1984 Story and Analysis in 9 min (with Subtitle)

The rise of the novel

THE RISE OF THE NOVEL  

WHEN  1st half of 18th century in England (Robinson Crusoe 1719)

An early example Aphra Behn’s Oronooko, or The Royal Slave (1688)

CAUSES

·  ·emerging middle class with new tastes and interests, having  leisure time to read and money to buy books

·    literacy rates increased

·    public interest in the human character led to the popularity of autobiographies,biographies, journals,diaries 

·   the rise of newspapers (The Spectator, The Tatler, The Examiner….talking about morals, fashion, urban change and foreign affairs)

·   the spread of lending or circulating libraries . They were  libraries with books lent for a small fee to subscribers; the first circulating library was set up in Edinburgh in the early 18th century, and in the 18th and 19th centuries the system proved extremely popular. Usually they were out of stores that sold other items such as newspapers and books. Sometimes they were in stores that sold items completely unrelated to book.

·   the novelists wanted to satisfy the needs of the middle class (shopkeepers, tradesmen, successful farmers)

THE READERS Members of the middle and lower class. (Women were good readers… they had spare time….they were interested in a  short escape from the prison of  their house.)

STORIES they were not taken from history, legends or ancient myths. The novelists created their own stories. Credibility and probability are essential qualities

CHARACTERS realistic, having contemporary names, struggling for survival or success

THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE the narrator is omniscient and he is often intrusive. The narration is in the third or first person narrator. The story is told in chronological order. A logical cause-and-effect sequencing is followed

THE SETTING lots of references to time (particular times of the year or of the day) and place (detailed descriptions of things, interiors and places)

MESSAGE if you have faith in God, if you work hard, if you respect a strict code of values you’ll deserve to be saved and also to have your social and economic situation improved. You mustn’t ask god for salvation: You must rely upon your own work and have the gift of self-help. The sense of reward and punishment, which was the “message” of the novel itself, was related to the Puritan ethics of the middle classes.

VALUES temperance, economy, sobriety, modesty, hard work, self-reliance

LANGUAGE simple, realistic, concrete

Daniel Defoe is  generally   regarded  as the first true novelist and the creator  of realistic  fiction

Learn English With Billie Eilish & Ellen

MAY - MIGHT - English modal verbs - Grammar Lesson

Students Speak: Stress

WE REFUGEES by Benjamin Zephaniah 

1)Why does he use WE in the title?

I come from a musical place
Where they shoot me for my song
And my brother has been tortured
By my brother in my land.

2)Why does the first stanza begin with I?

3)What’s the meaning of the expression brother’ torturing ‘brother’?

4)In the second stanza he uses ‘dont like, ban, hate’. Why?

I come from a beautiful place
Where they hate my shade of skin
They don't like the way I pray
And they ban free poetry.

5)What does he tell us about his country in stanza 3?

I come from a beautiful place
Where girls cannot go to school
There you are told what to believe
And even young boys must grow beards.

6)What problem does he deal with in stanza four?

I come from a great old forest
I think it is now a field
And the people I once knew
Are not there now.

7)What’s  strange with stanza five?

We can all be refugees
Nobody is safe,
All it takes is a mad leader
Or no rain to bring forth food,
We can all be refugees
We can all be told to go,
We can be hated by someone
For being someone.

8)What’s the meaning of stanza 5?

9)What does stanza 6 focus on?

I come from a beautiful place
Where the valley floods each year
And each year the hurricane tells us
That we must keep moving on.

10)What does he explore in stanza 7?

I come from an ancient place
All my family were born there
And I would like to go there
But I really want to live.

11)What does it seem disgusting in stanza 8?

I come from a sunny, sandy place
Where tourists go to darken skin
And dealers like to sell guns there
I just can't tell you what's the price.

12)Why does he use a passive form in stanza 9?

I am told I have no country now
I am told I am a lie
I am told that modern history books
May forget my name.

13)What’s the meaning of stanza 10?

We can all be refugees
Sometimes it only takes a day,
Sometimes it only takes a handshake
Or a paper that is signed.
We all came from refugees
Nobody simply just appeared,
Nobody's here without a struggle,
And why should we live in fear
Of the weather or the troubles?
We all came here from somewhere. 

Future with will for predictions

The world in 2070

Per eseguire il compito di pg.115 n. 12 (Performer B1) prendi ispirazione dalle seguenti immagini e cerca di rispondere a tutte queste domande nell’ordine che preferisci. Inoltre puoi prendere ispirazione dal testo della pag 114 del libro Future transportation ed anche dalle previsioni che sono state fatte dagli scienziati nei diversi settori che trovi in questo doc word. Puoi aggiungere qualche altra informazione per ogni previsione che leggerai sulla base delle tue conoscenze.

Cerca di collegare tutte le frasi con parole (connectors) come in addition (inoltre), what’s more(inoltre), also(pure), moreover (inoltre), first of all (prima di tutto),secondly(in secondo luogo),in conclusion (in conclusione)

1. Will it be better or worse than our present world?
2. What will cities be like in the future?
3. How will people move around?
4.  What means of transport will they use?
5.  Will people fly instead of walking?
6.  Will they have robots to do the housework?
7. Will there be "RoboCops"?
8. Will people use virtual reality in their daily lives?
9. Will people use holograms to play games?

These are some of the predictions for the future related to different fields.

Take inspiration from these predictions and give some more explanations in your written texts . Do you think they’ll come true?

Neuroscience: 'We'll be able to plug information streams directly into the cortex'

 Physics: 'Within a decade, we'll know what dark matter is'

 

Nanotechnology: 'Privacy will be a quaint obsession'

 

Gaming: 'We'll play games to solve problems'

 

Web/internet: 'Quantum computing is the future'

 

Fashion: 'Technology will create smarter clothes'

 

Sport: 'Broadcasts will use holograms'

Wording the Future

Future Simple Tense - Will Won’t: Creative ESL Whiteboard Animation Vide...

• QUESTIONS ABOUT REFUGEE BLUES

• 1.   Why did he choose the two words Refugee and blues in the title?
• 2.   Which popular musical form did Auden adopt for this poem?
• 3.   Why did he choose the blues form for this poem?
• 4.   Focus on the first line of each stanza. Do you notice a device which is common to almost all of them?
• 5.   Point out images that can be defined as poetic and images belonging to everyday life. Which prevail?
• 6.   The poem is built up on a series of contrasting images. What are they? Explain their meaning.
• 7.   Though the speaker is a German Jew complaining about the situation of his people, his words hint at issues having a more general relevance What are those issues?
• 8.   What is meant by the impossibile blossoming of passports?
• 9.   What examples of bureaucratic indifference to their plight are given?
• 10.   Auden is a writer of great wit, a quality that never deserts him when writing about dark subjects, as in the present poem. Note his use of irony to increase pathos. 

A Refugee Blues Screencast

Robinson Crusoe | Author Biography | Daniel Defoe

My bedroom: What you can see there