Literature in English - SPM08-11

POEMS: Listen to readings of some poems in the SPM selection

2011-05-21T00:23:00.011+08:00

William Butler Yeats 'A Prayer for my Daughter'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v19aVYVPQmU

Read an analysis at:
http://www.brighthub.com/arts/books/articles/120620.aspx

Elizabeth Barrett Browning 'How Do I Love Thee' read by Helen Mirren
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWv_f4DjBS4

Pablo Neruda 'Tonight I can Write the Saddest Lines' read by Andy Garcia
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbiwnv_pablo-neruda-tonight-i-can-write-th_creation

Pablo Neruda was born in Parral, Chile. He studied in Santiago in the twenties. From 1927 to 1945 he was the Chilean consul in Rangoon, in Java, and then in Barcelona. He joined the Communist Party after the Second World War. Between 1970 and 1973 he served in Allende’s Chilean Government as ambassador to Paris. He died shortly after the coup that ended the Allende Government.

_______________________________________________________

Roger McGough The way things are - Google Search: "www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyfkdKgRS4w
Get more video results"

McGough may avoid anger and bitterness, but he does nonetheless take a sceptical approach to life, using dry humour as a way of coping with life’s inevitable disappointments. Perhaps the most apt example of this is the title of his 1999 collection, The Way Things Are. The title poem articulates the voice of a well-meaning father, pouring ‘cold water’ over his child’s imaginative questions:

'No, the candle is not crying, it cannot feel pain.
Even telescopes, like the rest of us, grow bored.
Bubblegum will not make the hair soft and shiny.
The duller the imagination, the faster the car.
I am your father and this is the way things are […]'

However, though the poem may be read as cynical, the child’s magical and subversive approach to life continues, constantly challenging the father’s limited perspective.
[from http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth202 ]

THE SYLLABUS: OBJECTIVES & LEARNING OUTCOMES

2010-07-03T00:05:00.000+08:00

Click here to read the above.

LEARN HOW TO WRITE LITERATURE ESSAYS.

2010-06-17T12:52:00.001+08:00

Go to http://www.englishbiz.co.uk/ to learn how to study plays, poems, novels and how to write essays about them.

How to use quotations

2010-03-18T11:47:00.003+08:00

Put inverted commas at the beginning and the end of the quotation.
Write the quotation exactly as it appears in the original.
Do not use a quotation that repeats what you have just written.
Use the quotation so that it fits into your sentence.
Keep the quotation as short as possible.

BUYING THE TEXTS

2008-11-16T19:02:00.003+08:00

Are you having difficulty in obtaining the texts? Contact me.

Below is a list of where some of the texts can be found:

University Bookstore (www.ubsm.com.my):

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (The Total Study Edition published by Pansing is highly recommended as it includes questions for students to practice.)
An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley
Holes by Louis Sachar
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai

Contact me about The Lion and the Jewel by Wole Soyinka

Making Enquiries

2008-02-23T22:37:00.011+08:00

Any student who wishes to request information on the online programme can submit a request via email. Please remember to let me know your full name, form, school and texts you are studying.

Anonymous requests will not be entertained.

SPM 2008 - TEXTS AND TITLES FOR STUDY

2007-12-24T21:48:00.006+08:00

Poems
Theme: Relationships
1.Tonight I Can Write - Pablo Neruda
2. Ways of Love - Chung Yee Chong
3. A Prayer for My Daughter - Yeats
4. The Way Things Are - Roger McGough
5. For My Old Amah - Wong Phui Nam
6. How Do I Love Thee? - Elizabeth Barret Browning

Theme: Perception of Life
1. Birches- Robert Frost
2. I Am - John Clare
3. This Is A Photograph of Me - Margaret Atwood
4. Waiting to Go On - Hugo Williams
5. Daring Tears - Craig Romkema
6.The Traveller - Muhammad hj Salleh

Theme: Conflicts
1. Dulce et Decorum Est- Wilfred Owen
2. The Man He Killed - Thomas Hardy
3. Death of A Rainforest - Cecil Rajendra
4. The War Against the Trees - Stanley Kunitz
5. A Quarrel Between Night and Day- Omar Mohd Noor
6. "Crabbed age and youth cannot live together"- Shakespeare's Poems (from Sonnet XII - The Passionate Pilgrim)

Short Stories
1. Naukar - Anya Sitaram
2. Cinderella Girl - Vivien Alcock
3. The Landlady - Roald Dahl
4. Neighbours - Robert Raymer
5. Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut Jr

Novels
1. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
2. Fasting, Feasting - Anita Desai
3. Holes - Louis Sachar

Drama
1. Julius Caesar - William Shakespeare
2. The Lion and the Jewel - Wole Soyinka
3. An Inspector Calls - JB Priestley

J.B. Priestley's AN INSPECTOR CALLS

2007-12-07T22:20:00.001+08:00

This publication by Heinemann is highly recommended as it includes notes, questions and activities. It is available at University Bookstore. Look for the store nearest to you at http://www.ubsm.com.my/ or order it online but if you opt for the latter, there will be delivery charges.

Read a study guide on this play at http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/dramainspectorcalls/1drama_inspector_plotrev1.shtml

Listen to Audio Interviews with Literary Figures

2007-09-05T19:03:00.002+08:00

Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/

http://wiredforbooks.org/swaim/RayBradbury1.ram

Hugo Wiliams - read about him

2007-09-05T17:59:00.000+08:00

Go to http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,786755,00.html

Wole Soyinka's 'THE LION AND THE JEWEL'

2007-07-30T22:13:00.003+08:00

This is one of the best-known plays by Africa's major dramatist, Wole Soyinka. It is set in the Yoruba vilage of Ilunjinle. The main characters are Sidi (the jewel), 'a true village belle' and Baroka (the Lion), the crafty and powerful Bale of the village, Lakunle, the young teacher, influenced by western ways, and Sadiku, the eldest of Baroka's wives. How the Lion hunts the Jewel is the theme of this ribald comedy.

Read the study guide at http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/anglophone/soyinka.html#lion

Watch on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79p2EXmfeT4

Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR

2007-07-30T12:03:00.000+08:00

Various publishers offer the text of this play but I feel the best one is the one published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) as it is meant for students and includes 'a running synopsis of the action and an explanation of unfamiliar words.

In addition to the above CUP also has the Cambridge Student Guide on Julius Caesar.

You can listen to audio excerpts from the play at http://town.hall.org/Archives/radio/IMS/HarperAudio/020994_harp_ITH.html

...excerpts from William Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" starring Sir Ralph Richardson and Anthony Quayle and directed by Howard Sackler.

Part 1 .au format (4.7 Mb), .gsm format (1 Mb), .ra format (0.6 Mb). Caesar has been warned by a soothsayer to beware the ides of March (March 15). In this scene, Caesar's wife begs him not to go to the Capitol because she has had ominous dreams and fears for his life. Brutus, Caesar's friend and a conspirator against him, appears and convinces Caesar to go to the Capitol in spite of the portents.

Part 2 .au format (5 Mb), .gsm format (0.6 Mb), .ra format (0.6 Mb). Caesar, a great general, is petitioned by several citizens to show clemency to one of his enemies. He declines, pompously speaking of himself in the third person. The group of conspirators then proceeds to stab him. With his dying breath he gasps, "Et tu, Brute? ("And you, Brutus?") Thus falls Caesar." The conspirators exult, and Shakespeare inserts a self-referential joke as Cassius says, "How many ages hence shall this our lofty scene be acted over in states unborn and accents yet unknown!"

Part 3 .au format (2.6 Mb), .gsm format (0.6 Mb), .ra format (0.3 Mb). Brutus presents a rational argument in favor of Caesar's assassination at the beginning of the funeral. His logical but prosaic way of speaking convinces the attending Romans to accept his political reasons for the crime -- but only temporarily.

Part 4 .au format (5.3 Mb), .gsm format (1 Mb), .ra format (0.6 Mb). We hear the end of the funeral scene. After Brutus finishes his eulogy, Marc Antony gets up to speak. In contrast with Brutus's rational argument, Marc Antony appeals solely to emotion, rousing the crowd to pity Caesar and manipulating them by sheer force of feelings. Again, Shakespeare inserts an ironic touch; Marc Antony disingenuously claims "I am no orator, as Brutus is," even though he has just defeated Brutus in a battle of words.

All these are available at the link above.

MARGARET ATWOOD - A Biography

2007-05-02T01:44:00.002+08:00

Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on Nov. 18, 1939. Her father, Carl Atwood, was a forest entomologist, whose work, studying insects, kept the family in the forests of Ontario for much of her childhood. In her seventh year, her family moved to Toronto. She attended the University of Toronto, majoring in English, with minors in Philosophy and French. She received her BA with honors in 1961, after which she went on to get her master's degree from Radcliffe College in Massachussets, in 1962. She did two two-year periods of study at Harvard for her Ph.D., but writing was paramount, and she never finished. Margaret Atwood self-published her first collection of poems, Double Persephone, in 1961. The Circle Game was published by Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1964 and won the governor general's award for poetry. Since then, over 15 collections of her poetry have been published, many running several editions, and individual poems have appeared in magazines and journals too numerous to mention. In 1967, Atwood married Jim Polk, a fellow writer, but the couple drifted apart after a few years and separated. Atwood's first novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969. The story about a woman who cannot eat and feels as if she herself is being eaten, was well ahead of its time. Around the time of her second novel, Surfacing (1972), Atwood married Graeme Gibson and moved to the small community of Alliston, Ontario with Gibson and his two young sons. In 1976, the couple welcomed their daughter, Jess Atwood Gibson. The couple remain happily married to this day. Her next books, Lady Oracle (1977), Life Before Man (1979), and the profoundly disquieting Bodily Harm (1981) gained her further critical acclaim. In 1982, her first collection of short stories, Dancing Girls and Other Stories was published. Her best-known work the world over, The Handmaid's Tale (1986), got Atwood short-listed for the Booker Prize. A novel about a futuristic dystopia, where women are dehumanized into mindless wombs, it also garnered millions of new readers worldwide, and a fervently loyal readership. The wonderful book was later turned by Hollywood into a lump of a movie.

The Handmaid's Tale was followed by Cat's Eye (1989), about bullying among schoolgirls; it, too was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Next came The Robber Bride (1993), about the mysterious meanness of women toward women, and Alias Grace (1996), the story of a woman convicted of murder, who claims to have amnesia; and again Atwood was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The elusive prize was won by The Blind Assassin, in 2000. Her most recent works of fiction are Oryx and Crake (2003), The Penelopiad (2005), The Tent (2006), and Moral Disorder (2006).

Atwood is also a beloved children's book author. Her first children's book was Up In The Tree (1978), which she herself illustrated in charming, naive two-color pictures. It was followed by Anna's Pet (1980) and For The Birds (1990), and the delightfully illustrated Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut (1995). Her latest children's books are Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes (2003) and Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda (2004).

With all these works to her credit, Atwood also excels in the field of non-fiction. These writings include literary criticism, studies, autobiographical essays, book reviews, political essays, eulogies, ecological writings, and other journalism and essays. Written with her energetic style, keen intellect and dry wit, these collections of her non-fiction further affirm Margaret Atwood as one of the most noteworthy writers of our time. —A. Jokinen

(From http://contemporary.luminarium.org/atwood/atwood.htm)

Read This is a Photograph of Me by Margaret Atwood and comments on the poem at http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Margaret_Atwood/2132

WILFRED OWEN's Dulce Et Decorum Est

2007-04-25T12:24:00.002+08:00

Look carefully at how Owen uses vivid imagery to express the horror of war.
Examine the poet's use of imagery and its effects.

Remember to focus on specific details of the ways in which Owen uses language. Comment on the effectiveness of devices that might be used, such as metaphor, simile, alliteration etc. Don't just identify them but explain the effects they create within the poem.

Would you like to learn more? Send me an email on the online programme.

WILFRED OWEN

2007-04-25T00:53:00.000+08:00

Introduction to Wilfred Owen
Few would challenge the claim that Wilfred Owen is the greatest writer of war poetry in the English language. He wrote out of his intense personal experience as a soldier and wrote with unrivalled power of the physical, moral and psychological trauma of the First World War. All of his great war poems on which his reputation rests were written in a mere fifteen months.
From the age of nineteen Wilfred Owen wanted to become a poet and immersed himself in poetry, being especially impressed by Keats and Shelley.

He was working in France, close to the Pyrenees, as a private tutor when the First World War broke out. At this time he was remote from the war and felt completely disconnected from it too. Even when he visited the local hospital with a doctor friend and examined, at close quarters, the nature of the wounds of soldiers who were arriving from the Western Front, the war still appeared to him as someone else's story.

Eventually he began to feel guilty of his inactivity as he read copies of The Daily Mail which his mother sent him from England. He returned to England, and volunteered to fight on 21 October 1915. He trained in England for over a year and enjoyed the impression he made on people as he walked about in public wearing his soldier's uniform.

He was sent to France on the last day of 1916, and within days was enduring the horrors of the front line.

(Read more at http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owena.htm#WILFRED%20OWEN%20top%20of%20page)

2007-04-23T10:58:00.001+08:00

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian soft science fiction novel by Ray Bradbury that was published in 1953.

It is set in a society where censorship is prevalent, and moronic citizens learn only from television. Most books are banned and critical thought is suppressed. The central character, Guy Montag, is employed as a "fireman" (which, in this case, means "book burner"). 451 degrees Fahrenheit is stated as "the temperature at which book-paper catches fire, and burns …". It was originally published as a shorter novella, The Fireman, in the February 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. A film adaptation, by François Truffaut, was released in 1966, and another is anticipated. In addition to the movies, there have been at least two BBC Radio 4 dramatizations, both of which follow the book very closely.

The novel reflects several major concerns of the time of its writing: what Bradbury has called "the thought-destroying force" of censorship in the 1950s, the book-burnings in Nazi Germany starting in 1933, Stalin's suppression of authors and books in the Soviet Union, and the horrible consequences of the explosion of a nuclear weapon. "I meant all kinds of tyrannies anywhere in the world at any time, right, left, or middle", Bradbury has said.[1]

One particularly ironic circumstance is that, unbeknownst to Bradbury, his publisher released a censored edition in 1967 that eliminated the words "damn" and "hell" for distribution to schools. Later editions with all words restored include a "Coda" from the author describing this event and further thoughts on censorship and "well-meaning" revisionism.

Bradbury has stated that the entirety of his novel was written in the basement of the UCLA library on a pay typewriter. His original intention in writing Fahrenheit 451 was to show his great love for books and libraries. He has often referred to Montag as an allusion to himself.

On the alienation of people by media, Bradbury said:

“ In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.

The study guide is available at

http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmFar45102.asp

http://www.steppenwolf.org/_pdf/studyguides/F451_studyguide.pdf

2007-04-23T10:45:00.000+08:00

Anita Desai was born June 24, 1937 in India to a German mother and an Indian father. Although she now resides in South Hadley, Massachusetts, teaching writing at Mount Holyoke College, she is a member of the Advisory Board for English in New Delhi. Desai writes in English, saying, "I first learned English when I went to school. It was the first language that I learned to read and write, so it became my literary language. Languages tend to proliferate around one in India, and one tends to pick up and use whatever is at hand. It makes one realize each language has its own distinct genius." Her family spoke German at home and Hindi to their friends.
Desai's work is part of a new style of writing to come out of India which is not nearly as conservative as Indian writing has been in the past. One concern that is part of her work, especially the novel Baumgartner's Bombay, is that about foreignness and dividedness. Desai grew up during World War II and could see the anxiety her German mother was experiencing about the situation and her family in Germany. After the war when she realized the Germany she had known was devasted, her mother never returned there, nor had any desire to return. Anita herself did not visit until she was an adult.

(From http://www.postcolonialweb.org/india/desai/desaibio.html)

Holes by Louis Sachar

2007-04-22T03:28:00.000+08:00

Stanley Yelnats was given a choice. The judge said, "You may go to jail, or you may go to Camp Green Lake." Stanley was from a poor family. He had never been to camp before.
And so, Stanley Yelnats seems set to serve an easy sentence, which is only fair because he is as innocent as you or me. But Stanley is not going where he thinks he is. Camp Green Lake is like no other camp anywhere. It is a bizarre, almost otherworldly place that has no lake and nothing that is green. Nor is it a camp, at least not the kind of camp kids look forward to in the summertime. It is a place that once held "the largest lake in Texas," but today it is only a scorching desert wasteland, dotted with countless holes dug by the boys who live at the camp.
The trouble started when Stanley was accused of stealing a pair of shoes donated by basketball great Clyde "Sweetfeet" Livingston to a celebrity auction. In court, the judge doesn't believe Stanley's claim that the shoes fell from the sky onto his head. And yet, that's exactly what happened. Oddly, though, Stanley doesn't blame the judge for falsely convicting him. Instead, he blames the whole misadventure on his "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather." Thanks to this benighted distant relative, the Yelnats family had been cursed for generations. For Stanley, his current troubles are just a natural part of being a Yelnats.
At Camp Green Lake, the warden makes the boys "build character" by spending all day, every day, digging holes: five feet wide and five feet deep. It doesn't take long for Stanley to realize there's more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the treacherous warden is searching for something, and before long Stanley begins his own search—for the truth.
Fate conspires to resolve it all—the family curse, the mystery of the holes, the drought that destroyed Green Lake, and also, the legend of Kissing Kate Barlow, an infamous outlaw of the Wild West. The great wheel of justice has ground slowly for generations, but now it is about to reveal its verdict.

(From: http://www.louissachar.com/HolesBook.htm)