Литература на английском

[АЛЁНА]

D. Defoe (1660—1731) was a great master of realistic detail. The novel "Robinson Crusoe" was written in 1719. The novel is praise to human labour and the triumph of man over nature. Defoe shows the development of his hero. At the beginning of the story we see an unexperienced youth, a rather frivolous boy, who then becomes a strong-willed man.

Robinson Crusoe's most characteristic trait is his optimism. His guiding principle in life become "never say die" and "in trouble to be troubled is to have your troubles doubled". He had confidence in himself and in man. He believed it was within the power of man to overcome all difficulties. Crusoe was an enthusiastic worker and always hoped for the best.

Defoe is a writer of the Enlightenment. He teaches people how to live, he tries to teach what's good and what's bad.

His novel "Robinson Crusoe" is not only a work of fiction, an account of adventures, a biography and an educational pamphlet. It is a study of man, a great work showing man in relation to nature and civilization as well as in relation to labour and private property.

[АЛЁНА]

A. Conan Doyle (1859—1930)

With the words "Elementary, my dear Watson ...", the most famous detective of all time, Sherlock Holmes, starts to explain a crime to his friend, Dr. Watson. That phrase has now entered the English language.

Sherlock Holmes first appeared in a book called 'Study in Scarlet'. He became famous in 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes', first published in the 'Strand Magazine'. After that came a whole series of books about him: 'The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 'The Return of Sherlock Holmes', 'The Hound of the Baskervilles', and many others. Many thousands of the Sherlock Holmes books are still sold every year.

Who invented Sherlock Holmes? Arthur Conan Doyle was his inventor. Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Scotland, of Irish parents. He was a doctor. In 1882 he moved from Scotland to England, to Southsea near Portsmouth, to set up a practice. One of the doctors he worked for, Dr. Joseph Bell, was the model for Sherlock Holmes's friend, Dr. Watson. Conan Doyle's medical knowledge was a great help to him in his detective stories.

Conan Doyle started the fashion of the detective story. Today the fashion goes on — with Simenon's Inspector Maigret stories and the stories of other writers.

And what sort of man is Sherlock Holmes? We learn a lot about him from the stories in which he appears. He has a thin face and intelligent eyes. He speaks when he has something to say. He smokes a pipe (he has a collection of them). He plays the violin. He lives at 221 'B' Baker Street in London.

If you go to London, you will not be able to find 221 'B' Baker Street. But instead, you can go to a pub called "The Sherlock Holmes" in Northumberland Street (near Trafalgar Square). In that pub there is a room like Sherlock Holmes's room at 221 'B' Baker Street, as described in Conan Doyle's stories. There is also the stuffed head of a hound. It is said to be the original 'hound of the Baskervilies'!

Sherlock Holmes after more than eighty years is still the most famous detective in the world.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the novelist, first created his famous character, Sherlock Holmes, in 1885. Six years later, when he wrote another group of stories about the detective, Sherlock Holmes was a name that everybody knew.

When Conan Doyle began to get tired of writing detective stories, he decided to 'kill' Holmes. He wrote a story in which Holmes meets his great enemy, Professor Moriarty, in Switzerland. Holmes and Moriarty fight, and fall over a cliff and are both killed. The public didn't like it. Conan Doyle had to write another story in which Holmes comes back.

Conan Doyle was a famous writer. He became popular because of his love for people.

[Даша]

ксати у кого не спрашивала, никто не может вспомнить связку писательских настоящего имени и псевдонима

[АЛЁНА]

Настоящее его имя было Сэмюэль Клеменс.

Сам он утверждал, что псевдоним «Марк Твен» был взят им в юности из терминов речной навигации. Тогда он был помощником лоцмана на Миссисипи, а выкрик «марк твен» (англ. mark twain, дословно — «метка двойка») означал, что согласно отметке на лотлине достигнута минимальная глубина, пригодная для прохождения речных судов — 2 морских сажени (≈ 3,7 м).

Но существует и другая версия о происхождении этого псевдонима: в 1861 году в журнале Vanity Fair вышел юмористический рассказ Артемуса Уорда «Северная звезда» о трёх моряках, одного из которых звали Марк Твен. А Сэмюэл как любил юмористический отдел этого журнала, так и читал в своих первых стендап-выступлениях именно произведения Уорда.

Кроме «Марка Твена», Клеменс один раз в 1896 году подписался как «сьер Луи де Конт» (фр. Sieur Louis de Conte) — под этим именем он издал свой роман «Личные воспоминания о Жанне д’Арк сьера Луи де Конта, её пажа и секретаря».

[Andy]

Знаете откуда появился псевдоним Марк Твен? 

[Tessa]

Путешествуя по Франции, Марк Твен ехал поездом в город Дижон. Поезд был проходящим, и он попросил разбудить его вовремя. При этом писатель сказал проводнику:
- Я очень крепко сплю. Когда вы будете меня будить, может быть, я буду кричать. Так не обращайте на это внимание и обязательно высадите меня в Дижоне.
Когда Марк Твен проснулся, было уже утро и поезд подходил к Парижу. Писатель понял, что проехал Дижон, и очень рассердился. Он побежал к проводнику и стал ему выговаривать.
- Я никогда не был так сердит, как сейчас! - кричал он.
- Вы не так сильно сердитесь, как тот американец, которого я ночью высадил в Дижоне, - удивился проводник.

[Tessa]

когда человек искренне чего-то хочет - его ничто не остановит! они хотели творить!

[Andy]

Чума - ужасное явление, поразившее всю Европу. Страх и беспомощность, тем не менее, не останавливали творческих людей 

[Tessa]

From 1592 to 1594 the Black Death spread across England. Many public places were closed and plays couldn't be performed either. Shakespeare spent these years writing sonnets and poems.

When the theatres opened up again in 1594 Shakespeare joined the best acting company of the country—Lord Chamberlain's Men. It had the best actors, the best writers and the most famous theatre—the Globe.

The Globe was a huge amphitheatre without a roof. The seats were curved around a stage that was built on many levels.

Plays always started at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. People who didn't have the money to buy a seat were allowed to stand in the front of the stage. All kinds of people came to see the shows– housewives, children, noblemen and even visitors from other countries. The company also presented special plays for kings and queens.

Shakespeare and his fellow actors were responsible for everything in the Globe theatre. They owned the building and the costumes, they wrote the scripts and they also shared the profits that they made. The actors and writers of the theatre worked together successfully for many years.

In the twenty years that he worked on stage Shakespeare wrote 37 plays. They can be put into three big categories:

- Tragedies are plays that show the downfall of a main character. His most famous tragedies are Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth.

- Comedies are funny plays that have a happy ending most of the time. A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It and The Merry Wives of Windsor are among the most popular.

- Historical plays are dramas about the lives of some of England's most powerful kings like Henry IV or Richard II.

William Shakespeare retired from the theatre in 1610 and went back to his home town Stratford, where he lived until his death in 1616.

At that time the people of England did not know that their country's greatest poet and playwright had died. They thought of him only as a popular actor and writer.

[Даша]

Самым большим словарем в мире является Deutsches Wortetbuch, начатый Якобом и Вильгельмом Гриммами в 1854 г. Он был закончен в 1971 году. Словарь, объем которого составил 34519 страниц, был издан в 33 томах. На сегодняшний день словарь стоит 5425 немец¬ких марок. Самый большой словарь английского языка — 20-томный The Oxford English Dictionary. В нем 21728 страниц.     

[Даша]

Актуализируем тему

Средневековый футбол в Англии носил чрезвычайно азартный и грубый характер, и сама игра представляла собой, в сущности, дикую свалку на улицах. Англичане и шотландцы играли не на жизнь, а на смерть. Неудивительно, что власти вели упорную войну с футболом; выпущены были даже королевские приказы о запрещении игры. Но популярность футбола в Англии была столь велика, что ей не могли помешать и королевские указы. Именно в Англии эта игра была названа «футболом», хотя это и произошло не при официальном признании игры, а при ее запрещении. В начале 19 века в Великобритании произошел переход от «футбола толпы» к организованному футболу.

[born to be wild]

Продолжу свое повествование....

FACT 8

The eighteenth century was to see the first novelist in Daniel Defoe. Puritan self confession narratives evolved into fictional moral tracts, which became what we now know as the novel. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, was one of the first of this new genre. Soon novels moved away from morality tales, a development encouraged most obviously by cheeky eighteenth century novelists Henry Fielding and Lawrence Stearne. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, literature was becoming an overt alternative to religion. The nineteenth century atheist writer Percy Bysshe Shelley declared that "the poet is priest and prophet to a world which can move beyond religion and magic".

.....to be continued.....

FACT 9
Adam Smith, best remembered for his works on economics, pioneered the study of English literature at Edinburgh University in the 1740s. His successor Hugh Blair began a course in rhetoric and "belles-lettres" at Edinburgh in 1760, and was appointed to the new Regius Chair in 1762. This was in effect the first professorship ever in English literature. By the nineteenth century, the poet and school's inspector Matthew Arnold had decided in a famous essay called Culture and Anarchy that literature could work with religion as a "social cement". With Arnold's enthusiastic support "English literature" really came into being as an adjunct to official religion. Authors are provided with memorials in Westminster Abbey, and in Southwark Cathedral, where John Gower is buried, and where stained glass windows commemorate the plays of Shakespeare. All these memorials symbolise powerfully the way literature has taken its place alongside official religion, just as Matthew Arnold intended.

[АЛЁНА]

Конечно! Словарь словарём, а есть вещи, которые может подсказать и объяснить только знаток языка.

[Даша]

самостоятельно конечно трудно! как самому себя исправлять? как объяснить? учебники это прекрасно, но ничто не заменит педагога!

[АЛЁНА]

Изучить самостоятельно какой-либо иностранный язык достаточно трудно. Самым эффективным и, довольно действенным способом самостоятельного изучения английского языка является его изучение по произведениям классической литературы. «Из научных произведений читайте предпочтительно самые новые, из литературных — наиболее старые. Классическая литература не перестает быть новой» — так говорил английский писатель Эдвард Джордж Булвер-Литтон  еще много лет назад.

Читая произведения на языке оригинала, человек старается понять каждое предложение, перевести в нем каждое слово, постоянно бормоча себе под нос перевод частей этого предложения. Если он забывает то, что уже перевел, вновь смотрит в словарик и клянется себе в том, что на этот раз уж точно запомнит значение того или иного слова. А желание похвастаться перед однокурсниками или коллегами по работе, тем, что он прочитал в подлиннике произведения Шоу, Диккенса или Джерома К. Джерома подстёгивает к дальнейшему преодолению трудностей перевода.