. He joined up at the beginning of the conflict but saw little combat since he contracted blood poisoning and died in April 1915, on the Aegean Sea. He was buried on the Greek island of Skyros. His view of war. He advanced the idea that war is clean and cleansing. He expressed an idealism about the conflict, in which the only thing that can suffer is the body, and even death is seen as a reward. His poems show a sentimental attitude. His popularity. The publication of his five war sonnets coincided with his death in 1915 and made him immensely popular, turning him into a new symbol of the ‘young romantic hero’ who inspired patriotism in the early months of the Great War, when England needed a focal point for its sacrifice, ideals and aspirations.

T87

Landscape

‘her flowers to love’ ‘England bore, shaped, made (line 6) aware’ (line 5) ‘her ways to roam’ (line 6)

‘the thoughts by England given’ (line 11)

‘Washed by the rivers’ (line 8)

‘dreams happy’ (line 12)

‘blest by suns of home’ (line 8)

‘And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, / In hearts at peace, under an English heaven’ (lines 13-14)

6 How does the poet view England? He views England as a mother who gave him life and brought him up teaching him feelings of joy and gentleness. 7 What traditional qualities of the English does he emphasise? He emphasises the politeness and friendship of the English people. 8 List the images referring to death. What idea do they suggest? 1 ‘a richer dust’ (line 4); 2 ‘A body of England’s’ (line 7); 3 ‘A pulse in the eternal mind’ (line 10). They suggest immortality, glory and peace.

The Soldier

9 Structurally, the poem is A a Petrarchan sonnet.

Rupert Brooke, 1914 and Other Poems READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the poem and match the highlighted words and phrases with their Italian translation. 1 aware; 2 shed away; 3 concealed; 4 to roam; 5 laughter; 6 foreign; 7 breathing; 8 eternal mind; 9 bore; 10 pulse; 11 blest; 12 dust.

Inner growth and private feelings

10 The rhyme scheme is C ABAB CDCD EFG EFG. 11 Define the tone of the poem. Choose from among the following. Sentimental, romantic. 12 What is the view of war presented in the poem? The poem deals with patriotic ideas and the idealisation of those who sacrifice their life for their country. Death in battle is not regarded as a tragic experience but as a noble act.

2 READ the poem again and do the following activities.

Wilfred Owen

1 Who is speaking? A soldier. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 Is the speaker afraid of death? No, he does not seem afraid of death. 3 The speaker says his grave will be B in another country.

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1 READ the text and say: 1

why Owen enlisted; He decided to enlist after visiting a hospital for the wounded in France, where he was working as a teacher of English.

4

5 6

T88

Dulce et Decorum Est Wilfred Owen, Poems

VISUAL ANALYSIS

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

1 READ the poem and summarise the content of each stanza in your own words. Stanza 1: The soldiers are retreating towards the trenches; they are tired, scared, they cough and are made blind and deaf as a result of the gas shells. Stanza 2: The poet describes a gas attack: the men try to put on their masks in the green light and the poet’s friend is wounded. Stanza 3: The sight of the dying friend returns in the poet’s dreams. Stanza 4: The poet describes his friend’s horrible death from chemical warfare and conveys the message of the poem.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text. Write down what each highlight and colour represents. Highlighted in yellow: the personal pronouns in the poem: ‘we’ Æ the soldiers, including the poet himself; ‘I’ Æ the poet; ‘He’ Æ a soldier, a friend of the poet’s; ‘you’ Æ the reader, any person who thinks that the war is a noble adventure Highlighted in light blue: verbs of movement; the verbs in the first stanza describe slow, weary movements due to physical exhaustion, while those in the second stanza are convulsive and frantic because of panic Highlighted in orange: similes describing the soldiers during the retreat and the poet’s dying friend. The images belong to the world of the supernatural and that of suffering and disease Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

2

3

4

Describe the physical and psychological suffering of the soldiers by quoting from the text. The words ‘Bent double’, ‘Knock-kneed’, ‘coughing’, ‘trudge’, ‘limped on’, ‘blood-shod’, ‘lame’, ‘blind’, ‘Drunk with fatigue’ and ‘deaf’ in the first stanza refer to physical suffering due to fatigue and the effects of chemical weapons. The words ‘cursed’ (line 2), ‘haunting’ (line 3), ‘asleep’ (line 5), ‘ecstasy of fumbling’ (line 9) and ‘yelling out’ (line 11) convey the idea of psychological uneasiness and fear. Owen gives importance to the psychological sphere (see the passage from the real to the unreal), he deals with the themes of alienation and dehumanisation. What kind of world is introduced at the end of the second stanza? The passage from the real world of the battlefield to a nightmarish, hallucinatory, hellish world. Explain the theme and the message of the poem in your own words. The poem is a manifesto against the war and is addressed to those who claim that war is right and glorious. Through anti-heroic images, Owen gives an insight into what he calls the ‘pity of War’, its humane aspects. In October 1918 Owen wrote: ‘I came out in order to help these boys – directly by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can. I have done the first.’ Do you find it relevant to the poem? Yes, the poem is consistent with Owen’s statement. He thought that the message of poetry is strong and wanted people to feel the ‘pity of War’ through his lines, relating his first-hand experience of the horrors of war in the trenches.

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3

Highlighted in green: metaphors conveying the nightmare of war. Teachers could point out that ‘blood-shod’ (line 6) is almost a kenning; ‘Drunk’ (line 7) refers to a real condition of the soldiers fighting in the Great War, who often used to drink alcohol before and after an attack; ‘ecstasy’ (line 9) is utter panic; the ‘green sea’ (line 14) refers to the colour of the gas Highlighted in grey: there is nothing noble or decorous in war; war is an ‘old’ lie because it is not a new concept but a historic one that has been used many times to cover up the harsh reality of war. This statement comes after a crescendo of terrible images, which puts even more emphasis on it Pink letters: examples of alliteration Green dots: examples of onomatopoeia Arrow: bitter irony, the technique used by the poet to underline that there is nothing noble or decorous in war since it only means degradation and death

whether he survived the war; No, he died seven days before the armistice. He was killed in a German machine gun attack. what his poems deal with; They deal with gas casualties, men who have gone mad and men who are clinically alive although their bodies have been destroyed. what technical innovation he introduced in poetry; He introduced ‘pararhymes’ – halfrhymes where the consonants in two different words are the same but the vowels vary, for instance ‘loves/lives’, ‘seeds/sides’, ‘star/stir’. what he was concerned with when writing poetry; He was concerned with ‘the pity of War’. what the poet’s task was, according to Owen. It was to warn and be truthful.

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2

5

Images of war are very frequent on television or in films. Compare the impact of images with that of words. Which means is most effective? Can you provide an example? Students’ activity.

7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

4 WRITE 10-12 lines to compare Owen’s poem with Brooke’s The Soldier (→ T87). Analyse the soldier’s mood, his attitude to war, the imagery employed and the poet’s message.

In his poems, collected in The Old Huntsman (1917) and in Counter-Attack (1918), Sassoon denounced the political errors and insincerities for which the soldiers were being sacrificed in various ways: in a documentary manner, by which he recreated the physical horror of the war, through anger and satire and through sardonic distancing. What Sassoon achieved was neither compassion nor pity, but the bitter spontaneity of shocking and realistic detail. A resolute pacifist, he got involved in politics, siding with the Labour Party, and, in 1957, at last he found peace in his religious faith, becoming a Roman Catholic. He died in 1967.

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The Modern Age

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should develop the following notes: Brooke

Owen

The soldier’s mood

Romantic.

Disenchanted.

His attitude to war

He idealised it.

He condemned it.

Imagery

Drawn from Nightmarish. nature and private feelings.

The poet’s message

Dying at war brings glory.

2 READ the text and decide whether the following statements are true or false. Correct the false ones. 1

War and patriotism are deceitful.

2 3

4 5

Siegfried Sassoon 1

5.7 LISTEN and complete the life and works of Siegfried Sassoon with the missing information.

6

1 Jewish family; 2 pastoral life; 3 bitter and violent; 4 declaration; 5 shell shock; 6 influenced; 7 political errors; 8 sacrificed; 9 satire; 10 compassion; 11 realistic; 12 pacifist. TRANSCRIPT Siegfried Sassoon was born into a wealthy Jewish family in 1886. As a young man, he lived the pastoral life of a young squire – fox-hunting, playing cricket, golfing – and wrote romantic verse. In 1915 he joined the war and was sent to France. His reactions to the realities of the war were bitter and violent and he expressed them through irony in his poems. Sassoon also protested publicly against the war, reading out a declaration against it in the House of Commons in July 1917. It was his friend and fellow poet Robert Graves who prevented him from being court-martialled by convincing the review board that Sassoon was suffering from shell shock and he was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where he met and influenced Wilfred Owen.

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Sassoon came of a humble family. F He came of a wealthy family and lived the life of a young squire. He protested in the House of Commons. T He was court-martialled. F His friend and fellow poet Robert Graves convinced the review board that Sassoon was suffering from shell shock and he was sent to a military hospital. He influenced Wilfred Owen. T He adopted a romantic attitude to war. F He adopted a satirical stance because he wanted to denounce the political errors and insincerities for which the soldiers were being sacrificed. He wanted to be realistic and shocking, not to achieve pity or compassion. At the end of his life he rejected religion and God. F He became a Roman Catholic.

T89

Glory of Women Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack, and Other Poems

LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

VOCABULARY

1 READ the poem and match the highlighted words and phrases with their meaning. 1 mentionable; 2 mourn; 3 Trampling; 4 on leave; 5 fondly thrilled; 6 wounded.

7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

8 DEFINE the tone of the poem. Choose from the following adjectives. Then justify your choice with examples from the text. Ironical. Lines 5-6, 12-13.

2 READ the poem again and answer the following questions.

3

4

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9 DISCUSS the way in which the two pictures below reflect the contrast between the propaganda and the social realities connected with war. You can refer to 6.2. Students should reflect on the role of propaganda especially during the first part of the war, until conscription was introduced in 1916, and the active part played by women in the British economy. The two pictures also emphasise the difference between the romantic idea of war and the crude reality of the battlefield and the trenches, the gap between ideals and reality.

COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

3 ANALYSE the rhyme scheme of the poem. Is it regular? What type of poem is it? The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFG EFG. It is regular. It is a Petrarchan sonnet.

4 POINT out the technical device Sassoon uses to draw the reader’s attention away from the rhyme scheme. He uses enjambement (lines 3-4, 9-10, 13-14).

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COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

10 GO through the material about the War Poets again and write down your notes and key ideas in a Cornell note-taking page. Then write your summary in section C of the page. Student’s activity.

5 FOCUS on the use of imagery. List the images of the poem under the following headings. Domestic life: lines 12-13; honour and glory: lines 1, 3-4, 7-8; horror: lines 2, 6, 10-11, 14.

6 WRITE down what the following phrases suggest about the reality of war. 1 2 3 4 5

‘home on leave’ (line 1) Soldiers were sent back home because of wounds or shell shock. ‘wounded in a mentionable place’ (line 2) Sometimes soldiers were maimed. ‘tales of dirt’ (line 6) Soldiers fought in the mud of the trenches or the fields. ‘hell’s last horror’ (line 10) Here the battlefield is compared to hell. ‘Trampling the terrible corpses’ (line 11) After the attack, the panic-struck soldiers trampled the corpses of their companions during the retreat.

7 EXPLAIN how Sassoon succeeds in universalising the experience of war. By using the image of British and German mothers who are united in the tragic experience of war. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

6.13 William Butler Yeats Teaching tip The presentation William Butler Yeats in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 76: When You Are Old Teacher’s key on page 333. Text Bank 77: The Lake Isle of Innisfree Teacher’s key on page 335. Text Bank 78: Sailing to Byzantium Teacher’s key on page 336.

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5.9 LISTEN to a radio programme about William Butler Yeats’s life and complete the text. 1 Protestant minority; 2 rural west; 3 Celtic romances; 4 mystical; 5 occult; 6 actress and patriot; 7 Lady Gregory; 8 Abbey Theatre; 9 medieval tower-house; 10 mysterious communicators; 11 education policy; 12 divorce debate.

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Who do ‘You’ and ‘we’ (line 1) refer to? ‘You’ refers to women and ‘we’ refers to the soldiers. What is women’s attitude towards men at war? They idealise their men and consider them as Romantic heroes. What do they do at home in the meantime? They make shells (the poet refers to the women who replaced men in industry during the war) or they knit socks. Is the poem about ‘real’ war or ‘reported’ war? It is about reported war.

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TRANSCRIPT William Butler Yeats was born in Dublin in 1865 into a middle-class artistic family. His parents belonged to the Anglo-Irish Protestant minority. They moved to London when he was 2 and lived there for 14 years, so he grew up feeling as much Irish as British. The young Yeats spent the summer in Sligo, in the rural west of Ireland, with his mother’s family. There he heard and noted down the old Celtic romances about the great heroes of the Celts. Yeats’s passion for the Celtic past was linked to his quest for the mystical, which led him to explore the occult. He soon got involved in the nationalist cause and developed the idea of a distinctive Irish literature that would enable the Irish people to take pride in their cultural heritage. In 1889 he met the beautiful actress and patriot Maud Gonne in London and fell in love with her, but his love was not returned. In the 1890s Yeats met Lady Gregory, an Irish nationalist and dramatist. Together they founded the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1899. In 1917 Yeats bought Thoor Ballylee, a ruined medieval tower-house near Coole Park, in County Galway. This medieval tower took on a powerful symbolism in his work. In the same year he married Georgie Hyde-Lees, an Englishwoman 25 years younger who shared his interest in the occult. She began to indulge in ‘automatic writing’ supposedly dictated by mysterious communicators from the supernatural world. Yeats developed her writing into an elaborate system of ideas set out in A Vision (1925). In 1922 he became a senator in the recently established Irish Free State. He was concerned with the education policy and spoke out on behalf of the Protestant minority in the divorce debate in the Dáil in 1925. Yeats’s greatness as a poet received international recognition with the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. He died in France in 1939 and his body was brought back and buried in County Sligo in 1948. COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

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5.9 AFTER reading the captions of the following pictures, listen again to Yeats’s biography and reorder the pictures. Then use them to report on Yeats’s life. 1 B; 2 D; 3 F; 4 A; 5 E; 6 C. Student’s speaking activity. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

3 READ the texts on pages 195-196 and answer the following questions. 1

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What was the role of the artist, according to Yeats? It was the creation of a new culture, based on Ireland’s past, which all the Irish people

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alike could share. This hope in an Irish cultural renaissance found expression in a series of essays called The Celtic Twilight (1893). In his early poems the visionary and nationalist try to find mythic ways of representing the tension between artistic imagination and national loyalty. What are the basic elements of Yeats’s vision of history? How would you define it? He had a cyclical vision of history – 2000-year cycles of civilisations rising from a bestial floor to great heights of intellectual, aesthetic and spiritual achievement before turning like a tragic wheel down to apocalyptic anarchy. This vision enabled him to deal with violence and destruction in his art but also helped him to become confident of the superiority of art to history. What influenced his interest in occultism? When in London, he joined a famous mystical society, the Theosophical Society; he studied Emanuel Swedenborg, the Tibetan Mysteries and Buddhism. His attraction to these doctrines and cults was probably due to his belief that they provided clues to the unconscious life of mind and spirit, and therefore to the sources of creative imagination. What range of themes did he deal with? The beauty and eternity of art; the relationship between the poet and the Irish people and tradition; age; the clash between the failing body and the willing heart; death; the idea of the heroic individual. What is the function and development of his concept of the symbol? Symbols have an effective role in shaping both the individual and the collective consciousness; they are not only devices he uses to present his themes, but also themes in themselves, in which truths are embodied, in all their complexity. To Yeats the symbol has a ‘visionary’ dimension, it offers ‘revelation’. What are the characteristics of his style? Yeats’s imagination worked especially through the conflict and resolution of opposites: he widely employed the stylistic devices of antithesis, oxymoron and paradox. He paid particular attention to the order and construction of his sentences; very often a single sentence is as long as a whole stanza, and this is made possible by frequent enjambement. Yeats’s vocabulary contains many words of sensual and sensory experience, his syntax is dynamic and energetic, his vocabulary is rich in verbs of motion and action. What are the recurring images and words in his poetry? The recurring images are the falcon, which may stand for a violent and cruel rapacity which has broken free from control, or the grace and beauty of the free spirit; the

Easter 1916 William Butler Yeats, Michael Robartes and the Dancer

READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the first two stanzas and match the highlighted words with their Italian translation. 1 harriers; 2 utterly; 3 gibe; 4 resigned; 5 counter; 6 daring; 7 shrill; 8 motley; 9 nod; 10 lingered.

2 READ the whole poem and do the following activities. 1 When did the poet use to meet the insurgents? He used to meet them at the end of the working day (line 1). 2 Did he know them intimately? No, lines 5-6 suggest a superficial acquaintance. 3 List the words and phrases that characterised the world and life of Dublin before the uprising. 1 ‘grey / Eighteenth-century houses’ (lines 3-4); 2 ‘polite meaningless words’ (lines 6, 8); 3 ‘a mocking tale or a gibe’ (line 10); 4 ‘Around the fire at the club’ (line 12); 5 ‘motley is worn’ (line 14). 4 Collect information in the introduction to the poem and in the second stanza about the insurgents’ identities and activities. Information

Insurgents’ identities and activities

The woman liked discussion (lines 19-20); she used to go hunting (lines 22-23).

It must be Constance Markievicz.

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It must be Patrick Henry Pearse.

‘his helper and friend’ (line 26) and ‘He might have won fame’ (line 28) hint at another intellectual.

It must be Thomas MacDonagh.

‘A drunken, vainglorious It must be John lout’ (line 32): he had hurt MacBride, the husband someone who was dear of Maud Gonne. to the poet, namely Maud Gonne. It is clear that the poet despised him. 5 The ‘Hearts’ in line 41 A have only one aim. 6 The ‘living stream’ in line 44 stands for C the flowing of life. 7 The ‘stone’ (lines 43, 56) represents B the Anglo-Irish conflict. 8 What does the poet wonder about in lines 57-67? He wonders whether such sacrifice was useful and worthwhile. 9 Write down the lines where Yeats hopes that England may grant the Home Rule promised in an act of Parliament in 1914 but deferred by the outbreak of the war. Lines 68-69. 10 What happened to the insurgents? They died (lines 71-73). 11 Lines 16, 40 and 80 contain C an oxymoron. Explain how it works. An oxymoron is the combination of two apparently contradictory terms. The word ‘terrible’ implies sorrow, fear and even death; it is in contrast with the idea of pleasure linked with ‘beauty’. 12 What is the function of this line in the text? Complete the following sentence. This line is a sort of refrain and also conveys the feelings of the poet about the sacrifice implied in the change. 13 In line 74 the poet states the act he is performing. Write it down. He is writing his lines to celebrate the rebels who sacrificed their lives to a dream.

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The man was a school teacher (line 24) and a poet (line 25).

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swan, which either symbolises the perfect ideal or a violent divine force; and the tower, which suggests loneliness and reclusion, tradition or natural heritage, but also his vision of the dark future of humanity. Yeats’s most frequently used word is ‘all’, revealing his desire to universalise experience. How did he describe the evolution of man’s mind? As a process of circling toward the wide end of an idealistic spiral or whirling cone, or gyre, until ‘the centre cannot hold’. At that point a revelation takes place, and the mind shifts to a new centre.

Teaching tip The legitimacy of the sacrifice is achieved through the naming and remembrance of the martyrs led by the poet who writes ‘it out in a verse’. This act bridges the distance between the poet, the heroes and the reader. Yeats’s attitude was ambivalent, characterised by approval and disapproval at the same time. Little by little Yeats grew disenchanted with the nationalist movement and placed his sympathies with the moderate members of the government.

14 Complete the sentences with the words from the box. 1 theatre; 2 banality; 3 insurrection; 4 meaning. 7

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COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS WITH THE CONTEXT OF THE AGE

3 DISCUSS. What do you think the impact of the poem was in Ireland, given the fact Yeats was already a well-known poet? Comment on the role of the poet in writing about this event. How would you define Yeats’s attitude towards the idea of revolution? The poet wanted to celebrate the sacrifice of these heroes and at the same time to reflect on the contradictions of political commitment and nationalism. His poem wanted to immortalise these figures and make them part of the Irish heritage, which all the Irish people could share. 7

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Do you think that the people who fight against oppression even at the cost of their own lives should be regarded as heroes? Would you be ready to do the same for the freedom of your own country? Student’s activity. Though referring to a specific historical fact, the poem reflects upon the paradoxes linked to politics, nationalism, fanaticism and heroism. State your opinion on this topic, justifying it with references to recent events you have read about in the newspapers or watched on TV. Student’s activity.

The Second Coming William Butler Yeats, Michael Robartes and the Dancer

LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

VOCABULARY

1 READ the poem and match the highlighted words with their meaning. 1 drowned; 2 Reel; 3 hold; 4 vexed; 5 thighs; 6 drops; 7 at hand; 8 loosed. 7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the first stanza again and answer the questions. 1

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COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

4 DISCUSS. 1

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What is happening to the world? The world is characterised by anarchy and blood. The picture introduced in this first stanza is one of violence and change. The last two lines are simply a commentary on the times. What characterises the best people? The lack of all conviction. What characterises the worst people? A passionate intensity. This suggests a dissociation between the best people, which Yeats identifies as head people, the intellectuals, and the worst people, whom he associates with the mob, those who react with passionate physical intensity, not with careful intellectual study and expression.

3 READ the second stanza again and explain: 1

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what the poet is sure of; He is sure that there will be soon some revelation, a second coming, that is, a new cycle in history according to his theory of the gyre. what line 20 refers to; This is a puzzling line, because the rocking cradle suggests the manger where Jesus was laid. what powerful image Yeats uses to describe the event. This is the image of a rough beast that has the head-intellect of a man and the fierce emotions and body intelligence of a beast. COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

4 UNDERLINE examples of repetition. What effect do they create? Words and phrases such as ‘Surely’ and ‘is at hand’ in lines 9 and 10, ‘Turning’ in line 1, ‘is loosed’ in lines 4 and 5, and the very title, ‘Second Coming’ in lines 10 and 11 are repeated, creating a sort of onomatopoeic

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as weak and its innocence as idealistic and impractical in the real world (line 6), where the Spiritus Mundi can promise satisfaction and earthly fulfilment. The idea of the power of the new order is amplified by the size of the sphinx. This suggests the power of the process which integrates the human intellect with the animal power of the bodily intelligence of the beast. This idea challenges the conventional Christian idea that Christ overcomes the Beast of Revelation.

do you think it stands for? Complete the diagram below. There are two possible interpretations. The poem starts with the image of a falcon wheeling about in the sky, far away from the falconer who released it. This metaphor may stand for the young people who have given up the standards of their parents and grandparents for the new art, the new literature, the new music and the other novelties of Yeats’s time. Another possible interpretation is that the falcon stands for the intellect and the falconer for the body sensations and feelings (heart).

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6 ANALYSE the image of the beast. 1

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How is it described physically? The ‘rough beast’ has the ‘lion body and the head of a man’ (line 14), its eyes are ‘blank and pitiless as the sun’ (line 15) and it is ‘moving its slow thighs’ (line 16). What does it remind you of? It reminds the reader of the sphinx and also of a monster because it is foreign, unfamiliar and not so tame. What does it symbolise? It symbolises a godlike creature of the desert, whose era will replace the Christian one. It is the symbol of the new world order.

7 SAY what role the poet acquires in the text. Quote the relevant lines. At the beginning of the second stanza Yeats calls for a revelation, saying ‘Surely some revelation is at hand’, and he himself becomes the revelator – he is a prophet, he gives us a powerful image for the ‘Second Coming’. He presents this brilliant visionary image, and then he says ‘The darkness drops again’ (line 18). Here his vision ends, and Yeats starts thinking again. He concludes that ‘twenty centuries of stony sleep / Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle’ (lines 19-20). This poem is a riddle and ends with a question. Throughout the poem there are hints as to what the answer to the riddle is, but Yeats does not come right out with the answer and leaves the question open.

8 EXPLAIN the theme of the poem. In what sense is Yeats challenging the images of conventional Christianity? The poem is an apocalyptic vision of the future of mankind. A second theme is that of paganism as opposed to Christianity. Yeats had come to view Christianity Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

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What historical events do you think Yeats had in mind when he wrote this poem? Do these lines sound relevant to today’s society? Support your answer with examples. Student’s activity. Suggestion: Many critics remark that this poem is deeply concerned with the drama of modern war, including World War I as well as the Russian Revolution and the ‘Black-and-Tan’ conflicts in Ireland. Yeats himself described his poem as a reaction to the ‘growing murderousness of the world’ to which these wars were alerting him; this concern with war marks The Second Coming as a modern work. Several critics have also associated the poem with the rise of fascism and the political decay of Eastern Europe. Are you afraid of what might happen in the future? If so, are your fears more concerned with your private life or public life in general? Student’s activity.

6.14 Thomas Stearns Eliot Teaching tip The presentation Thomas Stearns Eliot in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 79: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Teacher’s key on page 338. Text Bank 80: The Waste Land Teacher’s key on page 341. Text Bank 81: The Hollow Men Teacher’s key on page 343. Text Bank 82: Journey of the Magi Teacher’s key on page 344. Text Bank 83: Burnt Norton Teacher’s key on page 345.

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5 FOCUS on the metaphor of the falcon. What

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effect that suggests the repetitive movement of the gyre, a spiral or repeated circling motion, which is a symbol Yeats used repeatedly in his poetry.

COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

1 READ the texts and write a summary about T.S. Eliot following this three-step method. Student’s activity. Suggestion:

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Thomas Stearns Eliot was educated at Harvard. He was influenced by the Italian poet Dante, the English Metaphysical poets and John Donne. Once in Paris, he attended Henri Bergson’s lectures at the Sorbonne and started to read the works of the French Symbolists. In the 1920s Eliot spent some time in a Swiss sanatorium, in Lausanne, undergoing psychological treatment and here he finished his masterpiece The Waste Land (1922). Poetry became his refuge where he expressed all his horror at his unhappy home life. He converted to Anglicanism, finding the answer to his own uncertainties and to the despair of the modern world’s lack of faith and religion. His religious poetry blossomed in Ash Wednesday (1930), a purgatorial poem, and then in Four Quartets (1943). Eliot’s work can be divided into two periods: before and after the conversion to Anglicanism. The works of the first period are characterised by a pessimistic vision of the world, without any hope, faith, ideals or values. They depict a nightmarish land where spiritual aridity and lack of love have deprived life of all meaning. Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922) and The Hollow Men (1925) belong to this period. Purification, hope and joy are the key words of the works of the second period: the poetry of Journey of the Magi (1927), Ash Wednesday (1930), Four Quartets (1943) and two important plays, Murder in the Cathedral (1935), on the assassination of Thomas Becket, and The Family Reunion (1939), on the guilt and expiation of a man haunted by the Furies. According to Eliot, the artist had to be impersonal and to separate ‘the man who suffers’ from ‘the mind which creates’.

The Waste Land 1

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the texts and answer the following questions. 1

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5.12 LISTEN to a lecture about the structure of The Waste Land and complete the text. 1 five; 2 sterile; 3 death; 4 juxtaposes; 5 splendour; 6 alienation; 7 loveless; 8 drowned; 9 shipwreck; 10 evokes; 11 sympathy; 12 utter.

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TRANSCRIPT The poem consists of five sections: I ‘The Burial of the Dead’, which deals with the coming of spring in a sterile land. It centres on the opposition between sterility and fertility, life and death; II ‘A Game of Chess’, which juxtaposes the present squalor to an ambiguous past splendour; III ‘The Fire Sermon’, where the character of Tiresias is introduced. Here the theme of present alienation is rendered through the description of a loveless, mechanical, squalid sexual encounter; IV ‘Death by Water’, which focuses on a drowned Phoenician sailor, Phlebas. The idea of a spiritual shipwreck is reinforced; V ‘What the Thunder Said’, which evokes religions from East and West. A possible solution is found in a sort of sympathy with other human beings; however, such a solution does not modify the general atmosphere of utter desolation.

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Who is the speaking voice of The Waste Land? All the fragmentary passages seem to belong to one voice relating to a multiple personality beyond the limits of space and time. He is Tiresias, the Theban prophet from Sophocles’s plays who experienced blindness and the life of both sexes, and, as such, suffers with the women he observes. He is the knight from the Grail legend; he moves through London and a post-war Central Europe, which has been deprived of its spiritual roots. What is the main theme of the poem? It is the contrast between the fertility of a mythical past and the spiritual sterility, chaos and devastation of the present world. What concept of history is developed? History is seen as the repetition of the same events, ‘classicism’ as the ability to see the past as a concrete premise for the present, and ‘the poetic culture’ as a ‘living unity’ of all the poems written in different periods. Thus present and past exist simultaneously in the human mind. What is the objective correlative? It is a combination of images, objects or descriptions evoking a particular emotion. The source of the emotional reaction is not in one specific object, image or word. Instead, the emotion originates in the combination of these phenomena when they appear together. What innovative techniques characterise the style of this poem? Eliot employed different poetic styles, such as blank verse, the ode, the quatrain and free verse, thus reproducing the chaos of modern civilisation. He requires

3 LOOK at Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). Why is his technique similar to Eliot’s? Both Eliot and Picasso revolutionised their art and developed new ways of communication. The Waste Land is one of the highest expressions of modernism in literature. The constant shift of voice and viewpoint as well as the fragmentary style employed by Eliot remind us of the technique of montage used by Picasso; the opening up of vast vistas of time and space by quotations and allusions in Eliot’s poem is linked to Picasso’s bronze face reminiscent of the African art in this painting. Both The Waste Land and Picasso’s painting are no longer set in a classical past, but they both clearly belong to modern times.

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The Burial of the Dead Thomas Stearns Eliot, The Waste Land

READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the poem and match the highlighted words and phrases with their Italian translation. 1 frost; 2 Lilacs; 3 feeding; 4 flowed; 5 he’ll dig it up; 6 kept; 7 Will it bloom. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

1 Write a heading for each part of the extract. Part 1 (lines 1-7) The coming of spring in a sterile land. Part 2 (lines 8-24) The degradation of life in the City. 2 Focus on the first part. 1 Why is April cruel? The aspects of April singled out as being cruel are: ‘breeding / Lilacs’ (lines 1-2), since existence is painful, so generating new life is cruel; ‘mixing / Memory and desire’ (lines 2-3), since any act of remembrance and consciousness is seen as painful, a longing for what men no longer have; ‘stirring / Dull roots with spring rain’ (lines 3-4), since bringing life to ‘dead’ things is considered negative. 2 What is winter like? It turns out to be positive (‘kept us warm’, line 5; ‘forgetful snow’, line 6; ‘feeding / A little life’, lines 6-7). 3 Does this description of winter contradict traditional views? Yes, since it allows men to live in peace and to forget (lines 5-7). 4 How many speakers are there? B Two. 3 Write words and phrases from the second part referring to time, place, the inhabitants of the City and other characters. Time: ‘Under the brown fog of a winter dawn’ (line 9); ‘a dead sound on the final stroke of nine’ (line 16). Place: ‘over London Bridge’ (line 10); ‘up the hill and down King William Street’ (line 14); ‘Saint Mary Woolnoth’ (line 15). The inhabitants of the City: ‘A crowd … so many’ (line 10); ‘I had not thought death had undone so many’ (line 11); ‘Sighs, short and infrequent’ (line 12); ‘each man fixed his eyes before his feet‘ (line 13); ‘Flowed’ (line 14). Other characters: ‘one I knew … Stetson’ (line 17). 4 Answer the following questions about lines 8-24. 1 What are the two most significant details illustrating the frustration and sterility of routine for office workers in the City? The office workers are linked to A their inability of communicating. (Line 13) D death within life. (Line 11) 2 Who is Stetson? He is a character the speaker sees by Saint Mary Woolnoth. The speaker already knows him; they have probably fought together in the First Punic War, which, according to Eliot’s idea of history, seems to reflect the present reality of WWI (line 18).

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COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

2 DO the following activities.

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the active participation of the reader/public, who experiences the same world as that of the speaker/poet, by employing the technique of implication. Metaphors and symbols replace direct statements; to this purpose, Eliot adopted the technique of the objective correlative. He used continuous shifts in time and space, as a consequence of the free associations of his characters’ ideas and thoughts. From the French Symbolist poet Jules Laforgue he derived the technique of juxtaposition: squalid elements are paired with poetic ones, trivial elements with sublime ones. Another device widely used by Eliot is the repetition of words, images and phrases from page to page: they all give the impression of the increasing musicality of the poem. What is the mythical method employed by Eliot? He explained the mythical method, which Joyce also employed in Ulysses, as ‘a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history’. According to Eliot, in fact, old myths are present in modern society but have lost their deep meaning and it is especially through the mythical allusions that the antithesis between present and past appears.

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What does Stetson represent? C The present. Explain the reference to Roman history. When the speaker mentions ‘the ships at Mylae’ (line 18), he is associating himself with the past; in fact, according to Eliot, all wars are equal because history is nothing but the repetition of the same events. What do you think the corpse symbolises? C Death. What does it mean if a corpse begins to ‘sprout’? A comparison between the modern ritual of office workers with earlier ceremonies and fertility rites is established. Why is ‘Dog’ written with a capital letter? A It may stand for the guardian of the dead. Why does Eliot call the reader ‘mon semblable, – mon frère’? Since the reader experiences the poet’s same world.

5 Concentrate on how the lines are organised and answer the questions with reference to the text. 1 Do these lines have a regular rhyme scheme? Is the metre traditional? No, they have neither a regular rhyme scheme nor a traditional metre. 2 Is there a classical division in stanzas? Are the lines of the same length? No, there is not a classical division in stanzas. Lines are not of the same length; one line is composed of two words (line 8), while other lines are much longer (for example lines 17, 24). 3 How is this type of line called? Free verse. 4 Are there any examples of alliteration? Yes, some examples are ‘Lilacs’/‘land’ (line 2), ‘forgetful’/‘feeding’ (line 6), ‘sound’/‘stroke’ (line 16). 6 Look for examples of repetition of sounds and words. What kind of atmosphere do they create? Some examples: Words referring to death are repeated in lines 2 and 16 (‘dead’), 11 (‘death’) and 19 (‘corpse’); ‘so many’ is repeated in lines 10 and 11. The sounds ‘f’ and ‘s’ often recur, in words such as ‘forgetful snow’ in line 6, ‘flowed’ in line 10, ‘fixed … feet’ in line 13, ‘sudden frost’ in line 21. A An alienating, sterile atmosphere. 7 This extract is characterised by the use of different personal pronouns. Identify the role played by these narrative voices completing the scheme which follows. We (line 5): the inhabitants of the waste land I (line 11): passive actor (line 17): passive actor

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He (line 13): a common man You (line 18): an accomplice (line 24): the speaker’s double 8 Which lines develop the following themes? 1 Present spiritual sterility. Lines 1, 5-7, 9. 2 Negativity of city life embodying death within life. Lines 10-13. 3 Antithesis between water (= fertility) and dryness (= sterility). Lines 4, 19-20. 4 The collective guilt of war. Lines 18-19; ‘you planted’ is linked to the burial of guilt. 9 Where can you detect a kind of unity in the passage you are analysing? Unity can be detected in the repetition of themes and images.

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5.14 LISTEN and complete the summary of the text. 1 rebirth; 2 upside; 3 the cruellest; 4 Winter; 5 associated; 6 surreal; 7 ghosts; 8 sigh; 9 recognises; 10 fought; 11 clashes; 12 fate; 13 destiny.

TRANSCRIPT The extract is from the first section of The Waste Land. April is usually connected to the rebirth of nature, but Eliot turns that upside down. April is said to be ‘the cruellest month’. Then he breaks with the common view again by saying that ‘Winter’, generally associated with cold temperatures, keeps human beings ‘warm’. The final episode of the first section is definitely the most surreal. The speaker walks through London, which is populated by people who seem to be the ghosts of the dead, since they sigh and stare only in front of their feet. They have lost the ability to communicate to each other. The speaker sees a man he recognises, named Stetson. He cries out to him, and it appears that the two men fought together in the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage. That past war seems to reflect the present clashes of World War I. The speaker then asks Stetson about the fate of a corpse planted in his garden. The section ends with a famous line from the preface to Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, accusing the reader of sharing the poet’s destiny. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

4 WRITE a 10/12-line paragraph to compare the opening of The Waste Land to that of The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer (→ 1.13) quoted below, as regards the speaking voice, the myth of fertility and the general atmosphere.

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

The Fire Sermon Thomas Stearns Eliot, The Waste Land

VISUAL ANALYSIS

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1 READ the text and identify its two parts. Then write a caption to describe the content of each section. Part 1 (lines 1-8): The ‘Unreal City’. Part 2 (lines 9-50): A squalid sexual encounter.

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2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in yellow: external setting in place Highlighted in green: setting in time Highlighted in light blue: the merchant Mr Eugenides; his name means ‘well-born’, of noble origin, but now he is unkempt. He is speaking vulgar French (line 6) Red dots: internal setting in place: an untidy, squalid bedsitter Highlighted in pink: ‘I Tiresias’ (lines 12, 22, 37) is the only explicit identification of the speaker in the whole poem What are his most significant details? What can he see? He possesses the knowledge of both sexes since he is the supreme metamorphosis that brings them together (line 13); thus he is qualified to summarise the whole human experience. He can see a squalid sexual encounter. Highlighted in orange: the ‘typist’ (line 16), the ‘liberated’ woman of the early 1920s What life does she lead? She is independent and free but this has not brought her any happiness: she lives alone in an untidy one-room flat, full of uninteresting everyday objects (lines 17-21: ‘food in tins’, ‘combinations’, ‘Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays’), and leads a highly monotonous life. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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Which adjective would you choose to define the setting of these lines? The City appears ‘Unreal’, since it is wrapped up in brown fog and only devoted to commercial transactions (line 3: ‘merchant’, line 5: ‘C.i.f.’ and ‘documents at sight’). Why do present, past and future coexist within the figure of Tiresias? Because Tiresias, coming from the past, has already experienced the events he is now witnessing in the present, and is also able to foretell the future (line 23), yet he cannot do anything to guide or alter it. Is the man worried about the woman’s indifference towards him? No, he is not (line 36: ‘And makes a welcome of indifference’) since he is only interested in his own satisfaction. What are his feelings when he leaves the typist? He goes away satisfied, and he is not able to grasp the depths of the squalor he lives in. What has love been reduced to? It has been reduced to the fulfilment of mere instincts and physical desires. It has become something practical, empty and meaningless. Why is Tiresias’s role appropriate to the male character? Because he is now walking ‘among the lowest of the dead’ (line 40). How does the typist react at her lover’s departure? The modern significance of lovemaking is registered in the reaction of the typist: she is ‘glad it’s over’ (line 46), and the ‘gramophone’ (line 50) also makes it mechanical. Her ‘automatic hand’ (line 49) reinforces the impression of sterility, dullness, squalor, monotony and indifference to this relationship that is no more than a parody. This extract is characterised by the presentation of an archetype belonging to modern civilisation: the typist. What is she compared to? What actions is she associated with? She is compared to a ‘human engine’ (line 10), acting as she does with ‘automatic hand’ (line 49). She is associated with repetitive present actions, like ‘clears’, ‘lights’, ‘lays out’, ‘are piled’ (lines 16-20), which point out her highly monotonous life.

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Highlighted in grey: the ‘expected guest’ (line 24), who is a ‘young man carbuncular’ (line 25) Pink words: the man’s actions and attitude: he is ‘Flushed and decided’ (line 33), only pleased with himself (line 35: ‘His vanity requires no response’) Blue words: the typist’s mood: she is tired, bored and apathetic, both morally and emotionally

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Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Unlike Chaucer’s pilgrims, who know their destination – Canterbury – and the way to get there, the speaker in The Waste Land is unsure of the path to the holy place; he is also unsure that he will be able to recognise it when he gets there. The journeying motif runs through the whole poem: the speaker moves around London encountering images of waste and decay, but he cannot find the redemptive shrine. The myth of fertility is celebrated in Chaucer’s work, while there is a negative, pessimistic implication in Eliot’s The Waste Land.

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Which themes are developed in these lines? They are: the present spiritual sterility and lack of communication – Eliot wants to underline how impossible communication through love is in the waste land, since this feeling has been debased to mere lust; the negativity of city life only linked to commercial transactions; the antithesis between past (Tiresias) and present (sterility). What language is employed? Provide examples of symbolism, objective correlative and juxtaposition. To underline the sterility and the routine quality of this sexual encounter, Eliot removes all the romantic notes both from the setting and the characters and employs the everyday language. The techniques used are: metaphors and symbols (‘C.i.f. London’ is a metaphor for a life that is reduced to commercial transactions; the ‘typist’ is a symbol of the liberated woman of the Twenties) instead of direct statements; the objective correlative (the passionless sexual encounter stands for the aridity of modern society); the juxtaposition of images belonging to the past and to the present; and the repetition of images and themes. COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ about Auden’s life and provide evidence to justify these statements. 1

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4 WRITE 10-12 lines about this topic: ‘The main theme of The Waste Land is “modern life as a waste land”. How does Eliot support this theme in “The Fire Sermon”?’

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Student’s writing activity.

6.15 Wystan Hugh Auden Teaching tip The presentation Wystan Hugh Auden in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

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Text Bank 84: Musée des Beaux Arts Teacher’s key on page 346. Text Bank 85: Funeral Blues Teacher’s key on page 347. Text Bank 86: September 1, 1939 Teacher’s key on page 348. Text Bank 87: O Tell Me the Truth About Love Teacher’s key on page 351.

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He was a voracious reader. His early reading consisted of fairy tales, myths and legends, but it seems to have been paralleled by books about psychology and technical works on mining engineering. He was one of the Oxford poets. While studying at Oxford, he became familiar with Modernist poetry and he was the leader of the so-called ‘Oxford poets’. He was deeply committed to social and political issues. During the General Strike of 1926 he worked for the strikers; in 1928 he went to Berlin, where he witnessed the rise of Nazism. During the Spanish Civil War he served as an ambulance driver. He expressed solidarity with the Jews persecuted by Hitler after 1933: in 1935 he married Thomas Mann’s daughter, Erika, only to provide her with a British passport so she could escape from Nazi Germany. He was a homosexual. He worried increasingly about the fact that he was a homosexual. Homosexuality was condemned by the standards of his religious upbringing and was regarded as a criminal offence in England. He started a new life in New York. In 1939 he moved to New York and settled in a house in Brooklyn, which he ran as a sort of intellectual commune. In 1940 he began teaching in New York and published what is probably his best volume of the decade, Another Time. He changed his poetic attitude. Auden’s ‘political’ period was over; from then on his social poetry was to be anti-ideological, anti-political. He returned to Anglicanism. It was at about this same time that he returned to the religion of his youth, Anglicanism. In his works, he expressed his religious reaffirmation through questions concerning existence rather than by discussing his own spiritual struggles and achievements.

2 READ the rest of the text and answer the following questions. 1

What characterised the works of the English period? Freud’s influence, the use of psychological models in relation to the customs and rituals of an entire society. Under the influence of Karl Marx he believed that it was the duty of citizens to engage with history, to question the social and political climate in which they lived.

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Another Time COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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the symbolical meaning of the title; The poet entered ‘another time’ through the exile which he shared with many other refugees and that would eventually lead to his becoming an American citizen. how the collection is organised. Into three sections: ‘People and Places’, the most complex and meditative, where the poet deals with the theme of and the relationship between man and nature; ‘Lighter Poems’, which may

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astonish readers with their light comic tone and domesticity; ‘Occasional Poems’, which both celebrate the death of great figures like Freud and Yeats – in whom Auden recognises examples of transgression, of moral and artistic renewal – and try to interpret great historical events like the German invasion of Poland.

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Refugee Blues Wystan Hugh Auden, Another Time

VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the poem and summarise the content of each stanza in your own words. Stanza 1 The refugees are homeless. Stanza 2 They have no country to go to. Stanza 3 They have no passport. Stanza 4 They are dead for the State but they are still alive. Stanza 5 They are refused help by any committee. Stanza 6 They are seen as intruders in the country they flee to. Stanza 7 Hitler marched through Europe and wanted them to die. Stanza 8 Pets are treated better than they are. Stanza 9 The fish enjoy greater freedom than they do. Stanza 10 The birds are happier than they are. Stanza 11 They have got no place to stay. Stanza 12 They are persecuted.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text. Write down what each highlight represents and fill in the missing details in the box next to the text. Highlighted in yellow: the use of repetition Highlighted in pink: the presence of a refrain Highlighted in grey: the few poetic images in the poem Highlighted in green: images and objects belonging to everyday life prevail in the poem Highlighted in light blue: contrasting images upon which the poem is built: (line 2) ‘mansions’/‘holes’ = it refers to the gap between the rich and the poor; (lines 11-12) ‘officially dead’/‘still alive’ = the refugees are considered dead by the government of their country but they are alive in body; (lines 23-24) the contrast between the love showed towards pets and the hostility felt towards the refugees; (lines 26, 36) the contrast between the freedom of fish and birds and the persecution against the refugees Box: Rhyme scheme: AAB

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What did Auden’s move to America coincide with? With his withdrawal from political commitment and the development of a style that would refuse the identification with a single poetic culture or nation. How did this change affect him? It freed him from the burden of social responsibility, of being the leader of the intellectual left rather than simply a verbal artist. He came to believe that improvement must begin within the self, not within society. What are Auden’s main themes? Love, which he often implies cannot be achieved without sorrow; modern suffering, including unfaithfulness, sickness, the passing of time, greed and religious doubt; death; politics, social concerns and citizenship. What theme recurs in both periods of his production? The theme of the quest recurs in both the earlier and later periods, but the message differs. In the English period the quest is for a new society and a new self. Later on it becomes a quest for a new life. Auden expresses hope for the future, valuing the freedom that comes from recognising one’s true condition whatever the circumstances are. What was his style like? He experimented with language all his life but tried to avoid obscurity. He employed traditional forms like sonnets and odes but also used free verse. His independent lyrics often start in medias res. What was the poet’s task, according to Auden? He believed that the role of poetry was to tell ‘stories of particular people and experiences, from which each, according to his immediate and peculiar needs, may draw his own conclusions’. So the poet’s task was to act as a public voice, to analyse the social, political and economic problems, to support the causes for freedom against tyranny, to express the anxieties of the contemporary left-wing intellectuals.

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Themes: The contrast between the fertility of a mythical past and the spiritual sterility of the present world; legends and myths; the spiritual quest; the alienation and chaos of modern civilisation. View of the function of poetry: ‘The poet has not a personality to express, but a particular medium’ in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar ways. W.H. Auden Choice of poetic forms: He used a mixture of forms (sonnets and odes but also ballads and songs). Language: Everyday speech; free verse; rhyme; metre. Themes: Love; modern suffering; alienation; death; politics, social concerns and citizenship; the quest for a new society, a new self and a new life. View of the function of poetry: To act as a public voice, to tell stories from which each individual may draw his own conclusion.

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State the identity of the refugees. They are Jewish refugees escaping from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Though the speaker is a German Jew lamenting the situation of his people, his words hint at issues having a far more general relevance. Sum them up. Homelessness, social injustice, isolation and lack of solidarity. Why do you think Auden chose the form of the blues for this poem? The blues is the expression of the individual contemplating his situation in relation to the conditions surrounding him. The most distinctive charm of the blues lies in the individual character which makes it unique, as well as the universality of its content, understood by everybody and thus collective. It is a private and personal way in which the anguished direct their sorrow into a song and find happiness in release. Who are the ‘refugees’ nowadays? Do you agree with the statement in line 17? Students’ activity.

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The Unknown Citizen Wystan Hugh Auden, Another Time

COMPETENCE: CONTRASTING AUTHORS

LITERARY COMPETENCE

4 DISCUSS. Compare and contrast W.B. Yeats (→ 6.13), T.S. Eliot (→ 6.14) and W.H. Auden as regards choice of poetic forms, language, themes and view of the function of poetry.

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VOCABULARY

1 READ the poem and match the highlighted Student’s speaking activity. Suggestion: Students should develop the following notes: W.B. Yeats Choice of poetic forms: He employed a great deal of forms and stylistic devices (antithesis, oxymoron and paradox). Language: Sensual language; words of sensory experience; dynamic syntax; recurring symbols. Themes: Irishness; the beauty and eternity of art; age; death; the heroic individual; history. View of the function of poetry: To create a new culture, based on Ireland’s past, which all the Irish people alike could share (Irish cultural renaissance). T.S. Eliot Choice of poetic forms: He used a mixture of different styles (blank verse, the ode, the quatrain and free verse). Language: Metaphors and symbols instead of direct statements; the objective correlative; allusions and quotations from many different literary works; juxtaposition; repetition of words, images and phrases.

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words with their meaning. 1 sound; 2 added; 3 fired; 4 proper; 5 complaint; 6 dues. 7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the epigraph to the poem. What does it remind you of? It is a parody of the symbolic Tomb of the Unknown Soldier commemorating unidentified soldiers; tombs of unknown soldiers were first created following the First World War.

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who the speaker is; A spokesman for the State Bureau of Statistics. how the citizen is referred to; As a saint, as one against whom there was no official complaint, a perfect citizen. what the speaker wonders about. Whether the citizen was free and happy.

9 UNDERLINE the words beginning with capital letters and say what effect is obtained through this device. Tick as appropriate. Student’s activity. It makes the poem sound serious and official. It imitates the style of advertising.

citizen under the following headings. Provide details and sources of information. Sources of information

workman in a factory

‘his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.’ (line 8)

Everyday habits

bought a paper

‘The Press’ (line 14)

Health

was once in hospital but left it cured

‘his Health-card’ (line 17)

Possessions phonograph, radio, car, fridge

‘Producers Research and High-Grade Living’ (line 18)

Family life

married with five children

Education

‘our teachers’ never interfered with his children’s (line 27) education

10 ANALYSE the variety of register in the poem. Provide examples of bureaucratic language, slang and everyday speech. Bureaucratic language: Lines 1-2, ‘report(s)’ (lines 3, 10, 11, 27), ‘dues’ (line 10), ‘prove’ (line 16), ‘declare’ (line 18), ‘fully sensible’ (line 19). Slang: ‘scab’ (line 9). Everyday speech: ‘he was a saint’ (line 4), ‘got fired’ (line 7), ‘mates’ (line 13), ‘liked a drink’ (line 13).

11 FOCUS on the ironic tone of the poem. Find some examples of irony and explain them. The epigraph; line 4; ‘Fudge Motors Inc.’ (line 8: ‘to fudge’ means to avoid making a clear and definite decision or statement); line 15; lines 1819; line 23; lines 28-29. Through the anonymity of the citizen and the names referring to the institutions, Auden conveys a satirical description of life in the consumer society.

‘our Eugenist’ (line 26)

5 WRITE the information about the citizen’s personality under these headings. 1

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His conduct: ‘no official complaint’ (line 2), ‘he was a saint’ (line 4), ‘in everything he did he served the Greater Community’ (line 5), ‘never got fired’ (line 7), ‘satisfied his employers’ (line 8). His views: ‘he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views’ (line 9), ‘he held the proper opinions’ (line 23). His relationship with his mates: ‘he was popular’ and ‘liked a drink’ (line 13).

12 CONSIDER the references to modern material achievements and abstract ideas. Which are more extensively present? The references to modern material achievements.

13 EXPLAIN in your own words the view of modern society presented in the poem. It is a materialistic, technological society in an urban environment, where there is no place for imagination, feelings and spiritual depth. In such a context life is seen as a question of statistics rather than individual happiness.

6 EXPLAIN in your own words the qualities of the citizen praised in the poem. He was an ordinary man, he worked, had a family, served his country. He participated in society, was orthodox in his views, never rebelled against authority and bought material goods. 7

COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

14 DEFINE the poet’s aim. Tick as appropriate. He acts as a public, committed voice against the danger of totalitarianism. He speculates about citizenship and how the State controls man. 7

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

7 FOCUS on the run-on line in lines 1-2. What is its effect? It reproduces the rhythm of spoken language, it gives pace to the poem by stressing ‘to be’.

8 IDENTIFY the rhyme patterns and comment on the function of the couplet in the last two lines. The rhyme patterns are: alternate rhymes (ABAB) and couplets (AA-BB). The couplet in the last two lines sums up the argument of the whole poem. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

15 DISCUSS. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55), whose works Auden knew well, once said: ‘Put me in a system and you negate me. I am not just a mathematical symbol – I am.’ Discuss the relevance of this statement to the poem. Then read 6.3 and point out what other influences you can perceive in the poem.

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Details

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4 GATHER information about the unknown

In this poem Auden expresses his concern with the danger of a democracy which allows the State to control the individual, who is denied his personality and praised for his conformity, for his being ‘a mathematical symbol’ and nothing more. The other influences which can be perceived in the poem are Sigmund Freud’s psychological theories and Karl Marx’s idea of man’s alienation under capitalism. 7

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COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

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The Modern Age

16 WRITE 10-12 lines about which aspects of Auden’s poetry are modern. Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should mention the complexity of form, the range of subjects, particularly the concern with the themes of citizenship and alienation within modern society, and his verbal energy. 7

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COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

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Do you usually trust statistics? Why/Why not? How do you think they can contribute to or act against the welfare of society? Students’ activity. What role does conformism play in people’s lives as far as their speech, behaviour, fashions and ideas are concerned? In your opinion, who or what should be held responsible for our tendency to conform? Students’ activity.

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6.16 Joseph Conrad Teaching tip The presentation Joseph Conrad in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

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COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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them he learnt to appreciate the values of a simple devotion to a demanding, monotonous, dangerous job. Work is in fact a powerful theme in his novels. What caused his mental breakdown? The horrors and brutalities of colonial exploitation that he witnessed in Congo. How did he view the writer’s role? He believed that the writer’s task should not be to try to amuse his readers or to teach them a lesson, but rather to record the complex pattern of life as he saw it. His aim was to explore the meaning of the human condition. He set his novels and short stories at sea or in exotic latitudes because these were the places he knew well, and they enabled him to isolate his characters so that their problems and inner conflicts stood out with particular force. What features of his works made him different from 19th-century writers? In contrast to the 19th-century novelists, who showed the insignificance of their main characters in relation to the hugeness of the universe or the life of a nation or modern city, Conrad’s heroes are all solitary figures, rooted in no past, committed to an uncertain future. In general they are viewed externally, through the mind of others or through their actions. The use of several points of view results from his wish to break free from the constraints of an omniscient narrator. How did he deal with time in his works? He found chronological sequence inadequate, so he broke the normal time sequence and preferred time shifts to create the illusion of life being lived by a number of very different people at the same time. Why did he choose to write in English although it was not his native language? Because he thought that it offered him the ideal expression for his complex vision of life. What were the main themes of his works? Conrad was concerned with the conflict between personal feelings and professional duties. He pointed out that reality was indeed the construction of individual consciousness through individual responsibility and self-control.

Heart of Darkness COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ about Heart of Darkness and answer the following questions. 1

How did Leopold II justify the kind of colonialism he set up in the Belgian Congo? In the name of philanthropy and anti-slavery. He stated that the agents of the State had to

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2 SURF the Net to find out information about the history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Make notes following these guidelines: 1

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where the present Democratic Republic of the Congo is situated and which countries it is bordered by; It is in central Africa. It is bordered to the north by the Central African Republic and South Sudan; to the east by Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania; to the south by Zambia and Angola; to the west by the Republic of the Congo, the Angolan exclave of Cabinda and the Atlantic Ocean. when European exploration took place in this region; It took place in the 1870s. who privately controlled the Congo basin from 1885 to 1908; Leopold II, King of the Belgians, regarded the Congo Free State as a personal territorial possession. what he used this country for; He used it to gather and sell ivory, rubber, mineral resources and metals. how the colonialists acted in the Congo; The natives were increasingly subjected to brutal mistreatment and the natural resources of their land were widely exploited. what the report of the British Consul there led to; It led to the arrest and punishment of white officials who had been responsible for several killings during a rubber-collecting expedition in 1903. what Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness was inspired by; It was inspired by these deaths and atrocities. what other writer exposed the activities of the Congo Free State; The British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a book, The Crime of the Congo (1909), about the Belgian atrocities in the Congo basin. when the Congo Free State became a colony of Belgium. In 1908.

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A slight clinking Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a heading to each section. Part 1 (lines 1-40) Marlow sees a chain-gang of black slaves and describes the landscape where a vast artificial hole has been dug. He realises that they were blowing mines.

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COMPETENCE: USING TECHNOLOGY TO ACQUIRE AND INTERPRET INFORMATION

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accomplish the noble mission of continuing the development of civilisation in Africa, gradually reducing the primitive barbarism and fighting sanguinary customs. They also had to accustom the population to general rules, of which the most needful and salutary concerned work. How does Marlow differ from Kurtz? Kurtz went into the jungle without properly knowing himself, so his misguided conduct took him beyond the limits of his heart, into madness and death. On the contrary, Marlow did not transgress his limits and came back without fully understanding his experience; although the ‘heart of darkness’ tried to exercise its influence on him too, he was able to restrain himself thanks to his work ethic. Marlow was saved because his aim was self-knowledge, the mistery of existence, which demands great humility. The difference between the two characters is that Kurtz reached new experiences of the self and felt all the excitement that life can give, while Marlow feels he has lived incompletely. What was Conrad’s attitude towards imperialism? Conrad’s indictment of the brutal exercise of law on the natives, as well as of the missionary zeal, the administrative efficiency and the search for profit is generalised to all forms of imperialism. How can the novel also be interpreted? As Marlow’s mythical journey in search of the self, in order to bring back a new truth. He witnesses the death of many men but also the death of ethical behaviour, of civilisation and goodness, so he is forced to understand that the great adventure of his life is really just about death. What is the structure of the novel? What sustains it? The novel presents a series of stories, one embedded within another. This complex structure is sustained by the continuous shifts backwards and forwards in Marlow’s narrative, by the way he creates suspense and interest by delaying the details of his meeting with Kurtz. In what sense did Conrad reverse traditional symbols? Traditionally, light is associated with calm, peace, beauty and good. Darkness or gloom, on the other hand, is seen as an insidious menace to light, and, ultimately, as evil. As Marlow penetrates into the darkness of Africa, black acquires positive connotations: it is the colour of the jungle, of a primitive, noble environment and of its people. White, instead, is associated with the negative aspects of colonialism: violence, exploitation, hypocrisy and indifference.

Part 2 (lines 41-67) Marlow sees the shapes of black men dying below the trees. Part 3 (lines 68-80) Marlow reaches the Company Station and describes the chief accountant with admiration.

Underlined in blue: Marlow’s sarcastic comments implying a severe judgement on European colonisation. The presence of the colonisers is compared to a mystery, a terrible voice, an outrageous law coming from the sea; it is presented as a new force, a great and right cause. Here Conrad is criticising the rhetoric behind colonialism. Then he introduces an extended metaphor to sum up his attitude: colonialism is like a devil of violence, greed and lust, it is rapacious and mad Blue words: Marlow, who is narrating to the people on the Nellie, refers to his own condition: he says he is not easily impressed or moved, that he has had to resist so as not to yield to the experience of Africa Highlighted in orange: the devastation of the landscape, the inefficiency and waste brought about by colonisation Boxes: Description of the chain-gang overseer: He is a black man; he carries a rifle and wears a uniform jacket with a button off; he is distrustful and has a large, white, rascally grin. Description of the chief accountant: He is a white man of unexpected elegance, dressed in white, with parted brushed hair, under a green parasol, with a pen-holder behind his ear.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text.

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Write down what each highlight and colour represents and fill in the missing details in the boxes next to the text. Highlighted in yellow: the expressions Marlow, the narrator, uses to mention the black men he sees. They are connoted by the colour of their skin, by the way the colonisers see them, that is, as enemies, criminals, savages; finally they have been reduced to inconsistent shapes, shadows, strange creatures Highlighted in grey: verbs conveying the actions of the black men. They have a connotation of exhaustion, suffering, disease and death. These men seem to have lost their human traits. They do not stand but crawl, they have lost their human dignity Highlighted in green: Conrad insists on the details concerning the parts of the body to underline the barbarous reduction of a whole human being to dislocated parts Highlighted in pink: words referring to the mood of the natives. They suffer and they have lost the wish to live; they are starving, weary and desperate Pink words: there are many similes throughout the text. ‘like tails’ (line 4) compares the rags around the men’s loins to a dog’s tail; in this way the black men are compared to animals. ‘like knots in a rope’ (lines 4-5) conveys the idea that the men were skinny because of toil and starvation. ‘like the bursting shells’ (line 9) and ‘as though the tearing pace of the launched earth had suddenly become audible’ (lines 39-40) refer to the sound of the shells and the devastation of the land caused by the colonisers. ‘as air’ (line 50) underlines the inconsistence of the human shapes. ‘as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence’ (line 64) reinforces the idea of disease and human waste. ‘His appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser’s dummy’ (lines 78-79) refers to the chief accountant and ironically hints at the fact that he himself has lost his sense of humanity Highlighted in light blue: symbolism of white and black. These two colours are juxtaposed in the image of ‘a bit of white worsted’ (line 57) around the neck of one of the dying ‘black shadows’. The ‘white thread’ has a negative connotation because it symbolises the black man’s submission to the white man. The image reminds us of the iron collars around the men’s necks (line 5) and is echoed in the chief accountant’s ‘white cuffs’ (line 70), ‘snowy trousers’ (lines 70-71) and ‘white hand’ (line 72) Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

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How does the narrator define himself and why? Is he passive towards the scene before him? He says he is ‘not particularly tender’ (line 20), since he has had to resist and to attack according to the demands of life. He is not passive towards the scene before him; in fact, towards the end of the extract, he gives the young man one of his biscuits. Sum up the ways in which Conrad achieves a formal protest against colonialism. By insisting on the description of the parts of the body of the natives as well as on their suffering, he protests against the dehumanising forces of colonialism. Focus on the description of the chain-gang overseer. What insight does this ‘product of the new forces at work’ give into the relationship between the natives and the white colonisers? The chain-gang overseer embodies the process of displacement and detribalization underwent by the natives. The colonisers relied on a force of native militia under white control to organise the system of forced labour. So natives were often placed in a position of authority over others, when they were not already tribal chiefs, and to fulfil the required work of the collection of quotas, they would frequently resort to coercion and mutilation to encourage output and ‘discipline’.

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COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

4 WRITE a 10/12-line commentary to explain

T97

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

VOCABULARY

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words with their meaning. 1 approaching; 2 bends; 3 mutter; 4 unearthly; 5 grimy; 6 startled; 7 contemptibly; 8 barren; 9 rent; 10 ghastly; 11 utterances; 12 callous. 7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the text again and note down: 1

2 3

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how Conrad’s view of imperialism compares with Kipling’s (→ 5.23).

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Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Whereas Kipling exalted imperial power and believed in the ‘burden’ of the British, who had to spread civilisation all over the world, Conrad pointed out the contradictions of colonialism. While pretending to ‘civilise’, the white colonisers brutally exploited the natives and their lands, pursuing economic profit.

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The horror

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what images and thoughts haunted Kurtz’s mind; Shadowy images of wealth and fame together with the thought of his fiancée, his station, his career and his ideas (lines 3-6). how Kurtz sometimes behaved; Like a child (line 11). what the landscape was like; It was characterised by the monotonous bends of the river and by the secular trees which had patiently witnessed the dirty fragments of colonisation (lines 15-18). what happened to the boat and how this affected Kurtz; The boat broke down, and this caused a delay that affected Kurtz’s confidence (lines 21-22). what Kurtz gave Marlow and why; He gave him a packet of papers and a photograph tied together with a shoe-string (lines 22-23). He asked him to keep them because he did not want them to end up in the hands of the manager (lines 24-25). why Marlow could not devote much time to Kurtz; Because he was busy fixing the boat (lines 31-33). what feelings Kurtz’s face showed before he died; Sombre pride, ruthless power, craven terror, intense and hopeless despair (lines 42-43). what the manager’s attitude was; He leaned back, serene, with a smile of meanness (lines 49-50). how the manager’s boy announced Kurtz’s death; He announced it in a tone of ferocious contempt (line 52). how the pilgrims and Marlow reacted; The pilgrims rushed out to see while Marlow remained in the cabin and finished his dinner (line 54).

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5

What images does Conrad use to connote the chief accountant? Discuss their possible symbolic implications. The dominant colour in the description of the chief accountant is ‘white’, which suggests light and cleanliness. Conrad also conveys the ideas of elegance, order and perfection which contrast with the chaos of the Company Station and arouse Marlow’s admiration. This character embodies one of the striking paradoxes Marlow faces on his journey. Can you explain why? What is Marlow’s attitude towards him? Life within the society is not possible without codes of behaviour, but these codes prove false or unsuitable when man is lonely and gets into the heart of existence, surrounded by a wild and hostile background. The accountant is dressed in elegant white as if he were working in an office in Europe when, in fact, he is surrounded by a reality which denies the values of European civilisation. Marlow respects the fellow. He believes that efficient work might have a redeeming power. The accountant has stuck to some codes of behaviour, which has prevented him from falling prey to evil or apathy. The whole sequence is seen through Marlow’s eyes. Focus on his method of narration and tick the correct statements. Then answer the question below. He withholds information. He delays the recognition of objects. He makes ironical remarks. He keeps a self-distancing position of marginality. He asks questions. Can you think of the advantages and disadvantages of this narrative method? Advantages: It enables different possible readings of the events. It creates the effect of a lens, focusing or blurring details. It creates suspense and arouses the reader’s interest and curiosity, leaving him the time to wonder. It stresses the atrocity of the description. Disadvantages: It may prove complex, obscure, slow. The reader may feel displaced and uneasy.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

4

11

what Marlow thought of Kurtz and why. He thought he was a remarkable person because he had had something to say and said it; he had seen the heart of darkness and had expressed his judgement (lines 56-57, 72-76).

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COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

struggles to hold onto the feelings of sanity and normality to which he has been accustomed. It is his devotion to his job that prevents him from losing his restraint. The case of Kurtz is of a directly opposite kind. He is a progressive and a liberal, a painter, a writer and a musician. However, he has yielded himself to the appeal of darkness, losing self-possession; he has indulged in acts of lust and extreme cruelty. So he becomes Conrad’s first example of moral nihilism and can also be seen as Marlow’s double. Confronted with the darkness of Kurtz, Marlow can no longer defend himself: his simple ideas of virtue, justice and honour prove inadequate to explain the nature of the evil he has seen and the effect it has had on him. Although he struggles into the heart of darkness, he declares his sympathy for Kurtz, watches the man die, and journeys out again. He ends where he began.

3 IDENTIFY the features of Conrad’s style as

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Modern Age

regards narrative technique, point of view, writer/reader approach and form. Conrad uses the first-person narration and multiple points of view (for example Kurtz’s death is seen through Marlow’s, the manager’s, the boy’s and the pilgrims’ eyes). There is an impersonal approach that leaves the reader to decide his own interpretation. He uses time shifts and flashbacks, an amazing wealth of adjectives and complex structures.

6 FIND the words referring to light and darkness in lines 47-59 and point out the effect of these opposites. Light: ‘candle’ (line 47), ‘lamp’ (lines 50, 55), ‘light’ (line 55). Darkness: ‘depths’ (line 50), ‘black’ (line 51), ‘beastly, beastly dark’ (line 56), ‘muddy hole’ (line 59). The main opposition is between the inside of the cabin, which is lit by the light of the candle/lamp and where Marlow feels safe, and the disturbing darkness that reigns outside and will characterise Kurtz’s grave.

4 NOTE down the positive and negative aspects of Kurtz’s personality hinted at in the text. Positive aspects: ‘the magnificent folds of eloquence’ (line 2); ‘unextinguishable gift of noble and lofty expression’ (line 4); ‘occasional utterances of elevated sentiments’ (lines 5-6); ‘the original Kurtz’ (line 6); ‘he intended to accomplish great things’ (line 12); ‘right motives’ (lines 14-15); ‘confidence’ (line 22); ‘for the furthering of my ideas. It’s a duty’ (lines 28-29); ‘remarkable man’ (lines 56, 72, 76). Negative aspects: ‘the barren darkness of his heart’ (line 2); ‘the hollow sham’ (line 6); ‘soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power’ (lines 8-10); ‘His was an impenetrable darkness’ (line 30); ‘of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror – of an intense and hopeless despair’ (lines 42-43).

7 SUM up Marlow’s concept of life in lines 6176 and say what the message of the text is. Through the contact with Kurtz and the constant comparison with his ideals, Marlow slowly acquires a deeper knowledge of himself and of reality. The message of the novel and also its modernity lie in the impossibility of penetrating the surface of reality in any meaningful way; the most man can hope for is self-knowledge because life is ‘Droll’, it is a ‘riddle’ that escapes any logic. Marlow feels he has lived incompletely, he has not transgressed his limits and understands that existence is essentially a mystery, while Kurtz reached new experiences of the self, went beyond the limits of his heart and felt all the excitement that life can give.

5 SAY how Marlow views Kurtz and try to explain the value that work has for Marlow. Discuss what Conrad’s aim was in presenting Kurtz and Marlow like this. Marlow is fascinated by Kurtz (line 41) but he also sees him as a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines (line 30-31). However, work has the power to keep him in contact with reality and prevents him from devoting too much time to Kurtz (lines 31-36). Conrad’s concern was mainly with man’s inner personality. By presenting Kurtz like this, he was able to deal with the coexistence of good and evil in the human soul. The story is in fact concerned with the effects of both the Dark Continent and Kurtz on Marlow. During his voyage Marlow

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8 DISCUSS your interpretation of Kurtz’s last words with the rest of the class. Teachers should encourage students to provide their own interpretation. Here are some of the most frequent interpretations provided by the critics: The horror stands for: • •

the darkness of Africa in opposition to the white European civilisation; Kurtz’s corruption;

• • • 7

the man’s unconscious; the violence and brutalities that the colonisers committed in Africa; the horror of life and the universe in general. COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

1 2

Where is the scene set? The scene is set in the chief accountant’s office, which is richly furnished. Does the scene take place during the day or at night? The scene takes place during the day because the sun is up in the sky and the sunlight is dazzling.

2 DIVIDE the sequence into two parts and write down a title for each of them.

9 WRITE an essay of 200 words about the

• •

•

•

•

Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: an interest in the primitive: Conrad’s choice of the African setting; the breaking down of limitations in space and time: Marlow’s experience is universal, not linked to a particular place or time. Even the narrative frame of the book reflects this, with its continuous shifts backwards and forwards; the importance of unconscious as well as conscious life: Marlow’s journey can be read both as a geographical journey and a journey into the self; the awareness that our perception of reality is necessarily uncertain: Marlow finds it difficult to explain his experience; the impossibility to give a final or absolute interpretation of reality: the way Marlow creates suspense and interest by delaying details shows this; the novel can be interpreted in several different ways.

are Marlow, the chief accountant and a slave. Describe them as regards age, physical appearance and first impression given. Marlow: Age: He is approximately in his forties. Physical appearance: He has fair hair and is dressed in white. First impression given: He is proud of his mission and curious about Mr Kurtz. The chief accountant: Age: He is approximately in his fifties. Physical appearance: He has grey hair, a grey moustache and a grey beard. He is wearing a pair of grey trousers, a white shirt, a light striped tie and a light brown waistcoat. The glasses and a pair of black sleeves make him a true clerk. First impression given: He is highly realistic; he increases the mystery surrounding Mr Kurtz by hiding his picture under some papers. The slave: Age: Very young. Physical appearance: She is a beautiful, slim black girl. First impression given: She is a sweet, subdued woman.

4 FOCUS on the first part of the sequence and answer the following questions. 1

From Text to Screen

Heart of Darkness

2

From Text to Screen: Apocalypse Now Photocopiable lesson on page 273. Teacher’s key on page 291.

3

COMPETENCE: WATCHING AND UNDERSTANDING A FILM

4

1 IN THE SEQUENCE you are going to watch Marlow has just arrived in a remote colony in the Belgian Congo, the source of ivory supplies. He is there to retrieve some missing cargoes. Watch the sequence and answer the following questions. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

5

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Does the chief accountant have a particular accent? Why? Yes, he does. He speaks with a French accent because he is a Belgian officer. What is he worried about? He is worried about the stations up the Congo River because they have been isolated for too long. What is he showing Marlow while speaking about the stations? He is showing him a map, probably of the Congo basin. What has happened to Kurtz’s station? It has been completely cut off. Who is there in the photo Marlow is looking at? Marlow is looking at a photo of two men, one of whom is Mr Kurtz. What does Kurtz look like? He is a tall man with a mysterious appearance. There is a tent behind him built in the jungle.

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3 THE CHARACTERS involved in the sequence Teaching tip Give advice about how to write an essay (→ Study Skill 25, p. 422) and have your students write one about the innovatory elements of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

Part 1 (the chief accountant is sitting at his desk, talking with Marlow): Rumours about Mr Kurtz. Part 2 (the chief accountant stands up and goes to take something to drink): Marlow’s mission.

innovatory elements of Conrad’s novel considering what you have gathered through the analysis of the two texts from Heart of Darkness.

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What does the chief accountant reveal to Marlow about Kurtz? He states that there are rumours about Kurtz that he has changed and become mad. Does the chief accountant allow Marlow to analyse the photo in detail? No, he hides it under some papers and a small book.

5 COMPLETE these sentences spoken by the chief accountant about Kurtz. 1 2 3

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4

There are rumours about him. That he’s changed. He has guarded a mountain of ivory. There are always too many rumours one must not listen to. One begins to go, you know, a little foolish with rumours.

6 CONSIDER the second part of the sequence and say: 1

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whether Marlow agrees with the chief accountant as regards the importance of rumours; He states that one must not give importance to rumours. what he asks about the captain of the boat carrying ivory; He asks what has happened to the last captain of the boat carrying ivory. what he does while asking for some information about the captain; He tries to look at Kurtz’s photo again while the chief accountant is in another room. what the chief accountant says in answer to him. He says that the last captain died some time before. COMPETENCE: USING DIFFERENT TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

7 WRITE down what kind of shots are the following. What does each shot represent? 1 Close-up = Kurtz’s station. 2 Extreme close-up = Kurtz’s mysterious gaze. 3 Medium shot = It allows the director to give the viewer a picture of the two people present in the scene: Marlow and the chief accountant. 4 Low-angle shot = Marlow’s point of view. 5 High-angle shot = It expresses Marlow’s feeling of superiority towards black people.

8 FOCUS on the first part of the sequence again. When does the camera move forward? Why? The camera first zooms onto Kurtz’s photograph to create a mysterious atmosphere surrounding this character. Then, it gradually zooms onto Marlow’s face while he is looking at the photograph to underline his increasing curiosity and perplexity.

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9 SAY when the music begins in this sequence and what it points out. The music accompanies the zooming camera, adding to the mysterious atmosphere that characterises the whole sequence.

6.17 David Herbert Lawrence Teaching tip The presentation David Herbert Lawrence in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 90-91: Sons and Lovers Teacher’s key on page 356. Text Bank 92-93: Lady Chatterley’s Lover Teacher’s key on page 358.

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6.1 LISTEN to a lecture about D.H. Lawrence’s life and works and complete the text. 1 mining; 2 coal pit; 3 short-lived; 4 environment; 5 emotional; 6 autobiographical; 7 warning; 8 eloped; 9 banned; 10 charge.

TRANSCRIPT David Herbert Lawrence was born in Eastwood, a mining village in Nottinghamshire, in 1885. His father was a miner and worked in a coal pit throughout his life. He was a handsome man and an excellent dancer. His enormous vitality had attracted a woman of a higher class, Lydia Beardsall, who had been a schoolteacher. The happiness of their marriage, however, was short-lived. Dissatisfied with her husband, who had turned into a heavy drinker, Lydia spent the rest of her life encouraging her children to advance beyond their restrictive mining environment. David, in fact, escaped the miner’s destiny through education and poor physical health. He studied hard to become a teacher and was accepted by Nottingham University College, where he gained his teacher’s certificate in 1908. By that time he had begun writing poetry and what would become The White Peacock, his first novel (published in 1911). When his brother Ernest died, David became the centre of his mother’s emotional life. The story of their mutual love is told in the autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers (1913). In 1908 he started teaching in a suburb of London and experienced life in the metropolis. A crucial year for Lawrence was 1910 because his mother died. He continued teaching until 1912, when a bad attack of pneumonia served as a warning that he should give up his job. In the same year he met and fell in love with Frieda von Richthofen Weekley, the German wife of a French professor at Nottingham University. They eloped to Germany and Italy and married in 1914. But World War I put their English-German marriage under some stress. Nevertheless, Lawrence was prolific in

Sons and Lovers COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 2

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ about the main features of D.H. Lawrence’s works and answer the following questions. 1

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Why is Lawrence a revolutionary force in the English novel? Because of his view of life, his fight against the mechanical and artificial aspects of industrial civilisation and his penetrating analysis of relations between the sexes. What was he mainly concerned with? With emotional life, and particularly with the emotions created by alienation. He considered man as a mixture of culture and biology, of natural impulses and instincts. What is the strongest natural impulse, according to him? The sexual one, so only a new type of relationship between men and women based on sensual passions and sexuality can save humanity from self-destruction. Sex and history are in Lawrence two different aspects of the same reality. What sort of female characters did he create? His female characters are neither heroines nor militant suffragettes but often sensitive girls who are aware of the essential ‘otherness’ of their partners, whose intellectual and sexual supremacy they accept. Woman is to Lawrence only an instrument for mankind’s happiness, consistently with his political opinions against industrial capitalism. What are the main features of his style? Lawrence employed the traditional omniscient narrator, limiting, however, the authorial interventions to the minimum; the point of view is, in fact, generally that of the characters. They are portrayed through the techniques of ‘showing’ and ‘telling’, and their feelings are revealed by means of a remarkable variety of rhythm and of words and images particularly linked to the senses.

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Where is the novel set? It is set in a workingclass environment in Nottinghamshire. How are characters and environment related? The protagonists are the members of the Morel family. Paul’s father is a coal miner and his mother belongs to a higher social class. Mr Morel’s estrangement from the emotional life of the family is due in part to this social difference, which alienates him from his own children and brings them closer to their mother. Moreover, his lack of education makes it difficult for him to express his feelings, and the hard, disciplined nature of his work leads him to domestic violence which drives the children deeper into their mother’s arms. Mrs Morel is educated and determined; she symbolises what the young Paul hopes to achieve: his emotional turning from his father towards her is a revolt against the poor exploited world of the mine towards the life of emancipated consciousness. Who is the Oedipus character in this novel? Lawrence used Freud’s Oedipus complex to explore Paul’s relationship with his mother. Paul is extremely devoted to his mother and even if he tries to transfer his incestuous feelings to Miriam and Clara, he cannot love either woman nearly as much as he loves his mother. The older, independent Clara, especially, is a failed maternal substitute for Paul. After his mother’s death, Paul is psychologically adrift, unable to resolve his Oedipal desires. What are the most important bondages explored? Mrs Morel is socially bound by her status as a woman and by industrialism. Though she joins a women’s group, she must remain a housewife for life, so she is jealous of Miriam, who has more opportunities to employ her intellect. Romantic bondage is given far more emphasis in the novel: Paul feels bound to his mother, and he often loves and hates at the same time, especially Miriam. What opposition does Lawrence employ? He employs the opposition of the body and mind to expose the contradictory nature of desire; characters often pair up with someone who is quite unlike them. What narrative technique does he use? Is it a traditional one? He uses the third-person narrator technique, but almost all the events are seen through Paul’s eyes. The novel, in fact, records the emotional process as experienced by Paul but does not quite communicate the process itself.

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1 READ the texts and answer the questions.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

this period, writing poems, publishing The Rainbow (1915) and working on Women in Love (1920). He spent the 1920s travelling throughout the world with his wife: Italy; Australia, where he set Kangaroo (1923); Mexico, where he wrote The Plumed Serpent (1926); and the south of France, where he died of tuberculosis in 1930. A few novels by D.H. Lawrence were banned by the censors, such as The Rainbow; Women in Love, which was in some ways a sequel to The Rainbow (written in 1916, published in the USA in 1920 and in Great Britain in 1921); and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, written in 1928 but acquitted on the charge of obscenity and finally published unabridged both in Great Britain and in the USA only in the 1960s.

T98

Mr and Mrs Morel

7

David Herbert Lawrence, Sons and Lovers READING COMPETENCE

8

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words with their Italian translation.

4 Identify the kind of narrator used. From whose point of view is the scene described? Lawrence uses an omniscient detached narrator for the opening description of the Bottoms, while Mrs Morel’s point of view is employed in the other paragraphs.

1 restlessness; 2 porches; 3 unsavoury; 4 slope; 5 parlours; 6 public house; 7 rows; 8 rent; 9 dwellings; 10 aprons.

2 READ the text again and do the following activities.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Modern Age

2 Complete the table about the attractive and unattractive details of these houses. Unattractive details

‘This double row … the valley’ (lines 2-4); ‘substantial and very decent’ (line 5); ‘gardens with auriculas … the attics’ (lines 6-8); ‘uninhabited parlours’ (line 9); ‘that was so well built and that looked so nice’ (lines 13-14)

‘The dwelling-room … ash-pits’ (lines 9-11); ‘long lines of ash-pits’ (lines 11-12); ‘the alley’ (line 12); ‘quite unsavoury … of ash-pits’ (lines 1415); ‘was already twelve years old and on the downward path’ (lines 16-17)

3 Answer the following questions. 1 Which house did Mrs Morel have? She had an end house. 2 Why did she feel different from the other women of the Bottoms? Because she had only one neighbour and an extra strip of garden; moreover, her rent was a bit higher. 3 How old was she? How long had she been married? She was 31 and had been married for eight years. 4 What was her husband’s job? He was a miner. 5 What began after the Morels had been living in their new house for only three weeks? The wakes. 6 What were the Morels’ reactions to the fair? Mr Morel was sure to make a holiday of it, getting out early in the morning; the children were excited: William, who was 7, went off after breakfast, leaving behind Annie, who was 5, who would be taken there after dinner by Mrs Morel.

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5 Identify the cinematic technique used by the narrator to introduce the setting in place. The zooming technique is used to introduce the setting in place – from the Bottoms to the single houses and on to the front gardens, the front windows and the little porches, the parlours, the kitchens at the back of the houses, the back gardens and the dirty alley.

1 What did the Bottoms consist of? They consisted of a series of A cottages where coal miners lived.

Attractive details

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How did Mrs Morel feel while watching families returning from the wakes? She felt dreary, as if nothing would happen to her in life. Why could she not afford a third child? Because her despised husband drank away his wages.

6 Discuss the use of contrast in the description of the miners’ dwellings. Contrast is the characteristic device of this passage: at first it is linked to the setting (the front side of the miners’ dwellings vs their back), then it extends to the characters of the married couple, Mr and Mrs Morel. These oppositions are, at the same time, of an attractive and a repulsive nature. 7 What do Mr and Mrs Morel symbolise? B She is the symbol of intellect, while her husband stands for passion. 7

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

3 DISCUSS. Compare and contrast the whole passage with Dickens’s description of Coketown in Hard Times ( → T62). Can you spot any differences or similarities between them in terms of style, presentation of the theme and narrative technique? Student’s speaking activity.

T99

The rose bush David Herbert Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and identify its two parts. Then write a heading to each section. Part 1 (lines 1-42) A spiritual experience. Part 2 (lines 43-67) Mother-son relationship.

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How does the language reflect the change from the world of emotion of the first part to the daily life of the second? There is a transition from the elevated, poetic language of the first part to the realistic, ordinary speech of the second.

7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided.

4 WRITE 10-12 lines about this topic: ‘Which aspects of this text from Sons and Lovers can be defined modern and which ones are linked to the 19th century?’ Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should develop the following notes: Modern elements: psychological analysis of characters; shifting points of view; great importance given to instinct. Nineteenth-century elements: contrast between nature and industrial towns; admiration of nature; use of a third-person narrator.

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1 2

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What is Miriam eager to show Paul? A wild rose bush. Why does Paul start to run on his way home? Because he knows his mother is becoming anxious. What happens when he arrives at home? He finds his mother waiting for him. She is visibly disappointed and getting increasingly angry about his being late. Who is the narrator in this passage? Whose points of view are adopted in the two parts of the extract? There is a third-person narrator. Paul’s and Mrs Morel’s point of view are employed in the first and the second parts of the extract respectively. What is the first part of the text characterised by? It is characterised by a close interplay between the two characters and the natural elements surrounding them. How would you describe Paul’s and Miriam’s feelings? Paul is attracted more by Miriam than by nature; Miriam’s quivering and the climax of her reactions to the rose bush create frustration in Paul. Which senses are most involved in the first part of the text? Smell, touch and hearing (the absence of any sounds and the presence of stillness) are the most involved senses. The second part of the text may be considered a sort of anti-climax. What kind of bond is there between mother and son? Mother and son appear as two lovers.

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6.18 Edward Morgan Forster Teaching tip The presentation Edward Morgan Forster in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 94-95: A Room with a View Teacher’s key on page 362. Text Bank 96: A Passage to India Teacher’s key on page 366.

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6.4 LISTEN to a lecture about E.M. Forster’s life and works and complete the text. 1 great-aunt; 2 strict preparatory; 3 spiritual imprisonment; 4 background; 5 differences; 6 social behaviour; 7 more spontaneous; 8 masterpieces; 9 modern aesthetics; 10 criminal offence.

TRANSCRIPT Edward Morgan Forster was born in London in 1879. His father died soon after, and he was brought up by his mother and his great-aunt, whose financial help enabled him to live comfortably all his life. He was educated by his mother until the age of 11, when he was sent to Eastbourne, a strict preparatory school, and then to Tonbridge School. He experienced both periods as a sort of spiritual imprisonment until in 1897 he entered King’s College, Cambridge. After leaving Cambridge – which he returned to in 1946

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Highlighted in light blue: setting in time and place Highlighted in yellow: Paul’s feelings and sensations as a response to the elements of nature Highlighted in pink: Miriam’s feelings and sensations linked to nature Pink words: images from nature Underlined in blue: sexual images. Miriam seems to have had a love experience Arrow: climax of Miriam’s sensations and reactions to the rose bush Green words: Paul’s mother’s irritation and contempt Highlighted in grey: Mrs Morel’s jealousy Blue words: Paul’s irritation to his mother’s remarks and behaviour

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2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and

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as an Honorary Fellow of King’s College, and where he was to spend the rest of his life –, he lived for a time in Italy, the background of his first and third novels, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) and A Room with a View (1908). In both works he explored the differences between the strictness of English conventions and upper-middle-class codes of social behaviour and the more spontaneous and relaxed way of life of the Italians. Between these two books he published The Longest Journey (1907), a novel about English life, perhaps the most autobiographical of the three. Then followed the first of his two masterpieces, Howards End (1910). In 1912 Forster went to India for the first time, where he began to work on the novel A Passage to India, which was finally published in 1924. He also published two volumes of short stories; Aspects of the Novel (1927), a series of lectures on modern aesthetics; and two books of collected essays. He died in 1970, and the following year Maurice – a novel about homosexuality – was published. The novel had already been completed in 1910 but had not been published because at that time homosexuality was still regarded as a criminal offence.

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the texts and answer the following questions. 1

2 READ the texts and provide evidence to justify these statements about Forster’s life and works.

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He was influenced by female figures. When his father died, he was brought up by his mother and his great-aunt. He was educated by his mother until the age of 11. He was annoyed by restrictions. He lived both the experience at the strict preparatory school at Eastbourne and that at Tonbridge School as a sort of spiritual imprisonment. He was attracted by dualities. For example, in his first and third novels – Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Room with a View – he explored the differences between the strictness of English conventions and upper-middle-class codes of social behaviour and the more spontaneous and relaxed way of life of the Italians. He was a prolific writer. He published several novels, two volumes of short stories, Aspects of the Novel (1927) – a series of lectures on modern aesthetics –, and two books of collected essays. He was indebted to the 19th-century novel. He is first of all a writer of comedy of manners who is interested in the society of his time; the technique of irony is reminiscent of Jane Austen’s. He derived much from the Victorian tradition – the plot arrangement and the presence of an omniscient narrator that occasionally becomes obtrusive.

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His works showed a modern complexity. His complexity derives from his talent for self-scrutiny, from his power to question the culture to which he remains, however, attached. Forster questions the optimism about the future that one finds in most 19th-century fiction, his novels remain focused on the struggles of characters in conflict with their own societies and other cultures, and he lays emphasis on personal relationships. His early books are more humorous; in the last two novels there is an attempt to use sensation and experience to approach what gives meaning to life and affords a visionary understanding of it.

A Passage to India

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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Who are the most important characters within the English and the Indian communities? The most important characters of the British community are the City Magistrate Ronny Heaslop, who is engaged to Miss Adela Quested; Ronny’s mother, Mrs Moore; and Cyril Fielding, the headmaster of the local college. The most important character of the Indian community is the Muslim doctor Aziz. What are the three turning points in the plot? They are the meeting of Dr Aziz and Mrs Moore at the mosque, the visit to the Marabar Caves and the trial. Why did Forster set the novel in India? What are the features of his India? The Indian landscape challenges the established values of Western civilisation. The reader is constantly reminded of the many inhabitants of India: the crowds of people, the animals, the plants, the birds, the stones. One of the basic qualities of Forster’s India is that it has no interiors or exteriors, nothing is private there, everyone can see you and know even your secrets, weaknesses and failures. Another aspect of India is that it awakens desire. What do the Marabar Caves symbolise? In Hindu mythology the caves represent the ‘womb of the universe’, from which all the forms of created life are derived. A psychological explanation would identify this idea with the notion of the subconscious. According to literary tradition, the echo is the symbol of nature’s benevolence which often acts as a reminder of the harmonies in creation, but Forster gives the echo in the cave a dehumanising quality.

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times, the consciousness of characters through free indirect style. However, he did not adopt Modernist innovations in form and style on a large scale.

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Chandrapore Edward Morgan Forster, A Passage to India

VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a caption to describe the content of each section. Part 1 (lines 1-18) Description of old Chandrapore on the Ganges River. Part 2 (lines 19-31) Description of the inland maidan on higher ground. Part 3 (lines 32-40) Description of the Civil Station on the second hill.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in pink: use of negative forms to describe the city. They are often accompanied by positive adjectives Underlined in blue: negative details concerning the city, which is connoted as filthy, unattractive and monotonous Highlighted in yellow: the buildings in the city Highlighted in green: simile reinforcing the idea of an uninteresting yet alive town Highlighted in orange: words conveying the description of the natural surroundings, particularly the presence of tropical vegetation. The trees are personified, they have a life of their own which blends with the human presence Highlighted in light blue: nature is very active in building a lively and energetic presence, which contrasts with the works of man. Personification is used Highlighted in grey: description of the English Civil Station: the words ‘sensibly’ (line 37) and ‘intersect at right angles’ (line 39) convey the cold British character and contrast with the liveliness of the tropical trees Green dots: the sky becomes a symbol of union between the Indian soul and the English part of the city

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

Does the novel start in a conventional way? The novel opens abruptly with a description that negates even as it creates picturesque images. The very first phrase (‘Except for’, line 1) is one

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What are Dr Aziz and Mrs Moore like? Dr Aziz is a Muslim doctor and a widower with three children. He is fond of poetry, emotional and generous with his English friends, but after Adela Quested accuses him of assault, he becomes bitter, anti-British and claims that India should be a united independent nation. Mrs Moore is an elderly woman, twice married with three children. She feels an immediate connection to Aziz when they meet. She represents Christian spirituality and kindness, but during the expedition to the Marabar Caves her confidence in the order of the universe is shaken by the echo she hears and she becomes irritable, depressed and apathetic. What is Forster’s main concern in the novel? It is the issue of ‘connection’, as well as the desire to overcome social and racial differences. Personal relationships are, for Forster, a fundamental value leading to a general need for tolerance, good temper and sympathy among people. What remains strong in the novel is the belief in ‘goodwill’, be it a religious belief or a secular, personal one. How does he view British colonialism in India? Whereas previous novelists like Kipling had given an attractive and romantic picture of imperial India, Forster recorded the moment of British India’s transformation into a new country. Forster shared the view of Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement and criticised imperialistic policies of discrimination under which personal relations were spoilt. What characterises the structure and style of the novel? A Passage to India is divided into three parts; the story is told by an omniscient narrator, whose voice intrudes from time to time to comment on the situation, while the point of view shifts from character to character. The pervasive use of negative forms from the beginning to the end emphasises the sense of ambiguity and mystery. What is the role of negative forms? They emphasise the sense of ambiguity and mystery: to say what something is not leaves wide open the question of what it might be instead. Negation and negativity in this novel are related to place and space, to interiority and exteriority, and to the varying shapes of inclusion and exclusion assumed by the different religious orderings of life. Can Forster be defined as a Modernist writer? Why? Forster appears a writer approaching Modernism in theme and outlook – in his choice of an indifferent setting in A Passage to India, which is capable of disrupting not only cohesive human relations, but coherence itself, overwhelming possibilities of order, morality or understanding; in his entering, at

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of exclusion and is extended as absence. In lines 16-18 the main clause of the sentence turns to the positive (‘do fall’, ‘are drowned and left rotting’) while conveying a sense of decadence and mortality. Thus the novel’s opening is not conventional but sounds Modernist. Can you think of a reason why Forster started his novel with negatives? Chandrapore is a typical Indian town, neither distinguished nor exceptionally troubled; it can be considered as symbolic of the rest of India rather than an exceptional case. The pervasive use of negative forms emphasises the sense of ambiguity and mystery: to say what something is not leaves wide open the question of what it might be instead. What impression do you get of the English part of the town? It is a sort of ‘cultural ghetto’ that has no connection with non-British people and places. In what sense does the Indian landscape challenge the values of Western civilisation? The reader is constantly reminded of the many inhabitants of India: the crowds of people, the river, the plants, the birds. Forster’s India has no interiors or exteriors, which conveys the idea that Western categories cannot be applied to the Indian landscape.

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2 READ lines 1-35 again and complete the factfile. Time: It is night (lines 12-13, 27). Place: A mosque at ‘the edge of the Civil Station’ (lines 5-6). Type of architecture: Lines 7-15: ‘The courtyard […] contained an ablution-tank of fresh clear water’; ‘a ruined gate’; ‘The covered part of the mosque was deeper than is usual’; ‘three arcades’; ‘a small hanging lamp’; ‘The front […] had the appearance of marble’; ‘ninety-nine names of God on the frieze stood out black, as the frieze stood out white against the sky’; ‘the contention of shadows’. Line 21: ‘the low wall that bounded the courtyard on the left’. Elements of the natural landscape: ‘that soil’ (line 3); ‘the moon’ (line 12); ‘the sky’ (line 14); ‘a blur of trees’ (line 22); ‘owls’ (line 26); ‘flowers’ (line 26). Feelings aroused in Aziz by the place: ‘He had always liked this mosque’ (line 7); ‘the arrangement pleased him’ (line 7); ‘pleased Aziz’ (line 15); ‘by winning his approval let loose his imagination’ (line 16); ‘awaken his sense of beauty’ (lines 17-18); ‘the happiness he felt now’ (line 30). The place arouses feelings of pleasure, joy and enthusiasm in Aziz.

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

4 WRITE 10-12 lines to compare the beginning of Forster’s A Passage to India with that of Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (→ T98).

3 READ the rest of the text again and answer the following questions. 1

Student’s writing activity. 2

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Aziz and Mrs Moore Edward Morgan Forster, A Passage to India

LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

words and phrases with their meaning. 1 swayed; 2 let loose; 3 springing up; 4 tread; 5 chilly; 6 strolled; 7 slabs; 8 bounded; 9 yields; 10 startled.

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VOCABULARY

1 READ the text and match the highlighted

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COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

How does Aziz react when Mrs Moore suddenly appears? He is ‘furiously angry’ and shouts at the woman (lines 40-41). What makes him change his attitude? He realises that the woman has taken off her shoes as a sign of respect towards the holy place (lines 45-47) because she believes God is there (line 53). He begs her pardon (line 48). What do they speak about? They speak about their children and some members of the English community at Chandrapore (lines 92-104, 109-120).

4 COMPLETE the table about the characters. Then state if they have anything in common.

Age

Aziz

Mrs Moore

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Old woman; red face; white hair; young voice (lines 61-63).

Family

Widower (line 92); Widow (lines 89three children 91); three children (lines 97-98). (lines 92-94).

Religion

Muslim (line 18).

She believes in God (lines 51-53).

Relationship with their community

He has a good relationship with the Muslims (lines 18-20); he is critical of the Hindu community (lines 16-18, 24-25) and also of some members of the British community (lines 115-120).

She has a good relationship with the Muslims (lines 43-53); she is critical of some members of the British community (lines 112-114, 124); she sympathises with and is curious about the Indians (lines 122-124, 131-132).

Hindus, for example he finds their religion and music uncongenial. Aziz appears as a sensitive and talkative young man with a slight inclination to melancholy and pathos (see the inscription in lines 32-35) and a deep sense of beauty. Mrs Moore is gentle and spontaneous, she respects other cultures and is curious about them.

British (lines 40, 68-69, 131-132).

8 UNDERLINE in the text the sentences expressing the understanding reached by these two dissimilar people. Which aspects of their personality bring them close to each other? Lines 75-80, 92-100, 106-108, 121-132. They are both seeking to escape from an alien environment and looking for relief in a holy place. They are friendly and sympathetic. They both would like to understand the meaning of their behaviour.

9 READ the Persian inscription Aziz would like on his own tomb. Besides clearly suggesting that the Muslim doctor overvalues pathos, it introduces a theme Forster will develop in the novel. Identify it. The issue of ‘connection’ and the importance of personal relationships, the need for tolerance, good temper and sympathy.

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COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

10 IN SPITE OF the understanding between Aziz an Mrs Moore, the text hints at some elements that will threaten personal relations later in the novel. Find the details connected with the ideas of:

5 IDENTIFY the kind of narrator used. From whose point of view is the scene described? It is a third-person omniscient narrator, and the scene is described from Aziz’s point of view.

6 TRACE the emotional changes Aziz and Mrs Moore undergo during their conversation. At the beginning Aziz is furiously angry and shouts at the woman (lines 40-41); Mrs Moore gasps and is startled (lines 42, 49). Then Aziz is sorry (line 48), afraid he has startled her (line 64); they both laugh (line 79) and he is delighted (line 100). They talk about their similar family situation, they share the same opinions; he is excited (line 122); they sympathise (lines 122-124); she is surprised (line 128); he is happy (lines 133-134).

7 FIND the references to the two characters’ cultural background and say if they appear to be conditioned by it in their behaviour or not. Though Mrs Moore is British, she behaves differently from the other members of her community: she talks to Aziz and tells him about her family, she criticises other members of her community, she is kind and invites Aziz to the club, she shows respect for his religion. Aziz shows resentment towards the English because of the way they treat the Indians, and despises their cool attitude. He also feels different from the Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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the hostility of nature; The hostility in the soil (lines 2-5); the hostility of nature suggested by the talk of dangerous snakes (lines 72-75). the conflict between cultures; The conflicting and discordant sounds of English and Hindu life heard from within the mosque (lines 21-25); a woman is not allowed in the mosque (line 43); Aziz feels a subordinate (lines 119-120, 133-134). the difficulty of communication. Aziz’s mistaken idiom – ‘we are in the same box’ (line 92) for ‘we are in the same boat’; the confusion of names and identities that arises from Mrs Moore’s second marriage.

11 EXPLAIN how Forster deals with the theme of ‘Only connect…’ (the words chosen for the epigraph of Howards End) in A Passage to India. What kind of connections does Forster deal with and which characters try or manage to connect? A Passage to India explores the possibility for Western and Eastern cultures to get in touch and, more generally, for human beings to connect and understand one another. Both Mrs Moore and Dr Aziz try to connect and wish to overcome social, cultural and racial differences (lines 123-124, 134-136).

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Indian (lines 1-2, 133).

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Nationality

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COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS WITH THE CONTEXT OF THE AGE

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12 DISCUSS the way Forster deals with the relationship between the English and the Indians in the passage and say what his attitude to colonialism was.

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The English considered themselves superior and behaved with arrogance, excluding the Indians from their own territories and violating their rights. The passage hints at the contrast between Hindus and Muslims inside the Indian reality. Forster had a critical view of imperialistic policies of discrimination under which personal relations were spoilt; he also represented the development of an Indian national consciousness through the character of Aziz. 7

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COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

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13 DISCUSS. Do you agree that sincere personal relationships overcome the obstacles between different peoples and civilisations? Justify your answer with examples. Student’s activity.

Link to Contemporary Culture

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The fascination of the East COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the text and highlight the key ideas in one colour and the supporting details in another colour. Student’s activity.

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Two cultures trying to communicate EDWARD MORGAN FORSTER, A Passage to India COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

1 READ the text and answer the following questions. 1

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Describe the opening scene. Who is the dialogue between? Why is it a ‘game’ (line 3)? The dialogue in the opening scene is between Adela, Aziz and Professor Godbole. They appear relaxed and the conversation is ‘light and friendly’ although there is actually an ‘underdrift’, a ‘game’ being played out that Adela is unaware

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of, that is, the fact that a white woman is talking to two Indian men seemingly as equals. Focus on Ronny. What is his annoyance about? Are his actions rude? Why/Why not? Ronny is annoyed because he has come to collect Adela and his mother to take them to a polo match and finds his fiancée alone with two Indians. He does not mean to be rude to them; the point is that his usual contact is as a superior talking down to a subordinate, he is not used to dealing with Indians as private individuals. Describe Aziz’s provocation towards Ronny. Although Aziz does not mean to be provocative, everything he says appears to Ronny to be impertinent or in the wrong tone. Aziz is tense, which makes him over-charming to Adela and loud and jolly towards Professor Godbole. Explain why Fielding sees the situation between Aziz and Ronny as a ‘scene from a play’ (line 34). From afar Fielding sees them as actors acting out parts, which makes the reader think that the scene looked unnatural. Discuss the double meaning of Ronny’s statement ‘I never even spoke to him’ (line 50). The double meaning is first the obvious one, that Ronny did not actually speak to Aziz; and secondly, the fact that not speaking directly to him was in fact offensive, ignoring his presence. Identify the type of narrator used in the text. What does this narration add to the story? The narrator is a third-person omniscient narrator, who can give an overview without seeming to take sides, although there are moments when the narrator steps aside and gives a character a voice, as in lines 51-57 where Fielding comments on the tea party. Find examples of lack of understanding in the text. There are different forms of incomprehension in the text. Adela does not understand the Indian ways but is trying to do so and is open to their culture (lines 1-3, 56). There is total incomprehension between Aziz and Ronny as they live in different worlds and each resents the other (lines 17-31). Fielding is a go-between because he recognises Aziz’s behaviour as tension and feels sorry for him while Ronny just gets increasingly annoyed (lines 36-50). The final incomprehension is between Ronny and Fielding, who are civil to each other on the surface but actually hate each other (lines 56-57). Why is Adela criticised for smoking? Would the criticism be the same today? Adela is not criticised for smoking in itself, but for smoking with two Indian gentlemen. Today the criticism would not have anything to do with being in the company of Indian gentlemen, but rather with the fact of smoking, whose harmful effects are widely acknowledged and socially condemned.

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Explain in your own words the phrase ‘A ship of goodness ploughing through a sea of sin’ (lines 35-36). This phrase is rather ironic as it is Baby Kochamma’s idea of herself as being an example for good through her pure actions when she is surrounded by evil and sin. What decision do the women take? They decide that Vellya’s son must be instantly sent away, meaning he will be fired from his job and sent off with nothing, as if the news of the relationship became public, Mammachi’s family would be disgraced. What does the text tell you about the caste system in India? The text shows a shocking divide between the Indian castes, where those who see themselves as superior despise and treat badly the Untouchables, whom they consider little better than animals. Baby Kochamma’s remark about their smell is repugnant and shocking. It is also interesting to see that the division is respected by the Untouchables themselves as it is Vellya, a Paravan, who feels it as his duty to tell Mammachi about his son’s relationship, despite being aware that there will be negative consequences for his son.

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COMPETENCE: CONTRASTING AUTHORS

ARUNDHATI ROY, The God of Small Things

Teaching tip Arundhati Roy (1961-) was born in Shillong, India, to a Bengali Hindu tea plantation manager from Calcutta and a Syrian Christian women’s rights activist from Kerala. When her parents divorced, Arundhati stayed with her mother Mary before going to Delhi to study Architecture. She married a filmmaker and began to write for several films and television dramas. She came to immediate international fame with her first novel, The God of Small Things (1997), which earned her the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1998. It was on the New York Times Notable Books of the Year List for 1997 and ranked fourth on the New York Times Bestsellers List for Independent Fiction. Since the overwhelming success of her first novel, Arundhati has written many politically oriented works and has been very active in various human rights causes, receiving several awards.

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COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

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Why is Vellya Paapen weeping at the beginning of the extract and what is the ‘Terror’ he is afraid of? He is weeping because he knows that what he has to say will cause serious problems for his son and possibly for him too, as his son has dared to love a woman from a superior caste, which is forbidden. The ‘Terror’ refers to the possible consequences and punishment that will inevitably follow his tale. Summarise Vellya’s story in your own words. Every evening a boat, that Rahel had found, crossed the river and was tied to a tree stump next to a path leading to Kari Saipu’s house in the abandoned rubber estate. The boat rocked empty for hours, sometimes till dawn. Vellya saw it as his duty to denounce the lovers – his son, Velutha, and Mammachi’s daughter, Ammu. Their love is prohibited because Vellya’s son is a Paravan, an Untouchable. How does Mammachi react to Vellya’s story? Why is Vellya surprised by Mammachi’s actions? Her reaction is absolute shock and horror; she shouts and pushes Vellya down the steps into the mud. Vellya is not surprised at her emotion and anger but at being touched by her when she pushes him, because the Untouchables are normally expected not to be touched. Why is Baby Kochamma pleased to hear the story? She has her own personal reasons for hating Vellya’s son as he was present at the protest march where she was humiliated. Her bitter nature also made her unpleasant towards her niece, whom she immediately condemns as being capable of this forbidden act of becoming an Untouchable’s lover.

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2 DISCUSS. The theme of lovers from different or opposing sides, religions or races is common in literature. Think of some examples and consider them in contrast to Roy’s story. Student’s speaking activity. Suggestion: The most obvious example is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The contrast is that in Roy’s story the difference is given by social standing, whereas opposing sides, religions or races can also lead to a tragic end.

6.19 James Joyce Teaching tip The presentations James Joyce and Dubliners and James Joyce: from A Portrait to Finnegans Wake in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author/works or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 97-98: Dubliners Teacher’s key on page 367. Text Bank 99: Ulysses Teacher’s key on page 372. Text Bank 100: Finnegans Wake Teacher’s key on page 375.

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their first date on 16th June, which was to become the ‘Bloomsday’ of Ulysses. In 1905 the couple settled in Trieste, where Joyce began teaching English and made friends with Italo Svevo. Joyce and Nora had two children, Giorgio and Lucia, and eventually married in 1931. Picture 3: After living in Zurich for some years, in 1920 Joyce moved to Paris, where the Americanborn bookseller Sylvia Beach agreed to publish Ulysses in 1922. A limited edition of 1,000 copies was followed by an English edition of 2,000 copies, also printed in Paris. The first unlimited edition followed in 1924, again in Paris, but there was no American edition until 1934, and no British edition until 1937. Picture 4: The period of success following the publication of Ulysses was also characterised by the worsening of Lucia’s mental illness. Joyce encouraged his daughter’s love of dancing, painting and drawing and spared no expense promoting her interests. Lucia’s condition deteriorated and she was sent to a mental hospital on the outskirts of Paris. Picture 5: In 1940, when France was occupied by the Germans, Joyce, Nora and Giorgio returned to Zurich, the city that had first given them refuge during World War I. Joyce never saw the conclusion of World War II. Following an intestinal operation, he died at the age of 59 in January 1941. He was buried in Zurich.

6.7 LISTEN to a radio programme about James Joyce’s early life in Dublin and complete the text. Dublin: 1 8 8 2 -1 9 0 4 1 Jesuit; 2 enrolling; 3 Modern Languages; 4 European culture; 5 awareness; 6 cosmopolitan; 7 writing career; 8 opening story; 9 fell in love; 10 Bloomsday.

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TRANSCRIPT Dublin: 1882-1904 James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882, the eldest surviving child of ten children, four boys and six girls. He was largely educated at Jesuit schools, before finally enrolling at University College, Dublin, where he gained a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus on Modern Languages in 1902. Political and literary movements which had as their objective the freeing of Ireland from English dominance held very little attraction for him. His interest was for a broader European culture, and this led him to begin to think of himself as a European rather than an Irishman. His attitude contrasted greatly with that of his literary contemporary W.B. Yeats, who was trying to rediscover the Irish Celtic identity by referring back to the past in order to create a national conscience. Joyce, on the contrary, believed that the only way to increase Ireland’s awareness was by offering a realistic portrait of its life from a European, cosmopolitan viewpoint. He established himself on the Continent and spent some time in Paris, where he intended to pursue a writing career, but his mother’s fatal illness in 1903 brought him back to Dublin. It was in this period that he began to seriously imagine his future career as a writer and published his first short story, The Sisters, in the Evening Telegraph. It would eventually serve as the opening story in his Dubliners collection. In June 1904 he met and fell in love with Nora Barnacle, a 20-year-old girl who was working as a chambermaid in a hotel. They had their first date on 16th June, which was to become the ‘Bloomsday’ of Ulysses. COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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2 READ about James Joyce’s life and use the pictures on pages 248-250 to provide evidence of the most important events. Picture 1: James Joyce was largely educated at Jesuit schools, before finally enrolling at University College, Dublin, where he gained a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus on Modern Languages in 1902. At the age of 22 he went into voluntary exile, moving to Paris, Trieste and Zurich. Picture 2: In June 1904 Joyce met and fell in love with Nora Barnacle, a 20-year-old girl who was working as a chambermaid in a hotel. They had

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In the early 20th century Joyce published his first short story, The Sisters, in the Evening Telegraph, which would eventually serve as the opening story in his Dubliners collection. Joyce’s first work to appear in book form was a collection of 36 short poems, Chamber Music (1907). Dubliners (1914), a collection of short stories all about Dublin and its life, was completed in 1905 but only published on the eve of the First World War. In 1914 Joyce wrote most of his naturalistic drama Exiles. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, his semi-autobiographical novel, appeared in 1916. Ulysses was published in Paris in 1922. It is considered one of the great literary achievements of the 20th century. Finnegans Wake was published in 1939. With its variety of puns and new words, this novel was even more difficult to read than his previous work.

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Why did Joyce choose Dublin as the setting of all his works? Joyce’s effort was to give a realistic portrait of the life of ordinary people doing ordinary things and living ordinary lives in his home-town. By portraying these ordinary Dubliners, he succeeded in representing the whole of man’s mental, emotional and biological reality, fusing it with the cultural heritage of modern civilisation as well as with the reality of the natural world around him. What was the real meaning of his hostility towards the Church? His hostility towards the Church was the revolt of the artist-heretic against the official doctrine, or the struggle between an aesthete-heretic and a provincial Church which had taken possession of Irish minds. But the conflict was even more painful; it was like a conflict between a son and his parents linked to the quest for his artistic potentialities. What was the writer’s task, according to him? It was to render life objectively in order to give back to the readers a true image of it. This necessarily led to the isolation and detachment of the artist from society. What are the main features of his style? His style, technique and language developed from the realism and the disciplined prose of Dubliners, through an exploration of the characters’ impressions and points of view, through the use of free indirect speech, to the interior monologue with two levels of narration – a device used to give a realistic framework to the characters’ formless thoughts – up to the extreme interior monologue. How did his perception of time affect his narrative technique? His themes are reworked in such a way as to become gradually less relevant than the ‘narrative’ itself. The facts become confused, they are explored from different points of view simultaneously and are presented as ‘clues’ and not through the voice of an omniscient narrator. Time is not perceived as objective but as subjective, leading to psychological change. Thus the accurate description of Dublin is not strictly derived from external reality, but from the characters’ floating mind.

Dubliners COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the texts on pages 251-252 and answer the following questions. 1

What is Joyce’s Dublin like in Dubliners? It is a place where true feeling and compassion for others do not exist, where cruelty and selfishness

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Complete the diagram below. Realistic objects are described with an abundance of external details, even the most unpleasant and depressing ones. → The use of realism is mixed with symbolism, since external details generally have a deeper meaning. → The use of a symbolic object takes the reader beyond the usual aspects of life through the analysis of the particular. State what ‘epiphany’ is. It refers to ‘the sudden spiritual manifestation’ caused by a trivial gesture, an external object or a banal situation, which reveals the character’s inner truths. So at these revelatory moments the reader’s attention focuses on the real meaning of the narrative. Focus on the techniques employed by Joyce to tell his stories. What narrative techniques are adopted? In the first three stories, which make up the childhood section, Joyce employs a first-person narrator, who remains nameless and not identified. It may be the same little boy for each of them, but we can never be certain. This narrator describes events from the point of view of the young boy; this allows the reader to penetrate the boy’s mind and understand him better. For the other 12 stories a thirdperson narrator is employed: he often shares a particular character’s perspective and tends to reflect the language and the sensitivity of the person who is being described.

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lie just below the surface. In fact Joyce, being a Modernist writer, was hostile to city life, finding that it degraded its citizens. How are the stories arranged? Dubliners consists of 15 short stories; they all lack obvious action, but they disclose human situations and moments of intensity, and lead to a moral, social or spiritual revelation. They are arranged into four groups: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. What characterises every Dubliner? Everyone in Dublin seems to be caught up in an endless web of despair. Even when they want to escape, Joyce’s Dubliners are unable to because they are spiritually weak. What do the terms ‘paralysis’ and ‘escape’ refer to? What do they mean? The paralysis of Dublin, which is both physical – resulting from external forces – and moral – linked to religion, politics and culture –, is one of the most important themes in Dubliners. The opposite of paralysis is ‘escape’ and its consequent failure. It originates from an impulse caused by a sense of enclosure that many characters experience, but none of them succeeds in freeing themselves.

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4 ANSWER the following questions.

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Explain how the interior monologue is used. The narrator tends to disappear in the interior monologue, which is in the form of free direct speech: the protagonist’s pure thoughts are introduced without any reporting verbs, which implies the disappearance of the narrator from the text. This allows the reader to acquire direct knowledge of the character’s mind. The syntactical structure maintains exclamations, questions, repetitions, interjections and exaggerations. Concentrate on the language used in the collection. What is it like? It appears simple, objective and neutral. It is always adapted to the characters according to their age, social class and role. Joyce also makes extensive use of chiasmus, that is, the patterned repetition of images, to create melodic effects, as in the final sentence of The Dead.

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Eveline

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James Joyce, Dubliners READING COMPETENCE

1 READ lines 1-100 and match the highlighted words and phrases with their Italian translation. 1 was lodging; 2 fold her in his arms; 3 shelter; 4 manly; 5 nostrils; 6 see her home.

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2 READ lines 1-100 again and do the following activities. 1 Choose the appropriate heading for this section. A Eveline’s considerations of her life. 2 Underline all the references to the setting in time and place. It is evening (lines 1, 76) and the action takes place in Eveline’s living room (line 17). She is sitting at the window (line 1), then she stands up (line 97).

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3 What characterises the interior of the room? Darkness and dust (lines 1, 17-18). 4 State how Eveline feels. She feels tired (lines 1-2). 5 Use the references to the lines to find the following. • Lines 3-10: what the world outside Eveline’s window makes her think about; It makes her think about her childhood. She remembers the field in which the children of the avenue and she once played together until a man from Belfast bought it and built houses in it. Ernest (Eveline’s brother) was too old to join in their play.

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Lines 10-13, 40-45: Eveline’s father in the past; Eveline and the other children of the avenue used to play and hide from Eveline’s father, who used to interfere with and spoil their play. However, at that time he was not so bad. She now fears her father, because he is a violent and uncontrolled man and she resents his parsimony. Lines 17-23: what objects the girl notices in her room and what feature these things share; She notices the yellowing photograph of a priest – a school friend of her father’s – and the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque next to the photograph. These objects share their being old and dusty. Lines 29-35: how Eveline considers her job; She considers her job as a department store clerk dull, and her superior abusive. ‘She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.’ Lines 36-37, 58-59: what she has agreed to become and why; She has agreed to leave her home, her country, to move to Buenos Aires and become Frank’s wife. ‘People would treat her with respect then.’ Line 66: who Frank is and what his job is; He is Eveline’s boyfriend and he works as a sailor. Lines 57-65, 67: what the girl remembers about him; She remembers Frank’s courtship, his being kind, open-hearted and lively. He has a house in Buenos Aires. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little. He used to call her Poppens. Lines 73-76: whether Eveline’s father accepted the young man; Eveline’s father quarrelled with him since he distrusted sailors. After that fight, Eveline and Frank had to meet secretly. Lines 85-92: what the sound of the organ reminds her of; It reminds her of the promise she made to her dying mother during her last night and how her father had paid a street organ player to move off, cursing all foreigners. Lines 93-96: how she sees her mother’s life and what her last words really meant for Eveline; She sees her mother’s life as a ‘life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness’. Her mother’s last words, seemingly Gaelic, were ‘Derevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!’ Joyce passes over in silence the improbability that a Dublin woman of this time and class would know Gaelic.

6 Focus on lines 84-96. What is the street organ a symbol of? A The lack of harmony in Eveline’s family.

3 READ the rest of the text again (lines 101-121). 1 Choose the appropriate heading for this section. B Eveline’s moral failure. 2 Answer the following questions. 1 Where is Eveline? Who surrounds her? She is at the station of North Wall, on the quayside, surrounded by a swaying crowd. The station is full of soldiers with brown baggage. 2 What happens when she is on the quayside? She is paralysed and is not able to get on board the ship. ‘All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart’ (line 113). 3 How does her relationship with Frank turn out to be? It turns out to be a superficial one since she dare not take risks and gives Frank ‘no sign of love or farewell or recognition’ (line 121) as he urges her to follow. 4 What does the girl understand about her affections? She understands that her affections for her family are the most important ones, even if that place is a home with dusty curtains and that family contains a frequently drunken and abusive father. 5 What is the effect produced by the last words of the story? The reader becomes aware of the end of Eveline’s dreams about an alternative life linked to love and freedom.

4 CONSIDER the whole story. 1 Choose the correct alternatives to complete the sentence. The story is narrated in the third person and the point of view adopted is Eveline’s. 2 Underline Eveline’s thoughts. What technique is employed? Eveline’s thoughts in lines 17, 97, 116 are expressed through the technique of free direct speech. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

3 Focus on the character of Eveline. 1 Does Joyce introduce her in a traditional way? What is the reader obliged to do? Eveline is not introduced in a traditional way, the story opens in medias res. We are not given any information about her physical appearance, family and school. The reader is obliged to infer the pieces of information from the development of her thoughts. 2 How does she appear? Why? She appears tired and linked to stillness and paralysis, since she does not move and her only life is in her mind. 3 Most of the story takes place in Eveline’s mind; however, her thoughts are not arranged in chronological order and they wander from past to present and future. Write her thoughts concerning past, present and future. Past: Her brother Harry, her sisters and she, together with the children of their same avenue, used to play in the field (lines 5-6, 8-9); her mother was dead (line 14); ‘she had dusted … many years’ (lines 17-18); ‘She had consented … her home’ (line 26); her father ‘had never gone for her’ (line 40); Frank’s courtship (lines 59-65); her father had forbidden her love (lines 73-76); ‘Sometimes [Eveline’s father] could be very nice … children laugh’ (lines 80-83); her mother’s last night and the promise she had made her (lines 86-96). Present: ‘She sat at the window’ (line 1); ‘She looked round the room’ (line 17); ‘She tried to weigh each side of the question’ (lines 26-27); ‘she had shelter and food’ (line 27); ‘she had to work hard, both in the house and at business’ (lines 28-29); ‘she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence’ (lines 38-39); ‘she had nobody to protect her’ (lines 42-43); she gave her entire wages (lines 44-45); her father was bad on Saturday night (line 49); ‘She had hard work … regularly’ (lines 53-55); letters to say goodbye (lines 77-78); she had to escape (line 97); she stood motionless among the crowd on the quayside (line 101); it was impossible for her to escape (lines 116-117); ‘she sent a cry of anguish’ (line 117); she was passive like a helpless animal (line 120). Future: ‘Now she was going to go away’ (lines 15-16); she would never see again all the things in her living room (lines 19-20); she would leave her job (lines 29-35); she would be married, have a new house and be treated with respect (lines 36-37); she was about to explore another life with Frank, she was to go away by night-boat and be his wife (lines 57-59); ‘Frank would save her’ (lines 97-98); ‘she would be on the sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres’ (lines 107-108).

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Line 97: what the girl experiences and what she perceives as her fate if she remains in Ireland; She experiences a sudden impulse of terror. She realises that if she remains in Ireland, she might have the same fate as her mother. Lines 97-98: what Frank represents to her. He is her saviour, the one who offers her the possibility of escape, of a life, and perhaps of love, too.

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All these thoughts of Eveline’s are expressed through the technique of free indirect speech. 4 Give these images time references (past, present or future): dust, love, grey, the sea, death. Eveline’s present is linked to dust and to grey. Her past is connected with the death of her mother. Her future has connections with love and the sea. 5 A simile is used in line 120 to describe the girl. Identify it. What does it add to the description of Eveline’s character? Eveline is compared to ‘a helpless animal’ because she is passive, paralysed and unable to make any decision. 6 State what Eveline becomes aware of. She remembers the promise she made to her dying mother and becomes aware of the emptiness and the meaninglessness of her dreams and of her love. 7 Say what this revelation is called. Epiphany.

5 SUM up the different phases of the girl’s decisions up to the final failure. Eveline’s plan of escape Æ failure of her project Æ Eveline’s paralysis. At first there is her plan of escape, which coexists with her antithetical wish of continuing to live in her home; then there is the gradual failure of her project to escape and paralysis wins inside her soul in the end. Probably she is too young to take any decision.

6 WHAT has Eveline’s state of paralysis been determined by? B

Her inability of escape.

7 IS Eveline a traditional short story? Tick its features. It starts in medias res. The main character is presented through her thoughts. Eveline’s thoughts reveal her past and future. Present, past and future mingle in Eveline’s mind. Free indirect speech is employed. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

8 WRITE a 10/12-line paragraph to explain the most important stylistic devices and the themes of Dubliners present in Eveline.

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Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should point out the following notes: use of realism mixed with symbolism; use of a limited point of view; presentation of the character from the inside; use of a new concept of time; use of epiphany; theme of paralysis.

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Gabriel’s epiphany James Joyce, Dubliners

VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and identify its two parts. Then write a heading to each section. Part 1 (lines 1-33) Gabriel’s riot of emotions. Part 2 (lines 34-42) An intense moment of existence.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis and write down what each highlight and colour represents. Pink word: setting in place Highlighted in light blue: Gabriel’s thoughts expressed in the past simple and past continuous – the present of the narration Highlighted in green: Gabriel’s thoughts expressed in the past perfect – the past of the narration Highlighted in yellow: Gabriel’s thoughts expressed in the conditional – the future of the narration Arrow: lines where there is a passage from outer stimuli to inner reality Underlined in blue: realistic descriptions Highlighted in pink: symbols Can you explain them? According to the Bible, Gabriel is both the prince of fire and the angel of death. Gabriel Conroy is often connected with warmth, therefore with fire, and can be considered spiritually dead until the end. As for Michael, he is one of the seven archangels in the Jewish tradition and the only one specifically identified as an archangel in the Bible; in the New Testament he is portrayed as the leader of heaven’s armies in the war against Satan, and is thus considered the patron saint of soldiers in Christianity. Michael Furey will be remembered by Gretta forever, overshadowing the weak presence of her husband. The snow may be a symbol of death, because it covers the dead and the living indifferently, the symbol of hopeless solitude and

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What is the situation described? Gabriel is watching Gretta sleeping. They have come back to their hotel room after a Christmas party, and he starts thinking about the man who had died for his love to her wife. Why does the whole scene seem to lose a precise temporal connotation? Because Gabriel’s thoughts begin to wander from past to present and future. Thus the scene acquires the tone of eternal truth. What conflicts can be found in Gabriel’s thoughts? The conflicts of death and life, taking and giving, past, present and future. What has Gretta’s recalling Michael Furey caused Gabriel to realise? It has caused him to realise that the guests of the party and he are ‘more dead’ for Gretta than Michael Furey. What does Gabriel become at the end? How does he perceive himself? He becomes one with all the living and the dead. Then, despite this dramatic fading out of his personality and his awareness of lacking love, Gabriel is no longer alone. He perceives himself as becoming part of the whole community of the living and the dead. What is the main antithesis of this extract? It is the metaphorical pattern of life and death. Throughout the story the living are shown as spiritually dead, and though Michael is physically dead, he is alive in Gretta’s heart.

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6.10 LISTEN and complete the summary of the text. 1 symbolism; 2 overloaded with; 3 angel; 4 overshadowing; 5 antithesis; 6 passionate; 7 passionless; 8 falling snow; 9 reconciles; 10 incommunicability; 11 purification.

TRANSCRIPT This extract is a combination of realism and symbolism. Everything is described in detail, but also overloaded with symbols. The personal names are symbols, too. Gabriel, according to the Bible, is both the prince of fire and the angel of death. As for Michael, he is an angel too, and Michael Furey will live in Gretta’s memory forever, overshadowing the weak presence of her husband. The most effective antithesis is the widespread metaphorical pattern of life and death. Gabriel learns from the memory of a dead young man that a brief passionate life can be more meaningful than a long passionless one. The final image of the falling snow symbolically reconciles life and death. The snow may be a symbol of death, which covers the dead and the living indifferently, the symbol of hopeless solitude and incommunicability or of the isolation and alienation of the artist in Dublin and Ireland. At the same time, it may be the symbol of purification and life, since it clears the world of all the negative images. As with all Joyce’s endings, the reader can only guess what the morning after will bring to Gabriel. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

5 WRITE a 10/12-line paragraph to explain the importance of epiphany in Dubliners. Student’s writing activity.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the text and answer the following questions. 1

What does the title of this novel suggest? The indefinite article ‘A’ is no less important than the word ‘Portrait’: this means that this novel, like a painter’s work, is only one of the possible interpretations of a subject. The subject is the mind of the protagonist and the development of his personality in his early life.

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3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs.

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incommunicability, or of the isolation and alienation of the artist in Dublin and Ireland; at the same time, it may be the symbol of purification and life, since it clears the world of all the negative images. Therefore, the final image of the falling snow symbolically reconciles life and death. Another important symbol is the journey; Gabriel feels the time has come for him to ‘set out on his journey westward’ (line 36). Traditionally, ‘going west’ means ‘dying’ and, to Joyce himself, leaving Ireland; yet Gretta and Michael, who lived and loved in Galway, represent the reality that must be faced. Gabriel’s westward journey, which includes these implications, remains ambiguous, since he goes towards the West to meet life and death. Red dots: epiphany What does Gabriel become aware of? He realises that he has played a poor part in his wife’s life. Blue words: examples of alliteration and chiasmus How would you define the language? Poetic.

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What kind of novel is A Portrait of the Artist? It belongs to the genre of Bildungsroman, or novel of education, which involves a young man, Stephen Dedalus, a young Irish writer, in search of experience and success. Where do the events take place? The novel is largely set in Dublin; at the end of the novel, however, the hero seeks voluntary exile in Paris. How does the hero develop? He undergoes several crucial transformations over the course of the novel. The first is from a shy little boy to a bright student who understands social interactions and can begin to make sense of the world around him. The second is from innocence to corruption. The third is from an unrepentant sinner to a devout Catholic. Finally, Stephen’s greatest transformation is from fanatical religiousness to a new devotion to art and beauty. By the end of his time in college, he has become a fully formed artist. What is the effect of the narrative technique adopted? A Portrait of the Artist begins with a third-person narrator and ends with a firstperson one. Most of the characters and the events presented are based on real characters and events but they are filtered through the consciousness of a fictional character, Stephen Dedalus, who is not identical to James Joyce even if so many of Stephen’s experiences have a biographical correlative. As with Dubliners, Joyce represented the complex inner lives of his characters by experimenting with points of view. Stephen is the unifying consciousness for each of the five chapters and we, the readers, see the world the way he does. The third-person narrator disappears when Stephen narrates his own experiences and thoughts through an extensive use of free direct speech. What kind of language is used in this novel? The language develops from what is appropriate to the very small child of the first chapter to the articulate comments on art made by a university student.

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LITERARY COMPETENCE

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COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

Who is the narrator? Whose point of view is adopted? The story is told by a third-person narrator and Stephen’s point of view is adopted. Is there any action in the usual sense of the term? What is the narrator more concerned with? No, there are no actions in the usual sense of the term. The narrator is more concerned with emotions (lines 1-3, 17-19, 32-47). Find examples of free direct speech and state their function. Some examples can be found in lines 1 (‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’), 6 (‘On! On!’), 17-19 (‘Where was … was he?’), 43-44 (‘To live … out of life!’), 46 (‘On and … and on!’). These expressions allow the reader to get directly in touch with the character’s mind.

4 FOCUS on the language of this extract, which is poetic. 1

1 READ the text and match the highlighted 1 aflame; 2 halted; 3 waded; 4 strode; 5 barefoot; 6 had leaped; 7 glimmer; 8 imperishable.

Where does this scene take place? What is Stephen doing? The scene takes place on a shore. Stephen is gazing at the wild, beautiful scenery of the sea in front of him. Sum up Stephen’s main actions and thoughts. He expresses his wish for the future (lines 1-3); he decides to wander along the beach (lines 4-8); he climbs down a sand slope (lines 9-11); he watches drifts of seaweed along the beach, the ‘water of the rivulet’ and the clouds (lines 12-16); he suddenly realises his boyhood is over (lines 17-19); his loneliness is in antithesis with the multitude of happy children in front of him (lines 20-23); he sees a lonely, still girl ‘before him in midstream’ (line 24); the girl is compared to a bird (lines 24-30); the girl and Stephen become aware of each other’s presence (lines 32-37); Stephen is ecstatic and excited at the sight of the girl (lines 38-41); he recognises the existence of ‘mortal youth and beauty’ in this vision (lines 42-47).

3 FOCUS on the narrative technique.

VOCABULARY

words with their Italian translation.

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 ANSWER the following questions.

Where was his boyhood now? James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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Find expressions connected with sight and sound. All the words and expressions used to describe the seashore are connected with sight; hearing is linked to expressions like ‘voices childish and girlish’ (lines 22-23) and ‘The first faint noise’ (line 35). Several sound devices are exploited. Identify them and explain how they affect the atmosphere of the whole passage. Example

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Identify and explain all the images used to describe her in the text. ‘Her long … as a crane’s and pure’ (lines 25-26) (ideas of elegance, purity and freedom); ‘Her tights … as ivory’ (line 27) (ideas of softness and purity); ‘the white fringes … white down’ (lines 27-28) (ideas of purity, softness and elegance); ‘Her bosom … darkplumaged dove’ (lines 29-30) (ideas of chastity and purity). Does this imagery convey a positive or a negative view of the girl? What does the girl symbolise? It conveys a positive image of the girl, who becomes the symbol of purity and freedom. What kind of mood does she create in Stephen? Stephen’s reaction, which is described in physical terms (lines 38-41), reveals intense emotion and excitement.

6 BEAR in mind that ‘epiphany’ in Joyce is the sudden revelation of a hidden reality through casual words or events. 1

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The image of the girl looking at the sea is an example of epiphany. What does it reveal about Stephen’s consciousness? It reveals his wish to break free from all the constrictions imposed by the Catholic Church and the small world of Dublin. Several negative words and phrases are employed to describe Stephen’s negative boyhood: ‘the grave of boyhood’ linked to ‘graveclothes’ (line 1), that is, constrictions; ‘the shame of her wounds … at the touch’ (lines 18-19) are the images used to describe the squalor of Stephen’s life in his hometown. This moment of the boy’s self-revelation is registered as ‘mystical’. Explain this statement pointing out words belonging to this semantic area in the text. The words ‘worship of his eyes’ (line 32), ‘Heavenly God’ (line 38), ‘soul’ (lines 2, 17, 38, 42, 43), ‘holy’ (line 42) and ‘ecstasy’ (lines 42, 45) belong to the semantic area of ‘mysticism’, which is antithetical to ‘profane joy’ (line 38) and ‘A wild angel … an envoy’ (line 44). This contrast points out Stephen’s break with religion. Consider the sentence: ‘To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life!’ (lines 43-44). It might be considered a statement of Stephen’s artistic creed, in which great

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COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS WITH THE LITERARY CONTEXT OF THE AGE

7 DISCUSS. Say in what way D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (→ 6.17) differs from Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as regards characterisation, narrative method, style and emotional tone. Students should develop the following notes: Sons and Lovers

A Portrait of the Artist

Characteri- Focalisation on sation main characters: Paul and his mother and their relationship.

The life of the character’s mind is portrayed.

Narrative method

Third-person narrator and use of a limited point of view.

Extensive use of free direct speech.

Style

Poetic style.

Use of a language which is Stephen’s and not the narrator’s; tends to suppress the narrating voice.

Emotional tone

The narrator is not The author uses detached. a detached tone since his aim is to achieve the neutrality of the artist.

Across Cultures

Memory

COMPETENCE: EXPLORING A LITERARY THEME IN DIFFERENT CULTURES

1 LOOK at the picture and read the quotes below. Discuss in pairs the role that memory has in our lives. Why is memory selective? Which are your strongest and clearest memories? Are they positive or negative? Students’ activity.

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5 CONSIDER the character of the girl.

emphasis is placed on error. Can you think of a reason why? Like Daedalus, Stephen wants to be an artist to enjoy creativity and freedom; but if an artist has to escape from the labyrinth of his world, he is destined to be alone, an outcast.

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of onomatopoeia: ‘swaying’ (line 14). Examples of alliteration: ‘soft and slight’ / ‘slight and soft’ (lines 29-30), ‘first’/‘faint’ (line 35). Examples of assonance: ‘slender’/‘legs’ (line 25), ‘thighs’/‘white’ (line 27), ‘hither and thither’ (lines 35, 36). All these sound devices contribute to underline the magic atmosphere created by the vision of the wading girl.

2 READ the text above and answer the following

4 DISCUSS in small groups your earliest childhood memories. Say if they are related to sensations or emotions, to sight, taste, sounds or tactic experiences. Think about whether you really remember them or perhaps feel you do because of photographs or what family members have told you. After the discussion, write a paragraph or a poem describing your childhood memories. Students’ activity.

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What is memory? It is the ability to store and access information in the mind relating to past events or experiences and it implies the capacity to place each of these in a temporal dimension. Memory is a fundamental element of our lives, it calls upon our inner selves and is related to sensitivity, empathy, character and emotion. Memory is our internal diary preserving the facts and the feelings of the past. Why have writers always been fascinated by the theme of memory? Because it is strictly connected with the concept of the passing of time. Who modified our idea of time at the beginning of the 20th century? The traditional notion of time was totally modified at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to the works of the philosophers William James and Henri Bergson, and the physicist Albert Einstein. The new perception of time led to a revaluation of individual consciousness and inner life. Moreover, memory also became a means to regain the happiness of the past as opposed to present disillusionment or crisis. How was the role of memory developed by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf? These writers expressed the complexities of the relationship between past and present with the interior monologue. In their works the free association of memories often leads to the sudden realisation of submerged truths. What other international examples have there been of the interior monologue? This technique was first used extensively by the French novelist Édouard Dujardin in Les lauriers sont coupés, translated into English with the title We’ll to the Woods No More in 1887. In the 20th century it became a common characteristic of the socalled psychological novels, like the Austrian Arthur Schnitzler’s story of pre-war Vienna Leutnant Gustl (1901) or the American William Faulkner’s masterpiece, The Sound and the Fury (1929), where events are seen through the three minds of the Compson family.

6.20 Virginia Woolf Teaching tip The presentation Virginia Woolf in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 101-102: To the Lighthouse Teacher’s key on page 375. Text Bank 103: A Room of One’s Own Teacher’s key on page 380. COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

1 READ the texts and use the pictures to provide evidence of the most important events of Virginia Woolf’s life. Student’s activity. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 ANSWER the following questions. 1

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3 COMPLETE the summaries about the relationship between philosophy, science, literature and memory with the words from the box. 1 Philosophy and science (America, France and Germany): 1 instruments; 2 single; 3 moments; 4 duration; 5 time. 2 Literature (Italy): 1 shelter; 2 painful; 3 despair; 4 temporal dimension; 5 concrete; 6 absent. 3 Literature (France): 1 sensation; 2 child; 3 unconscious; 4 impossibility; 5 source.

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What important biographical events marked Woolf’s work? The summers at St Ives, Cornwall; the death of her mother; her first nervous breakdown; the revolt against her father’s aggressive and tyrannical character and his idealisation of the domesticated woman; her father’s death; the outbreak of WWII. In what cultural context did she start her career? In Bloomsbury, a neighbourhood of central London, she became a member of the Bloomsbury Group, which included the avantgarde of early 20th-century London. For these radical writers, artists and thinkers, the common denominators were a contempt for traditional morality and Victorian respectability, a rejection of artistic convention and a disdain for bourgeois sexual codes. How did she contribute to the Modernist novel? She was interested in giving voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory and saw the human personality as a continuous shift of impressions and emotions. So the events that traditionally made up a story were

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Mrs Dalloway COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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1 READ the text and answer the following questions. 1

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What is the setting in time and place? The novel takes place on a single ordinary day early in June of 1923 and follows the protagonist through a very small area of London, from the morning to the evening of the day on which she gives a large formal party. What kind of woman is Clarissa? Clarissa Dalloway is a London society lady of 51, the wife of a Conservative MP, and she belongs to the upper-middle class. The influence of a possessive father, the frustration of a genuine love, the need to refuse Peter Walsh, a man who would force her to share everything – all this has weakened Clarissa’s emotional self and split her in two. She is characterised by opposing feelings: her need for freedom and independence and her class consciousness. Her life appears to be an effort towards order and peace, an attempt to overcome her weakness and sense of failure. She needs to make her home perfect to become an ideal human being, but she imposes severe restrictions on her spontaneous feelings What is the function of the character of Septimus? Septimus Warren Smith is a character specifically connected with the war, he is a ‘shell-shock’ case, one of the victims of industrialised warfare, who sought medical treatment in the special centres set up by 1922. How are Clarissa and Septimus connected? They are similar in many respects: their response to experience is always given in physical terms and they depend upon their partners for stability and protection. There is a fundamental difference, however, which has contradicted the theory that Septimus is Clarissa’s double. He is not always able to distinguish between his personal response and external reality. His psychic paralysis leads him to suicide, whereas Clarissa never loses her awareness of the outside world as something external to herself.

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T105

Clarissa and Septimus Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a heading to each section. Part 1 (lines 1-23) Mrs Dalloway’s visit at the florist’s is interrupted by the explosion of a tyre in the street. Part 2 (lines 24-37) Various people’s reactions to the explosion and their speculations about who might be in the car. Part 3 (lines 38-41) Introduction of Septimus Warren Smith. Part 4 (lines 42-53) The busy traffic in the street and Septimus’s thoughts. Part 5 (lines 54-73) Description of Lucrezia’s appearance and thoughts. She is worried because Septimus wants to kill himself.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in yellow: the setting in time and place: it is a late afternoon in summer, at a florist’s in London

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In the end she recognises her deceptions, accepts the idea of ageing and of death, and is prepared to go on. What is the role of clocks? They remind the reader of the temporal grid which organises the narrative, of the passing of time in life and of its flowing into death. How does life express itself? It expresses itself in moments of vision which are at the same time objective (the clocks, the streets, the cars, the flowers) and yet subjectively creative, since they are recreated every moment by active consciousness. How does Woolf’s narrative technique differ from Joyce’s? Differently from Joyce’s characters, who show their thoughts directly through interior monologue, sometimes in an incoherent and syntactically unorthodox way, Woolf never lets her characters’ thoughts flow without control, and she maintains logical and grammatical organisation. Her technique is based on the fusion of streams of thought into a third-person, past tense narrative. What are the ‘moments of being’? They are rare occasions of insight during the characters’ daily life when they can see reality behind appearances. They are similar to Joyce’s ‘epiphanies’.

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no longer important for her; what mattered was the impression they left on the characters who experienced them. What aspects of tradition did she reject in her novels? In her novels the omniscient narrator disappeared, and the point of view shifted inside the different characters’ minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas and momentary impressions presented as a continuous flux.

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Highlighted in grey: words and phrases describing Miss Pym, the florist, and conveying her opinion of and behaviour towards Mrs Dalloway Pink words: the main event in the passage is a violent explosion due to the bursting tyre of a car driving along Bond Street. The fact that the chauffeur draws the blind makes everyone think that there is someone important in the car Highlighted in orange: words describing the character of Mrs Dalloway. She is presented as a kind, elegant woman; she is sensitive to smell and colours and likes flowers, yet she is also capable of hatred. She is also curious Highlighted in green: words describing the character of Septimus Warren Smith Highlighted in pink: words describing the character of Lucrezia, Septimus’s wife Underlined in blue: words giving an insight into the changes in society such as cars and other vehicles, newspapers. The idea conveyed is that of busy city life Blue words: words referring to the senses. There are references to sight, hearing, smell and touch but the prevailing sense is sight. Woolf wants to emphasise that the characters’ response to the outside world is both emotional and physical Red dots: examples of free indirect speech, a literary technique that describes the interior thoughts of characters using third-person singular pronouns (he and she)

3 DO the following activities in pairs. 1 Summarise in your own words the various people’s reactions to the explosion. Miss Pym went to the window and looked apologetic for the noise coming from the street (lines 21-23). Mrs Dalloway jumped (line 24). Passers-by stopped and stared (line 26). Edgar J. Watkiss said it was the Prime Minister’s car (lines 36-37). Mrs Dalloway came to the window and looked out with curiosity (lines 45-46). Septimus was frightened and thought he was blocking the way and that everyone was looking at him (lines 4953). Lucrezia at first wondered who might be in the car (lines 56-57) but she was afraid everyone might notice her husband’s strange behaviour (lines 63-66). 2 How is the narrative organised? C Piece by piece through association. 3 What kind of narrator and point of view does Woolf use? What is the author’s aim in using this method? The omniscient narrator is a commenting voice who knows everything about the characters. This voice appears occasionally

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among the subjective thoughts of the characters. The point of view changes constantly, often shifting from one character’s stream of consciousness (subjective interior thoughts) to another’s within a single paragraph. Woolf most often uses free indirect speech, a literary technique that describes the interior thoughts of characters using third-person singular pronouns (‘he’ and ‘she’). This technique allows subtle and smooth transitions between the thoughts of different characters. The author’s aim is to convey reality as a continuous shift of subjective impressions and emotions and to stress the importance of apparently meaningless facts as stimuli to psychological responses. 4 How much action can you find in the passage? Look at the diagram below and say what the text mostly consists of. There is a continuous passage from outer to inner reality. The text mostly consists of perceptions and thoughts. 5 Consider the use of syntax and punctuation. Among the following features, tick those which you find in the passage and discuss their effect. Dashes. Semicolons. Question marks. Exclamations. Very short sentences. 6 Focus on lines 39-70 and list the sentences that convey the idea that Septimus is in the grip of a very serious mental illness. Match them with the corresponding states of mind. 1 Alienation Line 41: ‘The world has raised its whip, where will it descend?’ 2 Panic Lines 48-51: ‘Septimus thought, and this gradual drawing together of everything to one centre before his eyes, as if some horror had come almost to the surface and was about to burst into flames, terrified him. The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.’ 3 Feelings of guilt Lines 51-53: ‘It is I who am blocking the way, he thought. Was he not being looked at and pointed at; was he not weighted there, rooted to the pavement, for a purpose? But for what purpose?’ 4 Anger Lines 61-62: ‘But her husband, for they had been married four, five years now, jumped, started, and said, ‘All right!’ angrily, as if she had interrupted him.’ 5 Madness Line 65: ‘Septimus had said, ‘I will kill myself’; an awful thing to say.’

4 IDENTIFY who ‘the young man’ and ‘they’

the box.

are. If students have read T105, they should easily realise the young man is Septimus Warren Smith. ‘They’ are the Bradshaws and the people at the party.

1 greeted; 2 pistol shot; 3 fault; 4 mysterious; 5 queen; 6 veteran; 7 shell shock; 8 congestion; 9 embarrassed; 10 threatened. COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

5 FOCUS on the figure of Clarissa Dalloway and write down: 1

5 WRITE 10-12 lines to compare Woolf’s way of writing with that of Joyce (→ 6.19). Look for analogies and differences.

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Student’s writing activity. 3 7

COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

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6 DISCUSS. Have you ever experienced a ‘moment of being’, that is, one of those rare moments in which you suddenly seem to understand the reality behind appearances? Student’s activity.

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her reaction to the news; She is annoyed by the fact that the Bradshaws talk about death at her party. She identifies with the young man and wonders why he has killed himself. what she sees out of the window; An old woman staring at her from the window in the opposite room; she is alone and she is going to bed. what she hears; Her guests ‘laughing and shouting’; the clock ‘striking the hour’ (lines 51, 54). what she resolves to do. To come back to her guests; to find Sally and Peter, two old friends of hers. COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

6 UNDERLINE Clarissa’s thoughts about the T106

Clarissa’s party Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

From Text to Screen: The Hours Photocopiable lesson on page 275. Teacher’s key on page 292. LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

VOCABULARY

1 READ the text and match the highlighted nouns with their meaning. 1 closeness; 2 thud; 3 lust; 4 defiance; 5 disgrace; 6 rapture; 7 outrage; 8 chatter. 7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the first paragraph again and explain the details concerning the piece of news brought to the party by the Bradshaws. A young man has committed suicide by throwing himself out of a window. His body was wounded by ‘the rusty spikes’ (line 5) and smashed onto the ground.

3 READ the rest of the text again and underline evidence that the setting is a party. Lines 1-2, 7, 9-10, 38-39, 51-52, 56-57, 60-61. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

present and her thoughts about the past with different colours. Thoughts about the past: lines 8-11, 34-42, 53. Thoughts about the present can be seen in the rest of the text.

7 CONSIDER lines 1-36 and underline the parts of the text in which Clarissa responds to experience by translating her emotions into physical metaphors, which become indistinguishable from the emotions themselves. Lines 3-4, 27-30.

8 EXPLAIN what kind of relationship there is between Clarissa and her husband. Quote from the text. Richard is a conventional man (he reads the Times) and Clarissa feels protected and reassured by him. Their relationship is not based on love and passion but provides her with shelter from her weaknesses and insecurity. Lines 27-30.

9 CONSIDER the party as the climax of the novel, one of those ‘moments of being’ when the character can grasp the reality behind appearances. What does Clarissa realise? What brings about this realisation? She experiences a moment of clarity, or ‘moment of being’, when she realises that the social life she values so much is false and superficial. However, she finally accepts herself and chooses to go on living. Unlike Septimus, who is not always able

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PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

4 COMPLETE the summary with the words from

to distinguish between his personal response and the nature of external reality, Clarissa never loses her awareness of the outside world as something external to herself. In the end she recognises her deceptions, accepts the idea of ageing and of death, and is prepared to go on.

10 MATCH the terms of the oppositions written

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below with Clarissa or Septimus. Try to arrange them in the order they are hinted at in the passage. Clarissa: tolerance of superficial and false life; sanity; social success; final self-acceptance; life. Septimus: inability to conform; madness; alienation from society; rejection of existence; death.

the older woman

Clarissa sees herself in old age

the awareness of the passing of time

the clock

inner and outer reality

the voice of reality

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14 DISCUSS how various elements of Woolf’s personal experience came together in her novels. Consider her biography and point out the details of the passage relating to her own life.

11 FOCUS on the description of the suicide.

Virginia Woolf suffered from nervous breakdowns and mental illness and spent some time in a nursing house. She attempted suicide and eventually drowned herself. Moreover, Clarissa’s relationship with Richard reminds us of that between Woolf and her husband Leonard.

Identify the poetic devices used. Line 5 ‘Up had flashed the ground’ Æ inversion Line 5 ‘blundering, bruising’ Æ alliteration Line 6 ‘a thud, thud, thud’ Æ onomatopoeia and repetition Line 6 ‘a suffocation of blackness’ Æ metaphor What impression do you get? Tick as appropriate. The stress is on the brutality of the act.

15 DISCUSS. Trace the influences on the development of Woolf’s narrative method with reference to the context of the age. The feeling of rootlessness, anxiety and frustration following the First World War is reflected in Woolf’s choice of themes and in the use of short, ‘broken’ sentences. Sigmund Freud’s influence can be seen in the importance given to the human psyche, William James’s and Henri Bergson’s in the concept of time. The technical experimentation of the stream of consciousness is one of the features of Modernism in literature, as well as the idea that reality is not perceived objectively but subjectively and the importance of isolated moments which provide an insight into the nature of things.

12 FIND the two quotations from Shakespeare. 1

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Write them down and say what vision of death they imply. From Othello: ‘If it were now to die, ’twere now to be most happy’ (lines 16-17). It is better to die in a moment of absolute happiness rather than to bear the suffering of life. From Cymbeline: ‘Fear no more the heat of the sun’ (line 56). Death is seen as a shelter from the hardship of nature and the blows of life. However, Clarissa repeats this line from Cymbeline and she continues to endure. How do they help you understand the meaning of Septimus’s suicide? By choosing death, he has protected himself from further suffering and freed his soul from the constraints of society.

13 FOCUS on the images in the passage. There

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the sky

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Structural connection

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

16 WRITE 200 words about the way Virginia Woolf deals with the following aspects, considering the elements you have gathered from the analysis of the two extracts from Mrs Dalloway.

are three images which act both as structural connections and as symbols. Complete the table below. An example has been provided. Image

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS WITH THE CONTEXT OF THE AGE

Symbol

past Æ present the continuity Æ future of life

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Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should develop the following notes: Subject of the novel. The novel deals with the characters’ inner reality (their emotions, thoughts and memories) and their response

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6.21 George Orwell Teaching tip The presentation George Orwell in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Nineteen Eighty-Four COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

Text Bank 106-107: Animal Farm Teacher’s key on page 385. Text Bank 108-109: Nineteen Eighty-Four Teacher’s key on page 388. Route 11: Dystopia, the shadow of utopia Teacher’s key on page 436. COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

1 READ the texts and answer the following questions. 1

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1 READ the texts and use the pictures on these pages as prompts to summarise George Orwell’s life. Student’s activity. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 ANSWER the following questions. 1

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How did Orwell view his country? He had a deep understanding of the English character, of its tolerance, its dislike of abstract theories and insistence on common sense and fair play. On the other hand, his various experiences abroad contributed to his unusual ability to see his country from the outside and to judge its strengths and weaknesses. Closely linked to this quality was the fact that he chose to reject his background and to establish a separate identity of his own; as a consequence, he was receptive to new ideas and impressions. What conflict did he experience? The unresolved conflict between his middle-class background and education and his emotional identification with the working class. How did he conceive of the role of the artist? As a writer of the Thirties, he valued social commitment and content over form and had left-wing sympathies. His aim was to inform, to reveal facts and draw conclusions from them.

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What did he believe about writing? He believed that writing interpreted reality and therefore served a useful social function. However, he believed that the writer should be independent, that no good writing could come from following a party line. What themes did he deal with? He dealt with political and social themes. He insisted on tolerance, justice and decency in human relationships, and warned against the increasing artificiality of urban civilisation. Above all he strongly criticised totalitarianism, warning against the violation of liberty and helping his readers to recognise tyranny in all its forms.

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What historical facts influenced the composition of the novel? World War II, the Tehrān Conference of 1943, and the tyrannies in Spain, Germany and the Soviet Union. What is the protagonist like and what does he symbolise? Winston Smith is the last man to believe in humane values in a totalitarian age. ‘Smith’, the commonest English surname, suggests his symbolic value; ‘Winston’ evokes Churchill’s patriotic appeals for ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’ during the Second World War. Winston is 39 and physically weak; he experiences alienation from society and feels a desire for spiritual and moral integrity. His main concern is the manipulation of history by the Party, and he greatly fears the moment when no one will have any memories of actual history. How does Julia differ from Winston? Julia is more naïve and is pessimistic about the Party, since she believes that it will never be overthrown. She is not much concerned with historical truth. Why is O’Brien ambiguous? Because he is a member of the Inner Party who tricks Winston and Julia into believing that he belongs to the secret Brotherhood, which is dedicated to overthrowing the Party. The reader is also given little background information about him, which makes O’Brien a mysterious character. What are the main themes of the novel? Nineteen Eighty-Four is a satire on hierarchical societies which destroy fraternity. The main themes are the attempts to preserve mutual trust, memory and decency.

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(both physical and psychological) to external reality. Woolf juxtaposes the themes of youth and old age, life and death, sanity and madness. Concept of time. It is not chronological but linked to ‘moments of being’. There is a continuous shift from inner to external time and vice versa. Narrator. Woolf fuses stream of thought into a third-person past tense narrative. Characterisation. The characters are introduced through their perceptions, thoughts and feelings.

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In what sense is Nineteen Eighty-Four a dystopian novel? Because it does not present an ideal or perfect community embodying the author’s ideals, but it shows a future society that satirises existing conditions of society. The novel does not offer consolation but reveals Orwell’s acute sense of history and his sympathy with the millions of people persecuted and murdered in the name of the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century. What sort of society does it describe? Orwell presents a frightening picture of the future as being under the constant control of ‘Big Brother’. There is no privacy because there are monitors called ‘telescreens’ watching every step people take; love is forbidden but there is the ‘Two Minutes Hate’ and the country is in a perpetual state of war. The Party has absolute control of the press, communication and propaganda; language, history and thought are controlled in the interests of the State through the gradual introduction of Newspeak, the official language of Oceania, whose lexis is so limited that people find it impossible to express their own ideas. Any form of rebellion against the rules is punished with prison, torture and liquidation.

T107

Big Brother is watching you George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a caption to describe the content of each of the seven paragraphs of the extract. Paragraph 1: The setting in time and the main character Winston Smith. Paragraph 2: The hallway, the stairs, and the posters of Big Brother on each landing. Paragraph 3: The telescreen inside Winston’s flat. Paragraph 4: The coldness of the world outside, the posters plastered everywhere, and the presence of the patrols. Paragraph 5: The lack of privacy inside the flat due to the overwhelming control of the Thought Police. Paragraph 6: Winston’s mood, his distaste for the living conditions in London and his (vain) attempt to remember what London was like during his childhood. Paragraph 7: The Ministry of Truth and the three slogans of the Party.

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2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in yellow: setting in time and place Highlighted in green: weather conditions Highlighted in grey: description of London. It is full of details that are usually connected with war time. Even the details of the soap and razor blades (lines 20-21) and the name ‘Victory’ given to houses (lines 2-3) can be linked to war time Pink words: details concerning the social, economic and political organisation in Oceania, particularly as regards security and control, economic plans, people’s private lives, language. Oceania has a totalitarian government under the leadership of Big Brother, whom nobody has ever seen except on the posters that are hanging everywhere. The government has total control on the life of the citizens, whose private and public behaviour is constantly watched through telescreens and helicopters. The Thought Police has the task of controlling and manipulating people’s thoughts and opinions. The main principles of this government are expressed in the slogans at the end of the passage. There is also the Ministry of Truth, which is Winston’s place of work Highlighted in light blue: description of the protagonist: his name, age, address, physical appearance, job and mood Blue words: description of the posters portraying Big Brother

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1 What kind of narrator is used and from whose point of view is London described? A third-person omniscient narrator is used, and Winston’s point of view is adopted. Orwell used the past tense narrative to give his picture of the future the illusion of reality. Although his aim was to provide a disturbing picture of a possible future, his technique is that of the traditional realist novelist. 2 How would you define the features of Orwell’s language in this text? Realistic, concrete, ironical, varied in register. 3 Consider the symbolic meaning of the elements concerning Winston Smith’s description. 1 His name Winston: who may have inspired Orwell in the choice of such a name? His name has a heroic connotation, since it was Churchill’s name. 2 His surname Smith: how would you explain the choice of such a common British surname? His surname makes him the ‘man of the street’.

discouragement for anyone who might desire freedom, while the third slogan, ‘IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH’, encourages the people to accept as true everything that the Party tells them, without using rational thinking. For example, even if there is a constant shortage of everything, and the people make great efforts to get the most basic things (e.g. shaving razors), they are convinced that there is, in fact, abundance – only because the Party keeps repeating this every day. In their highly conditioned minds, it can be both scarcity and abundance, at the same time.

4 Analyse the presence of Big Brother in the extract. 1 Through what device is it conveyed? What does this method remind you of? It is conveyed through posters with captions. This reminds the reader of the conditioning of advertising. 2 Big Brother is also the parody of a historical figure. Single out the details of his description and try to guess who he might be. Lines 6-7, 25-27; Stalin or Hitler. 5 Orwell created a disturbing vision of the city of the future. What features of the life in such a city particularly strike you? Students’ activity. Suggestion: Students might discuss the following: the lack of privacy, freedom of thought and speech; mismanagement (lifts out of order, blunt razors, ruined houses, the dust outside suggesting that the streets are not clean); the perpetual state of war; the general atmosphere of squalor and gloom. 6 Analyse the three slogans of the Party. 1 What kind of words does Orwell employ? Words with opposite meanings; he uses paradox. 2 How does this affect the meaning of each slogan? It acquires a satirical meaning. 3 What does each statement imply about this society? What does the public’s easy acceptance of these slogans suggest about the population? The INGSOC aims to achieve total control over the people and especially over their minds. One of the main mind programmes of the Party is Doublethink, which describes the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct. ‘WAR IS PEACE’ and ‘FREEDOM IS SLAVERY’ are good examples of double thinking. Though contradictory by definition, they are both accepted as correct, simultaneously, by the citizens of Oceania. This means that even if Oceania is in a constant state of war, the people are acting as if there were peace as well, so they can easily switch from one emotion to the other, in accordance to what the Party orders. ‘FREEDOM IS SLAVERY’ also acts as a subconscious Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

7 What does Orwell attack and at the same time warn against in the passage? He makes a parody of any form of totalitarianism. He attacks the sense of loss of the finest emotions and values of contemporary Britain and warns the reader against the danger of total adhesion to a political system and its leader. 8 What does ‘having an identity’ mean to you? Do you think it is important to preserve the memory of the past? If so, why and how? Students’ activity. 7

COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

4 DISCUSS. Nineteen Eighty-Four was published 35 years before the year 1984. How do you imagine the world in 35 years’ time? Student’s activity. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

5 WRITE an essay of 200 words. Recall some text you have read about London and trace how its representation has developed through time. Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students might refer to Samuel Pepys, William Blake, William Wordsworth and Charles Dickens. 7

COMPETENCE: CONTRASTING AUTHORS

6 DISCUSS. As in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (→ 1.13) and in Eliot’s The Waste Land (→ 6.14), the choice of April as time setting in Nineteen Eighty-Four has a symbolic value.

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His age and appearance: do they correspond to the traditional features of the ‘hero’? No, he is an ordinary man, a sort of anti-hero. His memories: can he remember anything about his past? No, he cannot remember anything about his past. Nothing remains of his childhood.

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Students should point out that while in Chaucer April means renewal and rebirth, in Eliot and Orwell it acquires a negative connotation since it is linked to the ideas of aridity and alienation.

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T108

Room 101

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George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

What does he think is the only way to escape torture? To transfer his punishment onto someone else, to ‘interpose […] the body of another human being, between himself and the rats’ (lines 74-75). Who does he transfer his punishment onto? Julia. Does it work? Yes, because O’Brien does not open the cage door and the mice do not attack Winston’s face.

LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

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1 READ the text and match the highlighted adjectives with their meaning. 1 foul; 2 shrill; 3 drenched; 4 trivial; 5 split; 6 unendurable; 7 fierce; 8 utter; 9 musty; 10 blunt; 11 scaly; 12 cowardly. 7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the text again and answer the following 1 2 3

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COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

3 SAY what kind of narrator and point of view is used by Orwell. The third-person narrator is not part of the story but in the minds of the characters like an all-seeing eye or an omniscient presence overlooking the proceedings. The reader shares Winston’s point of view.

4 COMPLETE the table below with the actions taken by the Party to gain control of Winston and where they happened.

questions.

Action

Place

How does Winston realise where he is? By the slight difference in the air pressure. What does he notice? Two small tables in front of him, each covered with a green cloth. What is his condition? He is strapped upright in a chair and cannot even move his head because a sort of pad grips it from behind. Where exactly does his final torture take place? In Room 101. How does O’Brien describe this place? As containing the worst thing in the world, which varies from individual to individual. What does the guard bring into the room? What is fixed in front of it? The guard brings an oblong wire cage divided lengthways into two compartments (each containing rats) and with a handle on top. There is a sort of fencing mask fixed in front of it, with the concave side outwards. What does Winston especially fear? Rats. What dream does O’Brien remind Winston of? He reminds him of a dream where he saw a wall of blackness in front of him and heard a roaring sound in his ears. There was something terrible on the other side of the wall and Winston knew what it was – rats –, but he dared not admit it. Why does Winston begin to panic? Because O’Brien puts the mask on his face and is ready to click the cage door open.

Imprisonment.

In the windlowless building (lines 1-2).

He had been beaten.

In the cells below ground level (lines 2-3).

He had been interrogated by O’Brien.

In a room high up near the roof (lines 3-4).

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5 FOCUS on lines 13-24 and underline the words conveying Winston’s lack of knowledge. Words such as ‘something’, ‘(of) some kind’, ‘it’ and ‘thing’ are used in order to increase the fear of the unknown. O’Brien’s words shape Winston’s frightened thoughts. Lack of knowledge can be a very scary thing; if you do not know what something is, then you do not have the possibility of facing it.

6 FIND the definition O’Brien gives of ‘the worst thing in the world’. Lines 16-18: he provides some examples such as ‘burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by impalement’ because it varies from individual to individual depending on what one is most afraid of.

7 DISCUSS in pairs. What do the rats represent? First of all they are Winston’s worst fear, so on the one hand, the rats represent fear. On the other hand, they symbolise depravity. Throughout history, humans have associated rats with squalor and pestilence. Rats carry

physical pain in the text. How does it affect the mind? What connotation does the body take on therefore? The theme of psychic mind control manifests itself in the Party’s manipulation of the body: Orwell consistently argues that physical pain and the sense of physical danger can override human reason. Winston, facing a writhing swarm of rats prepared to devour his face, cannot act rationally. His betrayal of Julia occurs precisely because physical pain eliminates the possibility of defending emotional conviction. Turning against Julia is an instinctive act of self-preservation. Rather than the rats themselves, it is the awareness, forced upon him by the Party, that he is a prisoner of his own body that ultimately breaks Winston. Once he believes that he is limited by his body, he has no reason to think, act, or rebel.

9 IDENTIFY the climax in the text. The climax is in lines 80-87. Winston is mindless in his absolute fear and despair, then a tiny fragment of hope glimmers into his mind, he is frantic to transfer his punishment onto someone else and finally screams ‘Do it to Julia!’

10 FOCUS on Winston’s character. Highlight the phrases and sentences which mark the progression of his feelings. ‘A sort of premonitory tremor’ (line 25); ‘His bowels seemed to turn to water’ (line 27); ‘making an effort to control his voice’ (line 33); ‘could hear the blood singing in his ears’ (line 47); ‘He had the feeling of sitting in utter loneliness’ (lines 4748); ‘made a frantic effort to tear himself loose from the chair’ (line 61); ‘he fought furiously against his panic’ (line 70); ‘For an instant he was insane, a screaming animal’ (line 73); ‘Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless’ (lines 79-80); ‘it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope’ (lines 82-83); ‘he was shouting frantically, over and over’ (line 85); ‘He was falling backwards, into enormous depths’ (line 88); ‘He was light years distant’ (line 91); ‘the darkness that enveloped him’ (line 92). Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

the phrases referring to his behaviour. He delays the answer to the question ‘what was in Room 101’ (line 11): this increases the suspense as well as Winston’s fear. ‘O’Brien made no direct answer. When he spoke it was in the schoolmasterish manner that he sometimes affected. He looked thoughtfully into the distance, as though he were addressing an audience somewhere behind Winston’s back’ (lines 35-37): O’Brien acts as a sort of teacher or preacher, he seems completely devoid of emotion.

12 FOCUS on the description of the rats and complete the table below. What effect is achieved by Orwell? Winston’s perceptions: ‘They were enormous rats. They were at the age when a rat’s muzzle grows blunt and fierce and his fur brown instead of grey’ (lines 50-51); ‘an outburst of squeals from the cage’ (line 57); ‘the foul musty odour of the brutes’ (line 71); ‘could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth’ (line 79). O’Brien’s description: ‘although a rodent, is carnivorous’ (line 52); ‘The rats are certain to attack it. Within quite a small time they will strip it to the bones. They also attack sick or dying people. They show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human being is helpless’ (lines 54-56); ‘starving brutes’ (line 66); ‘They will leap on to your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue’ (lines 66-68). Winston’s perception of the rats passes through all the senses and conveys a sense of nausea that is transferred onto the reader. O’Brien’s description is detached and based on objective facts, which make it even more horrible and frightening. The effect achieved is realistic and makes the reader identify with Winston and feel shocked at the Party’s treatment of a human being.

13 EXPLAIN how Orwell contrasts the two characters to build up the suspense and terror of the scene. First, he contrasts the calm O’Brien and the terrified Winston in a slow, tortured build-up where every sound and every smell is meticulously described. Second, O’Brien presents contrasting features: his tone is calm, detached, yet his actions are calculatedly merciless and the content of his speech is brutal. He sends chills down the reader’s spine as well as Winston’s with his displaced tranquillity.

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8 EXPLAIN how Orwell develops the theme of

11 ANALYSE O’Brien’s character and highlight

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disease and thrive on human garbage. Rats rank among the world’s most ‘beastlike’ (as opposed to ‘humanlike’) creatures. Winston’s universe is filled with humans who act and are treated like beasts. Winston and his fellow citizens become rats, trapped in Big Brother’s cage. If people allow forces such as those represented by Big Brother to rule, then they will become no better than mindless, multiplying rats.

14 EXPLAIN what Room 101 teaches Winston.

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The Modern Age

The room teaches Winston that when faced with his greatest fear, he would be willing to sacrifice anything – love, dignity, loyalty – in order to escape it. Through that fear, O’Brien and the Party have taken control of Winston’s mind. Julia is the only person in the world whom Winston could have thrust between himself and the rats because she is the only person standing between him and his love of Big Brother. As long as Winston loved Julia, and what she represented to him, he was able to believe in himself and his humanity enough to hate Big Brother. Once he betrays that love, he violates his own humanity and can no longer love another human. 7

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS WITH THE CONTEXT OF THE AGE

15 DISCUSS what Orwell was warning mankind against in the following lines, which he wrote in a set of notes for a press release of the novel: ‘I think that, allowing for the book being after all a parody, something like Nineteen Eighty-Four could happen. This is the direction in which the world is going at the present time, and the trend lies deep in the political, social and economic foundations of the contemporary world situation’. Refer to 6.4, 6.5 and 6.6. Student’s speaking activity. Suggestion: Students might refer to the danger lying in the acceptance of a totalitarian outlook by intellectuals of all colours. Orwell also warns against the creation of ‘Super-States’, of great blocks that will be in opposition to each other. In the background there is also the threat of a total war with new weapons, of which the atomic bomb is the most powerful. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

16 WRITE 10-12 lines to explain in what sense Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel. Student’s writing activity. 7

COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

17 DISCUSS. 1

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Do you think Winston acted as a coward or as a hero? Student’s activity. Suggestion: Some students may regard Winston as a coward because he betrayed the woman he loved,

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others may say he was not a coward for trying to transfer the punishment onto Julia but that he simply acted out of self-preservation. Any man might do the same if faced with their greatest fear, as we are not unthinking machines nor are we unfeeling. Winston’s main attributes are his rebelliousness and fatalism. O’Brien succeeds in depriving him of his dignity by breaking his humanity. The text talks about how man cannot overcome his greatest fear. Do you agree? What is your worst fear? Student’s activity. Is torture still practised in any country of the world? Why? Which do you think is worse, physical or psychological torture? Student’s activity.

6.22 Francis Scott Fitzgerald Teaching tip The presentation Francis Scott Fitzgerald in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 110: The Great Gatsby Teacher’s key on page 390. COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

1 READ about Fitzgerald’s life and works and complete the factfile. Education: He studied in a Catholic boarding school in New Jersey and in 1913 he went to Princeton University. Married life: In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre; they led a life of luxury and excess, spending a lot of money on entertainment, parties, alcohol and drugs. Works and themes: Works: This Side of Paradise (1920), Tales of the Jazz Age (1922), The Beautiful and Damned (1922), The Great Gatsby (1925), Tender Is the Night (1934), The Last Tycoon (unfinished). Themes: the sense of loss and emptiness hiding behind the cult of money and materialism; the hedonism, corruption and loss of ideals of the Lost Generation; the failure of the dreams and ideals of the Twenties. Reputation: His first works were very successful. Popularity declined with The Great Gatsby. He began to write film scripts to pay his debts. Death: An alcoholic, he died of a heart attack in 1940.

7.5 LISTEN to a lecture about The Great Gatsby and complete the text. 1 stockbroker; 2 next-door neighbour; 3 parties; 4 mistress; 5 humble midwestern; 6 poverty; 7 illegal; 8 runs over; 9 funeral; 10 dream.

TRANSCRIPT The novel is set in the summer of 1922 in New York City and on Long Island, in the fictional areas known as ‘West Egg’ and ‘East Egg’. Nick Carraway, a young stockbroker, has just moved from the Midwest and rented a house in West Egg, the rich but unfashionable area of Long Island. His next-door neighbour is Jay Gatsby, a mysterious man who lives in a magnificent mansion and gives fabulous parties. Nick’s cousin, Daisy, and her husband, Tom Buchanan, introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, a beautiful, cynical young woman with whom Nick begins a relationship. Jordan tells Nick that Tom has a mistress, Myrtle Wilson. Nick receives an invitation to one of Gatsby’s parties and they become friends. Later on, Nick will discover that Gatsby’s real name is James Gatz and that he comes from a humble midwestern family. He made every effort to rise above poverty, he even changed his name. When he was in the army as a young man, he had a relationship with Daisy. But while Jay was in Europe during the war, Daisy, though returning Jay’s love, had married Tom. Gatsby later made a fortune in some illegal way. He then rented a house just on the opposite side of the bay to Daisy’s house. Thanks to Nick, Daisy and Jay meet again and begin an affair. One day, after a lunch at the Buchanans’ house where also Gatsby is invited, they go all together to Manhattan. There Daisy has a fight with her husband and, while driving back with Gatsby, she accidentally runs over Tom’s mistress, Myrtle, who dies. Myrtle’s husband finds out that the car which killed her is Gatsby’s, so he shoots him in his pool. Daisy reconciles with her husband. Only Nick tries to defend Gatsby’s name and arranges his funeral but nobody comes. Nick ends his relationship with Jordan and moves back to the Midwest. He reflects that just as Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was corrupted by money and dishonesty, the American dream of happiness and individualism is over.

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COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the texts on pages 285-286 and answer the following questions. 1

How does the character of Gatsby develop through the story? The protagonist of the novel, James Gatz, comes from a humble midwestern family. He makes every effort to rise above poverty, he even changes his name into

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Jay Gatsby. While in the army, he falls in love with Daisy, who, though returning Jay’s love, eventually marries Tom Buchanan, a wealthy, arrogant man. Gatsby later makes a fortune in some illegal way. He then rents a magnificent mansion on the less fashionable shore of Long Island, just on the opposite side of the bay to Daisy’s house; there he gives fabulous parties. Gatsby is presented as a mysterious character, since he seldom takes part in the parties he organises. Rich and attractive, with some secret hidden in his past, he has the stature of a romantic hero who dies for his dream; but he also embodies the self-made man who tries to recreate the past through the power of money and is destroyed in the end. What kind of relationship does he have with Daisy? Thanks to Nick Carraway – Gatsby’s neighbour and Daisy’s cousin –, Daisy and Jay meet again and begin an affair. One day Daisy has a fight with her husband and, while driving back with Gatsby, she accidentally runs over Tom’s mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who dies. Myrtle’s husband finds out that the car which killed her is Gatsby’s, so he shoots him in his pool. Daisy reconciles with her husband. What is the role of Nick Carraway? He is both an observer and a participant in the novel. He is the only character to show and hold on to a sense of morals and decency. Nick can be seen as representing the outsider that Fitzgerald felt himself to be, and is also linked to the theme of the contrast between East and West. He comes from the West and returns to it at the end of the novel. Through him, Fitzgerald shows his fondness for the West, which he idealised as being more moral than the East. What is Daisy’s personality like? She is very moody, theatrical and impulsive; she is characterised by meanness of spirit, carelessness and absence of loyalty. What is Fitzgerald’s narrative technique? Nick Carraway is the narrator from whose point of view all the events and characters of the story are presented. Nick is a retrospective narrator who, after going through an experience, looks back on it with a better understanding. Fitzgerald rejects chronological order and uses the fragmentation of time and frequent flashbacks to represent the inner world of his characters and to show the way knowledge is normally acquired in real life. How is American life described in the novel? The Great Gatsby contains many insights and criticisms of American life in the Jazz Age. The Americanness of the novel is emphasised by such themes as the move from West to East; the confrontation between the romantic ideals

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The Great Gatsby

of courage, honour and beauty, and the corrupt world of greed and money; the relationship between Gatsby’s material achievements and the myth of going ‘from rags to riches’; the tremendous growth of the car industry; the corrupting effects of Prohibition; the poverty of spiritual life in America during its most hedonistic decade.

about ‘bonds or insurance or automobiles’ (line 5), he feels purposeless and alone (line 11), he is embarrassed (line 12), he feels he has to attach himself to someone (line 15), he feels unnatural (line 17). Later on he begins to relax and enjoy himself, especially because he has been drinking champagne (lines 69-70), but he is again embarrassed when he fails to recognise Gatsby (line 88) Highlighted in green: the topics of conversation at Gatsby’s party Highlighted in light blue: what people do at the party: they talk, gossip, walk in the garden, laugh, drink, dance, sing, do stunts Highlighted in pink: description of Jordan Baker. She looks at the people around her in a contemptuous way (lines 13-14), she responds to Nick’s address absently (line 18) and holds his hand impersonally (lines 20-21), she is a golf player but has lost her latest tournament (line 23), her arm is slender and golden (line 27) Underlined in blue: gradual introduction of the character of Gatsby Red dots: references to the moon

COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

3 USE the pictures on the right to explain two of the main symbols in the novel.

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The Modern Age

Picture 2: Gatsby’s house is at the same time real and symbolic: carefully described in its various rooms and acres of garden, it celebrates Gatsby’s luck and success during the parties, but embodies his melancholy and loneliness when it is empty. Picture 3: The car is another symbolic image in the novel, which stands for the destructive power of modern society and money.

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Nick meets Gatsby Francis Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

From Text to Screen: The Great Gatsby Photocopiable lesson on page 277. Teacher’s key on page 293. VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a caption to describe the content of each section. Part 1 (lines 1-11) Nick goes to Gatsby’s party. Part 2 (lines 12-39) Nick joins Jordan Baker at the party and they meet various people. Part 3 (lines 40-57) Rumours about Gatsby’s past. Part 4 (lines 58-71) Description of the big party. Part 5 (lines 72-102) Nick finally meets Gatsby.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in yellow: description of Nick’s appearance, mood and feelings. We are given few details about his appearance; Fitzgerald tells us only how he is dressed (line 1) and insists on his sensations and feelings. At the beginning of the party, Nick does not feel at ease because he does not know anybody (lines 1-2) and is struck by wealthy businessmen talking (he presumes)

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How does Nick compare to the other people at the party? He is obviously an outsider, he does not belong to the vacuous world surrounding Gatsby and feels displaced. The reader also perceives a core of honesty and moral firmness in Nick. What method does Fitzgerald use to introduce the character of Gatsby? To what effect? What sort of man is he? What does Nick think of him? Gatsby is introduced in an indirect way through Nick’s gradual awareness of him. First of all through Nick’s acquaintance with his house: when he steps onto Gatsby’s vast lawn, he enters his world (line 1). He finds that most of the people there do not know Gatsby and even spread rumours about him. In this way Fitzgerald creates a halo of mystery and romanticism around Gatsby’s figure (lines 43-57). Nick is told that Gatsby was a German spy during the war and that he even killed a man. Nick finally meets Gatsby, who introduces himself and invites Nick to fly on his hydroplane with him. It is important to highlight the insistence on Gatsby’s way of speaking and his smile: his speech is absurdly formal and his smile is rare in its self-assurance. The narrator also hints at Gatsby’s age (line 68) and at his elegance. The reader gets the impression that Gatsby has created his own identity from personal romanticism based on typical social behaviour. In other words, he has created a role for himself and the role has

Teaching tip The presentation Ernest Hemingway in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 111-112: A Farewell to Arms Teacher’s key on page 392. Text Bank 113: The Old Man and the Sea Teacher’s key on page 393.

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

4 WRITE 10-12 lines to describe the mood of the American society of the Twenties presented in the text. Gatsby’s party is like a great public festival. The people act as if they were at an amusement park and lounge here and there sometimes without even meeting the host. There are buffets with plenty of good food to eat, alcohol to drink and an orchestra playing jazz. Guests who have met before do not even remember each other, and impersonality is the dominant attitude. There is laughter without amusement, enthusiasm between strangers. The effect is that of a gigantic and somehow absurd gesture of ‘the good life’ which will be replaced by the reality of the following Monday. All these elements reflect, on the one hand, the economic prosperity and general feeling of euphoria that characterised the American society of the ‘Roaring Twenties’, when the economy grew quickly, new industries flourished, and a new taste for experimentation in music, dance and fashion became widespread. On the other hand, they bring to light the moral sterility, superficial hedonism and contradictions which also marked the Jazz Age and were especially evident among young people. 7

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COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

5 DISCUSS. 1

1 READ the texts and answer the following

How important are dreams and illusions in life? Do you think it is possible to devote a whole life to fulfilling a desire? Student’s activity. In this passage the author describes one of Gatsby’s ‘dazzling parties’. Do you often go to or give parties? If so, what kind of parties? Do you think they are a good way of meeting people or just a good opportunity to keep to oneself among a crowd? Student’s activity.

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How did Hemingway spend his childhood? He had a very active childhood hunting and fishing in the Great Lakes region with his father, boxing or playing rugby. What did he master while working as a journalist for the Kansas City Star? He mastered the rigorous rules of ‘pure objective writing’, characterised by declarative sentences without any unnecessary words or clichés. What did he experience during World War I? He joined the Red Cross as an ambulance driver in 1918. On his journey to the Italian front he stopped in Paris, which was under constant bombardment from German artillery. He did not want to stay in the relative safety of his hotel, but tried to get as close to combat as possible. In the same year he was wounded by a mortar fragment in Italy; the Italian government later presented him with a medal for dragging a wounded Italian soldier to safety in spite of his own injuries. Which prizes was he awarded? The Old Man and the Sea (1952) won him the 1953 Pulitzer Prize in fiction, and in 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature; this was the high point of his literary career, which ensured his legacy for future generations. What is life identified with in his novels? It is identified with a codified set of actions which gives man the measure of his control over events. Beyond these actions there is nothingness and death. Which are the main features of his heroes? The ‘Hemingway hero’, who remains basically the same from book to book, is an outdoorsman but he is not primitive; he is extremely sensitive to the chaotic world he lives in and the pain it inflicts; he wishes he were braver, but he does the best he can in stressful circumstances. In contrast to this kind of action hero is the ‘code hero’, so-called because he is able to live

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6.23 Ernest Hemingway

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replaced the self. Gatsby’s smile symbolises the basic quality of the ‘Gatsby dream’ and the romanticism of the American dream itself. What does the moon symbolise in the text? The moon seems artificially placed by a caterer as a decoration for the party. Traditionally a Romantic symbol of imagination, it is here reduced to a parody of its dreamy quality.

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up to standards beyond the reach of ordinary human beings. He is honourable and extremely courageous; he cannot overcome the forces he confronts but he provides an example of honourable behaviour by facing death or terrible danger with dignity. What is his language like? His style is dry and essential, characterised by simple syntax, colloquial, concise dialogue and brief descriptions – often of landscapes. What was he fascinated with from boyhood? He was fascinated by death and particularly by suicide. Five of his seven completed novels end with the death of a male protagonist, while a sixth ends with the death of the heroine. Several short stories take a macabre approach to the subject. Why was his experience during the First World War so important? Hemingway’s injury on the Italian front during World War I was a traumatic event that provided a source for most of his writing. The compulsion to master the trauma can explain his necessity to test his courage by climbing into bullrings, hunting wild game and facing enemy fire during subsequent wars. He put himself at risk and was often injured.

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A Farewell to Arms 1

7.7 LISTEN and complete the plot and the setting of A Farewell to Arms with the missing information. 1 ambulance driver; 2 Italian front; 3 nurse; 4 Milan hospital; 5 being wounded; 6 retreat; 7 attack; 8 desert; 9 pregnant; 10 birth.

TRANSCRIPT This novel is the story of an American ambulance driver, Lieutenant Frederick Henry, on the Italian front during World War I. He falls in love with a beautiful English nurse, Catherine Barkley, whom he meets again in a Milan hospital where he is sent after being wounded. On his return to the front he finds himself in the middle of the retreat of the Italian army after the German attack at Caporetto. Eventually Frederick decides to desert the army, since all he wants is to be with Catherine. She is pregnant, so the two escape across Lake Maggiore to Switzerland, where she finally dies after giving birth to a dead child. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the text and answer the following questions. 1

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Where does the novel take place? It takes place on the Italian front during World War I.

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Who is the protagonist of this novel? Frederick Henry, an American who volunteers for the Italian ambulance service before the United States joins the war. He is the classic Hemingway hero: he does his duty without complaint and thinks that men should be free from passion. However, he undergoes an extraordinary transformation in the course of the novel. At the beginning he believes that war is dreadful but necessary and has a lust for adventure, drinking and women. Later he becomes intensely pessimistic about the war and realises that his love for Catherine is the only thing he is ready to commit himself to. He is full of noble ideas when he joins the army, but his experience during the war shakes his beliefs in Church, State, patriotism and love. What are the most important themes? War and love. War is presented as something inevitable. Against the backdrop of war, Hemingway offers a profound meditation on the nature of love. Henry and Catherine find temporary happiness and relief from suffering in each other. The lieutenant’s understanding of how meaningful his love for Catherine is overwhelms any consideration about abstract ideals such as honour, enabling him to escape from the war and return to her. The tragedy of the novel rests in the fact that their love can only be temporary in this world. The notions of loyalty and desertion can be applied both to love and war. The novel, however, suggests that loyalty is linked more to a personal need of love and friendship than to the grand political causes and abstract philosophies of battling nations. What is Hemingway’s narrative technique? The technique of the first-person narrator: it is the protagonist who tells his story, gradually discovering meaning in the events he experiences. What language does he employ? The language employed is simple and straightforward but requires the active participation of the reader for a true understanding, since the meaning of the story is revealed through suggestions, omissions and frequent use of free direct speech.

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There is nothing worse than war Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words and phrases with their meaning. 1 wiped; 2 cupped; 3 leaned over; 4 swallow; 5 shelter; 6 swiftly; 7 shut up.

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2 Complete the table about the different attitudes to war expressed by the characters. Character: Henry. What he says about war: War would not finish if one side stopped fighting (line 1); ‘Defeat is worse’ (line 4); the enemies would take possession of the home and the sisters of the defeated, they would hang them and oblige them to be soldiers in their armies (lines 6, 9-10); the Italian soldiers know nothing about being conquered, that is why they think it would not be bad (line 14); war is bad but they must finish it (line 19). Attitude to war: They must get the war over by fighting against the enemies and winning them; his attitude is idealistic. Character: Passini. What he says about war: ‘There is nothing worse than war’ (line 3); defeat is nothing but going back home (line 5); the enemies cannot take the homes and the sisters of all the defeated, nor hang all the defeated soldiers (lines 7-8, 11); war is made by all those people who are afraid of their officers (lines 15-18); ‘There is no finish to a war’ (line 20); war is not won by victory, but it ends when one side stops fighting (lines 23-27); everybody hates war (lines 29-30); the class that controls the country wants this war for stupidity (line 34). Attitude to war: Surrendering is the solution to the atrocities of war; his attitude is realistic. Character: Manera. What he says about war: An outside nation cannot make the defeated be soldiers in its army (line 12). Attitude to war: He does not accept this war; his attitude is realistic. 3 Underline the place reached by the soldiers in lines 42-51. ‘the main dressing station’ (line 46), that is, the place where emergency treatment is given to soldiers injured in battle.

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2 Define the role of the narrator. Is he inside or outside the story? He is inside the story. 3 Who is the narrator? C Both. 4 Focus on the use of free direct speech in the first section. State how this technique is achieved. What is the effect conveyed? It is achieved through the lack of introductory verbs. B Realism. 5 Concentrate on the last part, the climax of the extract, and explain how the bombing attack is described. How is the narrator able to increase the tension? The bombing attack is described in details and in a glittering way. The narrator is able to increase the tension through a matter-of-fact, detailed, shocking description and through the Italian soldier’s invocations. 6 Bear in mind that the whole extract takes place at night, in the dark. Yet, light breaks the darkness four times in the last part, revealing something important. 1 Find the words connected with light, the nature of this light and what it reveals. Words connected with light

Nature of the light

What it reveals

‘search-lights’ (lines 42-43).

They were mounted on camions (lines 43-45).

The lines (lines 42-45).

‘a light’ (line 48).

The artificial light inside the dressing station (lines 46-48).

The presence of board tables, instruments, basins and bottles (lines 49-50).

‘a flash’ (line 53). The light of a bomb explosion, ‘that started white and went red’ (lines 52-55).

The devastating effects of the explosion on everything and everyone (lines 55-61).

3 READ the rest of the text again (lines 52-88). 1 Answer the following questions. 1 What did Henry see and hear all of a sudden? He saw a ‘flash’ and heard a ‘cough’, then ‘the chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh’ and a ‘roar’ (lines 52-55). 2 How did he feel? He could not breathe and felt himself ‘rush bodily out’ of himself (lines 55-58). 3 What had happened to the other ambulance driver, Passini? His legs were both ‘smashed above the knee’ and he was near dying (lines 65-68). Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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1 Note down the setting in time and place. It is night (‘It was dark’, line 42); the characters are in the trenches on the Italian front during WWI – there are ‘mountains’ (line 43) and a road ‘close behind the lines’ (line 44-45).

What did the Italian soldier beg Henry to do? He begged Henry to shoot him in order to stop his pain (lines 68-71). Why was there no need to help Passini? Because he was already dead (lines 78-80). Where had Henry been hurt? He had been hurt on his knee (lines 82-84). What happened to him at the end? Someone took hold of him under the arms and somebody else lifted his legs (lines 8788).

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2 READ lines 1-51 again and do the following

In the dark the light goes up and floats whitely (lines 61-65).

The star-shells lighting the sky intermittently (lines 62-63).

‘another floating light’ (line 85).

It came from the Henry’s hell outside. wounded (lines 85-86).

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Passini’s injuries (lines 63-72).

A simile is used in lines 53-54. Find it and explain what feeling it conveys. The simile compares the flash of the bomb explosion to a blast-furnace door that is swung open. It conveys a feeling of destruction and death and points out the quality of this destruction, which is linked to fire and hell.

7 Underline all the words and phrases referring to the five senses employed to describe the explosion, which is experienced by Henry from the inside. Sight: ‘flash’ (line 53); ‘started white and went red’ (line 54); ‘The ground was torn up’ (line 59); ‘a splintered beam of wood’ (line 59); ‘the starshells go up’ (line 62); ‘float whitely and rockets going up’ (lines 62-63); ‘I saw in the dark and the light’ (line 66); ‘another floating light’ (line 85). Hearing: ‘I heard a cough’ (line 53); ‘the chuhchuh-chuh-chuh’ (line 53); ‘a roar’ (line 54); ‘rushing wind’ (line 55); ‘bodily in the wind’ (line 56); ‘somebody crying’ (line 60); ‘somebody was screaming’ (line 60); ‘I heard the machine-guns and rifles firing’ (line 61); ‘heard the bombs’ (line 63); ‘I heard […] some one saying’ (lines 63-64); ‘screamed’ (line 66); ‘moaned’ (line 69); ‘choking’ (line 71); ‘quiet’ (lines 72, 75); ‘shouted’ (line 73). Smell: ‘I tried to breathe’ (line 55); ‘breath’ (line 55); ‘I breathed’ (line 58). Taste: ‘He bit his arm’ (line 68). Touch: ‘I floated’ (line 58); ‘a great splashing’ (line 62); ‘touched him’ (line 65). 1 Which sense(s) predominate(s)? Sight and hearing. 2 Henry then turns his attention to the outside. What causes this shift in his attention? Passini’s screaming. At first we read ‘I thought somebody was screaming’ (line 60), then Henry comes back to reality in lines 63-64 when he ‘heard close to [him] some one saying “Mama Mia!”’, becoming aware of Passini’s terrible pain next to him. 3 What has he experienced at the end of the text? Do you think he could change his attitude to war because of that? He has experienced suffering and death. Yes, he could leave his ideals of ‘getting the war over’.

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COMPETENCE: CONTRASTING AUTHORS AND TEXTS

4 DISCUSS. Compare and contrast Ernest Hemingway’s description of this bomb explosion to the gas attack in Dulce et Decorum Est (→ T88) by the poet Wilfred Owen as regards the soldier’s mood, the attitude to war, the imagery and the message. Student’s speaking activity.

6.24 Langston Hughes Teaching tip The presentation Langston Hughes in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 115: I, too, sing America Teacher’s key on page 397. Text Bank 116: The Negro Speaks of Rivers Teacher’s key on page 397. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ about Hughes’s life and works and summarise them using a factfile. Student’s activity. Suggestion: Born: In Joplin, Missouri, in 1902. Education: He graduated from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, in 1929. His mother’s and grandmother’s influence: His mother taught him the things she liked: art, poetry and theatre. His grandmother helped him develop a sense of his ethnic heritage, telling him stories about the days of slavery. His teachers’ influence: They encouraged him to read; he began to write verse. Readings: They included almost everything, from fiction to philosophy. Job experiences: A job on a farm; he went to sea as a mess boy aboard a trading freight ship bound for Africa; he worked as a cook and a waiter in Paris; he worked as a busboy in the USA, clearing away dishes at the Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, D.C. Collections of poems: The Weary Blues (1926), Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), Shakespeare in Harlem (1942). Reputation: He was one of the most prolific American writers of the 20th century, internationally known as a poet. He contributed greatly to the Harlem Renaissance.

Death: In 1967. His funeral service was held in a Harlem funeral house with a musical accompaniment by a jazz band.

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The Weary Blues Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues

LITERARY COMPETENCE

2 READ the rest of the text and answer the

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VOCABULARY

1 READ the poem and match the highlighted words with their meaning. 1 mellow; 2 raggy; 3 Swaying; 4 drowsy; 5 Weary; 6 crooned; 7 Rocking; 8 moan; 9 rickety; 10 Droning. 7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the poem again and make notes about: 1

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the setting in time and place; ‘night’ (lines 4, 31), ‘Down on Lenox Avenue’ (line 4): it is a nightclub on one of the most famous streets in Harlem. the character; A black man (lines 3, 18). what he is doing; He is playing the piano and singing the blues (lines 8, 10, 13, 18). what his song is about; It is about his troubles and his solitude (lines 19-22, 25-30). the effect his song has on him. Relief (lines 21-22). COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

3 IDENTIFY the lines corresponding to the following. 1 2

A blues song Lines 19-22, 25-30. The description of the piano-player Lines 1-3, 6-10, 12-13, 17-18, 23-24, 31, 33-35.

4 FOCUS on the use of rhyme, repetition, alliteration and onomatopoeia. Provide examples from the text. Rhyme: The lines rhyme but they do not follow a regular pattern. Repetition: lines 6-7, 11, 16, 19-20, 23, 25-28. Alliteration: ‘d’ (line 1), ‘p’ (lines 5, 10), ‘m’ (line 10), ‘s’ (lines 12, 24, 33), ‘f’ (line 23). Onomatopoeia: ‘sway’/‘Swaying’ (lines 6-7, 12), ‘thump’ (line 23).

5 TICK as appropriate. The poem is a description of the mood characterising the blues.

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What did Hughes and Whitman have in common? Both poets: wanted to share the common man’s experience and to become his spokesman; saw America as a nation in progress and approached the writing of the poems in a non-traditional way – they were free in the choice of their subjects and wrote about matters traditionally thought unsuitable for poetry; believed in the ‘American dream’; felt they were performing a function beyond mere entertainment and intended to change the world through it – this is why, in their poetry, they chose to speak through a mask, an ‘I’, that was not individual but collective. How did they differ? Hughes’s poems show his will to break down the rigid distinction between poetry and prose, but he did not go as far as Whitman in this direction. Moreover, in his use of a ‘mask’, Hughes did not merge with the external world in general, but with his ethnic group, becoming the poet of the black masses. What did Hughes choose to deal with in his poetry? He chose to go back to the roots of blackness, to deal with its conflicts and contradictions, drawing from the folk tradition of the people: the spiritual as it was born in the South, and its modification into the blues under the influence of urban life. What did he regard as a paradigm of the black experience? Why? Jazz music because it was dynamic, developing and moving. With its free and easy construction, its invitation to joy and the uninhibited movements of the body, it represented rebellion in a puritanical society, the vision of an alternative way of life. What did Harlem represent in his poetry? It summed up all his themes: a temple of jazz, a refuge of the black masses fleeing the South, a living incarnation of the great dream of freedom and equality in which the poet never ceased to believe. How did he face the question of racial identity? He first looked to Africa, which became a symbol of lost roots, of a distant past that could not be retrieved, a myth which led the poet to an evaluation of his American roots. Then he exalted the colour of his skin as ‘beautiful’, expressing the strong will to preserve and exalt the characteristics of his people, together with the necessity for black writers to search for black aesthetics.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

following questions. 1

6 COMPLETE the table with the objects mentioned in the poem and the adjectives referring to them which reflect the singer’s feelings. Then answer the question below. Objects

Adjectives

‘gas light’ (line 5)

‘pale dull [pallor]’, ‘old’ (line 5)

‘key’ (line 9) ‘piano’ (line 10)

‘ivory’ (line 9) ‘poor’ (line 10), ‘old’ (line 18)

‘stool’ (line 12)

‘rickety’ (line 12)

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Modern Age

How is the setting connoted? It is old and bare; it reflects the singer’s melancholy and weariness.

7 FIND examples of the use of contrast in the

American poets you have studied and say if any of them influenced Hughes’s poetry. Give reasons for your answer. Student’s speaking activity. Students should point out similarities with Whitman’s work.

6.25 John Steinbeck Teaching tip The presentation John Steinbeck in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 117: The Grapes of Wrath Teacher’s key on page 398.

1 8 POINT out the linguistic techniques used by the poet to reproduce Black speech. Use of slang: ‘ain’t’ (lines 19-20, 29), ‘ma’ (lines 20-22), ‘I’s gwine to’ (line 21), omission of the subject, elision (lines 19-20, 27-28).

Underline the words and phrases referring to his actions and say what their common feature is. How would you define his mood? Lines 1-3, 6-7, 10, 12-13, 18, 23-24, 31, 33, 35. He is tired and desperate but he has a reserve of strength, which is felt in the ‘thump’ of his foot.

10 EXPLAIN in what sense singing the blues is a cathartic experience. The turbulence of the singer’s emotions is released in the song. He expresses his weariness in the blues and finds the strength to go on living.

11 DISCUSS the main features of Hughes’s poetry as regards: 1

2 3

style; He did not write in a traditional way and tried to break down the distinction between poetry and prose; he chose to speak through a mask, an ‘I’, to become the poet of the black masses; he chose to draw from the spiritual and its modification into the blues music. themes; The conflicts and contradictions of blackness; the question of racial identity. the poet’s attitude. He identified with his people and wanted to become their spokesman.

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COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

12 DISCUSS. Consider the works of other

poem. ‘ebony hands’ / ‘ivory key’ (line 9), ‘moan’ / ‘melody’ (line 10), ‘Weary Blues’ / ‘Sweet Blues’ (lines 8, 14).

9 FOCUS on the figure of the black singer.

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7.10 LISTEN to a radio programme about John Steinbeck’s life and works and complete the text. 1 California; 2 degree; 3 Great Depression; 4 his stories; 5 commitment; 6 migrant workers; 7 work camp; 8 financially successful; 9 radical social.

TRANSCRIPT John Steinbeck was born in 1902 in Salinas, California. He left university without a degree in 1925 to start his writing career in New York but soon went back to California. His first work, Cup of Gold (1929), is a novel based upon the life of Sir Henry Morgan, the buccaneer. During the Great Depression he published The Pastures of Heaven (1932) and To a God Unknown (1933), and several of his stories, including The Red Pony, appeared in the North American Review. Tortilla Flat, published in 1935, brought him to public attention while Of Mice and Men (1937) became a nationwide success. Steinbeck decided to stick to his intellectual commitment and to embark on a trip from Oklahoma to California with a group of migrant workers. He lived and worked with them in a work camp in California and this experience provided the inspiration for his next novel, The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Its publication made him financially successful but also created great controversy. Steinbeck was denounced in Congress for his radical social criticism and Transcendentalist views. His production after World War II included the novels Cannery Row (1945), The Wayward Bus (1947) and East of Eden (1952). Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 and died in 1968.

The Grapes of Wrath

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the following questions. What does the title of the novel symbolise? The grapes of the title symbolise the promised land of California, which turns out to be a disillusionment. So the grapes of hope turn into the grapes of wrath, or anger. Where is the novel set? The setting of the novel is vast: it includes a large part of Oklahoma, portions of other States, and a large area of California. The journey westward of the Joad family covers seven States: Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. In what sense can the novel be regarded as a historical document? Because it portrays the harsh realities of the Great Depression and the nature of equality and justice in America. How are Tom and Jim mutually connected? Their destinies cross from the beginning until the end when Jim dies and Tom takes up his mission. They are both devoted to helping others, fighting injustice and giving back dignity and respect to migrant workers. What traditional device of American literature does Steinbeck use and what is his aim? He uses the traditional American device of the journey as a quest for a better land. However, California is already corrupted and tyrannical. Its inhabitants have a hypocritical attitude towards the immigrants. On the one hand, they abuse people like the Joads; on the other hand, they want to exploit their labour as much as possible. What are the main themes of the novel? The idea that people are more important than things; the conflict between the tendency to respond to hardship and disaster by focusing on one’s own needs, and the impulse to risk one’s safety by working for a common good; the family and the idea of brotherhood having a saving power; the importance of preserving self-respect in order to survive spiritually. How is the story told? It is told by an anonymous narrator who sympathises with the workers, the poor and the dispossessed in general. There are shifts between different points of view. In some chapters the narrator describes and analyses historical events summarising the experiences of a large number of people. In other chapters he assumes the voice of a typical individual who expresses his own personal concerns. The chapters dealing with the Joad family are narrated mainly from an objective point of view, as if an observer might witness their

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T112

From fear to anger John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a caption to describe the content of each section. Part 1 (lines 1-19) Description of the change in the weather conditions, the rain and its effects on the land. Part 2 (lines 20-32) How the rain affects the poor people’s lives. Part 3 (lines 33-66) Description of the migrants’ despair and the rise of anger. Part 4 (lines 67-82) The rain stops, fear definitively turns into anger, the men begin to assemble.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in yellow: description of the rain, which fell steadily and incessantly until it finally stopped Highlighted in green: reaction of the earth: at first it ‘drank the rain’ but when it was full, it began to let it out. When the rain stopped, the earth ‘whispered’. The earth is personified Highlighted in light blue: the action of the rain. It caused a flood: it formed puddles and lakes in the fields, the streams overflew their banks and the water flooded the highways. It also flooded the migrants’ tents, and the beds and blankets got wet. The water spoilt the cars Highlighted in orange: the effects of the rain on the migrants: at first they tried to protect themselves and waited, but then they had to move away carrying the children and the old in their arms Highlighted in pink: the migrants’ feelings: from hopelessness and sadness, to fear and terror, and to anger and wrath Underlined in blue: use of a language that reproduces the one spoken by the common people of Oklahoma

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1 READ about The Grapes of Wrath and answer

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COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

experiences. As a whole Steinbeck describes his characters from the outside, so that he creates types rather than individuals. What is the real meaning of wrath? Wrath is directed at those who abuse power. It arises when one person chooses greed over equality, and it grows anytime self-interest wins over compassion. Wrath is in equal parts revenge and justice.

landowners treat the migrants like animals. They are shuffled from one filthy roadside camp to the next, denied liveable wages, and forced to turn against fellow humans simply to survive. In this context the family and the idea of brotherhood have a saving power – it is not genetics but loyalty and commitment to one another that establishes true kinship.

3 DO the following activities in pairs. 1

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What were the terrible consequences of the flood on the poor people’s lives? They had no food (line 39), they fell ill (lines 40-41), they started to beg for food, to steal and to lie (lines 45-47, 51-52, 58-59). What was the attitude of the wealthy people towards the migrants? They felt pity at first, then distaste and finally hatred (lines 60-61). What change took place in the migrants’ attitude? Complete the diagram below. They sat and waited (lines 20-21); they went to the relief offices and came back sadly (line 33); they began to beg for food, to steal and to lie (lines 45-47, 51-52, 58-59); the hunger and the fear bred anger (line 58), and anger turned into wrath (lines 78-80). What does the rain symbolise? It represents both a damaging force that threatens to wash away the few possessions of poor people, and a power of renewal in so far as despair turns into a positive form of reaction. The migrants, in fact, helped one another and decided to organise themselves (lines 77-78). Why did the women sigh with relief? Because they realised that their men had reacted instead of giving up. The value of human life is raised by Steinbeck above hardship. The connection between rage and dignity is clear: as long as man can keep the sense of injustice, he will never run the risk of losing his dignity.

COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

5 DISCUSS. Can you see any links between the historical and economic situation described by Steinbeck and today’s economic crisis? Who are the ‘Okies’ nowadays? Student’s activity. Extra Activity

1 DISCUSS in pairs. What does the word ‘ghost’ make you think of? Students’ activity.

2 ANSWER these questions. Have you ever listened to this song by Bruce Springsteen? If so, can you tell your classmates about the sensations it communicated to you? Student’s activity.

3 READ the text of the song and answer the

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

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4 WRITE an essay of 200 words to explain how

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Steinbeck describes the historical event of the Great Depression. Steinbeck devotes many lines to the description of the setting, and presents his characters from the outside rather than providing psychological insights, so that he creates types rather than individuals. The overall effect of this text is a documentary rendering of a crucial historical event and the suffering it implied. Steinbeck consistently points to the fact that the migrants’ great suffering is caused not so much by bad weather or mere misfortune, but by the selfishness of their fellow human beings. He denounces the historical, social and economic circumstances which separate people into rich and poor, landowners and tenants – where the people in the dominant roles struggle viciously to preserve their positions. In the text shown, the local town is willing to spend money on extra deputies to enforce the law but not on food to relieve the starving families of the migrants. Steinbeck shows vividly how the California

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following questions. Who are the first characters introduced? Some men walking along the railroad tracks (line 1). What can be seen in the distance over the hill? Some highway patrol choppers (line 3). What sort of world is depicted in the second stanza? The poor world of the Southwest. Whom is the speaking voice searching for? The ghost of Tom Joad (lines 12, 24, 36). What details are you given about the story of Tom Joad in the fourth stanza? Tom Joad probably met a preacher and had problems with the law. What are Tom’s qualities? He was ready to help all the people in trouble or in need.

4 FIND out what features of the traditional ballad are present in this song. This song deals with a dramatic story of which few details are given; there is a mixture of dialogue and narration, an extensive use of alliteration, the repetition of some words, the use of a refrain (the third stanza is repeated in the middle and at the end of the ballad, with a slight variation in the last line).

to fight harder than a man for their position? Student’s activity. The question is designed for the students to begin to focus on the role of women in their own world.

5 STATE what the people presented in this ballad might be symbols of. • •

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Men walking (line 1): Wanderers. Families sleeping in their cars (line 7): Emigrants looking for a better life in a new country. The preacher (line 14): Religion.

Gains in women’s rights haven’t made women happier. Why is that? COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A JOURNALISTIC TEXT

6 SAY what Tom Joad stands for. He stands for the defender of the oppressed.

1 READ the article and find the adjectives which 1 comparable; 2 declining; 3 surprising; 4 industrialised; 5 miserable; 6 working; 7 ambitious; 8 optimistic; 9 depressing.

8 READ about John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath and collect information about Woody Guthrie’s ballad Tom Joad (1940). Look for similarities and differences with Springsteen’s song and discuss the results of your research with your classmates. Student’s activity. Suggestion: Students should point out that Guthrie’s and Springsteen’s songs share an element of social activism and references to The Grapes of Wrath’s main character. However, Springsteen should be thought of as more of a lyrical Steinbeck. His album, a more acoustic-styled collection of tunes rather than his normal rock ’n’ roll fare, is supported by guitar, piano and harmonica.

ESAME DI STATO: SECONDA PROVA

2 COMPREHENSION AND INTERPRETATION

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Topic 6 Women in the world

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COMPETENCE: CONNECTING PICTURES TO TOPICS AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

1 LOOK at the pictures and read the quotes below. Discuss in small groups. How has the condition of women changed since the beginning of the 20th century? What was it like to be a woman before the First World War? How did society’s view of women change? Students’ activity. Expected answers will concentrate on the limited role of women as wives, mothers and homemakers before WWI, and on the new role they have gradually taken on throughout the 20th century as economically independent workers.

2 DISCUSS. Do you think equality is a natural consequence of equal education or is it something that has to be fought for? Think of the world leaders and say how many women you can name. Do you think they had Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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Answer the following questions by using complete sentences and your own words. Why is it surprising that women are outliving men? It is surprising because women have to face higher levels of poverty and are more at risk of sexual violence and discrimination in general than men. What is the paradox referred to at the beginning of the second paragraph? The ‘paradox of declining female happiness’ is that women have gained increasing political, economic and social rights but these improvements are not reflected in a greater feeling of contentment. What did the economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers discover in their analysis? They discovered that American women felt happier in the Seventies than they did in 2005, whereas American men’s level of satisfaction has remained constant. Which improvements in women’s rights were made law in the USA in the Seventies? Examples of laws that improved women’s rights in the Seventies were: a law making credit discrimination on the grounds of sexuality illegal in 1974; a law making it illegal to exclude women from juries in 1975; and a law making marital rape a crime in 1976. How did the massive rise in incarceration rates affect women, according to the article? According to the article, the increased number of men sent to jail affected the marriage market as there were fewer possible male partners for unmarried women to choose from, and many wives had to carry on living on their own without the support of their husband.

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light of what you have read, do you think this ballad is up-to-date? Students’ activity.

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derive from the following nouns.

7 DISCUSS with the rest of the class. In the

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Which statistic about African-American men in the 20 years between 1980 and 2000 is a shocking one? The shocking statistic is that in these 20 years there were more AfricanAmerican men in jail in the USA than in universities and colleges. According to the article, is women’s situation in the USA different to that in other countries? No, it is not. According to the article, the situation in other industrialised countries is similar. Stevenson and Wolfers found that in Europe, for example, the levels of perceived happiness for men and women over the same period were much the same as those recorded in the USA. What is meant by the ‘dual burden’ in the fifth paragraph and how does this affect women’s happiness? The ‘dual burden’ refers to the fact that working women have gained the right to a career but still have to do most of the housework and childcare in the home. This means that they are continuously tired and suffer from lack of sleep, which makes them more dissatisfied than their partners. How did women in the Seventies judge their role in life? Women in the Seventies judged their role in life according to how things were going at home without reflecting on other aspects of life, such as work or economic independence, as they had far simpler and less optimistic expectations in terms of gender equality. What is the article’s theory about why women in liberal and industrialised communities are not as satisfied? The conclusion in the article is that women in liberal and industrialised countries have gained greater equality and increased their expectations, which means they measure their happiness and satisfaction not just against other women but also against men. This leads to more dissatisfaction compared to women in more backward countries, who compare their position only to other women.

Woman’s Work TRACY CHAPMAN COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A SONG

1 EXPLAIN what is meant by ‘The woman’s work is never done’. This means that there is always something that the woman has to do in and out of the home whether it be cooking, cleaning, childcare or doing the shopping or any of the other many daily chores.

2 SAY what the singer is referring to by a ‘battle’. Using the word ‘battle’ implies that the woman is continually fighting to keep up with all she has to do and never manages to ‘win’ by completing everything.

3 IDENTIFY the warning in the song. The warning in the song is that if the woman does not slow down or give herself a break, she is likely to collapse or become ill (‘The woman better slow down / Or she’s gonna come down hard’).

4 GIVE your opinion on the following. Student’s activity. Suggestion: •

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‘no one on her side’ This points out the woman’s isolation. She has to do everything on her own as the other members of the family, children or partner, are unwilling to help. ‘better slow down’ This sounds like a piece of advice. The woman should remember to give herself a break, find some time for herself and relax despite all the things she has to do.

All those handkerchiefs MONICA ALI, Brick Lane COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A LITERARY TEXT

3 PRODUCTION Choose one of the following questions. Either 1 Are men and women treated equally in literature or are they given specific roles on gender lines? Write a 300-word essay with reference to texts you have read. Or 2 In the world around you, do you think men and women are regarded as equals in their work and in the home? Write a 300-word composition with reference to your own experience. Student’s writing activity.

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ESAME DI STATO: SECONDA PROVA

1 COMPREHENSION AND INTERPRETATION Answer the following questions by using complete sentences and your own words. 1

How do we know that it was difficult for Razia to talk to her husband about getting a job? We know it was not easy for her to talk to him about getting a job because she describes the way she made an effort to tell him ‘straight’ as though it was a challenge. She also tells Nazneen ‘straight on’ like an act of defiance.

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2 PRODUCTION Choose one of the following questions. Either 1 In today’s world more and more people are moving from their country of origin and seeking a new life in another country. Think of the possible problems of integration they may face in their adopted countries. Write a 300-word essay with reference to any novels, plays or poems dealing with the issue of immigration. Or 2 We live in an increasingly multi-cultural community where different races and ethnic minorities live in close contact. The cultural interaction brings difficulties of integration but also richness in widening our knowledge and culture. Write a 300-word composition with reference to your own community and personal experience. Student’s writing activity. The essay should contain the student’s own views, as well as references to what they have studied in this section and references to any other reading (of fiction or non-fiction) that they may have done. The marks will reflect the student’s accuracy in the use of grammar and vocabulary, and they will also be awarded for good, well-expressed ideas and the organisation of the essay into clear paragraphs with an introduction, a logical development and a clear conclusion.

COMPETENCE: DEVELOPING CITIZENSHIP SKILLS

3 AFTER studying the topic, discuss your community’s attitude to women working. Are there professions which are seen as more suited to men or to women? Which are the jobs normally done by women or by men? Is it considered acceptable for men to stay at home and take on the duties of childcare, cooking and housework? Student’s activity.

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3

What comparison does Nazneen make between the attitude towards jobs in Britain and in Bangladesh? She says that in Bangladesh people accept their role, so that for example a sweetmaker is a sweetmaker and does not aspire to be something else like in Britain, where everyone is unhappy with their position and hopes for promotion. What have been the consequences of Jorina’s job, according to Mrs Islam? According to Mrs Islam, Jorina has brought shame on her husband by getting a job as this is interpreted in their community as showing that her husband was not earning enough to keep his family. It is, therefore, Jorina’s fault that her husband had to turn to other women for comfort and to prove his manhood. What is the community’s view on women working? From this conversation between Razia and Nazneen it is clear that the Bangladeshi community does not approve of women working as it is the husband’s responsibility to economically support his family and the woman’s place is in the background looking after the children and the home. What is Razia’s opinion of the community’s disapproval? She says she does not care about the community’s opinion as they do not ‘feed’ her nor ‘buy footballs’ for her son, so they do not have any right to judge her. What makes Razia smile? She smiles because she is thinking of the hypocrisy of Mrs Islam, who condemns Jorina for getting a job while she herself is working while pretending not to. What are the three supposed explanations of Mrs Islam’s thousand hankies? The first theory is that Mrs Islam uses the handkerchiefs to hide an ugly wart on her face. The second theory is that she was given the handkerchiefs by an ex-lover and uses them in memory of him. The third theory is linked to the superstitious belief that using handkerchiefs would help her shake off bad luck. What are the hankies really used for? The true reason for the handkerchiefs is that Mrs Islam uses them as signals to her husband. When he brings business associates to the house, she listens to their dealings and then gives her opinion through the handkerchiefs. A spotty handkerchief means no, a white one yes, a laceedged one means a one-year contract and a muslin one a two-year contract. Which expression is used in the text to show that Mrs Islam is the one who makes the important decisions? The expression used is ‘she pulled the strings’. What impression does the extract give of women’s roles in the Bangladeshi community? The impression is that they are expected to stay at home and look after their home, husband and family.

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Review

•

ONLINE Interactive exercises

The ZTE exercises can be employed to review the chapter. COMPETENCE: MASTERING USEFUL VOCABULARY

1 TRANSLATE into English the following words and phrases to talk about history.

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The Modern Age

1 supremacy at sea; 2 sickness benefits; 3 protest marches; 4 hunger strike; 5 blockade; 6 conscription; 7 war of attrition; 8 trenches; 9 barbed wire; 10 machine guns; 11 tanks; 12 shells; 13 infantry; 14 casualties; 15 retreat/ withdrawal; 16 shelters; 17 aircraft carriers; 18 code-breaking; 19 industrial output; 20 bootleggers. COMPETENCE: ORGANISING INFORMATION IN A CHART

2 COMPLETE the diagram below to sum up the main features of the Edwardian Age. The British Empire covered a fifth of the total land of the globe, British towns were the wealthiest in Europe and British ships carried 80 per cent of world trade. Æ King Edward signed an agreement with France in 1904, the Entente Cordiale. Æ A new Labour Representation Committee developed into the Labour Party in 1906. Æ The 1906 general election was won by the Liberals, who were divided into two groups: those who supported the traditional liberal values of laissez-faire and self-help, and those who supported New Liberalism. Æ The foundations of the Welfare State were laid down through a series of measures. Æ New forces came into play: the Suffragettes wanted women to have the vote and soon won massive publicity for their cause.

3 COMPLETE the table about the causes and consequences of World War I.

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Causes In 1914 a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the AustroHungarian throne, and his wife in Sarajevo. This event triggered a series of reactions: Austria began bombing Belgrade; the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, declared war on Russia and then on France; Germany invaded Belgium in order to attack France from an unexpected front before Russia or Britain could intervene;

Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

• •

•

• •

•

Britain, which had participated in the creation of Belgium in 1831 and had guaranteed its neutrality, now faced the threat of a commercial blockade due to the aggressive presence of the German navy in the North Sea and the Channel. So when Germany violated Belgian neutrality, Britain declared war. Consequences Warfare cost the Allies and the Germans about 260,000 casualties respectively. On 4th October 1918 Germany asked President Woodrow Wilson for an armistice which would bring about German withdrawal from occupied territory and allow national self-determination, but included no punishment for the country. Britain and France agreed for fear that American power might increase if war continued. On 11th November, at 11 o’clock, the guns fell silent and the day has forever been commemorated as Armistice Day. It was also called ‘Remembrance Day’ or ‘Poppy Day’. The peace treaty was signed at Versailles in 1919 by the Allied powers. The war left Britain in a disillusioned and cynical mood. The gap between the generation of the young and the older one, regarded as responsible for the terrible waste of lives during the war, grew wider and wider. An increasing feeling of rootlessness and frustration, due to the slow dissolution of the Empire into the Commonwealth, led to a transformation of the notions of imperial hegemony and white superiority.

4 COMPLETE the diagram about the ‘age of anxiety’ highlighting the new trends in ideas and philosophy. • •

•

•

•

Freud’s theories: emphasised the power of the unconscious to affect behaviour A new method of investigation of the human mind through the analysis of dreams and the concept of ‘free association’ Crisis of certainties Æ Jung’s concept of ‘collective unconscious’, a sort of cultural memory containing the universal images and beliefs of the human race, which operates on a symbolic level People responded to figures or object of the everyday world that had symbolic power unconsciously; only the psychologist or the poet could understand these symbols and archetypes and explain them Einstein’s theory of relativity Æ Distinction between: historical time and psychological time

5 EXPLAIN the key ideas linked to the inter-war years. Commonwealth: In 1926 an imperial conference created a new entity from the dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa with the name of ‘Commonwealth’. In 1931 the Statute of Westminster formally granted the sovereign right of each dominion to control its own domestic and foreign affairs and to establish its own diplomatic corps. The Irish Free State: In the 1918 election in Ireland, the Sinn Féin party won almost all the seats except in Ulster and set up an independent Parliament in Dublin – the Dáil – in 1919. The Irish Volunteers became the IRA (Irish Republican Army) and declared open war on Britain in 1920, under the leadership of Michael Collins. The IRA terrorist attacks were brutally met by ‘Black and Tan’ police auxiliaries, culminating with ‘Bloody Sunday’ in 1920, when the ‘Black and Tans’ shot 12 dead at a football match in Dublin. In 1921 an Anglo-Irish treaty established the Irish Free State, under the leadership of Eamon de Valera, as an independent State within the British Commonwealth. Only six counties centred on Protestant Ulster remained a self-governing province of the UK. In 1922 a civil war broke out in Ireland, and in 1923 the anti-Treaty faction was defeated. Depression and unemployment: The aftermath of WWI was marked by a world economic boom. However, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 dramatically affected life between the wars, since in the following year banks went bankrupt across Europe. The war had damaged Britain’s position as the biggest exporter of manufactured goods. Therefore, British customers had found new suppliers in South America and Asia. Working hours were cut, prices fell but the attempt to cut wages was resisted by the trade unions. There were miners’ strikes and a General Strike was called in 1926. The most urgent inter-war issue was unemployment and the gap between North and South took on a new dimension: the once powerful industrial North became depressed and challenged by new growing automobile, chemical and electrical goods industries in the South and the Midlands. Restoring demand to the iron and steel industries began with rearmament in 1936. Abdication: The popular young king, Edward VIII, who had succeeded his father George V, wanted to marry a twice divorced American woman. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin forced his abdication on the grounds that he could not marry her and keep the throne. The king’s brother succeeded as George VI (1936-52). Rearmament: The need for a strong Royal Air Force independent of the army and the navy led the British government to shift spending onto the RAF. At the same time a ship-building programme was funded aimed at a ‘two-ocean fleet’. COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

6 EXPLAIN the link between the people represented in the pictures. They are all connected with the Second World War: Benito Mussolini: In 1935 he attacked the African monarchy of Abyssinia and took the first steps towards an alliance with Germany. In 1943 the Allies landed in Sicily and a long fight up Italian territory began. In 1944 they entered Rome. Adolf Hitler: He invaded Austria in 1938 proclaiming its union with Germany and breaking the Treaty of Versailles. He occupied Prague in March 1939. In August he signed the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact with Stalin, and on 1st September he invaded Poland. Two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany. In 1940 Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark by sea and air. In the same year there was a sudden German attack on Holland and Belgium, while German tank corps were heading for Paris. In 1941 Hitler declared war on the Soviet Union as he wanted to get the oilfields in the Caucasus region. Sir Winston Churchill: He took over after British Prime Minister Chamberlain’s resignation in 1940. The British ordered the retreat of their troops to Dunkirk. In 1940 the Battle of Britain saw English and German bombers fighting in the skies above Sussex and Kent. The battle was won by Britain, but Hitler changed his strategy and ordered the ‘Blitz’. Franklin D. Roosevelt: In December 1941 Japan bombed the US fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. President Roosevelt declared war on Japan, and Germany declared war on America. Sir Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference: At the Yalta Conference in Crimea in February 1945, they made important decisions concerning the future progress of the war and the post-war world. The war ended in Europe on 8th May 1945 but it took another three months to defeat Japan in the Far East. Victory and the end of WWII came only with the explosion of two atomic bombs on the Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August.

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Anthropological studies helped undermine the absolute truth of religious and ethical systems in favour of more relativist standpoints Inability to arrive at a commonly accepted picture of man

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COMPETENCE: PROVIDING INFORMATION ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

8 TRACE the main features of the Great Depression including its causes. The Wall Street Clash in 1929 marked the end of the prosperous Twenties and the beginning of a worldwide economic crisis. Thousands of businessmen were ruined, and millions of common people who had invested their savings in shares found themselves facing debt and ruin. Factories shut down, banks crashed, goods were produced but no longer sold. Nearly 8 million Americans were unemployed in the 1930s and spent hours in ‘breadlines’, where they received free rations of food. In that period the Great Plains region was devastated by drought. The winds easily picked up the dry earth and created thick dust clouds which choked cattle and pasture lands. Sixty per cent of the farmers were forced to migrate to California by this environmental disaster named the Dust Bowl. The agricultural devastation helped to lengthen the Depression.

7 EXPLAIN what characterised the American

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The Modern Age

society in the first decades of the 20th century in the USA. By the end of the 19th century the United States had become the richest country in the world, with its economic power based on agricultural prosperity, massive industrial output, the rich mineral resources available and the rise of ‘trusts’, the huge corporations of firms in the same trade, which gradually came to dominate the market. The economic boom, however, had not prevented the spread of poverty. In the industrial areas of the North – like the metropolises of Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York and Boston – workers lived in dirty, overcrowded slums, and toiled long hours for low wages. These national problems, like the conditions of life in the city slums or corruption in government, were brought to light by books and articles written by investigative journalists called ‘muckrakers’. Their reports shocked most Americans, who started to think that the government should take action to eliminate the problems of society through reform. Thus the 19th-century belief in laissez-faire was replaced by ‘progressivism’. In the 1920s the economy continued to grow, though large areas like the south-western mining towns, the farmers of the Midwest and the urban industrial workers remained untouched by the new wealth. The Twenties saw a growth in reactionary attitudes like the ‘Red Scare’, that is, the fear of Socialism. Political activists with radical or labour backgrounds were imprisoned and persecuted. The ‘open door’ immigration policy was replaced by tighter and tighter restrictions and minorities were segregated into city slums like Harlem in New York. ‘Prohibition’ was introduced to fight alcohol addiction among the poor but in reality it encouraged the illegal traffic of ‘bootleggers’ and increased the phenomenon of gangsterism. In 1929 the American stock market collapsed. The Wall Street Crash marked the beginning of a worldwide economic crisis known as the Great Depression. Thousands of businessmen were ruined, and millions of common people found themselves facing debt and ruin. Factories shut down, banks crashed and nearly 8 million Americans were unemployed in the 1930s. In that period the Great Plains region was devastated by drought and the consequent Dust Bowl conditions forced 60 per cent of the farmers to migrate to California.

In 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt became President and promised the Americans a ‘New Deal’ of reforms. The three aims of the New Deal were ‘relief, recovery, reform’. The federal government spent billions of dollars on relief for the unemployed, on public works and on the conservation of natural resources. It also promoted farm rehabilitation where farmers were instructed to plant trees and grass to anchor the soil, to plough and terrace in order to hold rainwater, and to allow portions of farmland to lie uncultivated each year so that the soil could regenerate.

9 DESCRIBE the main ideas of Modernism. All artistic forms of Modernism share several common features: • •

•

• • • •

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the intentional distortion of shapes, as in the Cubist paintings of Picasso and Braque; the breaking down of limitations in space and time and the radical disruption of the linear flow of narrative or conventional verse; the emphasis on subjectivity, on how perception takes place rather than on what is perceived; in literature, the objectivity provided by an omniscient third-person narrator was abandoned in favour of new techniques such as the stream of consciousness; the use of allusive language and the development of the multiple association of words; the intensity of the isolated ‘moment’ or ‘image’ to provide a true insight into the nature of things; the importance of unconscious as well as conscious life; the need to reflect the complexity of modern urban life in artistic form.

Georgian poets: Themes: Specifically English elements, such as the countryside as an idyllic place. Style: The convention of diction. Aim: To express the English sensibility. War Poets: Themes: The horrors of modern warfare. Style: Experimentalism, which emerged in the choice of a violent, everyday language. Aim: To deal with war in an unconventional, anti-rhetorical way. Imagism: Themes: Any subject matter; the poet’s response to a scene or object. Style: Hard, clear and precise images; free verse. Aim: To achieve precision, discipline, ‘dry hardness’, ‘the exact curve of the thing’. Symbolism: Themes: Escape from emotion and personality; collapse and fragmentation of Western civilisation; cultural and spiritual sterility that characterised the beginning of the century; cosmopolitan interests. Style: Indirect statements; allusive language and images; quotations from other literatures; free verse; importance given to the sounds of words. Aim: To evoke rather than to state; to convey the ‘music of ideas’.

11 DESCRIBE the differences between indirect and direct interior monologues. In the indirect interior monologue the narrator never lets the character’s thoughts flow without control, and maintains logical and grammatical organisation. The character’s thoughts are presented both directly and by adding descriptions, appropriate comments and explanatory or introductory phrases to guide the reader through the narration; the character stays fixed in space while his/her consciousness moves freely in time: in the character’s mind, however, everything happens in the present, which can extend to infinity or contract to a moment. This concept of ‘inner time’, which is irregular and disrupted compared to the conventional conception of time, is preferred to ‘external time’, since it shows the relativism of a subjective experience. The direct interior monologue with two levels of narration is characterised by a mix of third-person narration, linked to an external time, and an interior narration linked to the concept of ‘inner time’, that is, the time of the character’s mind. In the direct interior monologue with the mind level of narration, the character’s thoughts flow freely, not interrupted by external events. The extreme interior monologue was used by Joyce in Finnegans Wake. Here the narration takes place inside the mind of the main character, while he is dreaming. Words and free associations are fused to create new expressions. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

12 HIGHLIGHT the features of the Lost Generation. Say why it was so called and provide some examples of authors belonging to it. Many disillusioned writers and intellectuals emigrated to Europe, chiefly to Paris, because of its stimulating atmosphere for the arts. These writers and artists were usually referred to as the ‘Lost Generation’, after a term coined by the American experimental writer Gertrude Stein. World War I seemed to have destroyed the idea that if you acted virtuously, good things would happen. Many good, young men went to war and died, or returned home physically or mentally wounded, and their faith in the moral ideals that had earlier given them hope, was ‘lost.’ Among the writers of the Lost Generation were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and E.E. Cummings.

13 DISCUSS different attitudes to war using the quotations below. Then identify their authors. First quotation: from The Soldier, by Rupert Brooke. Patriotism and the glory of war. Second quotation: from Dulce et Decorum Est, by Wilfred Owen. The disillusionment and hypocrisy of those who send young men to war. Third quotation: from Easter 1916, by William Butler Yeats. In this poem, which was written after the Easter Rising in Dublin on 24th April 1916, the poet celebrates the Irish leaders, the rebels who sacrificed their lives to a dream, and reflects the idealism of those who were prepared to die for what they saw as a just cause. Fourth quotation: from The Waste Land (The Burial of the Dead), by Thomas Stearns Eliot. The section from which this quotation is taken focuses on the death of certain beliefs and the possibility of a rebirth, a new beginning rising out of decay and death. The war was an immensely disorienting experience that led to disillusionment in the idea of progress and a sense of widespread disorder that spiritual belief seemed inadequate to manage. Eliot attempts to impose an order on the chaos describing the eventual regeneration of a desolate land after long drought and hopelessness: its concerns with barrenness and fertility, with the concept of death and regeneration, and with Christianity. COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING LITERARY TEXTS

14 HIGHLIGHT the main ideas linked to the authors you have studied as regards setting, characters, themes and style. Support your ideas with details from the texts you have studied. Student’s activity.

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trends in modern poetry.

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10 COMPLETE the table about the different

SYLLABUS PLANNER Programmazione per competenze 7. The Present Age Tempo di svolgimento: circa 2-3 mesi Asse dei COMPETENZE linguaggi Traguardi formativi

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Utilizzare una lingua straniera per sviluppare la competenza linguisticocomunicativa finalizzata al raggiungimento almeno del Livello B2 e le competenze relative all’universo culturale legato alla lingua di riferimento

A quali “Traguardi per lo sviluppo delle competenze” mirano le attività didattiche del capitolo? Padroneggiare il lessico specifico, gli strumenti espressivi e argomentativi indispensabili per gestire l’interazione comunicativa in vari contesti • usare in maniera appropriata la terminologia relativa al contesto storico, sociale e letterario • leggere e comprendere testi relativi al contesto storico, sociale e letterario • inquadrare nel tempo e nello spazio le problematiche storicoletterarie

CONTENUTI Indicatori

Che cosa ci si aspetta sappia fare lo studente che ha raggiunto questi traguardi? Riflessione sulla lingua • osservare le parole nei contesti d’uso e impararne il significato

Parlato (produzione e interazione orale) • descrivere i principali eventi storici utilizzando in modo Leggere, comprendere e appropriato la terminologia interpretare testi scritti di vario tipo specifica • inquadramento storico-sociale • approfondimenti culturali • testi letterari e giornalistici

Su quali conoscenze e abilità si sviluppano le competenze? • abbinare vocaboli relativi al contesto storico-sociale o ai testi letterari alla loro traduzione italiana o alla loro definizione in inglese, anche riflettendo sulla derivazione di parola e sulle collocazioni

• descrivere gli eventi principali degli anni post-bellici, degli anni Sessanta e Settanta, degli Irish Troubles, degli anni della Thatcher, del periodo compreso tra Dimostrare consapevolezza della Blair e la Brexit, della storicità della letteratura storia americana dopo • cogliere gli elementi di la Seconda guerra permanenza e discontinuità nei mondiale processi storici e letterari • analizzare le eco della • comprendere le relazioni tra il guerra nella letteratura contesto storico e culturale e le contemporanea opere • utilizzare immagini per • descrivere gli anni postspiegare concetti storici e bellici Produrre testi scritti di vario artistici • descrivere l’arte tipo in relazione a diversi scopi contemporanea comunicativi • fornire informazioni pertinenti • descrivere le • scrivere brevi testi di commento a su un genere o un’opera caratteristiche della brani letterari letteraria poesia contemporanea • scrivere testi per esprimere le • descrivere le proprie opinioni caratteristiche del romanzo Attualizzare tematiche letterarie contemporaneo anche in chiave di cittadinanza • descrivere le attiva caratteristiche del • percepire l’importanza della teatro contemporaneo letteratura nella formazione • descrivere le personale caratteristiche della • interpretare le variazioni di un letteratura americana tema nell’ambito di culture diverse dopo la Seconda guerra e nel corso del tempo mondiale • descrivere le caratteristiche della letteratura del Commonwealth • relazionare le caratteristiche • descrivere le di un autore caratteristiche dell’opera di P. Larkin

Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

ATTIVITÀ DIDATTICHE

STRUMENTI DI VALUTAZIONE

Attività per lo sviluppo delle competenze

History and Culture es. 2-3 p. 318; es. 3 p. 321; es. 2 p. 323; es. 2-3 p. 325; es. 2-4 p. 327; es. 2-6 p. 333

Link to Contemporary Culture pp. 334-337 History and Culture es. 5 p. 318

Con quali strumenti di valutazione (formativa e sommativa) si verificano l’acquisizione dei contenuti e lo sviluppo delle competenze? Nelle Idee per insegnare, prove diversificate (prove standard Fila A e Fila B, prove guidate per BES) • questionario sul contesto storico, sociale e letterario • test su P. Larkin • test su S. Heaney • test di Literary competence su una poesia di S. Heaney • test su W. Golding e Lord of the Flies • test su D. Lessing e The Grass Is Singing • test su I. McEwan e Black Dogs • test di Literary competence su un brano da Black Dogs • test su S. Beckett e Waiting for Godot • test su J. Osborne e Look Back in Anger • test di Reading competence su un brano da Look Back in Anger • test su J. Kerouac e On the Road • test su D. DeLillo e Falling Man • test su S. Rushdie e Midnight’s Children • test su N. Gordimer e The Pickup • lettura e comprensione di un articolo relativo al Topic 7 (Towards Invalsi) • lettura e comprensione di un articolo relativo al Topic 7 (Esame di Stato Seconda Prova) • test di produzione scritta

B2 Exams IELTS Academic Reading; IELTS Listening – Section 2; IELTS Speaking – Part 2 and Part 3 pp. 328-330 eBook: IELTS Listening – Section 4; IELTS Academic Writing – Task 1 and Task 2

ZTE online • esercizi di allenamento interattivi • test interattivi

CLIL es. 3-5 p. 348; es. 8-10 p. 349 Literature and Genres es. 3-5 p. 339 Literature and Genres es. 1 p. 341

Literature and Genres es. 2 p. 343 Literature and Genres es. 1 p. 345

Literature and Genres es. 1 p. 347

Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 350

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History and Culture es. 1 p. 319; es. 1 p. 323; es. 1 p. 324; es. 1 p. 326; es. 1 p. 331; Literature and Genres es. 1 p. 338; es. 1 p. 342; Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 355; es. 1 p. 362; es. 1 p. 368; es. 1 p. 380; es. 1 p. 386; es. 1 p. 396; es. 1 p. 402

Preparazione alle certificazioni

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

Con quali attività didattiche si raggiunge l’acquisizione dei contenuti e si sviluppano le competenze?

Prove autentiche e strutturate

Asse dei linguaggi

COMPETENZE Traguardi formativi Stabilire nessi tra la letteratura e altre discipline o sistemi linguistici • utilizzare il linguaggio visivo per comunicare concetti • comprendere e interpretare opere d’arte

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Comprendere i prodotti della comunicazione audiovisiva • comprendere brevi testi orali relativi al contesto storico, sociale e letterario • confrontare il linguaggio filmico con il linguaggio verbale Elaborare prodotti multimediali (testi, immagini, suoni ecc.), anche con tecnologie digitali • utilizzare Internet per svolgere attività di ricerca • produrre presentazioni multimediali Utilizzare prodotti multimediali • utilizzare l’eBook per svolgere gli esercizi in maniera interattiva ed esercitarsi a comprendere i prodotti della comunicazione audiovisiva (video di storia, brani di ascolto a livello B2, dettati, percorsi tematici multimediali: Routes) Competenze chiave di cittadinanza • imparare ad imparare • collaborare e partecipare • acquisire ed interpretare l’informazione

CONTENUTI Indicatori

• descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di S. Heaney • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di W. Golding • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di D. Lessing • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di I. McEwan • descrivere le caratteristiche di un’opera di S. Beckett • descrivere le caratteristiche di un’opera di J. Osborne • descrivere le caratteristiche di un’opera di J. Kerouac • descrivere le caratteristiche di un’opera di D. DeLillo • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di S. Rushdie • descrivere le caratteristiche dell’opera di N. Gordimer • analizzare l’evoluzione di un • analizzare l’evoluzione tema in diverse letterature del Realismo Magico in culture diverse • stabilire legami tra il testo e il • collegare un testo al contesto contesto letterario o dell’autore • confrontare autori • collegare un testo all’esperienza personale • collegare immagini all’esperienza personale Lettura (comprensione scritta) • comprendere testi descrittivi e • analizzare brani di argomentativi autori contemporanei

• comprendere un articolo di giornale • comprendere testi di canzoni

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• analizzare il tema “razzismo e discriminazione” • analizzare la ribellione degli anni Sessanta e Settanta • analizzare la letteratura del Commonwealth • spiegare e interpretare un testo giornalistico sul rapporto tra arte e paesaggio naturale • comprendere il testo della canzone Hymn for the Weekend

ATTIVITÀ DIDATTICHE Attività per lo sviluppo delle competenze

STRUMENTI DI VALUTAZIONE Prove autentiche e strutturate

Preparazione alle certificazioni

Authors and Texts es. 3 p. 353 Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 358; es. 1 p. 360 Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 365; es. 1 p. 366 Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 370; es. 1 p. 372

Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 390 Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 393 Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 397; es. 1-2 p. 399 Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 405; es. 1 p. 406 Across Cultures pp. 403-404 Authors and Texts es. 4 p. 355; es. 5 p. 387; es. 10 p. 402 Authors and Texts es. 5 p. 357; es. 3 p. 369 Authors and Texts es. 5 p. 355; es. 6 p. 357; es. 4 p. 374; es. 9-10 p. 396; es. 4 p. 409 Topic 7 es. 1 p. 410

Authors and Texts es. 1-3 p. 351; es. 2-3 p. 355; es. 1-3 p. 357; es. 2-15 pp. 362-363; es. 2 p. 368; es. 1-3 p. 374; es. 2-10 p. 381; es. 2 p. 386; es. 1-3 p. 391; es. 2-8 p. 396; es. 2-9 p. 402; es. 1-3 p. 409 eBook: Route 12 Racism and discrimination eBook: Route 13 Uneasiness and Rebellion eBook: Route 14 Voices from Englishspeaking countries Topic 7 es. 1 p. 412

Topic 7 es. 1-5 p. 413

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Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 384

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Authors and Texts es. 2 p. 377

Asse dei linguaggi

COMPETENZE Traguardi formativi

CONTENUTI Indicatori

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Ascolto (comprensione orale) • comprendere un breve brano • comprendere un breve che descrive un evento storico testo sulle canzoni di protesta • comprendere un breve brano relativo alla storia dell’epoca contemporanea • comprendere una breve spiegazione relativa alla trama di un’opera e alla biografia di un autore • comprendere una breve • comprendere una sequenza filmica sequenza dal film Across the Universe Scrittura (produzione scritta) • scrivere le idee chiave relative • completare le idee a un periodo storico chiave relative agli anni post-bellici, agli anni Sessanta e Settanta, agli anni della Thatcher, al periodo compreso tra Blair e la Brexit • raccogliere dati in un modulo • completare un factfile fornito su A. Warhol e su diversi autori • completare una linea del • collocare i principali tempo e diagrammi con le eventi degli anni informazioni necessarie Sessanta e Settanta • scrivere le caratteristiche della poesia contemporanea • scrivere le caratteristiche del romanzo contemporaneo • scrivere un commento, breve • produrre un breve testo testo o saggio su periodi storici, brani, opere o particolari temi

Metodo di studio • utilizzare liste di vocaboli, diagrammi, immagini, tabelle per prepararsi a una interrogazione/verifica sommativa Metodo di ricerca • utilizzare Internet per condurre ricerche individuali o a gruppi

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• revisione di fatti, personaggi, generi letterari, autori e testi dell’epoca contemporanea • fare un approfondimento sui movimenti giovanili e le tendenze degli anni Sessanta e Settanta

ATTIVITÀ DIDATTICHE Attività per lo sviluppo delle competenze

STRUMENTI DI VALUTAZIONE Prove autentiche e strutturate

Preparazione alle certificazioni

Dictation p. 320 eBook: History videos

Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 358; es. 1 p. 376; es. 1 p. 383; es. 1 p. 388; es. 1 p. 392

CLIL es. 7 p. 349; Authors and Texts es. 1 p. 365; es. 1 p. 375; es. 1 p. 382; es. 1 p. 405 History and Culture es. 2 p. 321 Literature and Genres es. 2 p. 339 Literature and Genres es. 1 p. 341

History and Culture es. 4 p. 318; es. 4 p. 321; Authors and Texts es. 4 p. 351; es. 4 p. 357; es. 16-17 p. 363; es. 4 p. 369; es. 11-12 p. 381; es. 3-4 p. 387; es. 4 p. 391; Topic 7 es. 2 p. 412; es. 2 p. 415 Review pp. 416-417

Internet Point es. 1-2 p. 321

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History and Culture pp. 318, 320, 325, 327

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From History to Screen p. 322

7. The Present Age Teaching tip The interactive timeline can be employed as a support to the introduction of the historical period of this chapter.

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the text on pages 316-318 and explain:

History and Culture

1

7.1 The post-war years PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Present Age

Teaching tip The history video The post-war years, the Sixties and the Seventies can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

1 DECIDE whether the following statements are true or false. 1 2 3 4

5

After WWII the Labour Party introduced the Welfare State in Britain. T In 1949 Britain became part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. T During the 1950s the standard of living of the lowest classes did not rise. F The Irish Troubles were a period of violence between Catholics and Protestants in Southern Ireland. F In 1993 Northern Ireland received the right of self-determination and, the following year, the political wing of the IRA, Sinn Féin, declared a ceasefire. T

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2 MATCH the words and phrases from the box with their description. 1 the European Economic Community; 2 Lady Chatterley’s Lover; 3 miniskirts; 4 Telstar satellite; 5 The Beatles. Teaching tip The presentation The UK from 1945 to 1979 in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

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VOCABULARY: WELFARE STATE

1 READ the first paragraph and write down a sentence about the Welfare State for each of the highlighted words and phrases. Student’s activity. 6

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the reforms introduced in Britain by the Labour Party; The new National Health Service was established by law in 1946 as universal and free. The New Towns Act (1946) and the Town and Country Planning Act (1947) led to slum clearance, the building of large housing estates and the creation of green areas; council houses were built for the families with low incomes. The National Insurance Act (1946) established a system of social security including unemployment and sickness benefits, retirement pensions, child allowances and even funeral grants. Nationalisation was extended to hospitals, gas, electricity, steel, coal mines, railways and the Bank of England. the most important features of the new affluent society; Most families bought cars, installed telephones, washing machines and refrigerators, and began to buy their own homes. Television was the broadcasting revolution of the post-war years. some British achievements in the early 1950s; In 1951 the Festival of Britain celebrated the centenary of the Great Exhibition, while in 1953 two men from a British expedition were the first to climb Mount Everest. In the same year, the coronation ceremony of Queen Elizabeth II was broadcast live on television and watched by around 20 million people. the crisis of the British Empire; Britain’s position in the world progressively changed after the war. The first dramatic change was Indian independence that was passed by Westminster in 1947. Ceylon and Burma were granted independence in 1948. the impact of the Suez crisis; When Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, Britain reacted by colluding with Israel and France and landing at Port Said with the intention of occupying the Canal zone but had to leave Egypt immediately because the USA threatened to freeze all financial aid to Britain. These events proved that the country could no longer act on the international stage without American backing. public opinion about nuclear weapons. People were against nuclear weapons, and several anti-nuclear protest marches were organised advocating nuclear disarmament.

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

4 WRITE a 10/12-line commentary about the key concepts behind the development of the Welfare State.

COMPLETE the key ideas. The Welfare State was created in 1946-48 It implied social security and the nationalisation of hospitals, gas, electricity, steel, coal mines, railways and the Bank of England NATO was created to prevent Soviet expansionism The post-war revolution in communications regarded television Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953 and the ceremony was broadcast live on television and watched by around 20 million people Immigration from the Caribbean, Africa and Asia started in the 1950s Campaigners protested against nuclear weapons Extra Activity

Reading and Use of English – Part 6

Student’s writing activity. COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

5 USE the pictures on pages 316-318 to talk about the post-war years. 1

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Describe the buildings in picture 1. What was their purpose? Council houses were identical houses in long rows built specifically for the families with low incomes. Consider picture 2 and explain how people’s lives changed in Britain in the 1950s. Most families bought cars, installed telephones, washing machines and refrigerators, and began to buy their own homes. Television was the broadcasting revolution of the postwar years. The early television programmes were, in accordance with the BBC’s general aims, a mixture of information, education and entertainment. Then, in 1955, a commercial television network started to broadcast its shows which were paid for through advertising. Where are the people in picture 3 and on what occasion? They are on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in London after the coronation ceremony of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Focus on picture 5. What does it represent? It represents protesters campaigning for nuclear disarmament as they march from London to Aldermaston, the headquarters of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, in 1958.

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GAPPED TEXT. You are going to read an article about Mohandas Gandhi. Six sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences A-G the one which fits each gap (1-6). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use. 1 D; 2 G; 3 A; 4 F; 5 B; 6 E. The extra sentence is C. Extra Activity

LISTEN to a talk about the Commonwealth of Nations and complete the sentences. 1 The Commonwealth of Nations is a voluntary association of independent sovereign States. 2 It arose from the decolonisation of the British Empire. 3 The leader of the Commonwealth is the British monarchy. 4 Today there are 52 member countries. 5 The sovereign of the United Kingdom is the Head of State in Canada and Australia. 6 Membership is calculated upon a formula of population and Gross National Product. 7 The Commonwealth Secretariat’s headquarters are in London. 8 The aims of the Commonwealth are international cooperation, economic improvement, social development and human rights. 9 Commonwealth events are the Commonwealth Games and the Commonwealth Day. 10 The population of the Commonwealth is about 2.2 billion, almost a third of the world population.

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1 The totality of schemes and services through which the central government, together with the local authorities, assumed the responsibility for the social well-being of citizens. 2 It established a universal and free treatment for everyone. 3 A clash of politics and beliefs that grew between the USA and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and was characterised by competition and fear. The nuclear arms race was a central point to the war between these two powerful nations.

Key ideas

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3 EXPLAIN the following in your own words.

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The Present Age

TRANSCRIPT The Commonwealth of Nations is a voluntary association of independent sovereign States, most of which were once governed by the United Kingdom. As the British Empire began its process of decolonisation and the creation of independent States from former British colonies, there arose a need for an organisation of countries formerly part of the Empire. The London Declaration of 1949 stated that its members had to recognise the British monarchy as simply the leader of the Commonwealth. Today there are 52 member countries. Of the 52, 31 are republics (such as India), 5 have their own monarchies, and 16 are a constitutional monarchy with the sovereign of the United Kingdom as their Head of State (such as Canada and Australia). Dues for members are based on a formula of population and Gross National Product and are updated annually by the office of the Commonwealth Secretariat. Since 1965 there has been a London-based Secretariat which is elected by the Heads of Government of the membership and can serve two four-year terms. The Commonwealth Secretariat has its headquarters in London and is composed of 320 staff members from the member countries. The Commonwealth maintains its own flag. The purpose of the voluntary Commonwealth is for international cooperation and to advance economies, social development and human rights in member countries. Decisions of the various Commonwealth councils are non-binding. The Commonwealth supports the Commonwealth Games, which is a sporting event held every four years for member countries. A Commonwealth Day is celebrated on the second Monday in March. Each year carries a different theme but each country can celebrate the day as they choose. The population of the 52 member states exceeds 2.2 billion, almost a third of the world population.

7.2 The Sixties and Seventies From History to Screen: Dirty Dancing Photocopiable lesson on page 279. Teacher’s key on page 294. VOCABULARY: SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR

1 MATCH the highlighted words and phrases about modes of social behaviour in the text with their meaning. 1 put forward; 2 discontent; 3 permissiveness; 4 pressures; 5 making a valuable contribution; 6 mutual tolerance; 7 openness; 8 assimilation; 9 arguments; 10 mores.

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DICTATION Protest Songs

8.1

TRANSCRIPT In the early 1960s, folk singers like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan became famous for their protest songs connected to the Civil Rights Movement. When in the mid-Sixties the USA escalated its military presence in Vietnam, the songs changed focus to anti-war lyrics, and folk singers and rock stars like Jimi Hendrix appeared at anti-war demonstrations. This was the period of youth counterculture, of the Woodstock music festival, where folk music began to be replaced with rock music at political rallies. Rock bands like the California-based Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane became closely associated with the protest movement. An iconic moment was when American flags were burnt on the stage at Woodstock in 1969, while Jimi Hendrix was playing his own version of the American national anthem. COMPETENCE: BEING AWARE OF THE CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS

2 READ the text on pages 319-320 and complete the timeline with the necessary information. 1961 The contraceptive pill appeared. 1962 The Telstar satellite made world television news possible. 1965 Capital punishment for murder was suspended and comprehensive schools replaced most grammar schools. 1967 The Abortion Act made it possible to get an abortion on the National Health Service; the National Health Service (Family Planning) Act allowed local authorities to provide contraceptives; the Sexual Offences Act stated that a homosexual act between two consenting adults in private was no longer a criminal offence. 1968 The Race Relations Act tried to prevent unequal treatment of coloured people by making it illegal to refuse employment, housing or public services to anyone on the grounds of colour or race. 1970 The Matrimonial Property Act established that a wife’s work should be regarded as an equal contribution towards creating the family home and had to be considered in the case of a divorce. 1973 Britain entered the EEC; the Oil crisis began, which would affect the global economy. 1979 The Conservative Party won the general election and its leader Margaret Thatcher became the first woman Prime Minister.

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What contributed to the ‘cultural revolution’? First of all, a new openness to attitudes from the Continent and the United States; then the pressures from youth and popular culture, but also arguments of a civilised and tolerant society put forward by politicians. What role did England have in the development of youth culture? ‘Swinging London’ and Liverpool became the world capitals of youth culture. England was a world leader in musical fashion: The Beatles and The Rolling Stones brought new vitality to popular culture, and new subcultures would emerge like heavy metal, punk rock and new wave. How did the position of women change in front of the law? A wife’s work was regarded as an equal contribution towards creating the family home and had to be considered in the case of a divorce. What was the government’s goal regarding immigrants? The final goal would be integration, ‘not as a flattening process of assimilation but as equal opportunity, accompanied by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance’, as affirmed by the Home Secretary Roy Jenkins. What was the winter of discontent? It was the period between 1978 and 1979 that was characterised by strikes and new social problems such as the first urban race riots; a new generation strongly influenced by drugs; juvenile violence; and the new dangers of pollution created by prosperity and consumerism. COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

4 WRITE a 10/12-line commentary about the key concepts regarding British society in the 1960s and 1970s. Student’s writing activity.

Key ideas

Extra Activity

Dictation: The ideology of rock LISTEN to the text and write it down. Rock music offered an opportunity of unifying art, music, design, fashion and youth in a single great experience. Instead of a single driving beat, music was now vibration, the harmonious total sound of body, consciousness and music. Sound became a kind of materialisation of consciousness which allowed new ways of perceiving the world and of acting within it. Rock music was seen as the source of energy which would make the motor of social change run faster and charge the batteries of social fantasy. Rock was a weapon in the cultural revolution. Students were suddenly faced with a situation which provoked them into political radicalism. The image of society within the universities clashed so intensely with the brutal reality of the Vietnam War, as portrayed every evening on millions of television screens, that a radical criticism of capitalism developed. In their revolutionary model, class consciousness was replaced by a generation consciousness to which rock music lent an apparent reality. Teaching tip After the dictation the teacher can ask the following questions to check the students’ comprehension.

1 2 3

What was the main difference between the character of beat and rock music? What did sound become synonymous with? What social value did rock music have for young people in the Sixties?

WRITE down the key ideas using the prompts. generation gap The generation that grew up in the 1960s was more different from the generation of its parents than in any previous century. permissive society Censorship and capital punishment for murder were abolished; abortion and divorce were legalised. decriminalisation Homosexuality was no longer a criminal offence. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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3 ANSWER the following questions. 1

musical fashion England was a world leader in musical fashion: The Beatles and The Rolling Stones brought new vitality to popular culture, and new subcultures emerged. family and sexual mores Contraceptives were provided by local authorities; the nuclear family became more fluid and extended. race tensions Immigrants had the lowest-paid jobs and were sometimes refused employment, housing or public services on the grounds of colour or race. stagflation A combination of economic stagnation, rising inflation and unemployment that characterised the 1970s.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

INTERNET POINT Youth culture COMPETENCE: USING TECHNOLOGY TO ACQUIRE AND INTERPRET INFORMATION

1 LOOK at the pictures. The post-war period

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saw the emergence in Britain of a youth culture which distinguished itself by its behaviour, musical tastes and body symbolism, all of which took on the tribal significance of belonging to a group. The street became the focus of life. Carry out some research about youth culture in the 1960s and 1970s and answer the following questions. You can start by browsing the sites www.theguardian.com/ culture/gallery/2011/jul/10/10-best-britishyouth-cultures and www.historic-uk.com/ CultureUK/The-1960s-The-Decade-thatShook-Britain. 1

Focus on street styles and find information about: • Teddy boys; The Teddy boys or Teds were so called for their long drape jackets and pointed shoes with laces which imitated an upper-class style of dress worn at the time of Edward VII, when the greatness of Britain had been beyond dispute. Teds cut their hair very short at the back and kept it raised in the front. They had a reputation for violence, acting the part of hooligans, slashing cinema seats. • the bikers; The bikers tried to challenge the boring, cosy normality of the new postwar society. They wore rugged workingclass garments, notably the black leather jacket, and other battered clothes which demonstrated their harsh experiences on the road. Both stylistically and ideologically, they were outsiders; they organised illegal races in the main street, started drunken fights, and made obscene advances to local women. They considered women and coloured immigrants as inferior. Aggressive masculinity, the ability to handle a bike and take needlessly dangerous risks gave one the right to belong to the group. • the mods; The modernist movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s was heavily influenced by Italian fashion. The mods rode scooters and wore suits and other tailored outfits. • the skinheads; The skinheads adopted an aggressively working-class identity with heavy boots, labourers’ jackets, tattoos and shaved heads. Instead of ‘love and peace’, the skinheads seemed to welcome conflict

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and aggression. They became linked with extreme right-wing political groups and synonymous with racism. • the hippies; The gentle, anti-aggression hippies were devoted to the achievement of new levels of consciousness rather than to material success. In sharp contrast with the rigid, antagonistic working-class subcultures, in fact, their boundaries and categories were fluid and their goals unmaterialistic. To show their detachment from mainstream consumerism, they rejected time throwing away their watches. Life was concentrated on the ‘now’. Their style of dress was also characterised by fluidity, with garments that were hand-made from natural materials and were loose and flowing to allow the body the same relaxed freedom as the mind. • the punks. Rising unemployment and general economic stagnation gave rise to the punks with their nihilistic battle-cry of ‘No Future!’. The punks held nothing sacred. They spat on everything, including themselves, their basic belief being nothingness, a vacuum, a void. Deliberately threatening and offensive, punk style was violent in its ‘cut ups’ with safety pins worn through the cheek, ear or lip. They wore cheap, trashy fabrics and their hair was dyed black or bright yellow, with spikes of orange or green. Typical punk bands like the Sex Pistols chose song titles that reflected the deliberate desecration and the voluntary assumption of an outcast status. By the end of the 1970s the punks had become a tourist attraction particularly associated with Sloane Square and the King’s Road. Collect information about the rock music of the Sixties and explain what it reflected and what Beatlemania was. In 1963 and the years to follow, a number of historical and social influences changed what popular music was. The assassination of the US President Kennedy, the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement had a great impact on the mood of American culture (and later on the British one as well), and music started to reflect that change. Against this background rock music was supposed to be above all an experience of togetherness and community, pulling teenagers out of their isolation in the family, in school, at work or in the universities, and giving voice to the frustrations and feelings of the young generation of the Sixties, who started to oppose to establishment ideas and standards. Although rock ’n’ roll began having an effect on Britain in the 1950s, it was not until the early Sixties and the emergence of groups like The

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Max gave up two courses. Lucy thinks Max’s haircut looks androgynous. Max’s father had to work to go to college. Jude does not help himself to more stuffing. The university fees are expensive. Max is not going to get his university degree.

4 CORRECT the mistaken words and then say

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

I went to the closet under the stairs. F Those lectures can fry your brains. Mx Is that fashionable? M Your haircut, or lack of one. M These kids are so spoiled. F He won’t have to pay them much longer. Mx You gonna buy a broken-down station wagon. F Why isn’t the issue here who I am? Mx

2 GO through the material you have gathered and write down your notes and key ideas in a Cornell note-taking page. Then write your summary in section C of the page. Student’s activity.

From History to Screen

Across the Universe COMPETENCE: WATCHING AND UNDERSTANDING A FILM

1 BEFORE watching the sequence, match the words (1-8) with their meaning (A-H). 1 F; 2 H; 3 D; 4 B; 5 G; 6 A; 7 E; 8 C.

2 WATCH the sequence with the sound off and decide whether the following statements are true or false. 1 2 3 4 5

There are two girls sitting at table. T All women are wearing necklaces. F (Only the older woman.) The room is just lit by candles. F (There are also some lamps.) All men are wearing ties. F (The blonde young man, Max, is not.) There is a bottle of wine behind the flowers on the table. T

5 DESCRIBE Max, Jude, Lucy and her mother. How do you think they feel? Max looks concerned with what he is saying, he is actually rebelling against his parents and their way of thinking. Jude seems a bit embarrassed. He might not be used to behaving in that way towards his parents. Max’s mother looks amazed, she tries to control herself but she cannot believe her son dares defy his parents. Lucy looks as if she admired her brother’s courage. COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

6 RECOGNISE the prevailing shot in the sequence. Tick as appropriate. Medium shot. COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS WITH THE CONTEXT OF THE AGE

7 DISCUSS. How does the sequence reflect the mood of the 1960s? Student’s activity.

7.3 The Irish Troubles Teaching tip The presentation The Irish Troubles in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

3 WATCH the first part of the sequence with the sound on and choose the correct alternative. 1 2

Max’s father plays golf. Max finds his lessons heavy.

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who utters them. Choose F for Father, M for Mother and Mx for Max.

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3

Beatles that music truly began its revolutionary changes. The Beatles are an excellent example of how music influenced the lives of young people, leading to enthusiasm and excitement. By 1967 the group became a turning point in music and inspired other musicians, such as The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones, to experiment with new sounds and develop innovative pieces of music. Their later albums included lyrics encouraging rebellion against the authorities, as seen in Revolution. State what the fashions of the Sixties mirrored. Fashion mirrored many of the social changes of the Sixties. Mary Quant became famous since she popularised the miniskirt, which became the symbol of 1960s fashion. Her fashion designs used simple geometric shapes and colours which gave women a new kind of femininity. By the late Sixties, psychedelic prints and vibrant colours began appearing on clothes as the hippie movement gathered pace.

VOCABULARY: WORD FORMATION

VOCABULARY: WORD FORMATION

1 READ the text and write the corresponding

1 READ the text and find the words which are

verb/noun from the text near each noun/verb.

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The Present Age

Noun

Verb

strength internment imprisonment protester negotiation agreement declaration self-determination decommissioning

strengthen intern imprison protest negotiate agree declare self-determine decommission

formed from the following. 1 protective; 2 interference; 3 competitiveness; 4 privatisation; 5 acquisition; 6 impressive; 7 emergence; 8 Hostilities; 9 considerable; 10 resolution. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the text again and explain: 1

COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

2 READ the text again and write down your notes and key ideas in a Cornell note-taking page. Then write your summary in section C of the page. Student’s activity. Suggestion: Students should note the following key ideas: • • • • • • •

the discrimination of Catholics in Northern Ireland; civil rights movement; riots; internment; martyrs; ceasefire; Good Friday Agreement.

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7.4 The Thatcher years: rise and decline Teaching tip The history video The Thatcher years can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

4

1 CHOOSE the correct answer (A, B or C). 1 C; 2 B; 3 B; 4 C; 5 B.

2 COMPLETE the text with the words from the box.

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1 third; 2 Community Charge; 3 local; 4 property; 5 number; 6 unfair; 7 protests; 8 support; 9 resigned; 10 Prime Minister. Teaching tip The presentation From Thatcher to Brexit in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

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what Margaret Thatcher’s nickname and background were; Her nickname was ‘the Iron Lady’ but she can be defined as a 19th-century Liberal rather than a Conservative: the economy was her main concern and she believed that free market was the only means towards the restoration of social and political order. She wanted free trade, that is, low protective tariffs, and as little government interference as possible in business and domestic matters. her main actions to give impulse to the economy; The government’s first economic aim was to bring down inflation: interest rates were raised to reduce inflation, but this increased the value of sterling and export competitiveness fell. To lower government spending, State-owned industries were privatised: among the first companies to be sold were Cable and Wireless, British Telecom, British Gas and British Airways. the way she changed social priorities; She privatised council houses, which were sold on favourable terms to their tenants according to her plan of social engineering to build a society where people would have a private health service, private schools and private pensions. She also encouraged the young in particular to start up new businesses and to try to make a good career for themselves. how her government faced the Falklands crisis; At first Britain worked at a peace proposal, but when Argentina rejected further negotiations with Britain, a task force was sent by Britain to reclaim the islands, and after a twomonth campaign Argentina surrendered. her handling of the miners’ strike; The strike, which was characterised by great bitterness and some violence, was a confrontation between the Conservative government and the Unions; after a year the miners, who had protested against the proposed closures of many pits, admitted defeat and Thatcher won, also thanks to the support of the popular press. her influence on foreign affairs; She had considerable authority in the final resolution

7.5 From Blair to Brexit Teaching tip The history video From Blair to Brexit can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

1 CHOOSE the correct alternative to complete the sentences. 1

3 WRITE down what you think were the positive and negative sides of society under Thatcher. Positive

Negative

People valued the security that came from owning their own house. There was an increase in material wealth. Young people were encouraged to take up their own responsibilities, to try to make a good career for themselves, to value the freedom deriving from selfemployment.

An underclass of poor or unemployed people emerged. The ‘yuppies’ expressed exaggerated ambition and materialism. An enterprise individualistic society emerged, to which the weakest classes could not respond.

Key ideas WRITE down the key ideas using the prompts. free trade Thatcher wanted low protective tariffs and as little government interference as possible in business and domestic matters. privatisation To lower government spending, State-owned industries, like Cable and Wireless, British Telecom, British Gas and British Airways, were privatised. yuppies The ambitious urban professionals, whose main interests were high-earning jobs and the acquisition of impressive status symbols such as expensive clothes and sports cars, became a social phenomenon. strike In 1984 the British miners protested against the proposed closures of many pits. After a year of confrontation between the Conservative government and the Unions, the miners admitted defeat. international standing Thatcher persuaded US President Reagan to limit his anti-missile programme; she supported the introduction of American nuclear missiles into Europe Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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The election in May 1997 ended 17 years of Conservative government and brought in a Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who remained in office for ten years. New Labour was less attached to the idea of nationalising industry, invested in health and education and promoted progressive views on racial and sexual equality. In his foreign policy, Tony Blair supported the United States in its war on terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq, in spite of strong opposition at home. In June 2007 Tony Blair resigned in accordance with a previous agreement with his Chancellor of the Exchequer and Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. The elections in 2010 did not give a clear majority to any political party and a coalition government was formed between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats with David Cameron as Prime Minister and Nick Clegg as his Deputy.

2 CHOOSE the correct answer (A, B or C). 1 B; 2 C; 3 A; 4 B; 5 C. VOCABULARY: POLITICS

1 READ the text and write the Italian translation of the highlighted words and phrases about politics. 1 fu in carica; 2 abbandonò l’idea; 3 decentrarono; 4 alleato, sostenitore internazionale; 5 fonti dei servizi segreti; 6 governare il Paese; 7 coalizione; 8 riducendo i costi; 9 euroscetticismo; 10 questione delicata; 11 diritti di libera circolazione; 12 affluenza nazionale; 13 dimissioni.

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to balance similar Soviet weapons; and she gave public support to the reform-minded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and later Boris Yeltsin when Communism in Eastern Europe collapsed. unpopular tax The Community Charge, a local tax on individuals rather than on property, was introduced in 1987.

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of the Cold War. She persuaded US President Ronald Reagan to limit his anti-missile programme which had proved alarming to Soviet and European governments, and she supported the introduction of American nuclear missiles into Europe to balance similar Soviet weapons. She also gave public support to the reformminded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and later Boris Yeltsin when, in 1989, Communism in Eastern Europe collapsed. the reasons for her decline; The introduction of the Community Charge in 1987 made her very unpopular and caused many riots. She also gradually lost the support of her party and resigned in 1990. John Major’s programme. His programme as party leader and Prime Minister was to follow Margaret Thatcher’s ideas, but not to attack certain social policies quite so strongly.

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the first paragraph again and say: 1

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how Tony Blair changed the Labour Party; He believed that it was necessary to reform the Labour Party to give people from all backgrounds a voice and to reflect the diversity of the population better. He called it ‘New Labour’ and dropped the belief that Britain’s big industries should be nationalised. what his political views were; He promised to spend more money on the National Health Service and education but held more conservative views on law and order issues, as well as family values. the reforms promoted by his government. His government produced constitutional reforms that partially decentralised the UK, leading to the formation of separate Parliaments in Wales and Scotland by 1999. New Labour promoted progressive attitudes such as equality for women, blacks and Asians and the recognition in law of same-sex partnerships in 2004.

3 READ the second paragraph again and decide whether the following statements are true or false. Correct the false ones. 1

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The British government did not support the United States in the war on terrorism. F The British government became the most visible international supporter of the Bush administration in its war on terrorism. There has never been a terrorist attack in London. F On 7th July 2005 London suffered a terrorist bombing, Britain’s worst attack since World War II. Four bombs exploded, three on underground trains and one on a double-decker bus during the morning rush hour, killing 52 people and wounding more than 700. A terrorist plot was discovered to destroy planes travelling from the USA to the UK. F A terrorist plot was discovered to destroy planes travelling from the UK to the USA. Tony Blair resigned after a terrorist attack. F He had an agreement with his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, that he would resign at least a year before another election. Gordon Brown replaced Blair after the 2008 general election. F He became the leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister after Blair’s resignation in June 2007.

4 READ the rest of the text and answer the following questions. 1

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What kind of government took office after the 2010 election? A Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition government with the Conservative David Cameron as Prime Minister and the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, as Deputy Prime Minister. How did the new government face crisis? By cutting social spending, making employees redundant in the public sector and restraining the costs of the NHS. What complicated Britain’s problems? The Eurozone, which absorbed 40% of its exports. Being an EU member also meant being forced into economic austerity. What attitude developed as a consequence? Euroscepticism. What events reinforced the popularity of the monarchy? Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee and the birth of Prince George and Princess Charlotte. What was the Brexit referendum? What was the result of the vote? It was an ‘in-or-out’ referendum Cameron had promised if he won the 2015 election and which was held in 2016. It resulted in a vote to leave the EU by almost 52% on a national turnout of 72%.

Key ideas COMPLETE the key ideas. Tony Blair wanted the Labour Party to reflect the diversity of the British population Britain supported the Bush administration in its war on terrorism and London became the target of terrorist attacks Gordon Brown replaced Blair after he resigned in 2007 The leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010 and in the following years Euroscepticism was represented by the UK Independence Party Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 2012 Scotland voted to remain part of the UK in 2014 The Brexit referendum established that Britain would leave the EU

B2 Exams Academic Reading 1 READ the passage and answer questions 1-13. Complete each sentence with the correct ending below. 1 B; 2 C; 3 A.

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8.2 MONOLOGUE. You are going to hear a tourist guide talking about the events that marked the start of the 21st century. Read the questions below carefully. Then listen and answer questions 1-10. Complete the table below, using NO MORE THAN ONE WORD OR NUMBER in each space. 1 flashing; 2 harbour; 3 tons; 4 3; 5 reconciliation. Answer the questions below. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS OR A NUMBER for each answer. 6 Where was the tourist guide on the night of the new millennium? In London. 7 How many new structures were built in London to mark the historic moment? Three. 8 What is the Millennium Dome now called? The O2. 9 What do Londoners call the London Millennium Footbridge? The wobbly bridge. 10 Which Millennium structure is considered the most successful? The London Eye.

TRANSCRIPT The millennium celebrations to mark the end of the 20th century and welcome the 21st century on New Year’s Eve of 1999 happened all over the world. In Paris the Eiffel Tower was lit by 20,000 flashing lights in a brilliant display, enjoyed by millions along the Seine and on television throughout the country. Sydney Harbour held an unforgettable fireworks display also watched by millions. In Times Square in New York four tons of confetti were blown down onto more than 3 million celebrating people. In South Africa the President Nelson Mandela went back to the cell where he had spent over 20 years in prison and in a small company of people lit a symbolic candle for peace and reconciliation. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

Speaking – Part 2 3 INDIVIDUAL LONG TURN. Prepare a talk. You have one minute to make notes on an event, a discovery or an invention that has happened since the beginning of the 21st century. Then you have up to two minutes to talk about it. You should say: • • •

what it is; how this is different compared to the past; why it is important. Student’s speaking activity.

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Listening – Section 2

In the months leading up to the dramatic stroke of midnight, each country produced their own souvenirs. There was a widespread fear that the computers all over the world would break down because of the socalled Millennium Bug. A huge amount of money was spent to avert any danger to computing systems which might have brought chaos and disaster – but it did not happen. I was in London on the night of the millennium watching the celebrations along the Thames. They were unbelievable. More than 2 million people stood along the banks of the river to watch the most magnificent fireworks display ever organised in the capital. The Queen and the Prime Minister Tony Blair were present in the Millennium Dome to watch an allnight entertainment. The Millennium Dome near Greenwich was one of three structures specially commissioned to mark the beginning of a new millennium in London. It is now known as The O2. It was built as an exhibition centre but the original exhibition failed to attract enough visitors and the O2 Arena is now used for sporting events and entertainment. The second structure was the Millennium Bridge. Its official name is actually the London Millennium Footbridge. This elegant suspension bridge made of steel allows pedestrians to cross over the river from the South Bank just near Tate Modern to St Paul’s and the City on the other side. Londoners call this bridge the ‘wobbly bridge’ because on the day it opened the thousands of pedestrians crossing on it felt a strong swaying motion and many became sick. The bridge was immediately closed and reopened two years later after structural modifications. The most successful structure built for the millennium is without doubt the London Eye, originally called the Millennium Wheel. It is a huge observation wheel built at the side of the Thames near Waterloo Bridge. When it was built, it was the world’s tallest observation wheel at 135 metres tall and as it slowly revolves, there is a spectacular 360 degree view over London. The wheel was originally planned to stand for five years, but it has proved to be the most popular attraction in central London with nearly 4 million visitors a year.

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The passage has six paragraphs, A-F. Which paragraph contains the following information? 4 F; 5 E; 6 D. Choose the correct letter (A, B, C or D). 7 B; 8 B; 9 A; 10 C. Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer. 11 There will surely be new discoveries in space exploration in the future. 12 We may be able to construct a machine that mirrors life perfectly. 13 It is important to believe that individuals can play a part in shaping the world.

Speaking – Part 3 4 TWO-WAY DISCUSSION. Consider these questions and then answer them. • •

Will the world be a better or more difficult place in the near future? What do you think will happen before the next millennium? Student’s speaking activity. Extra Activity

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The Present Age

ACADEMIC LECTURE. You are going to hear a lecture about human obligations for the third millennium. Read the questions below carefully. Then listen and answer questions 1-10. Complete the table below, using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS in each space. 1 individual obligations; 2 future generations; 3 destroy the environment. Complete the summary below. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS in each space. 4 coal and gas; 5 will not survive; 6 extract and burn. Choose the correct answer (A, B or C). 7 A; 8 C; 9 B; 10 C. TRANSCRIPT The question that faces us at the start of a new millennium is how long we can go on talking about rights without simultaneously focusing on the individual’s obligations. Maybe we need a new universal declaration. Perhaps the time is ripe for a Universal Declaration of Human Obligations. It is simply no longer meaningful to talk about rights without simultaneously stressing the individual State’s or person’s obligations, including the most important challenge of our time: how can we be able to secure the health and welfare of our planet and its future generations? We are living in an exceptional period of time. On the one hand, we belong to a triumphant generation that explores the universe and maps the human genes. On the other hand, we are the first generation to destroy the environment on our own planet. We see how human activity drains the resources and results in the disintegration of habitats. It appears that just now we are experiencing the dramatic consequences of human-induced changes in climate, while opinion polls at the same time indicate that the world’s inhabitants are really not particularly concerned. If all the oil, coal and gas still to be found on this planet is extracted and released into the atmosphere, our civilisation will quite simply not survive. Nevertheless, many people consider it their crystalclear right to extract and burn all the oil and all the

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coal on their own national territory. Why shouldn’t it just as well be the crystal-clear right of rainforest nations to do what they want with their rainforests? What is the difference? What is the difference in relation to the global carbon balance? And what is the difference in relation to the loss of biological diversity? At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution there were 280 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere. Today, the figure is approaching 400 and is continuing to increase – with destructive climate change as an indisputable consequence. Sooner or later, we must try to return to a pre-industrial level. NASA’s Dr James Hansen, perhaps the most outstanding climate researcher in the world today, has pointed out that, at least initially, we must get down to a maximum of 350 parts per million to feel reasonably certain of avoiding major disasters for the planet and for our civilisation. The trend, though, is going the other way – and in spite of the current economic crisis in Europe and elsewhere. The release of carbon from burning fossil fuels, from deforestation and from peat decomposition is, however, not only affecting the atmosphere. Until now, great quantities of CO2 have also been swallowed by the sea – with a precarious acidification of the sea as one result. It is an open question how much more CO2 the sea will be able to relieve from the atmosphere – or how tolerant ocean ecosystems are able to be of a warm and acidic sea. During the latest decades it has been pointed out that we are the first generation to affect the climate on earth – and the last generation that won’t have to pay the price for it. But the saying does not sound adequate anymore. We do already suffer from many of the consequences we warned against only a few years ago. We’ve seen unprecedented storms, floods, drought, fires, hunger – and indeed also the first waves of climate refugees. The globe’s glaciers are melting, and the arctic ice cap is already drastically diminished. In fact, many of these symptoms have presented themselves far ahead of schedule, even compared to the most pessimistic scenarios worked out by climate researchers. It took some billions of years to create us. Yes, it really does take billions of years to create a human being! But will we survive the third millennium? Man may be the only living creature in the entire universe who has a universal consciousness, a sense of this entire, huge and enigmatic universe we are all a part of. Conserving the living environment of this planet is not just a global responsibility. It is a cosmic responsibility. adapted from www.huffingtonpost.com

DESCRIPTION. The pie charts below give information about the change in population in the century from 1900 to 2000. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. Write at least 150 words. The pie charts show the difference in population in the century from 1900 to 2000. Looking at the charts, the most interesting fact is the overall growth in the world’s population from 1.6 billion in 1900 to a massive 6 billion in 2000. This is a growth of nearly 400%. Most sections have grown. However, the percentage of population in North America has remained a steady 5% of the world’s population. The Asian population has slightly reduced as a percentage of the world’s population while Africa has grown to a 10% in 2000 from just 4% in 1900. The Middle East and North Africa do not appear at all in 1900 and have grown to 6% of the total world population in 2000. Latin America has more than doubled in percentage while Europe, which was 25% in 1900, is only 14% of the world’s population in 2000. In conclusion, while the overall growth was extremely large from 1900 to 2000, there were some areas which showed a greater growth than others and these were especially in Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and Latin America. Extra Activity

1 HIGHLIGHT which of the following influenced the Fifties and Sixties in the USA. Use a green highlighter for internal issues and a blue one for foreign policy issues. Internal issues: McCarthyism, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, protest movements. Foreign policy issues: the Marshall Plan, the United Nations Organization, the building of the Berlin Wall, involvement in South Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis.

2 DECIDE whether the following statements are true or false. 1

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Academic Writing – Task 2 AN ESSAY. Write about the following topic: ‘History is not just about the past but it is a series of useful lessons that help us to understand the present and to make decisions about the future. Each new year gives us the opportunity to reflect on the events of the past year and form resolutions about the year to come.’ To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words. Student’s activity.

7.6 The USA after the Second World War Teaching tip The history video The USA after the Second World War can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

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Richard Nixon took America out of Vietnam and his administration saw the first landing on the moon but his presidency ended in the Watergate scandal and his resignation. T The Camp David Agreements between Egypt and Israel were organised by President Ronald Reagan. F The First Gulf War began under George H.W. Bush because of Saddam Hussein’s annexation of Kuwait. T The Democrat Bill Clinton fought for social reform and tried but failed to bring about a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine. F The Second Gulf War began in 2000 after the terrorist attacks by Al-Qaeda in New York on September 11th. F History was made when a young African American became the 44th US President in November 2008. T

Teaching tip The presentation The USA after World War II in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the historical period or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

VOCABULARY: POLITICS

1 READ the text and find the words and phrases about politics which mean the following. 1 mutual defence; 2 Democratic candidate; 3 non-violent resistance; 4 assertion of racial identity; 5 settlement of the Middle East question; 6 comply with the demand; 7 weapons of mass destruction.

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Academic Writing – Task 1

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Extra Activity

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

6 EXPLAIN the following in your own words. 1 It was a programme for economic aid to European countries devised by the USA in the aftermath of WWII. 2 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an agreement of mutual defence between the USA and Western Europe. 3 Diplomatic agreements between Egypt and Israel, which prepared the ground for a possible settlement of the Middle East question.

2 READ the first two paragraphs on pages 331-332 again and complete the following sentences. 1

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The Second World War made the United States very prosperous because apart from Pearl Harbor it did not suffer the damage caused by warfare and the war brought economic advantages, such as increased production and higher wages. A step in the direction of peace was taken by the creation of the United Nations Organization (UN) in 1945. When John F. Kennedy was elected, the nation was facing social problems such as poverty in the crowded city slums and racial discrimination. The most important black protest movements were the Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Black Muslims led by Malcolm X. The greatest American anti-war movement was experienced during the Vietnam War.

3 READ the rest of the text again and explain Richard Nixon’s achievements and the problems he had to face during his presidency. Richard Nixon worked to put an end to the Vietnam War and finally, in 1973, the last American soldiers left Vietnam. Though marked by the success in the ‘space race’ with the USSR and the first landing on the moon in 1969, Nixon’s presidency was characterised by severe economic recession. Inflation and unemployment became major problems, and in 1973 the USA even suffered a fuel shortage and began to import large quantities of oil. The Watergate scandal (1972), which brought to light some illegal activities of the Republican administration, obliged Nixon to resign in 1974.

Link to Contemporary Culture

Echoes of war

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the text and make notes about: 1

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4 MATCH each US President (1-6) with one of the phrases (A-F). 1 E; 2 C; 3 A; 4 F; 5 B; 6 D.

5 EXPLAIN why Barack Obama’s election was a unique event in US history. The Democrat Barack Hussein Obama was the first ever black American to hold the office as President of the USA. Elected in November 2008, he promised to provide tax cuts, aid to cities and States, the creation of new jobs by the end of 2010, the reduction of carbon emissions, the improvement of health care and the reduction of Bush administration’s deficit.

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what marked the 20th century; It was marked by war and destruction. It was an age of heroism and brutality, triumph and suffering, courage and cowardice. where the battlegrounds were; They were in Europe, North Africa, the Pacific, the Atlantic, China and the Philippines, and vast parts of the Soviet Union, Korea, Vietnam, the Balkans and Iraq. what after-effects arose out of the wars; They were for example the Holocaust, the atomic bomb, the Cold War and terrorism. the issues raised in literature; The writer’s aim in a lot of contemporary literature was not just to document war but also to use it as a background to develop other issues such as pacifism, the quest for the protagonist’s identity or the exploration of guilt, shame, atonement and forgiveness. why there was a war in Vietnam; The communist government of North Vietnam, with its allies the Viet Cong in South Vietnam, wanted to form a unified communist Vietnam similar to the Soviet Union or China, while the South, which was supported by the USA, wanted closer links with the West. where there are still conflicts. Ongoing conflicts continue between Israel and Palestine, in Syria and along the borders of India and Pakistan. Another international war is the continuing fight against terrorism, which has claimed lives in different continents.

2 HOW would you describe the daily life of the American soldiers in Vietnam? Students should point out the repetitiveness of daily duty, the physical pain, the sense of pride which helps the soldiers to go on, the sensation they have of living in another world which is completely apart. Their feelings range from despair and fear to exaltation. Only the memories of home and the hope to come back one day keeps them alive among the mud and physical difficulties they have to endure.

BOBBIE ANN MASON, In Country

3 HOW do the soldiers refer to the enemy? The enemy is called with different names: V.C., Charlie, gooks. It is connoted with a sense of menace. It is either something to be scared of or scientifically interested in. They refer to some sort of special smell or ‘stink’.

COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

1 READ the text by Bobbie Ann Mason and note down: 1

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the actions of the soldiers; The soldiers march, are on their guard and hold their rifles, cut trees, wade through swamps, sleep, hole up, wait, get ambushed and open fire to defend themselves, smoke. their physical problems; They have ‘direah’ (diarrhoea) most of the time, they have wet feet, they are all sore, they have bites and scabs, one of them has malaria, their feet are ‘like boiled chicken’s feet’ and are painful. their encounters with the enemy; The soldiers come across the enemy first in an ambush, then they find the corpse of an enemy hidden under big banana leaves; then Darrel is killed when he goes off to relieve himself – showing the enemies are all around – and finally Dwayne himself comes unexpectedly across a Viet Cong and kills him. Dwayne’s feelings; He misses home and the autumn days, he is afraid and tense because his knees are shaking, he is emotionally affected by Darrel’s death, he is full of anger and fear at the same time, goes wild for a cigarette, is too tired to write, is surprised at killing a V.C. so easily and feels lucky to be alive. comparisons and memories of home. Comparisons: ‘like a team of dogs’, ‘like a baby’, ‘like a speed boat’, ‘like a firecracker’, ‘like manna from heaven’, ‘like boiled chicken’s feet’, ‘like a dream’, ‘like trying to put those round pegs in the square holes’. Memories of home: hunting rabbits in the fall, biology lessons, Sundays when company came, cherry bombing people’s mailboxes on Halloween, the taste of the turkey from home, Mama riding little Donna on her knee, a test they did in school.

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4 WHAT does the helicopter bring and how do the soldiers react? The helicopter is an important reminder for them of being part of an army, of having support and it arrives with cigarettes and typical American food which act positively on the soldiers’ morale.

5 FOCUS on the last paragraph and answer the following questions. 1

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What is Dwayne balancing on his knee and what does it remind him of? He is balancing a notebook on his knee, which reminds him of home and the way his mother played a game with her little daughter where she had her on her knee and pretended to be a horse. What is the play on words with ‘Luckies’ and ‘lucky’? Why is it ironic? The play on words is that the cigarettes are called Lucky Strike (‘Luckies’) and the soldiers need luck to stay alive and survive the war. It is ironic because smoking cigarettes is actually bad for one’s health and possibly leads to illness and death, while a chance for life is what is actually needed and hoped for by the soldiers. Why does Dwayne say that the world is a dream? Because of the nightmarish reality of the war. The ‘world outside’, the world ‘without war’ seems unreal almost like a dream. What does he think will be a miracle? It seems to him that survival would be a miracle. How do we know he is feeling homesick? The whole paragraph is full of nostalgia. First he remembers his mother playing with her daughter, then he thinks of the old life ‘like a dream’ and of his school days, and at the end he repeats the lines of a song that reminds him of his wife Irene.

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Teaching tip Bonnie Ann Mason (1940-) was born in Mayfield, Kentucky. After graduating from the University of Kentucky, she attended the State University of New York at Binghamton and the University of Connecticut. Her first novel In Country was published in 1985 and her second novel, Spence + Lila, in 1988. Her collection of short stories Love Life (1989) also received favourable reviews from critics. The characters of many of her novels are people who never left home and who quietly endure ordinary jobs and marriages that will never be as interesting as their dreams. She writes in spare, undecorated prose.

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Dad’s diary

A Cold Coming TONY HARRISON, The Guardian

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Teaching tip Tony Harrison (1937-) is an English poet, translator and dramatist. He was born in Leeds, where he received a classics-based grammar school education and a degree from Leeds University. He is considered to be one of Britain’s greatest contemporary writers and is well known for his poetry and plays, many of which have been performed at the National Theatre in London. He is also famous for his modern versions of Greek classic works, like Oresteia and Lysistrata, as well as Molière’s Le Misanthrope and medieval mystery plays. He is also well known for his outspoken and controversial views on current events and in particular the Iraq War. He received the David Cohen Prize in 2015 for his contribution to literature.

COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

1 READ the text and describe the scene set in the first four lines. The poet is looking at a dead Iraqi soldier who has been burnt alive in his truck and describes him as leaning forward, reaching out towards the shattered windscreen almost as though he wants to use the windscreen wiper to write down his thoughts or his will.

2 WHAT is the Iraqi soldier asking the poet to do? What is strange about this request? The poet sees the soldier as asking him for an exclusive interview. The strange thing is that the soldier is dead so it is almost as though he is asking from beyond the grave to have his message heard.

of having their children. It shows us that the soldiers were fully aware of the possibility of dying and it also expresses their wish to leave something of themselves behind if they do die.

5 EXPLAIN lines 19-20 in your own words. The Iraqi soldier who describes himself as half roasted and half bone apologises for being scornful of the American soldiers but explains that he is actually envious of what they have done because he wishes he had had that opportunity too.

6 WHICH lies does the soldier suggest to the poet? What does this suggest about journalism in wars? The soldier suggests that the journalist/poet lies by saying the Iraqis want their enemies to become their friends and would be pleased to see their children in the arms of enemy soldiers. This ironic tone is a comment on what people want to read and hear from journalists rather than the horrific reality of war.

7 EXPLAIN the images described in lines 28-32. The ‘frozen phial of waste’ is a comment on the destruction of the country caused by the war; the frozen test-tube is a reference to the frozen sperm of the three soldiers; the crib, Kaaba, Ark, Cross and Crescent are all religious symbols of the countries and religions involved – Christians, Muslims and Jews; the rainbow in seven shades of black is a reference to the black smoke from the burning oil fields.

8 FIND examples of alliteration in the final couplet. ‘bottled Bethlehem’, ‘come-curdling Cruise/Scud-cursed’, ‘pressed … PLAY’.

3 POINT out why the poet makes reference to ‘three wise men’. What does this remind you of and what is the poet emphasising here? What other references to the same event are present? The reference is to the Nativity and the birth of Christ, which is mentioned again at the end of the poem (‘a bottled Bethlehem’, line 35). The poet is emphasising the contrast between the Three Kings (also called the Three Wise Men) arriving for Christ’s birth and this war, which leads only to death. Teaching tip The title of the poem comes from the first line of T.S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi.

4 WHAT have the soldiers done and why? What does this tell us about the soldiers’ view of the war? The three soldiers have left their sperm frozen so that if they do not return from the war, their wives will still have the possibility

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9 COMMENT on the rhyming pattern in the poem. What does it remind you of? The rhyming pattern is a double rhyme in each line giving a quick pace to the poem, almost like a regular heartbeat – a deliberate irony, as the poem talks of death and the dead soldier is the protagonist.

10 IDENTIFY the tone of the poem and say what the poet’s message is. The tone of the poem is falsely light and almost simplistic because of the regular rhymes and the simple vocabulary, but the message is actually strong and shocking – like the terrible photograph of the dead burnt soldier. The message is clearly anti-war with ‘Mankind on the rocks’; the world will never have a rebirth until it ‘renounces War’.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and

11 DISCUSS in pairs. In which ways does Tony

Highlighted in light blue: in the first stanza, Dylan is calling people to gather together. In the second stanza, he is speaking directly to those who write for the media/newspapers. In the third stanza, he addresses the senators and congressmen and those involved in government affairs. In the fourth stanza, he addresses mothers and fathers Blue words: awareness of the social negativities of contemporary world Green words: the people’s standing up and battling against what is going on in the USA in order to avoid failure Highlighted in grey: the need to fight for freedom, for civil rights notwithstanding difficulties Red words: the times are changing and good is rising in the country

Harrison’s poem recreate the atmosphere of the War Poets (→ 6.12)? Is his poetry more like Rupert Brooke’s or Wilfred Owen’s? What characteristics do they have in common? Tony Harrison’s poem is obviously closer to Wilfred Owen’s poetry in its vivid description of war and the emphasis on graphic details, like the charred soldier’s face and the mention of gas and arms. Both are violently anti-war in their message. COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

12 DISCUSS in an essay of 300 words why war is such a fascinating and emotional topic. Why are there so many novels, stories, films, paintings and poems written and made about war? Make reference to any of your own reading or viewing on this subject. Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: An expected answer would explain that war has always been the subject of human interest from the earliest times. Students might cite examples like Beowulf or the Odyssey as examples of early interest and then modern works, in particular films and photographic evidence. Good essays will contain details of films, novels, poems or paintings that the students have seen or read and their reaction to them. Detailed description of the work and of the individual reaction would gain good marks as also the comparison of different works and different viewpoints on war. Some students may also be able to cite the War Poets for WWI, films sometimes glorifying war and those critical of it. A personal viewpoint on war is required.

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

2

3

Explain what the ‘waters’ in line 3 stand for. They refer to the flaws of the government; if people do not see what is happening with racism and poverty, then nothing will change. What is Bob Dylan telling the senators and congressmen in the third stanza? He is telling them to hear the call from those who want change and not to block those fighting for freedom. If senators and congressmen do not do anything to improve their country, then they will be hurt. What are the youth in the fourth stanza fighting for, according to the singer? They are fighting for freedom.

Extra Activity

The protest song and Bob Dylan; The Times They Are a-Changin’

4 DISCUSS. Do you think this song can be suitable for today even if Bob Dylan wrote it in the 1960s? Student’s activity.

VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a heading to each stanza. 1st stanza: The request for unity among common people. 2nd stanza: Journalists’ and critics’ awareness of the times they are in. 3rd stanza: Calling on politicians to listen to those who want change. 4th stanza: Parents are invited to accept their children’s rebellion. 5th stanza: The change is taking place. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

Literature and Genres 7.7 New trends in poetry Teaching tip The presentation New trends in poetry in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the literary context or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 119: Ted Hughes Teacher’s key on page 400.

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write down what each highlight and colour represents.

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COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

VOCABULARY

3 COMPLETE the following sentences about contemporary poetry.

1 READ the text and find the words which mean

1

the following. 1 nicknamed; 2 threat; 3 decency; 4 spokesmen; 5 establishment; 6 distorting. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2

3

2 READ the text again and complete the diagram about the main trends in contemporary poetry.

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The Movement main representatives: Philip Larkin and Thom Gunn main features: they reacted against some trends in British poetry which had characterised the first half of the century, showed a tendency towards cultural provincialism and British insularity, and aimed at creating rational and comprehensible poetry about contemporary everyday life The Group main representative: Ted Hughes main features: radical protest against the Movement poets, who were accused of ignoring the real contemporary problems; cruel, violent poetry Poetry of the underground main representatives: poets of the late 1950s and early 1960s main features: it was associated with rock music and festivals, and with happenings; poets came to be considered the spokesmen of common people again The Liverpool poets main representatives: Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten main features: they wrote for the young, using simple, direct, immediate language, and their favourite themes were a mixture of personal feelings and innocent protest against the establishment The Martians main representatives: Craig Raine and Christopher Reid main features: they looked at reality through the distorting filter of a lens, expressing familiar concepts in unfamiliar ways, as if they were Martians visiting the earth Northern Ireland poetry main representative: Seamus Heaney main features: the Irish poets viewed nature as the locus of Ireland’s historical memory, both political and private Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

4 5

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The new poetic trend in the early 1950s was called the ‘Movement’. Its poets were nicknamed ‘University Wits’ because most of them were teachers of English from recently built red-brick provincial universities. They reacted against the cosmopolitan intellectualism of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, the political commitment of the poets of the 1930s, and Dylan Thomas’s excessive romanticism and obscure symbolism. They showed a tendency towards cultural provincialism and British insularity. The poetry of the Group was characterised by the radical protest against the Movement poets, who were accused of ignoring the real contemporary problems. ‘Underground’ poetry was associated with the urban environment, rock music and festivals, and with happenings.

4 EXPLAIN the main features of the poetry written by the Liverpool poets. It was influenced by pop music; it was written in simple, direct, immediate language, and it mixed personal feelings and innocent protest against the establishment.

5 SAY what characterised the poetry of the 1970s and 1980s. The absence of a dominant figure and the lack of an important poetical movement characterised the poetry of the 1970s and 1980s.

Extra Activity

Adrian Henri (1932-2000); Love is… READING COMPETENCE

READ the poem and do the following activities. 1

2

Say which lines refer to: 1 feelings connected with being in love; Lines 10, 17-19. 2 pleasant and amusing experiences; Lines 2-3, 5, 9. 3 physical love. Lines 1, 6-7, 11, 13-15. Analyse the sound quality of the poem focusing on the following features. Then answer the question below. 1 rhyme scheme The lines rhyme but there is not a regular rhyme scheme.

4

7.8 The contemporary novel Teaching tip The presentation The contemporary novel in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the literary context or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 121: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien Teacher’s key on page 402. Text Bank 123: Bruce Chatwin Teacher’s key on page 407. Text Bank 124: Angela Carter Teacher’s key on page 408. COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

1 READ the text and complete the diagram about the contemporary novel. the dominant trends: individualism and pluralism, even if some novelists share particular themes and techniques in their work neo-realism: the 1950s were characterised by the appearance of neo-realism, a trend which worked against Modernism and led to social protest the ‘Angry Young Men’: in the late 1950s and early 1960s the ‘Angry Young Men’ portrayed a conflict-ridden everyday reality through the figure of a young hero, who was usually provincial and lower-middle- or working-class in origin, and who tried to climb the social ladder at the expense of some established values and figures Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

magic realism: magic realism mingles the realistic with the unexpected and the inexplicable; elements of dream, fairy story or mythology are combined with everyday reality the dystopian novel: horror of the present and fear of the future concerned writers such as William Golding, who, in his novel Lord of the Flies (1954), expressed his view of the thinness of the protective civilised layer keeping man from barbarism and the brutal annihilation of his own kind contemporary women writers: contemporary women writers are not only interested in portraying female personal life, but also in questioning large-scale social or intellectual problems the present scene: the present scene is varied and rich

7.9 Contemporary drama Teaching tip The presentation Contemporary drama in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the literary context or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 130-131: Harold Pinter Teacher’s key on page 417. VOCABULARY: WORD FORMATION

1 READ the text and write the corresponding verb/noun from the text near each noun/verb. Noun

Verb

rejection attempt performance approach anguish reflection babbling criticism development connection characterisation

reject attempt perform approach anguish reflect babble criticise develop connect characterise

COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

2 READ the text again and create a diagram to summarise the main trends in contemporary drama. Student’s activity. Suggestion: The Theatre of the Absurd main representatives: Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard theme: the absurdity of the human condition

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3

use of punctuation There is no punctuation, except for the dots in the last line. 3 repetition The refrain ‘Love is’. 4 structure The poem is divided into 5 fourline stanzas. 5 length of lines The first three lines of each stanza have more or less the same length; the fourth line is much shorter. 6 alliteration ‘f’ (line 2), ‘h’ (line 3), ‘s’ (line 14). What does the poem sound like? It sounds like a song. Explain if the images of love used by the poet can be regarded as stereotypes or not. The images are a mixture of stereotypes (like ‘prison’, line 18) and unconventional images (lines 2, 10, 13). Write a paragraph to sum up the idea of love conveyed in the poem. You can use some of the following words. Student’s activity.

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style: debasement of language; seldom recognisable characters aim: to express the anguish of modern man The Theatre of Anger main representative: John Osborne themes: frustration and everyday life style: conventional form; logical plot; outspoken language aim: to criticise and reject the establishment The kitchen-sink drama main representative: Arnold Wesker theme: working-class urban life style: realism aim: to express political concern The socialist theatre main representatives: Edward Bond and Caryl Churchill themes: social and political issues style: rational analysis aims: to analyse issues at a social rather than metaphysical level; to bring about a change in working-class consciousness Irish theatre main representative: Brian Friel themes: Irishness; getting free from the ghosts of Irish history style: away from conventional characterisation towards theatrical improvisation aim: to break up the old models and reshape the past

7.10 American literature after the Second World War Teaching tip The presentation American literature after World War II in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the literary context or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Route 12: Racism and discrimination Teacher’s key on page 439. Route 13: Uneasiness and rebellion Teacher’s key on page 446. COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

1 READ the text and complete the table below with information about contemporary American literature. Genre: Beat poetry. Main representatives: Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso. Aim: It expressed the mood of the new

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generation, its angry and desperate revolt, its reflective and denunciatory attitude. Style: It rejected the traditional forms, broke down the distinctions between poetry and prose and experimented with graphic visual layout. Genre: Confessional poetry. Main representatives: Robert Lowell, Jr. and Sylvia Plath. Aim: It dealt with the poet’s most private experiences and emotions, with suffering, madness, family relationships, the exploration of female awareness. Style: It employed an everyday, colloquial language and a narrative form. Genre: Fiction in the 1950s. Main representatives: Jerome David Salinger, Jack Kerouac and Ralph Ellison. Aim: It reflected the tensions and contradictions of America’s complex and varied society; it represented the rebellion of the American teenagers and the myth of the journey. Style: The style was conversational and the language very effective. Genre: Fiction in the 1960s and 1970s. Main representatives: Kurt Vonnegut, Harper Lee and Thomas Pynchon; Jewish writers. Aim: It questioned the values of society, history and the literary form; it dealt with Jewish life in Eastern Europe and the USA. Style: It used double meanings, grotesque, surrealist techniques, and also drew from science fiction; their works were mostly written in Yiddish and then translated into English. Genre: Fiction in the 1980s. Main representatives: Raymond Carver, David Leavitt and Jay McInerney. Aim: It dealt with themes such as the crisis of the family, drugs, homosexuality and AIDS. Style: It employed a neat, clear, dry style accumulating trivial minimal elements to convey disturbing meaning. Genre: Afro-American fiction. Main representatives: Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Alex Haley; Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. Aim: The novels of Afro-American women writers combine feminist, ethnic and psychological issues. Style: The style is rich and varied and underlines the power of the literary voices of women and minorities. Genre: Contemporary drama. Main representatives: Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams; Edward Albee, main exponent of the Off-Broadway movement. Aim: It dealt with social contradictions, the crisis of values and political issues like the Vietnam War. Style: It was characterised by the use of American regional speech, the close interplay between stage and film techniques and the production of musicals; Off-Broadway theatres experimented with language and staging techniques.

– from initial revulsion against colonialism and passionate reassertion of indigenous cultural values, through disillusionment with the fruits of independence, and thereafter either to a growing sense of alienation, to silence or to further explosions of anger and radicalism. Another general point is that the rapid political and social changes in Africa are likely to exert considerable pressure on African writers, so that they are less interested in introspection and psychological analysis or in elaborate experiments in language and structure.

7.11 Voices from English-speaking countries Teaching tip The presentation Voices from English-speaking countries in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the literary context or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Route 14: Voices from English-speaking countries Teacher’s key on page 452.

Contemporary art

questions. 1

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What factors led to the use of English as a sort of lingua franca? This was made possible, first of all, by historical events: the settlement of English-speaking people in newly discovered lands; the massive emigration of people from England, Ireland and Scotland to North America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Africa during the 18th and 19th centuries; the increased world power of the United States since World War II. In the 20th century, English became the language of political and financial transactions, of study and research; it is now the language used by people of different nations to communicate. This is due to the adaptability and flexibility of the language itself, and increasingly to the domination of English on the Internet. What new contributions have enriched the English-language literature since World War II? The contributions of countries such as South Africa and Nigeria, the West Indies, Australia and Canada, which used to be part of the British Empire. Nowadays they belong to the Commonwealth. What are the reasons why non-English writers write in English? Some authors have chosen to write in English because, although born in another country – often in an ex-colony or a Commonwealth country –, they have been educated and live in Britain. On the other hand, those writers who come from countries where indigenous languages are still mainly oral and not mutually comprehensible have quickly realised that if they wish to communicate not only with the English-speaking world at large, but also with considerable numbers of their fellow countrymen, they have to use English. What do African English literatures have in common? All the new African English literatures have shared similar styles and approaches, dealt with many of the same basic themes and gone through the same phases of development

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COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 GO through the first paragraph and say: 1

2 3

what Abstract Expressionism focused on; It focused on the use of abstraction to convey expressive or emotional content. what the painting symbolised; It symbolised the artist’s psychic world. the leading figures of this movement. The leading figures of Abstract Expressionism were Mark Rothko (1903-70), who explored abstraction through rectangular fields of luminous colour, Willem de Kooning (1904-97), whose works were characterised by highly gestural signs, and Jackson Pollock (1912-56).

2 READ the paragraph about Jackson Pollock and answer the following questions. 1

2

3

What was Pollock’s early style influenced by? Pollock’s early style was influenced by the expressive, often violent use of paint of Mexican muralists, while Picasso and the Surrealists affected the tumultuous symbolism of his works in the late 1930s. What did his ‘drip’ technique consist of? He used his whole body energetically in the act of painting. He dripped, splattered, rolled and even threw enamel and aluminium paint onto his huge canvases stretched on the floor. He was the first ‘all-over’ painter who abandoned all conventions of a central motif. He painted no image, only ‘action’. What are the main features of his paintings? Most of his paintings are a vast expanse on a heroic scale. They are alive with coloured scribble, spattered lines moving this way and that, now thickening, now trailing off to a slender line. Pollock put his hands into the paint and placed them at the top right – an instinctive gesture reminiscent of cave painters.

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1 READ the text and answer the following

CLIL Art

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

3 LOOK at the painting above and answer the

COMPETENCE: LISTENING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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following questions. 1

2

3

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Does the painting show any reference to recognisable objects? The only recognisable objects are the dark blue poles of the title. What does the elaborate build-up in the background contain? It contains interwoven lines, drips of colour and splashes of paint. Does the picture seem to have any edge or frame? Does it maintain the traditional perspective? Does it emphasise the flatness of the plane? Does it create a sense of depth and does it try to harmonise lines, shapes and colours? No, the picture does not seem to have any edge or frame and does not maintain the traditional perspective. It emphasises the flatness of the plane and it does not try to harmonise lines, shapes and colours.

4 IDENTIFY the moments of action painting on the canvas: Pollock dripping and splashing paint onto the canvas, and acting on it using brushes like sticks. The poles were probably made with the brush. The white, yellow and orange look as if they had been dripped or splashed onto the canvas.

5 DEFINE the colours in the painting. Choose from the following adjectives. Bright, crude, violent. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

6 READ the paragraph about Pop Art and find out: 1

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where the name ‘Pop Art’ came from; It came from the imagery of popular culture as defined by the powerful advertising industry that was adopted as its subject matter. why the public appreciated it; The public appreciated it because it was lively, colourful and decorative; it could be easily collected and fitted into modern interiors. the most famous Pop artists; The most famous Pop artists were Roy Lichtenstein (1923-97), Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), Andy Warhol (1928-87) and Jasper Johns (1930-). which techniques they adopted. They adopted various techniques from collage to assemblage, silkscreen and encaustic.

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8.3 LISTEN to a radio programme and complete the factfile about Andy Warhol. Real name: Andrew Warhola. Place of birth: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Education: He studied Art in his hometown. Moved to: New York City, where he practised commercial art. How he attracted attention: He attracted attention in the 1960s with exhibitions of Pop Art objects from daily life. What he chose to present: He made use of images of consumption and death. Testimonials and Warhol’s paintings: He chose his testimonials with care; among his first paintings were Green Coca-Cola Bottles (1962), Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962), and film stars, which he treated in single or multiple images. Did you know? The Andy Warhol Museum, the largest single-artist museum in the United States, opened in Pittsburgh in 1994.

TRANSCRIPT Andy Warhol, whose real name was Andrew Warhola, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he studied Art. He practised commercial art in New York City and he started to attract attention in the early 1960s with exhibitions of Pop Art objects from daily life. He aimed at corrupting the classic art of images with the art of communication, turning his own name into something that was both a symbol and a logo of the spirit of the age and a brand easily recognisable. This is why he chose his testimonials with care and, in particular, he made use of images of consumption and death. Among the first of these were Green Coca-Cola Bottles (1962), Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962), and film stars, which he treated in single or multiple images. His art, and from 1965 his experimental underground films, such as The Chelsea Girls (1966), Lonesome Cowboys (1968) and Trash (1970), his personal lifestyle and his determination to remain an inarticulate enigma made him fascinating to a wide public. In 1994 the Andy Warhol Museum, the largest single-artist museum in the United States, opened in Pittsburgh. COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

8 LOOK at the picture above and answer the 1

following questions. Describe Marilyn Monroe’s physical features in detail. Her hair is blonde, short and wavy; her lips are red and smudges can be seen on the lipstick; her eyes are dark and the eyeshadow is light blue.

9 DEFINE the kind of images produced by Warhol’s method of work. Choose from among the following, then answer the question below. Warhol developed a mechanical process, the commercial silkscreen printing or serigraphy, which gave the effect of newsprint reproduction and allowed multiple reproductions of the same image. This method of work created mechanical, unreal, flat, impersonal and visualjoke images. Which techniques/styles does this painting recall? This painting recalls the techniques/ styles used in newspapers and advertisements.

10 STATE the colours used and their connotation. A considerable distortion in colour characterises this composition. The colours used are six: light blue for Marilyn’s eyeshadow and part of the background, pink for her face, red for her lips, yellow for her hair, black for the outlines and shades and orange for the background. These colours connote something unreal.

11 DISCUSS: 1

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what Marilyn Monroe’s myth meant for Andy Warhol; Warhol found in Monroe a fusion of two of his consistent themes: death and the cult of celebrity. By repeating the image, he evokes her constant presence in the media. The contrast of vivid colour with black and white, and the effect of fading in the right panel are suggestive of the star’s mortality. what Warhol infused the traditional genre of portraiture with and what he brought to it. He infused portraiture with immediacy and power, and he brought to it new materials and techniques. Extra Activity CLIL: Art

Jasper Johns: the precursor of Pop Art

1 LOOK at the picture. What popular image is represented? What do you generally do with it? A target. You pick up a gun and shoot at it.

2 DECIDE. Where is your attention drawn while you are looking at it? To the bullseye (the exact centre), because it is the unique point of interest and it scores 10. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

3 LOOK at the top of the picture. Why have the flaps been lifted? To show some plaster casts.

4 LOOK. Can you recognise the elements set in the boxes? They are parts of the human body.

5 LOOK at the picture. What flag has been depicted? Do you know what it is called? The American flag. It is called the ‘Stars and Stripes’.

6 DECIDE. How many planes does the painting consist of? Three.

7 DECIDE. What geometric shapes are being explored in the two works? Rectangles and circles.

8 JOHNS employed the ancient Egyptian technique of encaustic, that is, adding wax to the pigment and then applying colours with brushes or spatulate tools. Discuss the effect this produced, choosing from among the prompts given below: It created a pronounced sense of surface texture. It increased the lustre of the colour. It conveyed a luminous, naturalistic impression.

9 JOHNS chose commonplace objects as subject matter. Say whether they continue to function socially once they have become artistic subjects. Johns pointed out the abstract forms upon which social usage had conferred meaning, but which, displaced into their new context, cease to function socially. The sign becomes an image, a painting.

10 FOCUS on the first painting. What gives it a sense of disturbing ambiguity? The anonymity of the human specimens, removed from life. They are like fossils or signs that stand for classes of things. One might wonder whether they are what remains of the human target and they engage the mind in moral considerations about the function of a target.

11 SAY what you associate a flag with. Do you think Johns wanted to add any meaning to what is one of the best-known signs in Western culture? No, he said it was not a flag, but a painting sharing some of its characteristics with the American flag. Paint can make anything abstract. How would you define the way he treated it? Tick as appropriate: respectful inventive

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Say whether all the images are identical. What modifies the outline of Marilyn Monroe’s oval face? No, the images are not identical. The shade on Marilyn’s oval face and the eyeshadow modify the outline of her face.

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Robert Rauschenberg and ‘assemblage’

1 LOOK at the picture. What does the composition represent? A stuffed angora goat.

12 SILKSCREEN is a form of printing in which ink is forced through the mesh of a screen, usually made of silk. What other technical devices did Rauschenberg clearly employ in Retroactive I? Where are they apparent? Brushstrokes and drips running down the surface – in particular, in the right-hand corner.

2 LOOK at the goat. Where is it mounted? On a horizontal canvas treated with collage and paint.

3 DESCRIBE. What is there around the body of

13 DECIDE. What illusion does the choice of colours create? It conveys a documentary flavour and reproduces the coloured flicker of the TV set.

the animal? An automobile tyre.

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14 TICK as appropriate. What main assumption 4 DESCRIBE. How has the head been decorated? With paint.

do Rauschenberg’s works attempt to make? That a work of art can exist for any length of time, in any material and anywhere.

5 LOOK at the picture. What can be seen in the upper left? An astronaut.

6 DESCRIBE. What does the work combine? TV images and magazine cut-outs.

7 DECIDE. Who is depicted in the middle? American President John F. Kennedy.

8 DECIDE. What is being re-stated in the lower left frame? Kennedy’s pointed finger.

9 LOOK at the lower right-hand corner. Do you recognise this image? It looks like the figures of Adam and Eve expelled from Eden in Masaccio’s fresco for the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence.

15 DISCUSS. What kind of relationship between nature and culture does Monogram express? The goat represents a survivor of nature in a flood of culture.

16 RETROACTIVE I can be read as an iconographic representation of the theme of ‘Fall’. Point out and try to explain the parallels contained in the work. The dripping motion of paint at the top parallels the fall of the astronaut, and one drip lands humorously in a glass of liquid embedded in the green patch on the right. More hidden is the iconographic parallel between the falling paint, the astronaut, and the ‘Fall of Man’, which resulted in the expulsion from Paradise. Kennedy’s ‘mythic’ character is implied by his formal similarity to the Christ of Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement.

10 HIGHLIGHT the interplay of horizontals and verticals in the organisation of the two works. In the first work, the horizontal canvas contrasts with the goat standing on it and the tyre around the animal. In the second work, verticals introduce the subjects whereas horizontals focus on the details.

17 DISCUSS. What do you think of Rauschenberg’s achievements? Choose from among the following adjectives. Student’s activity.

18 DISCUSS. What implicit criticism of 11 EXPLAIN how the title of the first work is reflected in its composition. First read the definition of a ‘monogram’. A ‘monogram’ is a character composed of two or more letters, interwoven or combined, usually representing a name or part of one. The title is self-explanatory, since monograms are drawn with their letters lacing through one another, as the goat laces through the tyre.

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contemporary society does Rauschenberg’s art contain? In Monogram he explored the relationship between mass-produced objects and natural objects. In Retroactive I he criticised the montages based on chance which are created by a culture which relies heavily on the mass media.

Extra Activity CLIL: Art

10 LICHTENSTEIN said in 1967: ‘I want my images to be as critical, as threatening, and as insistent as possible.’ Explain how these words are reflected in the picture. In Lichtenstein’s work the two-dimensional comic-strip imagery and the clichéd fragments of dialogue are rendered all the more phoney and sentimental when blown-up on a monumental scale.

Roy Lichtenstein: from comic strips to painting

1 LOOK at the picture. What does this cartoon represent? This cartoon represents a war scene.

2 DESCRIBE the two scenes filling the whole to express the idea this picture has communicated to you. Student’s activity.

12 DISCUSS. What society does this painting mirror? This painting mirrors the post-war, consumer society.

indicated. The movement of the rocket is indicated by the coloured vertical lines under it.

4 DISCUSS. What kind of word is ‘Whaam’? Where is it used? ‘Whaam’ is an onomatopoeic word. It is used in comic strips.

Authors and Texts 7.12 Philip Larkin

5 THE DIFFERENT STAGES followed by

Text Bank 118: Poetry of Departures Teacher’s key on page 399.

Lichtenstein in his picture are given in jumbled order. Arrange them correctly. 1 D; 2 G; 3 A; 4 C; 5 F; 6 B; 7 E.

6 STATE what technical features this painting and the comic-strip imagery you know share. The technical features this painting and the comic-strip imagery share are the illusion of depth in space and the flatness of the picture plane.

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the texts and answer the following questions. 1

7 FIND the contrasting elements the composition is built on. The composition is built on the strong contrast between the vehemence and brutality of the image and the cool detachment of the pictorial and typographic style, and between the illusion of depth in space and the flatness of the picture plane.

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8 IDENTIFY the colours used in the painting and state their connotation. Black, white, yellow, red and grey are the colours employed in the composition. They connote violence.

9 POINT OUT what Lichtenstein wants to underline by using common images and methods. He wants to turn the seriousness of art into a visual joke.

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What are the main themes developed by Larkin? The sense of time, nature – which is generally a winter, cold, dark landscape – and childhood are the main themes developed by Larkin. His poetry also deals with disillusionment, defeat, solitude, death, isolation and boredom, and it is dominated by a deep pessimism. What is old age a symbol of, according to the poet? Old age is seen as the decline of man and is characterised by loneliness. What are the main characteristics of his style? Larkin’s poems usually present a casual, easygoing start, and end up in serious reflection and philosophical questioning. Their language is argumentative, objective and colloquial. However, in his last collection there is a development in the adoption of coarse expressions, probably the sign of an emotional involvement and a bitter impatience that increased over the years. What are the recurring symbols in his poetry? Two important symbols recur in Larkin’s poetry: the photograph, which stands for the past since it freezes what happened, and the room, which

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3 SAY how the movement of the rocket is

11 CHOOSE from among the following

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of the left-hand canvas and of the righthand one. A rocket is reaching his target in the left-hand canvas and it has destroyed it in the right-hand one.

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represents loneliness; here man isolates himself within four walls and among some trivial objects and prevents himself from escaping. The room, which mirrors the person who lives in it, is also the symbol of the limits of human experience and knowledge. What is the dominant mood in his poems? It is one of loneliness, melancholy and deep pessimism. This sense of loss is in tune with the deepest insecurities, anxieties and halfvalues of an English audience suffering the withdrawal from imperial and colonial power in the aftermath of the war. What characters does he create? His characters are wounded by sexual impotence, anxiety, distress, incompetence and incommunicability.

T113

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1 2

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Annus Mirabilis Philip Larkin, High Windows

VISUAL ANALYSIS

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1 READ the poem and identify its two parts. Then write a heading to each section. Part 1 (lines 1-5, 16-20) The year 1963 and the beginning of a new age. Part 2 (lines 6-15) The time up to 1963, the year of big change.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the poem and

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COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

4 WRITE a 10/12-line paragraph about the dramatic change in attitude towards sexual freedom celebrated by Larkin in this poem.

write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in yellow: specific details of 1963 Highlighted in light blue: words and phrases describing the past Red dots: two important symbols: The Beatles and Lady Chatterley’s Lover What do you think they stand for? They both stand for sexual freedom as part of the cultural revolution of the Sixties as opposed to the depression linked to the past, that is, the time up to 1963. Highlighted in green: a metaphor: the change taking place in everyone’s life after 1963 is compared to a game that cannot be lost Highlighted in grey: the poet’s comments What do they suggest about his personality and attitude to life? He feels defeated, disillusioned and alone since it is too late for him to join the cultural revolution of the 1960s. Arrows: the opening and the closing stanzas are very similar; they function as a refrain

What does 1963 look like, according to the poet? It looks like an Annus Mirabilis. What characterised the relationships between the sexes until then? Marriage. The poet uses words such as ‘bargaining’, ‘wrangle’ and ‘shame’ to refer to the often squalid, hypocritical nature of loveless marriages. What changed after 1963? Everything changed, beginning with people’s attitude towards sexual freedom. What does the poet say about his present condition? It is too late for him, which is why he feels so disillusioned. What are the most important stylistic features of the poem? The poem is composed of four five-line stanzas. The lines are mostly regular in length; the fourth line in each stanza is longer than the others. The rhyme scheme is regular: ABBAB. The rhythm is regular, too. Examples of alliteration can be found in lines 9 and 14. Do you find the language of this poem ordinary or ‘poetic’? Would you describe the general tone as conversational or formal? The language of the poem is ordinary and the tone is conversational.

Student’s writing activity.

7.13 Seamus Heaney Teaching tip The presentation Seamus Heaney in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 120: Personal Helicon Teacher’s key on page 402. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the texts and write the questions to the following answers about Heaney’s life. 1 2

Where was Seamus Heaney born? At Mossbawn, in County Derry, Northern Ireland. What was his childhood characterised by inside the walls of his home? Warmth and affection.

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2 COMPLETE the table about Heaney’s literary career. 1966

Death of a Naturalist

1969

Door into the Dark

1972

Wintering Out

1975

North

1980

Selected Poems 1965-1975; Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978

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Station Island

1995

Nobel Prize for Literature

1996

The Spirit Level

1999

published a translation of ‘Beowulf’

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Human Chain

3 ANSWER the following questions about the works of Seamus Heaney. 1

What role does the rural world of Heaney’s childhood play in his poetry? Heaney’s early poems derive their primary material from the world of his childhood. Rural County Derry is the ‘country of the mind’. The poet conveys what man and nature share, which is underlined in his emphasis on human work. The interchange between man and nature also enlarges the poet’s consciousness; the incidents described always bring about new knowledge and enforce the view of the poet as intimately involved with his own community, the inheritor of rural traditions of labour and service.

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In what sense can some of his poems be defined as elegiac? They evoke figures who suffer some kind of human diminishment – isolation, repression, disenchantment, exploitation or betrayal. They stand for those historically dispossessed and maltreated, and act as exemplars of suffering and endurance. Heaney’s poems are filled with images of death and dying, and yet they are also firmly rooted in the concreteness of everyday life. What is the quatrain form he elaborated like? It is characterised by the dissolving of line into line and image into image, often through the use of enjambement. This form is heavily stressed, with two stresses to a line, like the half-line of Anglo-Saxon alliterative metre; it often breaks its line to coincide with the grammatical phrase; and it makes much use of the colon or its equivalent, the dash. As a result, it has a certain archaic quality. Heaney uses alliteration and onomatopoeia extensively and he sometimes refers to, quotes or imitates Anglo-Saxon kennings. He uses northern dialect and words from the Gaelic, and employs technical terms. What was the poet’s relation to politics? Being born into a society deeply divided along religious and political lines had the effect not only of darkening the mood of Heaney’s work in the 1970s, but also of giving him concerns about the question of poetry’s responsibilities in the world, since poetry is split between a need for creative freedom and a pressure to express the sense of social obligation felt by the poet as a citizen. What did the bog victims represent for Heaney? To Heaney, the bog victims became archetypal symbols for the need of communities to exact blood sacrifice. The poet’s task is to examine the historical reasons and psychological consequences behind them. This gives his work universal meaning and almost mythic resonance.

T114

Digging Seamus Heaney, Death of a Naturalist

READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the poem and match the highlighted words with their meaning. 1 shaft; 2 handle; 3 mould; 4 scatter; 5 soggy; 6 squat; 7 Corked; 8 Stooping; 9 curt; 10 rasping.

2 READ the poem again and do the following activities. 1 Explain: 1 where the speaker is; At home, by the window.

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What characterised the world outside his home? Conflict and division. Why did Heaney go to the Catholic boarding school of St Columb’s College in the city of Derry? Because he won a scholarship. Where did he move next? First to Belfast, then to the Irish Republic. When did he begin to write poetry? In the early 1960s. What contributed to his popularity along with his activity of public commentator? His poetry readings. What change took place in the 1970s? He got more involved in the Catholic civil rights movement. Why was 1980 an important year for Heaney? Because he published both Selected Poems and a prose collection. What was he awarded in 1995? The Nobel Prize for Literature.

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if he coincides with the poet; Yes, he does. what he is doing; He is writing when he hears someone under his window. what he can see; He can see his father digging, bent among the flowerbeds. what and whom this scene makes him remember; He remembers when his father used to drill potatoes 20 years before, and he remembers his grandfather as well. what the man was very good at; He was very good at handling the spade to cut the turf. what the speaker brought him one day; He brought him some milk in a bottle. what the speaker decides to do in the end. He decides to dig with his pen.

3 ‘DIGGING’ is used by Heaney as a metaphor to establish a similarity and continuity between his own work and that of the rural community he comes from. Complete the summary about the view of poetry and of the poet with the words from the box. 1 cinematic; 2 spade; 3 pen; 4 metaphor; 5 couplet; 6 closing; 7 choosing; 8 digging; 9 memory; 10 self-awareness; 11 weapon. 7

4 DISCUSS this statement. This poem clearly shows the way Heaney’s imagination works and the importance of memory in the process.

2 Consider the sequence of the scenes described. Identify those belonging to the poet’s reflection and those associated with his memory. Scenes belonging to the poet’s reflection: lines 1-6, 15-18, 25-31; scenes belonging to the poet’s memory: lines 7-14, 19-24. 3 Decide whether the following statements about the sound of the poem are true or false. 1 The poem has a regular rhyme scheme. F 2 The stanzaic division follows a regular pattern. F 3 There are several run-on lines. T 4 The poem is free verse. T

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS BETWEEN TEXT AND CONTEXT

Heaney’s inspiration springs from ‘remembering’, through a process of looking back rather than forward. At the same time, ‘digging’ becomes a metaphor of the probing of the unconscious. 7

COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

5 DISCUSS. Can you remember any moment in your childhood when you observed your father or grandfather at work? Describe what they did, how you felt and what idea of work you perceived. Student’s activity.

4 Line 4 contains A alliteration. 5 The ‘squelch and slap’ in line 25 is B onomatopoeia. 6 Underline the words referring to the area of agriculture. The ‘spade’ (lines 4, 15, 28); ‘gravelly ground’ (line 4); ‘digging’/‘dig’ (lines 5, 9, 24, 31); ‘potato drills’ (line 8); ‘coarse boot’, ‘lug’ (line 10); ‘rooted out’, ‘tops’ (line 12); ‘scatter’, ‘potatoes’, ‘picked’ (line 13); ‘turf’ (lines 17, 24); ‘bog’ (line 18); ‘Nicking and slicing’, ‘heaving sods’ (line 22); ‘potato mould’, ‘squelch and slap’ (line 25); ‘soggy peat’ (line 26). 7 Through the image of his digging forefathers, Heaney expresses a vision of labour that is B productive and rewarding at the same time. 8 What are the feelings conveyed through the poet’s memories? Tick as appropriate. Intimacy. Respect. Warmth. Tenderness.

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T115

Punishment Seamus Heaney, North

Teaching tip The ‘Bog People’ of P.V. Glob’s book are examples of victims of prehistoric and historical sacrificial rituals, murders or executions. Their bodies, sometimes bound in rope or blindfolded and even with the rope that strangled them still around their neck, were left in the marshy peat bogs of Denmark and were thereby preserved over a period of hundreds to thousands of years, until discovered by modern peat cutters. The bog people provide us valuable insights into the culture and religion of Northern Europe from pre-Christian times up to the Middle Ages. The way of life (and death) of these people is made all the more intelligible to the modern observer by the fortuitous preservation of their bodies as they were the day they died, with soft tissue and even intact clothing.

VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the poem and write a caption to describe the content of each section. Part 1 (lines 1-22) The poet is fascinated by the sight of the retrieved body.

Part 2 (lines 23-31) The poet feels pity for the victim. Part 3 (lines 32-44) The poet reflects on his role.

write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in yellow: details of the punishment Highlighted in grey: what the girl’s appearance might have been at the time of the execution Highlighted in green: how the poet feels in front of the retrieved body: he observes with curiosity but also identifies with the victim. He feels sympathy and almost love Highlighted in pink: metaphors comparing the girl to a young tree: her bones look like wood, her head is like a wooden box containing the brain. Teachers should point out that these images are imitations of Anglo-Saxon kennings Blue words: simile to describe the girl’s shaved head Pink words: how the poet addresses the victim: the adjectives emphasise the fragility and helplessness of the girl Highlighted in light blue: the poet’s attitude when faced with a similar punishment against Irish girls by the IRA in contemporary Ireland

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4 WRITE a 10/12-line commentary about the theme of ‘digging’ described in line 15 with the unearthing of the bog figure ‘that is dug up’. Draw a comparison with the poem Digging (→ T114) as regards similarities and differences. Both poems contain a tense shift which underlines the role of the past in the present. The ‘digging’ theme is present in both but in T114 it regards gravel, potatoes and turf, while in T115 it concerns the past, or better, myth. In both poems the bog is a powerful metaphor of the collective unconscious of the Irish. Both poems deal with the poet’s role – in Digging he has an imaginary journey into memory and decides to dig up the truth with his pen, in Punishment he is more ambiguous and feels guilty in front of sectarian revenge.

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1

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Analyse the poem’s layout considering the division into stanzas; the length of lines and of words; the rhyme scheme; and the use of punctuation. Eleven four-line stanzas; the length of lines and words is not regular, even though most lines and words are short; the rhyme scheme is not regular, free verse is used; students should notice the use of run-on lines, and of commas, colons and full stops at the end of several lines/stanzas. The poet draws an analogy between the bog girl and the Irish Catholic girls punished in Northern Ireland during the 1970s for going out with British soldiers. Point out the relevant lines. Can you see any difference in the way the poet talks about prehistoric and contemporary violence? Lines 38-40. The way the poet describes the prehistoric ritual betrays a sort of fascination and reverence. Moreover, he implies that the girl had been used as a scapegoat. Her Irish sisters, instead, were publicly exposed as a warning: contemporary violence is much more savage, it implies hatred and denies its victims any dignity. The last part of the poem is dominated by the poet’s reflection about his role. Why do you think he chose to talk about the young girl?

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COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

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COMPETENCE: CONTRASTING AUTHORS

5 DISCUSS. Compare Heaney’s ‘Irishness’ with Yeats’s (→ 6.13). Consider the two poets’ upbringing, interests, themes, imagery and aim. Heaney Upbringing: He was born into a Catholic family, he was brought up in a rural environment and became aware of the religious and cultural division of Ulster at school. Interests: He was interested in the Catholic civil rights movement and archaeology. Themes: He wrote about rural life, human isolation and Irish history. Imagery: He drew his images from country life and archaeology. Aim: His poetry aimed at enlarging consciousness and bringing about new knowledge.

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2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the poem and

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What do the oppositions (‘understand’/‘revenge’, ‘civilized’/‘connive’) in the last four lines underline? Because she was offering the poet an image that could become an emblem and also achieve a kind of poetic beauty. The bog girl of ancient Europe became a symbol of the violence in Northern Ireland. The oppositions in the last four lines underline the contrast between a rational and an instinctive attitude. Some critics have seen in these lines a refusal to face the reality of violence in Northern Ireland, others think that Heaney is looking for a consolatory note to be able to stand the atrocities in his country.

Yeats Upbringing: He belonged to the Anglo-Irish Protestant minority and spent long periods in the rural west of Ireland. Interests: He was interested in the Irish revival myth, mystical doctrines and the occult. Themes: He wrote about art, beauty, eternity, tradition, age and death. Imagery: He drew his images from nature and myth. Aim: His poetry aimed at reviving Irish culture. 7

COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

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6 DISCUSS. 1

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The picture below was taken in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, at the very start of the Troubles in 1971 and shows a young woman tied to the lamp post who had been tarred and feathered because she was engaged to a British soldier. What is your reaction to the picture? Student’s activity. How much should an artist respond to the social and political context in which he lives? Is it the artist’s responsibility to question it, to make moral or other comments? Discuss your opinion on the role of the artist in today’s society. Student’s activity.

7.14 William Golding Teaching tip The presentation William Golding in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

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8.7 LISTEN to a lecture about William Golding’s life and works and complete the text.

innocence, and considered adults as well as children as being damaged by war. After the war Golding published his first novel, Lord of the Flies (1954), which has sold over 7 million copies in the United States alone and has been translated into more than 14 languages. The success of his first book encouraged him to follow it quickly with other similarly original and distinctive novels, The Inheritors (1955), Pincher Martin (1956), Free Fall (1959) and the widely acclaimed The Spire (1964). There was then a pause in Golding’s literary production until 1979 when he published Darkness Visible, followed by Rites of Passage (1980), The Paper Men (1984), Close Quarters (1987) and Fire Down Below (1989). In 1983 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in 1988 Queen Elizabeth II knighted him Sir William Golding. He died of heart failure in 1993. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the text and answer the following questions. 1

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1 Royal Navy; 2 D-Day landings; 3 psychological; 4 first-hand; 5 affected; 6 damaged; 7 over 7; 8 encouraged; 9 Nobel Prize; 10 knighted. TRANSCRIPT William Golding was born in Cornwall, the son of a schoolmaster, in 1911. He studied at Oxford, reading Science and then English Literature. He joined the Royal Navy in 1940 and fought in World War II, taking part in the historic D-Day landings in Normandy, which marked the beginning of the liberation of France. The psychological impact of the war completely changed Golding’s view of life. The horrors he experienced first-hand left him with a much darker perception of life and human nature. This new perception inspired and affected most of his writing from then on. He no longer believed in man’s

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What does Golding provide the reader with? He provides the reader with immediacy and certainty, and an analysis of what is permanent in human nature. How is man presented in his work? He is presented in relation to his cosmic situation. What is Golding’s world like? Golding’s world is remote and dreadful, and he believes that man’s propensity for evil is far greater than his propensity for goodness. What does the writer try to create throughout his work? Throughout his work, Golding tries to create a structure that serves as an emblem of the spiritual life, which only becomes real in the realm of imagination. What are the most important narrative devices employed in his novels? They are the development of two narrative movements and two different perspectives of the same situation, and the radical shifts in points of view that usually appear near the end of the novel.

Lord of the Flies COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the texts on pages 359-360 and answer the following questions. 1

Where does the novel take place? It takes place on an Eden-like island in the Pacific or Indian Ocean after a plane crash.

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and order. The skull of a female pig, a victim of the collective ritual killing, becomes both a symbol of a sacrificial victim and the emblem of the forces of evil. Another important symbol is Piggy’s glasses, which serve to make fire and therefore symbolise power; as they serve as a means for rescue, they symbolise rationality as well. The symbols of savagery are the children’s painted faces, and the Lord of the Flies created when Jack and his hunters perform the brutal murder of a sow. What is the language of the novel like? Golding’s language is a remarkable blend of the abstract, the symbolic and the concrete. On one hand there is the jargon of schoolboys in the Fifties, and on the other, when the author voices the children’s thoughts or explains the meaning of their actions, the language is much more elaborate, full of symbols and imagery. What are the most important themes? The most important themes are: human nature; man’s innate defects that can destroy not only an individual but an entire society; good versus evil; the fear of the darkness; two opposing forms of government, a democratic one and an authoritarian one.

T116

The end of the play William Golding, Lord of the Flies

LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

VOCABULARY

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words with their Italian translation. 1 pursued; 2 peaked; 3 bows; 4 streaked with; 5 wreckage; 6 Squirming; 7 shuddering; 8 gilt; 9 Spots; 10 tensed; 11 overhead. 7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the text again carefully. Divide it into the three parts in which: 1 2 3

Ralph is hunted and falls on the beach: lines 1-9 Ralph bumps into the naval officer: lines 10-62 Ralph weeps: lines 63-73

3 CONSIDER the first section and answer the following questions. 1

Who is Ralph chased by? He is chased by the other boys, that is, Jack and his gang.

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Who are the protagonists? The protagonists are a group of boys aged 6 to 12. Their plane, while en route, crashed and all the adults were killed. There is no mention of how many boys were originally on the plane, nor is there an exact count taken of the boys who survived the crash. The three main characters of the novel are Piggy, Jack and Ralph. What is their main task? The boys are confronted with the task of survival. What do they initially set up? They initially set up a rational community based on a ‘grown-up’ model; they establish a government and laws under the leadership of Ralph, Simon and the short-sighted Piggy. Shelters are built and food supplies are arranged, yet, almost immediately, the society disintegrates under two pressures: aggression and superstition. Who is the ‘Lord of the Flies’ and where do these words come from? After killing an enormous sow, Jack cuts its head off and puts it on a stake transforming it into a kind of god, the ‘Lord of the Flies’. These words are a direct translation of the Greek word Beelzebub, which, in the Bible, is another name for Satan. When is the climax reached? The climax is reached when the boys’ game turns into the killing of Simon and Piggy. It is from that point on that all social rules are disregarded. How does the novel end? Ralph is hunted down by those who oppose social norms and boundaries, and has to flee in order to stay alive. In the end the adult world intervenes in the person of a British naval officer. The fable ends with Ralph crying for ‘the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart’. What do Ralph, Jack, Piggy and Simon symbolise? All the boys in the novel exist on two levels: as individuals and as symbols of human nature. Ralph stands for reason, democracy and civilisation. Jack, who represents savagery, violence and instinct, is Ralph’s natural antagonist. He is the head of a choir of ‘hunters’. He is the aggressive force of evil and imposes a sense of discipline on the others, unlike Ralph. He stands for dictatorship versus democracy. Piggy – Ralph’s most loyal supporter – is the voice of rationalism; he believes in the possibility of rescue by the adult society, in the values of civilisation and in the possibility of directing human effort constructively. Simon stands for intelligence and sensitivity. His death marks the end of civility and rationality in the novel. What are the most important symbolic objects? The fire becomes the symbol of destruction but also of rescue, while a white shining conch, found by Ralph near the shore at the beginning of the novel, stands for democracy

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What is he afraid of? He is afraid of being killed. What can he hear and see as he runs? He can hear the other boys ‘crashing in the undergrowth’ and their ‘desperate ululation’. He can see the fire and the things destroyed by it.

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what the officer sees on the beach; The officer sees Ralph and a semicircle of little boys making no noise; he can also see the fire destroying the palms by the beach and the wood. what these boys look like; They look like small savages. what is sweeping across the island. The fire is sweeping across the island.

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5 SUMMARISE what Ralph weeps for in the last section. He cries for the end of innocence, the darkness existing within man’s soul and the death of his true friend Piggy.

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6 IDENTIFY the two forms of fighting in the passage. The fighting in a primitive world and the war in a civilised world. 7

COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

7 CONCENTRATE on the narrative method. 1 2

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Whose point of view is used at the beginning? Ralph’s. What is the effect of adopting this perspective when the officer is sighted? The officer looks like a stranger coming from a different world. Where does the point of view shift? In line 24 (‘A semicircle of little boys…’) the naval officer’s point of view is adopted. A second shift can be found in line 71 when the boys’ point of view is adopted. What is/are the effect(s) achieved by these changes? The former shift makes us aware that the human beings who have killed and are now chasing Ralph are ‘little boys’. The latter shift points out that the boys have been rescued by the naval officer but they will be plunged into another war.

8 CONSIDER Ralph and the other boys. 1

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By speaking but also nodding and shaking his head, Ralph tells the officer his and the other boys’ story. Underline with different colours events and situations that happened at the beginning of their adventure and the ones linked to their present situation. Then collect

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your data under the following headings. Past: Peace and friendship (lines 60-62); the island was an earthly paradise (lines 55-58, 63-64). Present: The desperate ululation of the boys (lines 5, 16); two boys have been killed (lines 35-39); Ralph does not know how many boys there are on the island (lines 47-48); the burning wreckage of the island (line 67). What do the past and the present represent? The past represents civilisation, while the present stands for primitive, savage life. Is there any meaningful contrast between the past and the present condition of the island? Yes, there is a meaningful contrast between the two periods: the past was characterised by friendship and peace, while the present is linked to evil and violence. The passage contains some expressions which seem to underline that the boys’ life has been reduced to an animal, primitive state. Circle them. What has brought about this change in their life? ‘ululation’ (lines 5, 16), ‘filthy appearance’ (line 20), ‘their bodies streaked with coloured clay, sharp sticks in their hands’ (lines 24-25), ‘the little scarecrow’ (line 33), ‘The kid needed a bath, a hair-cut, a nose-wipe and a good deal of ointment’ (lines 33-34), ‘with the distended bellies of small savages’ (lines 41-42), ‘painted boys’ (line 48), ‘with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose’ (lines 68-69). The passage from a state of innocence to that of experience has brought about this change in their life.

9 FOCUS on the naval officer. Square all the words and expressions referring to him. 1

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Which semantic area do they belong to? Words like ‘a huge peaked cap’ (line 10), ‘a white-topped cap’ (lines 10-11), ‘white drill, epaulettes, a revolver, a row of gilt buttons down the front of a uniform’ (line 12) belong to the military world. Do you suppose that the officer will take the boys back to a reassuring world? The boys will be taken back to the world of the adults where another war is being fought with more sophisticated weapons and means – ‘revolver’ (lines 12, 18), ‘a cutter’ (line 14), ‘a sub-machine gun’ (line 15). The officer is clearly a symbol. Choose from among the following to define him. Reason, authority, civilisation.

10 DEFINE the language used in this text. Choose from among the following. Precise, realistic, colourful.

Sight: ‘through the forest towards the open beach’ (line 3); ‘Spots’ (line 3); ‘red circles’ (line 4); ‘burst into flames and the fire flapped’ (lines 7-8); ‘glitter of water’ (line 8); ‘white-topped cap’ (line 11); ‘green shade of the peak … gold foliage’ (line 11); ‘white drill’ (line 12); ‘gilt buttons’ (line 12); ‘a cutter … gun’ (lines 14-15); ‘semicircle’ (line 24); ‘streaked with coloured clay’ (line 25); ‘A flame … was black’ (lines 28-29); ‘shuddering with flame’ (line 39); ‘brown’ (line 41); ‘painted boys’ (line 48); ‘black cap on his red hair’ (line 51); ‘began to shake’ (line 68). Sound: ‘crying out madly’ (line 1); ‘hear them crashing’ (line 1); ‘thunder’ (line 2); ‘desperate ululation’ (line 5); ‘the cry … rose even higher’ (line 7); ‘trying to cry for mercy’ (line 9); ‘The ululation faltered and died away’ (line 16); ‘dumbly’ (lines 24, 63); ‘no noise at all’ (lines 25-26); ‘noisily’ (line 28); ‘whistled softly’ (line 40); ‘loudly’ (line 50); ‘sob(s)’ (lines 65, 68); ‘His voice rose’ (lines 66-67); ‘wept’ (line 69); ‘noises’ (line 71).

12 DO visual and auditory elements change when Ralph meets the officer? How would you define them before and after Ralph’s fall? Choose from among the following. Before: obsessive, primitive, terrifying, simple, mysterious, hostile; after: reassuring, complex, childlike.

13 DEFINE the roles of sense impressions and rational thinking in the world of the island. Sense impressions are more important than reason before Ralph’s fall; in fact, the boys have neglected reason, which was, according to them, unable to solve any problems.

14 WHAT is the dominant theme of the passage?

17 WRITE a 10/12-line paragraph to point out similarities and differences between Dickens’s (→ 5.14) and Golding’s children. Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should point out that whereas Dickens depicts childhood as pure in order to criticise the impure adult world around them, Golding suggests a primordial capacity for sadism and cruelty in all mankind. Lord of the Flies also hints at the savagery in the Western coloniser.

7.15 Doris Lessing Teaching tip The presentation Doris Lessing in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 122: The Sweetest Dream Teacher’s key on page 405.

Evil is something innate in man.

15 DISCUSS. Why do you think Golding chose to write about children rather than adults? Student’s activity. 7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

16 WRITE a 20-line paragraph to answer these questions. Have you come across anything similar to Golding’s vision of human nature in English literature? Can you find anything in common with Defoe (→ 3.10), Swift (→ 3.11) and Orwell (→ 6.21)? Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ about Lessing’s life and works and complete the factfile. Born: She was born in Persia (now Iran) in 1919 from British parents and was brought up in the British colony of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where her family had moved in 1924. Moved to: Salisbury in 1937 for a year, and to England again, this time to London, in 1949 because of her radical politics. Political stance: She joined the Left Book Club in 1937. During the post-war years she became increasingly disillusioned with the communist movement, which she left in 1954.

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sight and sound.

Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Golding’s novel is considered a subversion of the adventure tale, comparing it to Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Both Robinson and Golding’s children deal with survival, but in the latter case the young participants’ mission is to stay on the island as long as possible. They challenge each other in different competitions and vote one person out every week. The full meaning of Lord of the Flies is linked to the very real horrors of World War II. It hints at the concepts of civilisation, altruism, political leadership responsibilities, and the history of Western imperialism. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Orwell’s 1984 and Golding’s novel describe a dystopian world, but while Swift’s aim is to attack political corruption and Orwell’s to show the dangers of politics, Golding develops the theme of ‘the darkness of man’s heart’, of evil that is innate in man.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

11 WRITE all the words and phrases referring to

Beginning of literary career: She published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, in 1950. Issues to be found in her novels: She attacked the colour bar; she dealt with the issues of the Sixties and with the condition of women, the mental condition of people in a technological society and with the apocalyptic ecological disaster. Reputation: In 1956 she was declared a ‘prohibited alien’ in both Southern Rhodesia and South Africa; in 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Grass Is Singing COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the text and answer the following questions. 1

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2 READ the rest of the text and answer the

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following questions. What is the artist’s task, according to Lessing? The responsible artist should be ‘an architect of the soul’ working to strengthen good against evil. The artist’s responsibility is to describe the world with energy and despair, never in a spirit of passive acceptance, to look for a relationship between individuals and the community. What are the main themes of her novels? In her novels she traces the most urgent concerns of contemporary society: the collapse of empires and idealism, the shadow of war and the threat of the nuclear bomb, urban disaster and the destruction of the environment through pollution, the free will of the individual within a historical and social continuum, the condition of women in relation to marriage, politics, sex. Was she an experimental writer? Why/Why not? No, she was deeply involved with the changing patterns of thought, feeling and culture, rather than with formal experimentalism. Her style is predominantly realistic, though her language is rich in symbolism. The characterisation in her novels draws on psychological introspection; the development of a theme often implies acute political analysis and social documentation. What role does Africa play in her works? Africa was her starting point, an experience that became a mirror for the universe. Drawing upon her childhood memories and her commitment to politics and social issues, Lessing explored the clash of cultures, the injustices of racial inequality, the struggle among opposing elements within an individual’s own personality, and the conflict between the individual conscience and the collective good. What did Lessing try to do in the course of her writing career? She tried to accommodate what she admired in the novels of the 19th century – their ‘climate of ethical judgement’ – to the demands of 20th-century ideas about consciousness and time. She described society in terms of realism and at the same time questioned it by means of other literary modes, such as utopia and dystopia.

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Where does the title of the novel come from? From a line in the fifth part of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land. When and where is the story set? It is set in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, today’s Zimbabwe, in the days of apartheid. Who is Mary Turner and what is her relationship with Moses? Mary Turner is a white woman who has spent the first 30 years of her life in town, and eventually decides to marry a farmer, Dick Turner, to achieve social stability. However, she finds it difficult to get used to the isolated life on the farm and to deal with the natives. So she becomes increasingly apathetic and finally breaks down. She is attracted to Moses – one of the black workers – and frightened by him at the same time. How does Moses behave towards her? He addresses her with insolence, thus subverting the traditional master/servant relationship. What theme does Lessing explore in this novel? She explores the theme of racism, the institutionalised discrimination of apartheid, the relations between blacks and whites. From what point of view is the novel written? Written from a third-person omniscient point of view, the novel is almost entirely in the form of an extended flashback. The narration focuses especially on the thoughts, feelings and motivations of its white characters. What is Lessing’s aim in using the newspaper article? The writer’s aim is to document the murder of a white farmer’s wife by her native servant in order to address the human tendency to generalise, sensationalise and confirm one’s worst assumptions, fears and beliefs.

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The bush avenged itself Doris Lessing, The Grass Is Singing

READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words with their meaning. 1 shifted; 2 trickled off; 3 sagged; 4 wounded; 5 plunged; 6 leapt; 7 outwitted; 8 flickered; 9 checked; 10 crouched.

1 What is the place and time setting? The veranda (line 1): there are slim pillars (line 4), geranium plants (line 5) and the trees (line 6). It is dark (line 15) and Mary Turner is wearing a nightgown (line 8), so it must be night. 2 What is the weather like? The lightening flickers (line 3), the sky is cloudy (lines 6, 12) and the thunder growls (line 14). 3 Complete the following sentences. 1 The woman saw a man’s shape (Moses) move out from the dark and come towards her. 2 The dogs stood watching alertly and wagged their tails in welcome. 3 The man held a piece of metal in his hand and used it to kill the woman. 4 The woman could not cry because C Moses inserted his hand between her jaws. 5 Complete the table with evidence of Moses’ two contrasting reactions: fear and controlled indifference. Fear

Controlled indifference

‘he started up, turning his ‘he checked himself’ head this way and that, (line 38) straightening his body’ (lines 30-31) ‘he dropped the weapon sharply on the floor, as if in fear’ (lines 37-38)

‘he hesitated, looking about him’ (lines 39-40)

‘[he] held his hands under the rain, and, cleansed, prepared to walk off … ready to protest his innocence’ (lines 40-41) ‘suddenly indifferent’ (line 42)

6 Tick the sentence which best sums up the end of the novel. Following his first impulse, Moses rushes away into the bush but, on second thoughts, he stops and waits by a tree.

11 Write down the parts of Moses’ body mentioned in the text. What does the insistence on Moses’ physical appearance emphasise? His great shoulders, his head, the glistening of his eyes (lines 16-17); his hands (lines 21, 23, 40, 52, 57); his big arms (lines 2627); his back (line 34). The insistence on Moses’ physical appearance emphasises his physical superiority and strength and his menacing presence; he symbolises the dark, obscure side of human nature to which Mary feels attracted and of which she feels afraid. 12 ‘lightning plunged’ (line 5) and ‘the crowding shoulders of the trees’ (lines 5-6) are A personifications. 13 How would you describe the relationship between the white woman and wild nature? The personification of wild nature underlines the menacing effect it has on the white woman, who feels alien and inferior to it. 14 Focus on the symbolic images in the text and write down their meaning in the table below. Symbol

Meaning

The bush

the wild aspect of nature

The lightning

the warning of death, which coincides with Moses’ triumph

The rain

purification and freedom

Darkness

murder, mystery and death

15 Considering that the story is set in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia in the days of apartheid, what does Moses’ action subvert? It subverts the traditional assumptions about the relationship between master and servant, man and woman, black people and white people. 7

COMPETENCE: CONTRASTING AUTHORS

3 DISCUSS. Compare Conrad’s (→ 6.16) view of

7 What kind of narrator is used and whose point of view prevails? Lessing employs a thirdperson narrator. Mary’s point of view prevails in the passage.

Africa as the ideal setting for exploring inner reality and seeking the truth with Lessing’s treatment of the wilderness.

8 State how the characters are presented. 1 Moses; 2 Moses; 3 Mary; 4 Neither Mary nor Moses.

Student’s speaking activity.

9 What are Mary’s feelings? Mary’s feelings are fear, horror and guilt. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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activities.

10 With the phrase ‘she lifted her hands, clawlike’ (line 24) Lessing compares Mary to B a helpless animal.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

2 READ the text again and do the following

7

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

3

4 WRITE 10-12 lines to explain why, in your opinion, Lessing chose the epigraphs below for the novel. Student’s writing activity.

7.16 Ian McEwan PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

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Teaching tip The presentation Ian McEwan in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

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Text Bank 125-126: Black Dogs Teacher’s key on page 411. Text Bank 127-128: Atonement Teacher’s key on page 413.

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COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ about McEwan’s life and works and find the title of the novel or screenplay which corresponds to the following headings. 1 The Child in Time; 2 On Chesil Beach; 3 Nutshell; 4 The Daydreamer; 5 The Children Act; 6 The Imitation Game.

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Black Dogs COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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1 READ the texts on page 371 and answer the following questions. 1

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Where does the novel take its title from? The novel takes its title from an incident. While hiking in southern France in 1946, June was attacked by two huge black dogs which she perceived as the embodiment of the evil in the universe. In that moment she discovered a sense of the divine inside her that enabled her to resist the dogs. Where and when does the story take place? Black Dogs moves around Europe: some sections take place in an English nursing home where June is, others are set in southern France, in Poland, and in Berlin in November 1989 when the Berlin Wall began to be dismantled. The novel combines two different narrative levels: one, dealt with in the first three parts, referring to the late 1980s and the other, Part IV, to the mid-1940s.

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Who are the main characters and how are they related? The narrator of the story is middle-aged Jeremy, who lost his parents in a road accident when he was 8. Since then he has tried to substitute them first with his friends’ parents and finally with his parents-in-law, June and Bernard Tremaine. Through their memories, Jeremy tries to reconstruct the story of their love and marriage, of their faith in Communism and later disillusionment, and of their parting when their lives take different courses after the incident which gives the novel its title. What are McEwan’s main concerns in the novel? The clash of science and mysticism, rationality and magic; the existence of evil; the moral limits of political reform and religious belief; the excesses of violence and the redeeming power of love. The novel also explores some of the major events of late 20th-century European history. What do the black dogs represent? The black dogs are the dogs the Gestapo had originally brought to the French village to intimidate its inhabitants. After the landing of the Allies in Normandy, the Germans retreated; the dogs were left behind and they ran wild, becoming a menace for the area. After attacking June, the two dogs disappear but the book ends with Jeremy’s visionary warning that the black dogs will return to Europe at some other time. How is the narrative organised? Black Dogs is a first-person narration by Jeremy and it is presented as a memoir through the use of shifting perspectives and its doubling back through time for multiple reconstructions. What kind of novel is Black Dogs? There are elements of genre mixture in Black Dogs. The book is in part a ‘memoir’ both of the Tremaines and Jeremy himself, which makes it a psychological study as well as an act of selfanalysis. It has a discursive, essay-like element in it and, to some extent, it is a philosophical novel in which different positions are constantly in dialogue with each other. How is the theme of violence developed? The novel is pervaded by violence. There is violence in Jeremy’s youth, in the sadistic-masochistic relationship between his sister and her husband, in their treatment of their daughter. The whole episode connected with Jeremy and Bernard’s visit to the Berlin Wall is full of violence. The unconceivable violence of the concentration camp of Majdanek, the French father’s brutal violence toward his child, the hideous black dogs themselves – all embody a brutal savagery that, Jeremy suggests, will recur in Europe sometime in the future. Violence is closely connected with a rejection of civilisation.

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A racy attack

moral and intellectual standards by which to judge not only his personal experience, but also the upheavals that have taken place in Europe since the end of WWII and culminated in the fall of Communism, one of the central motifs of the novel

Ian McEwan, Black Dogs VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a caption to describe the content of each section. 1

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2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in pink: Jeremy’s behaviour: he is worried about Bernard’s health and does not want to get involved in the fight. He tries to take action only when he cannot help it Highlighted in yellow: description of the Turkish demonstrator. He symbolises the minorities that become object of contempt even in democracy. His description and the zoom on the red flag are a bit grotesque: he is compared to a tango dancer doing his performance Highlighted in green: the ‘respectable’ German citizens that witness the odd demonstration and abuse the Turk both verbally and physically. They do not even take action when Bernard is kicked by the Nazi sympathisers but they applaud when the young woman rescues the old man. They represent hypocrisy and cowardice Highlighted in light blue: Bernard’s behaviour: he reacts against racism and violence; he believes that better social and political systems could eradicate ‘evil’. He tries to prevent violence against the Turkish man and becomes himself a victim Highlighted in orange: the very young neoNazis who attack the Turk first and then Bernard. They respect nothing and embody evil, the pervasive, ever-present force of violence that can arise anywhere at anytime Highlighted in grey: the young woman from the street that comes to Bernard’s rescue. If the old system of values has ceased to command, sexual appeal still functions. The neo-Nazis give up their attack because they are judged as naughty boys – and therefore not virile – by a young woman in public Blue words: the narrator’s remarks which interrupt the narration: they emphasise Jeremy’s helplessness towards the disappearance of Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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How would you define the young Turkish man’s attitude? What strikes the reader is his being alone. The narrator says he is ‘a fraud’, probably an exhibitionist who escapes as soon as he can. Describe the crowd’s behaviour. What do you think of them? Although they look respectable, they behave aggressively towards the Turkish demonstrator; they are racist and hypocritical. The second question is a class discussion. This task prepares the students to identify with the scene before doing exercise 4. How does Jeremy’s behaviour contrast with Bernard’s? While Bernard is able to understand what will happen and wants to be involved to prevent violence, Jeremy seems detached and even when he tries to defend Bernard, he does not seem convinced and in vain looks for help from the soldiers. His continuous remarks to the reader show that he lives experience on an intellectual level trying to make sense of history. What did the destruction of the Wall symbolise? What does McEwan seem to point out here instead? It seems that while the destruction of the Wall is meant to mark the end of racial hatred and the triumph of reason and humanity, it has merely signalled the end of one period of oppression under the Cold War to be replaced by another under democracy. The novel presents violence and a rejection of civilisation. COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

4 DISCUSS. What do you think of the way the individual people behaved in the situation described? Would you have behaved in the same way? Student’s activity.

7.17 Samuel Beckett Teaching tip The presentation Samuel Beckett in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 129: Waiting for Godot Teacher’s key on page 416.

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3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

Part 1 (lines 1-19) A Turkish demonstrator is abused both verbally and physically by some German passersby; Bernard decides to help him. Part 2 (lines 20-91) The demonstrator manages to escape, and a group of neo-Nazis gathers round Bernard; Jeremy helps him fight the skinheads; a young woman verbally insults the boys forcing them to give up their assault.

COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

1 READ about Beckett’s life and works and complete the factfile.

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Born: In 1906 in a Dublin suburb, into a Protestant middle-class family. Education: He was educated at a boarding school, where he was a brilliant student, and then at Trinity College, Dublin. Here he took his BA degree in French and Italian. Beginning of his literary career: He began his literary career as a short-story writer and a novelist. He was one of a group of dramatists who developed the so-called ‘Theatre of the Absurd’. Features of his masterpiece: It expresses the basic belief that man’s life appears to be meaningless and purposeless and that human beings cannot communicate and understand each other. Its protagonists, the tramps Vladimir and Estragon, became the emblems of the Absurd. Further plays: Beckett’s further plays develop the character of the naked, helpless, static being. Endgame (1958) deals with the dissolution of the relationship between the physical and the intellectual sides of man experienced at the very moment of his death; Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) is a monologue, which stresses the impossibility for a man to find an identity; Happy Days (1960) reveals the playwright’s tendency to reduce characters to motionless individuals. One of his last plays, Breath (1969), shows how human life has become mere sounds, if not silence. Reputation: His international reputation was established by his plays. In 1969 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Did you know? Joyce and Beckett both spent several years in Paris, where Beckett helped his nearly blind friend to write down Finnegans Wake. The two writers’ friendship and working relationship came to an end when Beckett rejected the advances of Joyce’s daughter, Lucia.

TRANSCRIPT The two-act play starts in medias res, in the midst of circular and pointless repetitions. In Act 1 two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, or ‘Didi’ and ‘Gogo’ as they call each other, are waiting on a country road for a mysterious Godot, who eventually sends a boy to inform them he is not coming but will surely come the following day. The tramps are continually aware of cold, hunger and pain; they quarrel and think about separation and even suicide in each act, yet remain dependent on each other and never do anything. As opposed to the two protagonists, the other characters in the play – Pozzo and Lucky – make continuous purposeless journeys to fill their existence. Act 2 differs only apparently from the first, and the play ends with the two tramps still waiting for Godot. COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the texts and answer the following questions. 1

2 3

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Waiting for Godot 1

8.11 LISTEN to a radio programme about the plot of Waiting for Godot and complete the text. 1 in medias res; 2 tramps; 3 country road; 4 hunger and pain; 5 quarrel; 6 dependent; 7 purposeless; 8 only apparently; 9 still waiting.

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What is the setting of the play? The play has no development in time, since there seems to be just a repetitive meaningless present, and no setting but a country road and a bare tree. What does the setting stand for? It stands for the inner world of the characters. How can the play structure be defined? The structure of the play is symmetrical: the stage is divided into two halves by the tree; the human race is divided into two, Didi and Gogo, then into four, Didi-Gogo and Pozzo-Lucky; then, with the boy’s arrival, into two again, mankind and Godot. The characters’ actions are also symmetrical: throughout the play Estragon tries to take off one of his boots, while Vladimir takes off his hat and peers into it. Both tramps need to take off their hat to think, whereas Lucky and Pozzo need to do the opposite. Who are the protagonists? Why are the main characters complementary? They are two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon. They are complementary, since they are different aspects of a single whole. Vladimir is more practical, he never dreams and he keeps waiting; Estragon is a dreamer, sceptical about Godot and always complaining about mysterious people who beat him during the night. Both men also serve to remind the other man of his very existence. What is the relationship between Pozzo and Lucky? Pozzo and Lucky are physically linked to each other by a rope as well as by a tyrannical relationship of master and servant; Lucky is slavish and stands for the power of the mind, while Pozzo is the oppressor and represents the power of the body.

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characters. 1

Waiting

LITERARY COMPETENCE

VOCABULARY

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words and phrases with their Italian translation.

COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

3 FOCUS on the dialogue between the

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

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what Estragon is doing while Vladimir is talking to the boy; He is sleeping. what the two tramps decide to do after the boy leaves; They decide not to go anywhere and to hang themselves. if they manage to commit suicide; No, they do not manage to commit suicide. what prevents them from hanging themselves; They do not have any rope, and Estragon’s belt is too short and not strong enough, therefore they are not able to hang themselves. whether there is any conclusion to the play. No, there is not. The end is open.

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1 parted; 2 rope; 3 Without fail; 4 hang ourselves; 5 Off we go; 6 ankles; 7 mercy; 8 recoils.

State why from beginning to end the dialogue is dying. Tick as appropriate and justify your choices quoting from the text. It is full of repetitions. Examples: ‘Mr Godot’ (lines 8, 20, 28, 33), ‘sir’ (lines 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33), ‘shall we go’ (lines 44, 90, 97), ‘if we dropped him’ (line 56), ‘trousers’ (lines 73, 91, 93, 94). It is composed of ready-made phrases. Examples: lines 38-43, 63-73. Lots of silences and pauses are interspersed with the characters’ utterances. Examples: ‘Silence’ and ‘Pause’ in the stage directions, the use of ellipses in lines 1, 18, 30, 34. Each character has experienced a universe and is not interested in communicating it to the other. Examples: lines 82-89. The usual cues ‘We can’t’, ‘Well?’, ‘Shall we go?’ are repeated several times in this extract. What effect is achieved? They create expectation, but they also underline the idea of repetitiveness linked to human experience.

4 CONCENTRATE on the stage directions. 7

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the text again and find out: 1 2

3

who the boy wants to speak to; The boy wants to speak to Vladimir. why he has come; He has come because he has a message from Mr Godot: he will not come that evening. what Vladimir hopes; He hopes that Mr Godot will come the following day.

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What do they mostly refer to? They mostly refer to the actors’ movements and the absence of real communication. Do they sometimes contradict the words spoken by the characters? Can you provide any examples? Yes, they do, for example in the last line of the extract. ‘Silence’ and ‘Pause’ are repeated several times; they isolate words and remind us how communication is meaningless and impossible in such a world.

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What pervades the routine of the two protagonists? A grotesque humour pervades the daily routine of the two tramps, whereas tragic and desperate tones express Beckett’s assumption: man’s increased knowledge has only made him aware of the uselessness of his learning, since the forces that regulate the universe cannot be understood. Beckett’s pessimism is intensified by his perception of the meaninglessness and dreariness of human life and by his notion of time as a series of senseless events. What is the main feature of Beckett’s style? The language of the play is informal, but it does not serve the purpose of communication: dialogue is only sketched and the characters are unable to provide each other with any information. Another device used to show the lack of communication is the use of para-verbal language, such as pauses, silences and gaps. Repeated phrases, lines and words, plus the fact that the second act largely repeats the first, are used to signify the senseless repetition and relentless flow of time inherent in human existence. Why is time meaningless? Time is meaningless as a direct result of chance, which is at the basis of human existence.

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Message: To satirise and entertain. Dialogue: Satirical, witty, brilliant. Stage directions: Limited. Shaw’s theatre Plot: Social themes like class distinction and education. Setting: London and surroundings at the end of the 19th century. Characters: Realistic, mouthpieces of the playwright’s ideas. Message: To express a satire of social conventions, to improve society. Dialogue: Use of verbal wit and comic, ironic tones. Stage directions: Very long, detailed. Beckett’s theatre Plot: No real story or plot, nothing happens. Setting: Bare, symbolic. Characters: Outsiders, tramps. Message: To express the lack of communication. Dialogue: Repetitive, meaningless. Stage directions: Short, essential, repetitive, frequent.

5 DEFINE Vladimir and Estragon in a few sentences using the prompts from the box. Vladimir is inquisitive, hopeful and the more practical of the two; he never dreams. Estragon is anxious and suicidal and often forgets about the past.

6 STATE what kind of relationship exists between the two tramps. Tick as appropriate. There is a mixture of interdependence and affection. They can ease their negative human condition by living together. (This is evident in their use of childish names, ‘Didi’ and ‘Gogo’.)

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7 WHO do you think Beckett’s immediate models for Vladimir and Estragon were? Tick as appropriate. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, the classic couple of 1930s cinema.

12 WRITE 10-12 lines about the aspects which 8 FOCUS on Mr Godot. This scene, just like the whole play, is centred on the postponed appearance of this mysterious figure. Who do you think Godot could stand for? Some possible interpretations are given; tick the one(s) you consider the most suitable and provide reasons for your choice(s). Student’s activity.

may have had an influence on Beckett’s view of human life. Refer to 7.2 and 7.9.

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9 DEFINE the language used in this scene. You can choose from the following adjectives or add any other you consider suitable. The language is simple, informal and essential.

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10 IDENTIFY the message of the play. Nothing

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can be done by contemporary man but waiting. Beckett’s aim was to make the audience share the waiting of the two tramps and understand the quality of their inaction.

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COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

7.18 John Osborne

11 WRITE a 20-line paragraph about how Beckett moved away from the traditional features of drama (→ 7.9) as regards plot, setting, characters, message, dialogue and stage directions. Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should develop the following notes: Wilde’s theatre Plot: Social climbing. Setting: London high society. Characters: Static, flat, stereotypes.

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Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should develop the following notes: the social revolution and the changing values in Britain in the Fifties and Sixties; the certainties and basic assumptions of the previous age swept away by the two World Wars; the decline of religious belief; the mistrust in rationalism as a means to explain reality; the disillusionment with social ideals, brought about by totalitarianism; the materialism and consumerism of contemporary society; a general mood of frustration, alienation and futility.

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Teaching tip The presentation John Osborne in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

1 READ about Osborne’s life and works and complete the factfile. Born: He was born in a London suburb in 1929 into a lower-middle-class family.

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9.1 LISTEN to a radio programme about the plot and the setting of Look Back in Anger and complete the text.

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the text on pages 383-384 and answer the following questions. 1

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1 working-class; 2 frustrated; 3 disillusioned; 4 graduate; 5 by running; 6 uneducated; 7 complaints; 8 inability; 9 pregnant; 10 loss; 11 fantasy world; 12 squirrels; 13 circular. TRANSCRIPT The play is divided into three acts and takes place in a typical working-class family environment accurately described: a shabby, gloomy attic flat in the Midlands. Jimmy Porter is the main character and emerges as the representative of the frustrated British youth of the 1950s. He is an embittered and disillusioned university graduate and makes his living by running a stall in a market with his young, uneducated friend, Cliff. Jimmy has married Alison, the daughter of a retired colonel in the British army in India, on whom he vents his violent, bitter, but useless and futile complaints. His refusal of hypocrisy explains his desire to hurt and his inability to show genuine tenderness to all around him, but especially his wife. She is pregnant but unable to tell him, fearing his outbursts of rage. In the second act she decides to leave him, influenced by her old friend Helena, an actress. In the last act she returns home after the loss of the baby by miscarriage, and finds Jimmy ready Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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What is the setting of Look Back in Anger? The setting is a shabby, gloomy attic flat in the Midlands in the 1950s. Who is the protagonist? Jimmy Porter is the main character; he is the representative of the frustrated British youth of the 1950s. He is an embittered and disillusioned university graduate. What/Who is he angry at? He is angry at his wife’s not being angry, at a society which leaves no room for young people. He is an outsider in rebellion against the whole establishment, which he sees personified in his wife and her family; he is the embodiment of the protester without a clear, definite cause to fight for. However, he continually searches for one, with courage, honesty and sincerity, but also with morbid self-pity and hysterical excesses. Why can he be considered a sort of anti-hero? He is an anti-hero because he only speaks but never acts. Who are the other characters of the play? Jimmy’s wife, Alison, stands for the upper middle class. She is far more complex than she would appear on the surface: she is Jimmy’s victim, but she is so by her own choice, and she is the stronger of the two, since she has had the courage to leave her family and to bear her husband’s rudeness. The other female character, Helena, is from the upper class. She is honest and straightforward and she believes in the traditional distinction between right and wrong. Cliff, Jimmy’s friend, is a working-class uneducated man; he is a pleasant person, who shows none of the neurotic behaviour displayed by Jimmy. What is the main theme? The main theme is a critique of establishment values. Why is it possible to state that the plot is circular? The plot of the play can be said to be circular because in the last act the objective reality is just the same as it was at the beginning. In fact, the three acts start and finish in the same place and at the same time, and the characters do the same actions in the first and the third acts. What is the structure of the play like? It is conventional and echoes the eternal triangle theme.

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to play with her in a fantasy world of teddy bears and squirrels. The plot of the play can be said to be circular, since in the last act the objective reality is just the same as it was at the beginning.

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

Education: He was educated in London and at a boarding school in Devonshire. Once back in London, he developed a passion for acting and for writing plays. Known for: Look Back in Anger (1956), which turned Osborne into one of the spokesmen of the so-called ‘Angry Young Men’. Themes of his masterpiece: Rebellion against traditional mores; the anger of the post-war generation at all middle-class values and social injustices. Works: The Entertainer (1957), produced in London; Luther (1961), a historical play in which the central figure is seen as a true rebel; Inadmissible Evidence (1964), which resumes Osborne’s attack on contemporary values; West of Suez (1971), a depiction of Britain’s past imperial glories; Déjàvu (1992), with the same characters as Look Back in Anger; and the autobiography A Better Class of Person (1981). Cause of death: Complications from diabetes. Did you know? Osborne won an Academy Award for his screenplay Tom Jones based on the 18th-century novel by Henry Fielding.

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What is the main feature of Osborne’s style? The language is the most innovative element of the play: it is spontaneous and vital, crude and violent, no longer influenced by middleclass conventional diction, provocative and revolutionary. Jimmy’s vulgar slang expressions and colloquialisms could be understood by everybody, thus the play was addressed to a wider public, which had been ignored only a few years before.

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Jimmy’s anger John Osborne, Look Back in Anger

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READING COMPETENCE

1 READ the text and match the highlighted words and phrases with their Italian translation. 1 cabbage; 2 grins; 3 manufacture; 4 shut up; 5 potful; 6 warden; 7 guzzled; 8 moving; 9 reviews; 10 weekly; 11 I’ll pull your ears off.

2 READ the text again and do the following activities. 1 Identify the two parts of this scene and write a heading to each section. Part 1 (lines 1-57) Jimmy’s anger. Part 2 (lines 58-87) ‘Posh’ papers. 2 Read the first part again. Then answer the following questions. 1 What do Jimmy’s first words express? His disgust with the snobbish tone of the Sunday papers. 2 What does he denounce in the ‘posh’ Sunday papers? He denounces such papers noting how even discussing the English novel, they can make an article unintelligible to most people by writing three columns half in French (lines 4-5). 3 What does this criticism reveal? It reveals a social barrier between the upper class and the common people. 4 What does Jimmy tell his friend Cliff? He criticises Cliff’s ignorance and compares him to a peasant (line 7). 5 What does he try to draw his wife into? Jimmy tries to draw his wife into the conversation (lines 7-8, 10). 6 Is Alison listening to her husband? No, she is not (lines 9, 16). 7 What do Jimmy’s and Alison’s words reveal about their relationship? A sort of animosity between them begins

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immediately, since the further Alison withdraws, the more Jimmy demands a response (lines 11, 14-18, 20-21, 27-28). Does Cliff try to stop the argument between husband and wife? Yes, Cliff tries to stop the argument but he does not succeed in destroying Jimmy’s anger against his wife (lines 31-34). What does Jimmy express while picking up a weekly? He expresses his hunger (line 37). How does Cliff react to this statement? He calls Jimmy a ‘bloody pig’ (line 39). What does he, then, pretend to report? He pretends to report Jimmy’s brave behaviour during the war (lines 41-46). What does Jimmy ask Cliff to make? He asks him to make some more tea (lines 50, 52, 56).

3 As you read the second part of the scene again, note down: 1 what happens; Very little happens; Jimmy and Cliff get on reading papers and Alison continues ironing. 2 what Jimmy and Cliff exchange; They exchange two ‘posh’ papers (lines 65-67). 3 how Cliff behaves to Alison; He suggests that she has a break and relax, and he tries to console her by putting out his hand to Alison and kissing her hand (lines 70-71, 73). 4 what reference to the past is made by Cliff. The reference made by Cliff is to the manufacture of the H-bomb (lines 79-80). 4 What is the keynote of the whole scene? B Jimmy’s anger. 5 Concentrate on the main character, Jimmy Porter. Read his remarks once again and use different colours to underline words and phrases indicating: 1 remarks on Alison; Lines 7-8, 12, 14-15, 17-18, 20-21, 27-28, 35, 58-60. 2 outbursts against Cliff; Lines 7, 23, 25, 30, 47, 49-50, 52, 58, 77. 3 criticism of the world he himself belongs to. Lines 1-2, 4-5, 84-87. 6 What causes Jimmy to treat his wife so badly? A Her lack of response and affection towards him. 7 What do you think Jimmy is battling against? C The lack of response he sees around him.

10 Read the stage directions again. Do they affect the overall meaning of the scene? What is/are their function(s)? They underline Jimmy’s anger. 11 Define the language. Tick as appropriate. Colloquial. Plain. Immediate.

3 WRITE a 10/12-line paragraph. Refer to 7.9 and write down how Look Back in Anger reflected the mood of the post-war generation.

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comparison between Osborne and Beckett (→ 7.17) as regards plot, setting, themes, stage directions and language. Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should develop the following notes: Osborne Plot: Continuous, logical, true-to-life. Setting: Realistic, related to the working class. Themes: Open criticism of establishment values. Stage directions: Detailed, informative and clear. Language: Everyday, raw, simple, clear. Beckett Plot: No real story or plot. Setting: Symbolic, bare, vague. Themes: The meaninglessness of human experience. Stage directions: Short, essential, repetitive, frequent. Language: Everyday, meaningless.

13 What are the functions of these repetitions? A To make particular points. C To reproduce the constant repetition and patterns of common speech. 14 The main semantic area of this extract is that of anger. Square the most relevant expressions and state what tone they set. The most relevant expressions can be found in lines 17, 30, 35, 50, 52, 60, 62. They set a ferocious and angry tone.

Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

Student’s writing activity. Suggestion: Students should develop the following notes. Look Back in Anger reflected: the social revolution and changing values in Britain in the 1950s; the destruction of the certainties and basic assumptions of the previous age, which were swept away by the two World Wars; the decline of religious belief; the mistrust in rationalism as a means to explain reality; the disillusionment with socialist ideals, brought about by totalitarianism; the materialism and consumerism of contemporary society; a general mood of frustration.

4 WRITE a 20-line paragraph to draw a

12 Osborne is a master of repetition. Underline relevant examples with a wavy line. Some examples: ‘ignorant’ (lines 5, 7, 25); ‘peasant’ (lines 7, 8), ‘think’ (lines 15, 33, 34, 35).

15 Identify the main themes developed in the text. The theme of isolation and frustration. Jimmy is, in fact, a visionary looking forward to some unknown ideal; what shatters him is the tension of his present situation, since he is forced to seek out and establish relationships in a society which does not understand them.

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

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COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

5 DISCUSS other social and literary movements similar to that of the ‘Angry Young Men’ in their rejection of traditional values and rebellion against social conventions.

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9 Focus on Alison, the long-suffering wife, and Cliff, the faithful friend. Is their characterisation drawn in detail? No, their characterisation is only sketchily drawn, since they have little independent life at all. Their reactions show their resignation at Jimmy’s anger.

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PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

8 Consider what has emerged from the previous tasks and define Jimmy’s personality. 1 Choose from the following adjectives and provide reasons for your choices in the table below. Student’s activity. Suggestion: Students should choose the following adjectives: angry, impatient, unpleasant, restless, domineering, irritating, frustrated, pessimistic, violent, revengeful and committed. At the end of the activity students should be asked to compare their results with the other classmates. 2 Jimmy Porter is the prototype of the ‘angry young man’. Can you say what he is angry about? He is angry at everyone and everything, at his wife’s not being angry and at her lack of interest.

Some examples are the Beat Generation, the Teddy boys, the punks, the Sex Pistols, the protest songs of folk singers like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, The Rolling Stones and rap artists.

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

2 READ the texts and answer the following questions.

7.19 Jack Kerouac

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Teaching tip The presentation Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author/movement or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 132: On the Road Teacher’s key on page 421.

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9.3 LISTEN to a lecture about Jack Kerouac’s life and works and complete the text. 1 childhood; 2 enrolled; 3 Beat movement; 4 inhibitions; 5 wild excitement; 6 hitch-hiking; 7 chronicled; 8 bestseller; 9 frightened; 10 addicted; 11 alcoholism.

TRANSCRIPT Jack Kerouac was born in Massachusetts in 1922, the son of French-Canadian immigrants. From the experience of his brother’s death, and the Catholic faith of his childhood, he developed a spiritual dimension to his character that would last throughout his life. In 1940 he moved to New York and enrolled at Columbia University. In New York he met the poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-97), the experimental novelist William Burroughs (1914-97) and the intellectual Neal Cassady (1926-68). This circle, with a few other friends, became known as the centre of the Beat movement. The influence of Cassady on Kerouac was enormous; his total lack of inhibitions, his enthusiasm, a sort of permanent wild excitement, and his love of adventure made Kerouac idolise him and consider him the archetypal hero. After the war, with Cassady, Kerouac started his first hitch-hiking journey across America, which was to inspire his best-known novel On the Road, where he chronicled all that had happened during this journey. The publication of this novel in 1957 marked the beginning of Kerouac’s success: the book became a huge bestseller and the ‘Bible’ of the Beat Generation. This popularity, however, frightened the writer, who started to lead a solitary life and became more and more addicted to alcohol and drugs. On the Road was followed by other works: The Dharma Bums and The Subterraneans, in 1958; Big Sur, which contains an account of the disintegration of Kerouac’s hopes, in 1962; and Desolation Angels, in 1965. Kerouac’s books were widely read on college campuses; young people imitated him, hitch-hiking around the country. His fame diminished towards the end of his life, and alcoholism deteriorated his health considerably. In 1969 he died from internal bleeding caused by cirrhosis of the liver. He was only 47. Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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Where did the term ‘Beatnik’ come from? The ‘-nik’ suffix was borrowed from ‘Sputnik’, the first artificial earth satellite that had just been launched by the Soviet Union, striking fear into the hearts of many communist-fearing Americans over what they perceived as Soviet technological superiority. The term ‘Beatnik’ was created by a journalist of the San Francisco Chronicle in 1958. How did the Beatniks use to act and what did they use to wear? Beatniks lived in dirty apartments, rejecting conformity. They often hitch-hiked across the country along Route 66. They acted on impulse, did whatever they felt like doing, explored nudity, sexuality, and pushed their senses to the limits of understanding; they used hallucinogenic drugs and alcohol to expand their world. They wore their hair long, grew beards, and considered worn-out jeans, old T-shirts and sandals their standard uniform. What did they advocate? They advocated escapism. What kind of language did Kerouac and Ginsberg employ? Both Kerouac and Ginsberg used the so-called ‘hip talk’, which was vital, alive, authentic and individual, as opposed to conventional language, which was too dull, conservative, boring and inadequate for expressing their new intense experience of reality. What are the different connotations of the word ‘beat’? The word ‘beat’ was a slang term used by post-war jazz musicians to mean ‘down and out’, or poor and exhausted. Kerouac claimed that the word meant both exhausted, at the bottom of the world, rejected by society, and also beatitude or beatific. What did the ‘Beats’ react against? The Beats reacted against traditional middle-class puritanical values, materialism and organised religion.

On the Road COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ about On the Road and answer the following questions. 1

What is the most important theme of the novel? The journey, which is a symbol of the escape from the city and from one’s own past.

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We moved! Jack Kerouac, On the Road

On the Road became a cult book of the 1960s. Student’s activity. Suggestion: Students should point out that On the Road became a cult book of the 1960s because its protagonists embodied the youth rebellion and the search for freedom of the Beat Generation. They influenced the style of some newspapers and novels; moreover, they contributed to giving a voice to the uneasiness of the young, which led to the students’ riots and rebellions of 1968.

1 READ the text and identify its two parts. Then write a heading to each section. Part 1 (lines 1-17) The beginning of the journey. Part 2 (lines 18-24) Driving towards New Orleans.

2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and

Pink words: the narrator, Sal Green words: the characters involved Highlighted in light blue: Dean’s actions and exuberant behaviour Highlighted in grey: the journey and the actions related to it Green dots: the description of the journey and the final destination Highlighted in yellow: the group’s feelings and sensations at the beginning of their experience Underlined in blue: the theme of friendship Highlighted in pink: the importance of music Highlighted in green: the road

COMPETENCE: PRODUCING A WRITTEN TEXT ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

4 WRITE 10-12 lines to explain the reasons why

VISUAL ANALYSIS

write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided.

What is the road a symbol of? The road is ‘pure’ and straightforward as nothing else is in the boys’ life. What does the boys’ car represent? The car is more than an object; it is like a person and shares the adventurous life of these young people. What are the most important features of Kerouac’s prose in this extract? The most important features of Kerouac’s style are: juxtaposition of short and long sentences (lines 1-5), exclamations (lines 2, 5, 7), repetitions (‘Here we go’, lines 2, 13), the use of slang and colloquial terms (lines 2, 7, 10), the use of monosyllabic words and place names.

7.20 Don DeLillo Teaching tip The presentation Don DeLillo in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

Text Bank 133: Underworld Teacher’s key on page 422.

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9.5 LISTEN to a lecture about Don DeLillo’s life and works and complete the text. 1 the Bronx; 2 Italian; 3 experimental art; 4 advertising; 5 the media; 6 television executive; 7 film project; 8 consumerism; 9 Greece; 10 waste.

3 DISCUSS the following questions in pairs. 1 2 3

What do Sal and Dean share? They share restlessness and craziness. What are their feelings at the beginning of their journey? A collective euphoria. What are they leaving behind? They are leaving ‘confusion and nonsense’ behind them to perform their only ‘noble function’: moving.

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TRANSCRIPT Don DeLillo was born in 1936, in the New York City borough of the Bronx, to Italian immigrants. He attended Fordham University in New York and soon became interested in experimental art, jazz and the cinema. He worked in the advertising world for a while, and his obsession with the media and American culture may find its roots there, as well as

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Who is the narrator? Sal Paradise, who stands for Kerouac himself. Who is the hero? Dean Moriarty, who stands for Kerouac’s friend Neal Cassady. Sal idolises him for his cowboy style, his ease with women and his exuberant joy in living. What language is employed? Kerouac’s style is ‘spontaneous’ and episodic. According to him, writing meant expressing whatever came into one’s mind: a thought, an idea, a scene or an episode, set down as the mind recalls it. The unsophisticated language used in this novel – ‘hip talk’ – has been identified with the language of jazz musicians in so far as it is based on spontaneity and on mostly monosyllabic words.

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in his immigrant background. DeLillo’s first novel, Americana (1971), explores issues of the media and culture through the experiences of a television executive who travels to rediscover America through a film project. End Zone (1972) and Great Jones Street (1973) are about celebrities – a football player and a rock star – and deal with issues of death, celebrity, cults and consumerism. In the 1980s DeLillo moved to Greece for several years; then he returned to the USA and wrote White Noise (1985), which earned him the National Book Award for Fiction. He later published Libra (1988) and Mao II (1991). His greatest achievement, Underworld (1997), spans the latter half of the 20th century and explores celebrity, consumerism and waste. His novel Falling Man (2007) takes its title from the title of the photograph of an unidentified man who fell from the Twin Towers on September 11th after the terrorist attacks. DeLillo has also written several plays, such as The Day Room (1986) and Valparaiso (1999). Zero K was published in 2016.

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What kind of man is Keith? How does his wife differ from him? Keith likes living alone, he only socialises when he practises sports or plays poker with friends, and he is rather unemotional. He lives mainly through his intellect and he likes analysing other people’s psychology. Unlike Keith, Lianne is very emotional and constantly worries about what is around her. What is the main subject of the novel? The psychological damage that the characters have suffered beyond the mourning. Other subjects, such as religion, terrorism, death and the meaning of life, are dealt with but never resolved. What is the real effect of 9/11? It is not political but existential. The attack unhooks everyone from any appearance of normality that would allow them to relate to each other and the world.

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Down the tower Don DeLillo, Falling Man

Falling Man COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ about Falling Man and answer the 1

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LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

VOCABULARY

1 READ the text and match the highlighted

following questions.

words with their meaning.

Where does the title of the novel come from? The novel’s title comes both from the photograph of an unidentified man who fell from the Twin Towers on September 11th after the terrorist attacks and from the fictional performance artist known as ‘the falling man’, who appears in the novel around the city in the weeks after 9/11, dressed like a businessman, leaping from high places only to be caught by a safety harness and suspended, mid-air, in the posture of someone falling from the World Trade Center. What does Keith do after the collapse of the tower? Keith feels terribly disoriented, he is covered in blood and walks towards the flat of his estranged wife, Lianne, and their son, Justin. Later he looks for the owner of the briefcase that had been passed from hand to hand and come to Keith in the chaos of the darkened staircase of the North Tower. How does DeLillo present the terrorists? He does not present them as villains; instead, he gives us a taste of the power of 9/11 from the other side. What characterises the structure of the novel? The novel does not have a linear plot. The form is circular, moving the readers around and around a central point and then ending up where they started. Language is fragmented and vision is distorted.

1 dismal; 2 blankly; 3 stairwell; 4 lean; 5 odd; 6 seeping; 7 rattling; 8 billowing; 9 retain; 10 hazy.

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COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the text again and say: 1

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what situation is described; The extract describes the moments immediately after the terrorist attack on one of the towers. The people who worked in the tower and had not been killed in the impact were trying to make their way down the stairs to reach the ground floor. what people are involved in the scene. The people involved in the scene are: Keith; a woman who carried a small tricycle tight to her chest; thousands of people; the man falling sideways; Rumsey; an old man on the landing ahead; someone praying back in the line somewhere, in Spanish; a man in a hard hat (he was not going down but coming up, so he was probably one of the rescue team); firemen coming up; a woman; men with towelled heads; a woman blinded by debris; a woman calling someone’s name; a woman with her hand in the air, like running to catch a bus; two men running by with a stretcher; someone facedown; and a man falling from the tower.

3 HIGHLIGHT the repetitions. ‘There was/were’ (lines 3, 9, 31, 33, 40, 43, 47, 62, 76), ‘This goes down’ (lines 49, 50, 56, 57, 59), ‘Pass it down’ (lines 51, 55).

4 FOCUS on the setting and write the words and phrases referring to it. What contrast is the scene built upon? The setting: Inside the tower: The paper was moved around the offices by a wind coming from above, there was a fallen wall and it was almost dark. There was water running down the stairs and it was very hot. The tower swayed and leant. The shops in the tower were closed and locked. Outside the tower: From the street the two towers could be seen burning and they started to fall, the South Tower diving into the smoke. The windblast sent people to the ground. A thunderhead of smoke and ash came moving toward them. The light drained dead away, bright day gone. In the ash there were ruins of what was various and human, hovering in the air above. There was a line of fire trucks and they stood empty with their headlights flashing. Everything was falling away, street signs, people, things Keith could not name. The contrast: The scene is built upon the contrast ‘down/up’. The things and the people inside the tower go down, while the firemen go up.

5 SAY from whose point of view the story is told. The story is told from Keith’s point of view.

6 WRITE down Keith’s perceptions and actions. How would you define his mood? Keith’s perceptions: ‘the pain in his face seemed to shrink his head. He thought his eyes and mouth were sinking into his skin’ (lines 11-12); ‘Things came back to him in hazy visions, like half an eye staring’ (line 13); ‘He smelled something dismal and understood it was him’ (line 17); ‘for an instant he saw it again, going past the window, and this time he thought it was Rumsey. He confused it with Rumsey’ (lines 24-25); ‘It did not seem forever to him, the passage down. He had no sense of pace or rate’ (line 39); ‘He could not find himself in the things he saw and heard’ (lines 80-81); ‘Then he saw a shirt come down out of the sky. He walked and saw it fall’ (line 85). Keith’s actions: ‘He climbed out over a fallen wall and made his way slowly toward the voices’ (line 4); ‘He walked in a long sleep, one step and Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

then the next’ (lines 7-8); ‘He stood looking into nothing’ (line 15); ‘he walked on his own, in his sleep’ (lines 23-24); ‘he looked straight ahead’ (line 27); ‘he took a step down and then another’ (line 28); ‘he closed his eyes, maybe because it meant he didn’t have to reply’ (lines 29-30); ‘moved past’ (line 37); ‘He stopped again’ (line 52); ‘he stood looking straight ahead’ (line 59); ‘he reached his right hand across his body to take it [the briefcase]’ (line 60); ‘started down the stairs again’ (line 61); ‘He took one step and then the next, smoke blowing over him. He felt rubble underfoot’ (lines 75-76); ‘He walked by the Easy Park sign, the Breakfast Special and Three Suits Cheap’ (lines 76-77); ‘He went past a line of fire trucks’ (line 80). Keith’s mood: He seems to be in a state of numbness. He moves taking one step after the other as if he were sleeping. However, his senses are alert to the sounds, the smells and the sights. It is his conscience which is stunned.

7 FIND the objects or people that acquire a symbolical meaning. The woman with the tricycle appears twice; one may wonder why she was holding a tricycle in her arms, it might have been a present for her child. The smoke, the dust and ashes recur in the passage as a symbol of death and destruction. The line of people going down symbolises the desperate attempt to find a way out of hell. The briefcase which passed from hand to hand until it reached the ground floor symbolises people taking care of others and reinforces the idea of the descent in the repetition of ‘This goes down’. The falling man is the symbolical image that closes the book and gives it its title.

8 DEFINE the tone of the narration. What strikes you the most in DeLillo’s descriptive technique? The tone is deprived of emotion. The description proceeds by accumulation, with the use of words such as ‘thousands’, ‘crowded’, ‘people’, ‘several’ and ‘things’ that underline the mass effort and the number of people who got trapped and killed in the towers. The last part of the extract is more dynamic, almost frantic compared to the first part, which is very slow in its description of an almost interminable descent. The reader does not share Keith’s impression of a quick descent because the description makes it clear that going down was hard and long. Students should discuss the emotional impact of the extract on the reader.

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COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

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COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

9 DISCUSS the impact September 11th has had

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on our daily lives. Student’s activity.

10 DISCUSS the following questions. Student’s activity.

7.21 Salman Rushdie PROGRAMMAZIONE E SOLUZIONI DEGLI ESERCIZI DEL CORSO

The Present Age

Teaching tip The presentation Salman Rushdie in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

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COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

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1 READ about Rushdie’s life and works and make notes under the following headings. 1 2

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Place and year of birth: Bombay (now Mumbai), 1947. Education: He attended an English mission school in Bombay. In 1961 he was sent to school in England, first at Rugby School and then at King’s College, Cambridge. Work experience: He worked for a while as an actor and eventually got a part-time job in advertising. Early works: Midnight’s Children (1981), Shame (1983) and The Satanic Verses (1988). Later works: The volume of essays Imaginary Homelands (1991), the collection of short stories East, West (1994), the novels The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995), Fury (2001), Shalimar the Clown (2005), Luka and the Fire of Life (2010) and Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (2015).

Midnight’s Children

2 READ the rest of the text and answer the following questions. 1

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COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

1 READ the plot of Midnight’s Children on pages 397-398 and explain: 1

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the meaning of the title; It refers to the children that were born at midnight on 15th August 1947, exactly when India gained its independence from British rule. Saleem’s origins; He is the illegitimate son of a poor woman, Vanita, and an Englishman, William Methwold, who is switched at birth with the

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baby of two wealthy Muslims – Ahmed Sinai and Amina –, so he will be raised by the well-to-do couple. how Vanita’s and Amina’s destinies cross; They both expect a child, go into labour at midnight and deliver a son. Their destinies cross when a midwife at the nursing home, Mary Pereira, switches the nametags of the two newborn babies, giving the poor baby a life of privilege and the rich baby a life of poverty. Saleem’s special powers; Telepathy and an incredible sense of smell with which he can detect emotions. his misadventures; He moves from India to Pakistan; during the war between the two countries, he gets hit in the head and temporarily loses his memory; then he has other adventures in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well, before going back to India again and being sterilised. his final prophecy. Saleem prophesies that he will die on a specific day, disintegrating into millions of specks of dust.

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Where is the novel set? It is set in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, beginning with India’s struggle for independence and ending with Indira Gandhi’s sterilisation campaign, also including some Pakistani events. How does Saleem see himself? He sees himself as a metaphor for the Indian nation. What are the midnight’s children a metaphor of? They are a metaphor of the destruction of potential in a new, independent India, of hope and opportunities betrayed. What is the central idea of the novel? The central idea of the book is not just that public life affects private life, but that people can blend into each other ‘like flavours when you cook’, as Saleem says at one point. So, thanks to the act of writing, any historical event or person may flow into people’s lives and thoughts. What narrative techniques does Rushdie use? He uses first-person narration, flashbacks, foreshadowing and digressions, a prevalently ironical and comic tone, realistic techniques such as detailed references and visual language, and verbal versions of cinematic techniques such as ‘close-up’ and ‘zooming’. Why does Rushdie’s work belong to magic realism? Because magic realism is what allows him to explore the themes of displacement and the confusion between fact and myth in the Third World; it is also a way through which his own multi-cultural identity – a mixture of Indian, Pakistani and British – can find expression.

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15th August 1947

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Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children LITERARY COMPETENCE 7

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VOCABULARY

1 READ the text and match the highlighted

It is two minutes to twelve The two babies are about to be born and the crowd in the street is celebrating. At last, it is midnight The two babies were born and ‘India awakens to life and freedom’. What events are being juxtaposed? The birth of the children and the birth of India as an independent nation.

words with their meaning. 1 will; 2 tryst; 3 ward; 4 hue; 5 utterance; 6 shrieks; 7 name-tags; 8 hollows; 9 pledge; 10 Rumours.

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COMPETENCE: ANALYSING AND INTERPRETING A TEXT

COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING A TEXT

2 READ the text again and gather information about the people mentioned in the extract. 1

2 3 4 5

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Dr Narlikar The ‘dark glowing’ director of the nursing home. An expert gynaecologist, he dislikes babies and gives lectures on contraception and birth control. He assists Amina personally. Wee Willie Winkie Vanita’s husband. Vanita A poor woman who dies immediately after giving birth to the protagonist/narrator, Saleem. I The narrator, Saleem. As a newborn child, he will be switched with a rich baby. Amina Sinai A rich woman who is in labour in the same hospital as Vanita and is having a nightmare. Ahmed Sinai Amina’s husband. Flory A midwife, a ‘thin kind lady of no importance’. She helps Dr Narlikar with Amina’s labour and delivery. Dr Bose A gynaecologist assisting Vanita. Miss Mary Pereira The midwife who assists Vanita by Dr Bose’s side. She does her private revolutionary act by switching the nametags of the two newborn babies. Jawaharlal Nehru A ‘wiry serious’ politician making a speech in Delhi.

3 WRITE down what happens each time the narrator refers to the clock, then answer the question below. 1 2 3

Eighteen hours; seventeen; sixteen Vanita has been in labour for eight hours. Twelve hours to go Amina is pressing her womb and has just awoken from a nightmare. It is twenty-nine minutes to midnight The two women are still in labour.

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Identify the kind of narrator. The passage is narrated in the first person by one of the midnight’s children, that is, by Vanita’s real son, Saleem. Mark the passages where the narrator uses present tenses and those where he resorts to past tenses. Present tenses: lines 1-8, 21-81, 104-106; past tenses: lines 9-20, 82-103. What is the effect of such a shift? The present tense coincides with the narration of the birth and gives the event a realistic, impressive, almost haunting quality; the past tense is used for the digressions and reflections the narrator makes later on. Do you think the narrator’s tone changes when he moves from the narration of the event to his own considerations about it? Humour and irony are used in the narration of the event; the digressions are bitter and show disappointment.

5 QUOTE some examples of both verbal and situational irony from the text and discuss the narrator’s aim. Verbal irony: Amina’s words when she sees the baby (lines 101-103). Situational irony: the exchange of babies (lines 85-91) and also lines 98-99.

6 FOCUS on the dashes and the suspension of speech often employed and say what their functions are. Tick as appropriate. They increase suspense. They show a pause in time. They mark a turn in the narrative from the private to the public sphere. They indicate the missing parts in a speech.

7 WRITE down the historical references to India’s past and present contained in the passage. By juxtaposing private experiences with public events, Rushdie gives the reader an insight into a fundamental moment in India’s history. Here are the events mentioned in the

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4 FOCUS on the narrator. 1

extract: M.A. Jinnah announced the midnight birth of a Muslim nation; a nation which had never previously existed was about to win its freedom; it invented the game of chess; it traded with Middle Kingdom Egypt; the mass bloodletting in progress on the frontiers of the divided Punjab; the violence in Bengal; the long pacifying walk of Mahatma Gandhi; Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech at the Assembly Hall.

magic fascinating. Student’s activity. Students will probably discuss how writers, artists and philosophers have a more sensitive awareness of the themes and anxieties of their time and continually search for means of expressing their concerns in their works. The fantastic and unreal give a stunning and visionary means of showing reality in a clearer light.

2 DISCUSS in pairs the term ‘magic realism’ 8 COMPLETE the table below with the terms to

and write a sentence explaining what you think it is. Students’ activity. Suggestion: Magic realism refers to a literary or artistic genre in which imaginary and fantastic, and often disturbing images or events are depicted in a realistic and naturalistic manner.

which the narrator applies each of the colours of the flag of the new nation.

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Saffron: walls, Vanita’s eyes, minutes, rockets, the men’s shirts, carpet, lamps’ light, the monster’s blood, fired fuel; white: Vanita’s eyes; green: woodwork, Vanita’s skin, seconds, sparkling rain, the women’s saris, carpet, skirts, lamps’ light, the monster’s blood, flames of blistering paint. What is the effect of such a use of colour? A unifying, but also hallucinatory, distorting effect.

3 READ the text above and answer the following questions. 1

9 FIND the metaphor the narrator employs for the Indian people. How does this device add to the narration of the night of independence? The monster with saffron and green blood (lines 56-58). It reinforces its dreamlike and magic quality. 2 7

COMPETENCE: ESTABLISHING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

10 COMMENT on Rushdie’s use of magic realism (→ Across Cultures, p. 403) as a means to rewrite myth and history. Consider the following aspects: Student’s activity. Suggestion: 1 2 3 4

subject; Indian history. technique; Mixture of reality and fantasy. perspective; He expresses his own multicultural identity. aim. To let historical events or people flow into people’s lives and thoughts.

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Across Cultures

Magic realism

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COMPETENCE: EXPLORING A LITERARY THEME IN DIFFERENT CULTURES

1 LOOK at the picture and read the quotes below. Discuss in small groups why writers, artists and philosophers have always found the idea of unreality, the supernatural or

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Who first wrote about the theory of magic realism? What kind of narrative did he promote? The first theorisation of the narrative techniques and themes of magic realism was given by the Italian writer Massimo Bontempelli in the first half of the 20th century from the pages of his review 900 (1926-29). He promoted a kind of narrative that would underline the gap between real facts and their literary representation and which should include something ‘magic’. What evidence was there in Italy of a taste for the irrational? Evidence of a taste for the irrational was to be found in Italy in the second half of the 19th century in the experimentation of the Scapigliatura (1860-70) and in some spiritualistic instances which can be detected in works such as Antonio Fogazzaro’s Malombra (1881). This literary genre included several authors who were active in the first decades of the 20th century and also after World War II, such as Alberto Savinio, Dino Buzzati and Tommaso Landolfi. Who were the forerunners of magic realism in Europe? How was their interpretation of magic different? In European literature, the forerunners of magic realism were Franz Kafka and H.P. Lovecraft, even though their magic takes on the characteristics of nightmares rather than restlessness and ambiguity. How did the Metaphysical paintings convey an atmosphere of mystery and hallucination? A sense of mystery and hallucination was achieved by means of distorted perspective, dramatic lighting and the use of dummies and statues instead of human figures. Which authors have conveyed the paradox of history in their writing? What techniques have they used? Remarkable authors, like Italian Italo

relationship between art, literature and magic realism with the words from the box. 1 2

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Art (Italy): 1 founded; 2 Paris; 3 statues; 4 admiration; 5 reality. Literature (Italy): 1 awareness; 2 surrealism; 3 influence; 4 helplessness; 5 allegory; 6 dehumanisation; 7 trees; 8 struggle. Literature (USA): 1 macabre; 2 history; 3 time; 4 mythology; 5 best. Literature (South America): 1 supernatural; 2 ghost; 3 ordinary; 4 line; 5 authors.

2 WRITE down the key ideas connected with Gordimer’s relationship with South Africa. Analysis of the contradictions of a multiracial country; the novelist’s difficulties in a society where 80% of the population is cut off from normal cultural influences by the colour bar; the connection between the changes in the life, experience and thoughts of the writer and the political and social transformations of South Africa.

The Pickup COMPETENCE: READING AND UNDERSTANDING INFORMATION

5 DISCUSS in small groups how effective fantasy and the supernatural can be in illustrating the anomalies and paradoxes of everyday life. Do you think the unreal can be a stimulating way of making us see the real in a different or clearer light? After the discussion, write a paragraph of at least 10 lines about the role of fantasy in literature and films. Students’ activity.

1 READ the texts and answer the following questions. 1

7.22 Nadine Gordimer Teaching tip The presentation Nadine Gordimer in PowerPoint can be employed either as a support to the introduction of the author or as a summing up at the end of the lesson.

From History to Screen: Invictus Photocopiable lesson on page 281. Teacher’s key on page 295.

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Text Bank 134: Burger’s Daughter Teacher’s key on page 424. COMPETENCE: READING AND ORGANISING INFORMATION

1 READ the texts and complete the factfile. Born: in 1923 in Springs, in the area near Johannesburg, South Africa Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

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What problems are dealt with in The Pickup? Gordimer deals with race and class problems, the arbitrariness of bureaucracy and the link between the private and the political. She analyses these problems at a global level, since in the second part of the novel the setting of the story shifts from liberal post-apartheid Johannesburg to an unnamed Arab country. Therefore the interracial love between the two protagonists widens its scope from the racial opposition ‘black and white’ to the cultural one between ‘East and West’. Who are the protagonists? The heroine, Julie Summers, has grown up in the affluent suburbs of Johannesburg. However, she rejects her upper-class roots and moves to a formerly black part of the town where she rents a small cottage, drives a second-hand car and works for a rock ’n’ roll agency. Her life revolves around the EL-AY Café, a local café where she meets a multiracial and liberal group of friends. When Julie’s car breaks down, she meets Abdu, a Muslim immigrant who is in the country illegally. How does Gordimer deal with the theme of identity? Traditional gender roles are clearly questioned in the relationship between Julie and

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4 COMPLETE the summaries about the

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Education: first in a convent school, later at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg Collections of short stories: Face to Face (1949) and The Soft Voice of the Serpent (1953) What her first novel showed: the author’s controlled, unsentimental technique, the constant tension between personal isolation and social commitment, and the refusal of exile Political stance: strong opposition to apartheid Awards: the Booker Prize, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991 Death: in Johannesburg in 2014

Calvino, English Angela Carter, Bruce Chatwin, Ian McEwan and Graham Swift, Irish Seamus Deane and Anglo-Indian Salman Rushdie, have conveyed the paradox of history effectively in their works. These writers have used various techniques: they have juxtaposed local historical events with world events; they have asked their readers to doubt and be suspicious of any stories that claim to be absolute; they have adopted the device of stories within a story challenging the reader to accept the author’s account; or they resort to narrators who play an active role in the text constantly reminding the reader of their presence.

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Abdu; for example, it is Julie who ‘picks up’ Abdu. However, each adapts to but neither dominates the other. What is the structure of the novel? The Pickup is characterised by structural parallels, chiasmic inversions as well as binary oppositions. The novel is divided into two almost symmetrical parts through the use of two very different settings, and it revolves around two distinctive characters, each of whom seems to represent a somewhat split personality him/herself. On what levels is the theme of ‘the Other’ explored? Racial, social, sexual, cultural and psychological.

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Back home Nadine Gordimer, The Pickup

VISUAL ANALYSIS

1 READ the text and write a caption to describe the content of each section. Part 1 (lines 1-35) Julie and Abdu arrive at the airport. Part 2 (lines 36-109) Abdu’s family and home.

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2 LOOK at the visual analysis of the text and write down what each highlight and colour represents in the spaces provided. Highlighted in yellow: Julie’s self-awareness and first reaction in her new country; for the first time in her life she realised what home must be like, she was caught up in the emotion of the warm welcome by Abdu’s family Highlighted in green: the male members of the family were waiting for Julie and Abdu at the airport: they embraced them and the father made a speech of welcome; he did not look like Ibrahim. Some wore casual Western clothes, others wore the traditional long white tunics. They took them to the house in their cars Highlighted in light blue: Abdu’s reactions and point of view; inside his house he sees things differently from Julie Pink words: details of the family’s house Blue works: the behaviour of the people in the house Highlighted in pink: Abdu’s mother: she was the centre of the house, she must have been beautiful but had had a hard life, her son took after her and she was not actually interested in Julie – even if she addressed her with a formal speech – but in her son

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Focus on the narrative technique. Identify the kind of narrator and the point(s) of view adopted. Gordimer uses a third-person narrator with shifting points of view (Julie’s and Ibrahim’s). Consider the use of punctuation. What features strike you? The use of dashes, which convey the flow of the narrator’s thoughts, and the absence of inverted commas and introductory sentences for direct speech. In the extract emerges the contrast between the Eastern and the Western figure of the woman. Explain this statement with reference to the text. Julie stands for the Western woman and the references in the text are in the first and in the last paragraphs, where she is given a name and surname and her independence and determination are underlined. Ibrahim’s mother and sisters stand for the Eastern, Muslim women on whom society imposes behavioural rules. However, Ibrahim’s mother is the core of the family. The references in the text are in lines 46-59, 62-64 and 103-107. What image of ‘family’ is presented in the text? Do Julie and Ibrahim have the same attitude towards it? Julie is fascinated by her husband’s family and for the first time she feels part of a family. Ibrahim wishes he could escape from them, although he wants to take his mother away from that reality one day. COMPETENCE: LINKING LITERATURE TO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

4 DISCUSS. 1

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In a world of rapid social changes also due to immigration, Gordimer offers insight into the different meaning which ‘another country’ has for those who can choose to move and those who must overcome odds in order to be accepted. What is it like to move to another country, another culture, a strange place, language and customs? What sort of people choose to do it? Class discussion. Do you think it is possible to escape the effects one’s family has on one’s identity? Class discussion.

Living art COMPETENCE: CONNECTING PICTURES TO TOPICS AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

1 LOOK at the pictures. Discuss in small groups. What is your idea of art? Can it be as simple as a flower? Would you call a tattoo or graffiti ‘art’? What else would you include in this category? Students’ activity.

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2 WHAT do you think ‘living art’ or ‘land art’ refer to? Is art a stimulating and active part of our lives? Should it be so or should it be locked away in museums and private collections? Student’s activity. Students will hopefully enrich the discussion with other examples and the expected conclusion will be that there is a place for both public art in open squares and parks as well as protected art in museums. Art masterpieces in private collections may also give rise to discussions about art being for all and not for a limited few.

Museum peace: Japan’s Naoshima island

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COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A JOURNALISTIC TEXT

9 ESAME DI STATO: SECONDA PROVA

1 COMPREHENSION AND INTERPRETATION Answer the following questions by using complete sentences and your own words. 1

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What is normally associated with Japanese cool? When people talk about Japanese cool, they normally refer to modern Japanese technology like hi-tech, car television or automatic toilets. As regards art they probably think of anime or manga. How has the island of Naoshima been turned into an ‘art island’? The island of Naoshima has been turned into an ‘art island’ because it has been transformed by the presence of art museums and modern constructions. According to the article, how are the modern constructions similar to traditional Japanese principles? According to the article, in spite of being ultra-modern, the buildings on the island also have the same qualities as traditional Japanese art because they are simple and intense.

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In which way does Naoshima make the writer lose ‘all sense of when [he] was’ (par. 3)? The writer says that the structures around the island are extremely modern and up to date, even futuristic with every possible innovation, but at the same time the calm atmosphere created on the island is like a traditional shine so that there is a feeling of being far ahead in the future while also being deeply in the past. This creates the confusion of when exactly the writer is in time. Who designed Benesse House and what atmosphere is created there? Benesse House, which is a hotel and art museum, was designed by the minimalist Tadao Ando and although it is totally modern, it creates the same atmosphere as the traditional Japanese inns. Which details of the hotel fascinate the writer? The details which fascinate the writer are that each room is different, that the corridors are full of modern paintings and sculptures, and the light effects created. How did Tadao Ando deal with the challenge of creating an international centre of art on part of the island? Tadao Ando created the Benesse House as a hotel and art museum as well as the Chichu Museum a short walk away. He also designed a further art museum in a field to display the works of a Korean artist. What makes the Chichu Museum a ‘unique place’? The unique quality of the Chichu Museum is due to the fact that it has just a few major artworks displayed in huge spaces with particular lighting giving it an almost dreamlike atmosphere of purity and spirituality. How are the works of Lee Ufan displayed? The works of Lee Ufan are displayed in a new museum constructed by Tadao Ando as a tall, grey, windowless building in a field. One of the works is placed out of doors in front of an earthcoloured stone with a light shining on it. What is the overall effect of the island on the writer? The entire text is full of the writer’s sensations of surprise, interest and inspiration from the island. He repeatedly emphasises the qualities of simplicity and tranquillity given by the buildings, the artworks and the way these are displayed.

2 PRODUCTION Choose one of the following questions. Either 1 The island of Naoshima works on the principle that our environment has an important influence on our lives. In which ways do you think the landscape around where you live has an influence on your life? Write a 300word essay making reference to your own experience.

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Topic 7

Or 2

Some people consider graffiti as an ugly and destructive way of spoiling buildings and trains, others think they enliven the environment or are a form of true art. What do you think about this form of artistic expression? Write a 300-word composition. Student’s writing activity.

from his girlfriend who is like a gift from heaven, an angel who lightens up his world and gives him the essential water needed to live and grow. He talks of thirst and being dried up, and she provides drink and happiness so that he feels like flying high in the sky. The song is pervaded with the idea of lightness and flying from sheer joy.

Recycling art in a desert landscape DON DELILLO,

Hymn for the Weekend

COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A LITERARY TEXT

COLDPLAY

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COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING A SONG

1 DESCRIBE what images the singer uses to talk about the girl in the song and what effect she has on his mood. The singer talks of his girlfriend as an angel who adds life and brightness to his world, who lifts him up when he is down and gives him ‘drink’ (meaning life) when he is thirsty.

ESAME DI STATO: SECONDA PROVA

1 COMPREHENSION AND INTERPRETATION

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2 SAY what words are used for feeling depressed and their opposite words for feeling happy. Words used for feeling depressed are ‘down’, ‘hurt’, ‘dried up’, ‘thirsty’, ‘heavy’ and ‘low’, whereas words for happiness are ‘shoot across the sky’, ‘Symphony’, ‘high’, ‘light up’, ‘lift me up’, ‘miles up’, ‘drunk and high’ and ‘make the stars come out’.

3 IDENTIFY all the comparisons with nature in the song. Nature plays an important role in the song and is often mentioned: the sky, water (‘Life is a drink’), the river and flood and rain, and the life force running through the blood. The stars are also mentioned as being lit up by the singer’s girlfriend, who has the power to brighten the sky and his life.

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4 GIVE your own explanation of the following. Student’s activity. Suggestion: •

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‘you make my world light up’ This means that the girlfriend has a positive effect on the singer’s mood and brightens up his whole life. ‘Life is a drink’ Water is an essential part of life and in this song the girlfriend is the person who ‘gives life’ to the singer.

5 SAY in which ways the singer gains inspiration from beauty, nature and the images created in his mind. The singer is clearly inspired by the light and life force he gets

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Underworld

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Answer the following questions by using complete sentences and your own words. Who are the people involved in the art project Nick has come to see? There is a complete mixture of people involved in the art project including art students, students about to graduate in history and history teachers, nomads, young people who have run away from home, hackers and those who had in some way felt the need to get away and do something different. How are they physically doing the artwork? They work with their hands, scraping and painting, mixing the paint and also using brushes and sandblasters. What is Nick’s aim in coming? His aim is not to join them in their project but to see what is happening there and to see Klara Sax. How does he find Klara? He is told where to go by one of the students; he drives along following a row of reflectors until he finds some lights and cars beside a concrete building, which is the operation centre. He finds Klara there sitting in a director’s chair. How is she described? Klara is described as sitting in a commanding position, with a cane beside her and one leg propped up on a bucket, smoking a black cigarette. She seems to be completely relaxed and in control. What does the project consist of and what is its aim? The project, as Klara explains, is to paint ex-military planes. First of all they have to scrape and sandblast the old paint off to get rid of all the military connotations and then they paint them in beautiful colours. Who is cooperating on the project and how is it funded? They have cooperation from the military to a certain extent and also some grants of money and special congressional permission for what they are doing.

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Review ONLINE Interactive exercises

The ZTE exercises can be employed to review the chapter. COMPETENCE: MASTERING USEFUL VOCABULARY

1 TRANSLATE into English the following words and phrases to talk about history. 1 social security; 2 housing estates; 3 affluent society; 4 permissiveness; 5 sexual mores; 6 race riots; 7 internment; 8 decommissioning; 9 remain in office; 10 privatisation; 11 urban professionals; 12 resign; 13 coalition; 14 Euroscepticism; 15 rights of free movement; 16 national turnout; 17 consumer goods; 18 non-violent resistance; 19 weapons of mass destruction; 20 military expense. COMPETENCE: PROVIDING INFORMATION ON A GIVEN SUBJECT

2 PRODUCTION Choose one of the following questions. Either 1 Can waste become art? Can discarded weaponry become art? What about the industrial buildings that have become museums, like Tate Modern in London or the Centrale Montemartini in Rome? Write a 300word essay. Or 2 Art, whether paintings, statues, murals, videos, buildings, created landscapes or bridges can shock, disturb or inspire. With reference to your own personal experience and views, discuss the role of art in your own environment. Write a 300-word composition. Student’s writing activity.

COMPETENCE: DEVELOPING CITIZENSHIP SKILLS

2 DISCUSS the consequences of the victory of the Labour Party in the 1945 general election in Britain. The Labour Party won the general election in 1945. The new government, led by Prime Minister Clement Attlee, is remembered for the creation of the Welfare State in 1946-48. In 1946 the new National Health Service was established by law as universal and free. The New Towns Act (1946) and the Town and Country Planning Act (1947) led to slum clearance, the building of large housing estates and the creation of green areas; council houses were built for the families with low incomes. The National Insurance Act (1946) established a system of social security including unemployment and sickness benefits, retirement pensions, child allowances and even funeral grants. Nationalisation was extended to hospitals, gas, electricity, steel, coal mines, railways and the Bank of England. This process of nationalisation meant that the government bought all the shares of the companies in these fields in exchange for government bonds.

3 AFTER studying the topic, discuss the idea of transforming negative aspects of our lives into artworks. Can you imagine a world without art? Without music, paintings, visual messages and creative ideas in public buildings? Is art in the widest sense more or less important in a fast-moving world where technology is becoming increasingly dominant? Student’s activity.

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3 EXPLAIN the key ideas linked to these pictures of the 1940s and 1950s in England. Picture 1 (from left to right): Elizabeth II succeeded her father George VI, who had died in 1952. The coronation ceremony, which took place in 1953, was broadcast live on television and watched by around 20 million people. Picture 2: During the 1950s most families bought cars, installed telephones, washing machines

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What is the name that ‘trailed’ Klara and what does it mean? The name that was following Klara around is ‘the Bag Lady’, which is an unpleasant label meaning someone who lives out of bags, in other words someone who is dressed in second-hand clothes and takes little care of their appearance. Why has she chosen this particular context for her project? She has chosen this context because the desert landscape is an important part of the artwork. In fact she says it is central to the piece and gives her artwork a particular frame. Do you see her project as a peace project or an art project? From reading the whole text the impression is of both an art project and a peace project. It is certainly an art project because it involves creating artwork out of the unlikely source of military planes, but it is also a peace project because it is transforming machines used for warfare into items of beauty and peace.

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and refrigerators, and began to buy their own homes. Television was the broadcasting revolution of the post-war years. The early television programmes were, in accordance with the BBC’s general aims, a mixture of information, education and entertainment. Then, in 1955, a commercial television network started to broadcast its shows which were paid for through advertising. Picture 3: Indian independence was passed by Westminster in 1947 and led to the partition of the country into India and Pakistan, a separate Muslim country in the north-western part. The photograph shows the architect of India’s independence, Mahatma Gandhi, talking to his successor, Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1946. Picture 4: British scientists developed the hydrogen bomb through a series of tests in 1957. Anti-nuclear protesters joined in a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958 with a march from London to the atomic research plant at Aldermaston. In 1961 the pacifists, led by the aged philosopher Bertrand Russell, ‘occupied’ Trafalgar Square.

4 COMPLETE the diagram about the main changes in 1960s British society. There was a new openness to attitudes from the Continent and the United States; the generation that grew up in the 1960s was more different from the generation of its parents than in any previous century; many reforms marked a retreat from the social controls imposed in the Victorian Age in favour of ‘permissiveness’; England became a world leader in musical fashion with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and the new subcultures; the Telstar satellite made world television news possible; the contraceptive pill appeared and it became possible to get an abortion on the NHS; capital punishment for murder was suspended and comprehensive schools replaced most grammar schools; homosexuality was decriminalised.

5 EXPLAIN what is meant by the ‘winter of discontent’. It was the period between 1978 and 1979 that was characterised by strikes and new social problems such as the first urban race riots, a new generation strongly influenced by drugs, juvenile violence, and the new dangers of pollution created by prosperity and consumerism. Factories, discharging waste material, polluted rivers and the sea and oil tankers were responsible for the appearance of ugly oil slicks on beaches; chemical fertilisers and insecticides upset the balance of nature in the countryside; noise from aircraft and traffic made life unbearable at times.

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6 POINT out the events that marked the socalled ‘Irish Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. Say how England tried to solve the problem. After WWII, new factors had strengthened the power of Protestants in Northern Ireland and made a united Ireland less possible. The introduction of the Welfare State had become a powerful reason for keeping the union with Britain, since Northern Ireland was guaranteed higher living standards than the Republic of Ireland, and Catholics were kept out of responsible positions. In the late 1960s the Catholics organised a civil rights movement demanding equality. Tensions between the Protestant Unionists and the Catholic Republicans led to rioting between the communities. In 1969 British Prime Minister Harold Wilson was forced to send the army to keep order in Belfast and Londonderry, where bloody riots had taken place. To counter the threat of terrorism, in 1971 the government approved internment, that is, imprisonment without trial. In the following year, in Londonderry, British paratroops shot dead 13 unarmed civil rights protesters at a march against internment during what was called Bloody Sunday. In 1974 car bombs began to be used in both parts of Ireland, and the IRA planted bombs in Britain to kill innocent civilians. A long war of attrition followed, which was characterised by attacks, negotiations and truces. In 1976 a group of IRA prisoners in the Maze prison in Belfast claimed special status as they said they had committed their crimes for political reasons. In 1985 Britain and Ireland made a formal agreement to involve the Dublin government in the affairs of Northern Ireland. However, violence continued and was experienced both in Britain and in Ireland. IRA targets included Lord Mountbatten – uncle of Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, Prince Philip –, who was murdered in 1979. Finally, in December 1993, British Prime Minister John Major and his Irish counterpart, Albert Reynolds, signed a historic declaration affirming the right of selfdetermination for the people of Northern Ireland. It was only on 31st August 1994 that Sinn Féin, the IRA’s political wing, announced a ceasefire. A further development in the peace process came with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

7 REVISE the Thatcher years and write down the key words/ideas that best explain their main features. Emphasis on private enterprise, rise of ambitious urban professionals; increase in material wealth but also emergence of an underclass of poor people with low-paid jobs or no jobs, a poor home or no home; privatisation to lower government spending; Britain’s increased international standing.

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New Labour: Tony Blair won the elections in 1997: reformed the Labour Party (New Labour); increased money on the NHS and education; partial decentralisation of the UK; progressive attitudes on women and minorities Æ Terrorism: supported the USA after 9/11 there were attacks in London in 2005 Æ Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition: won the election in 2010 with David Cameron as Prime Minister had to face the financial crisis and the increasing Euroscepticism Æ Brexit:

2016 was marked by the Brexit referendum, which resulted in a vote to leave the EU by almost 52% on a national turnout of 72% following Cameron’s resignation in June 2016, Theresa May became the Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party

9 TRACE the main events in US history from the aftermath of WWII to Donald Trump’s presidency. In 1945 the UN was created, which replaced the League of Nations. In the 1950s, as regards foreign policy, the USA devised a programme for economic aid to European countries called the Marshall Plan, and signed an agreement of mutual defence with Western Europe known as NATO. Fear of Communism, seen as a threat both to the freedom of the individual and the capitalist economic system, swept across the USA. Senator Joseph McCarthy started a public ‘witch hunt’, carrying out investigations on all kinds of people to find out if they worked for the Soviet Union or had socialist sympathies. By the mid-1950s his influence declined sharply and he was finally censured by the Senate. In 1961 John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the Democratic candidate, won the elections. He was the first Catholic and the youngest President ever elected. He was aware that the nation was facing social problems such as poverty in the crowded city slums and racial discrimination. In foreign policy there were a few moments of tension with the building of the Berlin Wall (1961) and the Cuban missile crisis (1962), which ended with the withdrawal of Russian missiles from the island. Moreover, America’s involvement in Vietnam became militarised. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 put an end to the social hopes his election had awakened. Protest was in the air Idee per insegnare la letteratura inglese con Spiazzi, Tavella, Layton Performer Heritage 2 © Zanichelli 2017

on university campuses and among minorities. The involvement in the Vietnam War led to the development of the greatest anti-war movement the nation had ever experienced; President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger worked to put an end to the conflict and finally, in 1973, the last American soldiers left Vietnam. The Camp David Agreements between Egypt and Israel, which prepared the ground for a possible settlement of the Middle East question, were President Jimmy Carter’s greatest achievement. When Ronald Reagan became President, millions of dollars were invested on developing powerful missiles and on space research. This created employment and businessmen made big profits. The Republican George H.W. Bush led the USA in its involvement in the Persian Gulf crisis in 1990 after Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein invaded and annexed Kuwait. Under Bill Clinton’s presidency an achievement in foreign affairs was marked by the peace agreement signed between Yasser Arafat’s PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) and Yitzhak Rabin of Israel at the White House in 1993. In 2001 the USA was struck by the September 11th attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon in Virginia. The buildings were hit by American passenger planes hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists. President George W. Bush ordered an attack on Afghanistan and, in 2003, he declared war against Iraq. November 2008 marked a unique moment in American history: the Democrat Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th US President. He was the first ever black American to hold the office. He was re-elected in 2012. On 8th November 2016 the Republican Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the USA.

10 COMPLETE the table below with details about the different trends in contemporary poetry. The Movement: Themes: They reacted against some trends in British poetry which had characterised the first half of the century: the cosmopolitan intellectualism of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, the political commitment of the poets of the Thirties, and Dylan Thomas’s excessive romanticism and obscure symbolism. They also showed a tendency towards cultural provincialism and British insularity. Style: Simple, clear, concrete language, conventional metres and traditional forms. Aim: To create rational and comprehensible poetry about contemporary everyday life. The Group: Themes: The real contemporary problems: WWII, the concentration camps, genocide and the threat of nuclear war. Style:

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events in British politics from 1997 to 2016.

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8 COMPLETE the diagram highlighting the key

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Cruel, violent poetry, which revealed anger. Aim: To express a note of radical protest against the Movement poets. Poetry of the underground: Themes: It was associated with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and anti-Vietnam War protests. Style: Poetry as performance associated with rock music, festivals and happenings. Aim: To make poetry popular among ordinary people, and especially the young. The Liverpool poets: Themes: A mixture of personal feelings and innocent protest against the establishment. Style: Simple, direct, immediate language; influenced by pop music. Aim: To write for the young. The Martians: Themes: Familiar earthly sights. Style: They expressed familiar concepts in unfamiliar ways. Aim: To look at reality through the distorting filter of a lens, as if they were Martians visiting Earth.

11 HIGHLIGHT the main features of the contemporary novel. No principal school; individualism and pluralism; main trends: neorealism (social protest, conflict-ridden society), anti-realism (world of fantasy, comment on reality through allegories and mythology), magic realism (mixture of the realistic with the unexpected and the inexplicable), dystopian novel (negative view of the human condition), feminist literature (large-scale social and intellectual problems).

12 DESCRIBE the differences between the Theatre of the Absurd and the Theatre of Anger. The Theatre of the Absurd expresses a sense of metaphysical anguish and rootlessness, lack of purpose and inaction. It does not argue about the absurdity of the human condition, but simply presents its concrete situations on the stage. What happens on the stage transcends, and often contradicts, the words spoken by the characters; pauses, silences, miming and farcical situations are also common. The plays have no real story or plot to speak of and seem to be the reflection of dreams and nightmares; time and place are vague, there are seldom recognisable characters and dialogue often consists of incoherent babbling. The plays of the Theatre of Anger are written in a conventional form, with a realistic set and a continuous, logical, easy-to-follow plot. Their novelty is the outspokenness of their language, their open criticism of establishment values. The articulate, thoughtful working-class anti-hero of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, the rebel Jimmy Porter, is the spokesman of a frustrated generation, anxious to speak the raw language of real people.

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13 COMPLETE the idea and details sheet below with the necessary information. Support each main idea with details. American literature after WWII: It is generally characterised by a renewed interest in the exploration of the self, by subjective analysis and by a variety of experiments in style. Beat Generation: Rebellion and bohemian living; refusal to conform to traditional middleclass puritanical values; rejection of materialism and organised religion; search for alternative ways to find spiritual understanding, like Eastern religions, with their emphasis on meditation and communion with nature, and mind-altering drugs. The novels from the 1950s to the 1980s: In 1951 Jerome David Salinger published The Catcher in the Rye, a tragi-comic fictional autobiography of an adolescent who tries to maintain his innocence in the hypocritical corrupted world of the grown-ups. He adopted a conversational style and very effective language able to represent the rebellion of the American teenagers. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road returned to the myth of the journey. Kerouac used an episodic structure and a spontaneous style. The anti-hero, victim and rebel at the same time, is the protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, a milestone in black literature, as well as a unique portrait of American society in the 1950s. The novels of the 1960s and 1970s were mainly characterised by experimentation. Rejecting realism, writers questioned the values of society, history and the literary form. They used double meanings, grotesque, surrealist techniques, and also drew from science fiction. The fashionable trend in American fiction since the Eighties has been ‘minimalism’. Minimalist writers use a neat, clear, dry style accumulating trivial minimal elements to convey disturbing meaning. Their themes are the crisis of the family, drugs, homosexuality and AIDS. Afro-American fiction has become a rich and powerful source of literature. Some notable writers are Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Alex Haley. The successful novels of AfroAmerican women writers such as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison combine feminist, ethnic and psychological issues, and underline the power of the literary voices of women and minorities. Contemporary drama: It developed some distinctive qualities of its own, such as the use of American regional speech, the close interplay between stage and film techniques, and the production of musicals. Though the centre of American theatre was Broadway,

a certain new vitality came from experimentation with language and staging techniques by OffBroadway theatres. In the 1960s, Off-Broadway theatres were commercialised; this is why new experimental theatres were founded, which became known as Off-Off-Broadway. The authors who worked within this new movement dealt with social contradictions, the crisis of values and political issues like the Vietnam War.

COMPETENCE: READING, UNDERSTANDING AND INTERPRETING LITERARY TEXTS

15 HIGHLIGHT the main ideas linked to the authors you have studied as regards setting, characters, themes and style. Support your ideas with details from the texts you have studied. Student’s activity.

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voices from English-speaking countries. Recently the scope, audience and significance of English-language literature have been enlarged by the contributions of countries such as South Africa and Nigeria, the West Indies, Australia and Canada, which used to be part of the British Empire. These writers use English as a lingua franca. At times they find themselves torn between their two cultures and judge their native countries both as insiders and as Westerners. Each writer tries to make a specific adjustment to this conflict, shaping it by personal and national circumstances, and by his/her creativity.

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14 SUM up the key ideas linked to contemporary

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FROM TEXT TO SCREEN OLIVER TWIST NOME

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FROM TEXT TO SCREEN

OLIVER TWIST Directed by Coky Giedroyc; BBC miniseries, UK 2007. With William Miller (Oliver Twist) and Timothy Spall (Fagin). Oliver’s mother dies not long after giving birth to him. Soon Oliver finds himself living in a workhouse. After a courageous rebellion against the cruel Mr Bumble, who oversees the children tormented by starvation and suffering, Oliver is cast out and goes to London. Here he meets the Artful Dodger, Fagin and his gang as well as the beautiful Nancy, and gets the first warm welcome of his life, but he is soon to discover that this kindness requires its own type of payment. As Oliver is turned into a pickpocket, he remains unaware that the kind Mr Brownlow is searching for him, while others, like the manipulative Fagin and the mysterious Mr Monks, are trying to ruin and destroy his life. The grey and brown tones of the film contribute to the grim and appalling atmosphere of early 19th-century London as it must have been for the lower classes.

COMPETENCE: WATCHING AND UNDERSTANDING A FILM

CONTENUTI DELL’EBOOK

FROM TEXT TO SCREEN Oliver Twist

1 WATCH the first shot of the sequence and guess where Oliver is. How does he feel? What is he doing?

2 WATCH the first part of the sequence and match the words from the dialogue with their meaning. Then say who utters them. 1 2 3 4 5 6

niff slaughter chisel whipping release miscreant

A B C D E F

the act of hitting somebody with a long piece of rope a tool with a sharp flat edge at the end, used for shaping wood let go a person who has done something wrong or illegal smell unpleasantly massacre

3 WATCH the first part of the sequence again and say: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

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whom Mr Sowerberry is speaking about; what the woman is complaining about; what Mr Sowerberry’s job is and what he urgently needs; what the girl is doing; who will kill them all, according to the young man; what Mr Bumble guarantees these people; what he is going to do; what he decides to do in the end.

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FROM TEXT TO SCREEN OLIVER TWIST NOME

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4 WATCH the second part of the sequence and decide whether the following statements are true or false. Correct the false ones. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

The black shot represents the lid of the coffin. ............................................................................................................................................................. All the people look at Oliver amused. .......................................................................................................................................................................................... Oliver feels happy and relieved. ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ Mr Sowerberry succeeds in seizing Oliver by his arm and preventing him from escaping. .......................... There is lots of confusion in Mr Sowerberry’s laboratory. .............................................................................................................................. Oliver does not manage to lock them all in the lab. ............................................................................................................................................... He escapes after taking a big stone from a basket. ................................................................................................................................................

5 SAY what surrounds Oliver in the last scene.

COMPETENCE: USING THE VISUAL TOOLS OF COMMUNICATION

6 SAY what kind of shot is used at the very beginning of the sequence. What is the effect achieved? 7 FIND the mistakes in the following sentences and correct them. 1 2 3 4 5

When Mr and Mrs Sowerberry speak, the camera moves forward. When Mr Bumble speaks, a long shot is used. When the coffin is opened and all the characters look at Oliver, a high-angle shot is used. A low-angle shot is employed when the camera focuses on Oliver in the coffin. When Oliver escapes, the camera is fixed.

sequence?

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FROM TEXT TO SCREEN Oliver Twist

8 DISCUSS with the rest of the class. What aspects of Oliver’s character are highlighted in the

CONTENUTI DELL’EBOOK

COMPETENCE: FINDING AND UNDERSTANDING LINKS AND RELATIONSHIPS

FROM TEXT TO SCREEN JUDE NOME

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JUDE Directed by Michael Winterbottom; USA 1996. With Christopher Eccleston (Jude) and Kate Winslet (Sue Bridehead). Jude Fawley, a poor young man, harbours ambitions to become a student at the University of Christminster. He works as a stonemason and studies in his spare time. But he will face the prejudices of this venerated institution, which will never accept him because of his humble origins. Even his love for his cousin, Sue Bridehead, meets the disapproval of the community because they are not married. Jude tries to fight against his destiny, but in the end he is overcome.

COMPETENCE: WATCHING AND UNDERSTANDING A FILM

1 BEFORE watching the sequence, complete the summary with the words from the box. attractive get married bears ambition turns out

cousin schoolmaster pregnant stonemason takes in

disastrously fulfil God narrow-minded

poor overwhelmed Christminster scandalous

CONTENUTI DELL’EBOOK

FROM TEXT TO SCREEN Jude

Jude Fawley is a (1) village boy who harbours the (2) to become . a student at the University of (3) girl called Arabella. When she is (5) , He gets infatuated with an (4) . But their marriage ends (7) , Arabella goes away they (6) and studies in his free time, and Jude goes to Christminster. Here he works as a (8) his dreams. He meets his (10) , Sue Bridehead, and hoping to (9) , Phill