The Handmaid's tale

The Handmaid's Tale takes place in an unspeakably awful future that Margaret Atwood first envisioned in her 1985 novel of the same name. Spurred by a global plague of infertility, an extremist group called the Sons of Jacob staged a coup on the U.S. government and sent progressive American society reeling backwards to totalitarianism, organized on Old Testament principles. In addition to enforcing incredibly strict gender roles, Gilead has introduced an entirely new vocabulary for its citizens to internalize. Women must identify with their new position as Marthas, handmaids, or Wives. They must learn that the term "the Colonies" should inspire terror.

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/05/197964/handmaids-tale-sayings-words-meaning-vocabulary

The Cold War

Berlin Wall

Korean War

Vietnam War

Cuban Missile Crisis

1984 - Literary Essay

Language and Culture II

Choose ONE of the following tasks and develop it thoroughly in an essay.
It should include an introduction, the main body and a conclusion.
Develop the corresponding theory, and account for it quoting from the novel.

Psychoanalytic Criticism (1930s-present)
How do the operations of repression or structure inform the work?
How can characters' behaviour, narrative events, and/or images be explained in terms of psychoanalytic terms: id, ego, superego?

MARXISM
Which class does the work claim to represent?
What conflict can be seen between the values the work champions and those it portrays?
What social classes do the characters represent?
How do characters from different classes interact or conflict?

New Historicism
How are events' interpretation and presentation a product of the culture of the author?
How does this portrayal criticize the leading political figures or movements of the day?
How does the literary text function as part of a continuum with other historical/cultural texts from the same period...?
How does the work consider traditionally marginalized populations?

Feminist
How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?
What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming male/female roles)?
How are male and female roles defined? What constitutes masculinity and femininity? How do characters embody these traits?

The Great Gatsby

The USA: 1919-1941

Coming soon..."The Great Gatsby"

Happy Students' Day!

Nazi Germany: Hitler's children

Episode I: Seduction

Episode II: Dedication

Episode III: Education

Episode IV: War

Episode V: Sacrifice

War Poetry: The Soldier by Rupert Brooke

The Soldier 

Rupert Brooke, 1887 – 1915

If I should die, think only this of me:

   That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England.  There shall be

   In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

   Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England’s, breathing English air,

   Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

   A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

     Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

   And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

     In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

War Poetry: Break of Day in the Trenches By Isaac Rosenberg

Break of Day in the Trenches  
By Isaac Rosenberg

The darkness crumbles away.

It is the same old druid Time as ever,

Only a live thing leaps my hand,

A queer sardonic rat,

As I pull the parapet’s poppy

To stick behind my ear.

Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew

Your cosmopolitan sympathies.

Now you have touched this English hand

You will do the same to a German

Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure

To cross the sleeping green between.

It seems you inwardly grin as you pass

Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,

Less chanced than you for life,

Bonds to the whims of murder,

Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,

The torn fields of France.

What do you see in our eyes

At the shrieking iron and flame

Hurled through still heavens?

What quaver—what heart aghast?

Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins

Drop, and are ever dropping;

But mine in my ear is safe—

Just a little white with the dust.

War Poetry: Poems by Siegfried Sassoon

The General 

By Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

“Good-morning, good-morning!” the General said

When we met him last week on our way to the line.

Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,

And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.

“He's a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack

As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack

'They'  By Siegfried Sassoon (1917)

       The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back

       'They will not be the same; for they'll have fought

       'In a just cause: they lead the last attack

       'On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought

       'New right to breed an honourable race,

       'They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'

       'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.

       'For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;

       'Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;

       'And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find

       'A chap who's served that hasn't found some change

      ' And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!

IV Jornada de Lengua

War Poetry: Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

Dulce et Decorum Est 
By Wilfred Owen(1893 – 1918)

Published Posthumously in 1920.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

The Panopticon

Watch the video below and then read the following article "Bentham and Big Brother: The Power of Supervision in 1984"

War Poetry: Futility by Wilfred Owen

Futility 
By Wilfred Owen (1918)

Move him into the sun— 

Gently its touch awoke him once, 

At home, whispering of fields half-sown. 

Always it woke him, even in France, 

Until this morning and this snow. 

If anything might rouse him now 

The kind old sun will know. 

Think how it wakes the seeds— 

Woke once the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides 

Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir? 

Was it for this the clay grew tall? 

—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil 

To break earth's sleep at all?

To Germany, by Charles Hamilton Sorley

You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed,
And no man claimed the conquest of your land.
But gropers both through fields of thought confined
We stumble and we do not understand.
You only saw your future bigly planned,
And we, the tapering paths of our own mind,
And in each others dearest ways we stand,
And hiss and hate. And the blind fight the blind.

When it is peace, then we may view again
With new won eyes each other's truer form
And wonder. Grown more loving kind and warm
We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain,
When it is peace. But until peace, the storm,
The darkness and the thunder and the rain.

Interpellation

Interpellation: This term was coined by Louis Althusser and it derives from the French verb appeller, which means ‘to name’. Interpellation is a process by which individuals internalize cultural values or ideologies. For Althusser, ideology calls on us to accept unquestioningly certain elements of our culture as fixed, natural and disinterested because we are free, autonomous and choosing subjects. A subject can be interpellated by institutions such as the police, the school, the family, the church and the army. There are different reactions to interpellation: response, negotiation and resistance through silence, action or passive resistance.

Enjoy your winter holidays!

The Russian Revolution

1984 (Crash Course Literature)

1984: Summary and Analysis

Summary and Analysis: Careful! It may contain spoilers

 

World War I: Part 2

World War I: How did it get started?

WWI in Colour

Power Relations - Foucault

Power is a “network of relations, constantly in tension, in activity, rather than a privilege that one might possess; one should take as its model a perpetual battle… this power is exercised rather than possessed; it is not the ‘privilege’ of the dominant class, but the overall effect of its strategic positions – an effect that is manifested and sometimes extended by the position of those who are dominated.” (p. 26)

Foucault analysed how power shapes our behaviour.
efinition: the ability to make someone do something, very often without that someone noticing it.
Characteristics:

• Invisible 
• Omnipresent 
• Constant state of flax, always flowing. Nobody has power all the time. 
• Power is not hierarchical. It doesn’t come top down or bottom up, also can come from the sides. 
• It is not negative, it can help people grow. 

It can be made manifest through:

• Building, we can’t move in the way we want. 
• Discourse: the things I say 
• The Gaze: the way people look at teach other 

Power can only be effectively exerted if people accept the legitimate right of someone to exert power.

Foucault, M. (1995) [1977]. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon.

Literary Essay

Language and Culture II 

Choose ONE of the following tasks and develop it thoroughly in an essay.
It should include an introduction, the main body and a conclusion.
Develop the corresponding theory, and account for it quoting from the novel.

1. Define what power is according to the theory of Michel Foucault. Describe the struggle for power between Inspector Goole and Mr Birling throughout the play. 
2. How gender roles are represented in the play within Patriarchal Society. 
3. Analyse the character of Mrs Birling throughout the play taking into consideration Gender Roles & Patriarchal Society. 
4. Priestley includes a strong range of female characters in An Inspector Calls from an upper class snob, through a vain daughter to an oppressed factory worker, showing he wanted to convey women from all types of social backgrounds. The vulnerability of women evokes sympathy, which supports Priestley’s belief in gender equality and community as “one body”. Develop. 
5. How is patriarchal society represented through discourse in “An inspector calls”? Choose two characters from the play to illustrate your point. 
6. Is inspector Goole’s discourse patriarchal in the same way as the discourse of Gerard, Mr Birling or Eric. Or, is he a non-patriarchal character? 
7. How are Mr Birling and Inspector Goole coming from "opposite ideological points of view"? 
8. Explore two characters from the play bearing in mind whether they are developing and static characters. 
9. Explore the effect of class, age and sex on people's attitudes to responsibility in the play “An inspector calls” 
10. Explain how social class determines the decisions that people make in “An inspector calls” 
11. Explore Eva Smith's encounters with each of the members of the Birling family and Gerald showing how Priestley uses these encounters to expose society's attitudes to working class girls like Eva. 
12. 1What social classes do the characters represent? 
13. How does this portrayal criticize the leading political figures or movements of the day? 
14. What role does authority (in the laws, or embodied by the police or others with power) play in the play's projected morality? 
15. Consider what each one seems to believe about the role of an individual in society, and use the theme of responsibility as a major guide.

Kings and Queens of England - 20th Century

Patriarchal Society

What is a Patriarchal System?

A patriarchal social system can be defined as a system where men are in authority over women in all aspects of society. In the past, men were often the established gender of authority and exhibited control in all situations.

The etymology of the word patriarchy allows us to understand the meaning of the term. The term patriarchy comes from the Latin words pater, which means “father”, and archein, “to rule”. Also, patriarchy derives from the Greek terms patriarches (“chief or head of family”) and patria (“family, clan”) Therefore, it refers to male political power within society and the father’s authority within his family.

Malpas and Wake (2006) claim that:

Patriarchy is a term used – especially but not exclusively in feminist theory – to analyse male dominance as a conventional or institutionalized form. Literally the ‘rule of the father’, patriarchy historically describes systems in which the male has absolute legal and economic control over the family. The patriarch is the male head of a tribe, religion or church hierarchy. (...)

Patriarchy was stablished as a system, defeating the ‘mother right’ and controlling women’s sexuality in order to establish paternity and protect private property. (Malpas and Wake, 2006: 237)

Characteristics of a Patriarchal System 

(male dominance, male centeredness, obsession with control, male identification)

Firslty, a patriarchal society is male dominated, which does not mean that all women are powerless, but the most powerful roles in most sectors of society are held by men,whereas the least powerful roles are held by women. 

Secondly, it is organized with men at the center, while women occupy the margins. This is so because of the assumption that women need men's supervision, protection, or control because they are fragile or vulnerable. 

This takes us to the thrid characteristic, which is the obsession with control. Men living in a patriarchal system or society must be in control at all times. They have a desire to control all social and family situations and must make all decisions regarding finances and education.

Finally, it is important to mention those aspects of society and personal attributes that are highly valued and which are generally associated with men, while devalued attributes and social activities are associated with women. Men are concerned with identification that includes qualities of control, strength, forcefulness, rationality, strong work ethic, and competitiveness.

Reference:

Malpas, S. and Wake, P. (eds.) (2006) The Routledge Companion To Critical Theory. London: Routledge

An Inspector calls by J.B. Priestley

John Boynton Priestley was born in Yorkshire in 1894. He knew early on that he wanted to become a writer, but decided against going to university as he thought he would get a better feel for the world around him away from academia. Instead, he became a junior clerk with a local wool firm at the age of 16.

When the First World War broke out, Priestley joined the infantry and only just escaped death on a number of occasions. After the war, he gained a degree from Cambridge University, then moved to London to work as a freelance writer. He wrote successful articles and essays, then published the first of many novels, The Good Companions, in 1929. He wrote his first play in 1932 and went on to write 50 more. Much of his writing was ground-breaking and controversial. He included new ideas about possible parallel universes and strong political messages.

During the Second World War he broadcast a massively popular weekly radio programme which was attacked by the Conservatives as being too left-wing. The programme was eventually cancelled by the BBC for being too critical of the Government.

He continued to write into the 1970s, and died in 1984

Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/english_literature/dramainspectorcalls/0drama_inspector_contrev1.shtml

Poem: The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

Literary Theories and Schools of Criticism

Happy Easter

Retrieved from: http://www.lovethispic.com/uploaded_images/248359-Pretty-Happy-Easter-Eggs.jpg

Vocabulary: ways of....

Poem: She Hears the Storm

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in the English village of Higher Bockhampton in the county of Dorset. He died in 1928 at Max Gate, a house he built for himself and his first wife, Emma Lavinia Gifford, in Dorchester, a few miles from his birthplace. Hardy’s youth was influenced by the musicality of his father, a stonemason and fiddler, and his mother, Jemima Hand Hardy, often described as the real guiding star of Hardy’s early life.

Retrieved from: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-hardy

Poem: Seen by the Waits (Thomas Hardy)

Through snowy woods and shady

We went to play a tune

To the lonely manor-lady

By the light of the Christmas moon.



We violed till, upward glancing

To where a mirror leaned,

We saw her airily dancing,

Deeming her movements screened;



Dancing alone in the room there,

Thin-draped in her robe of night;

Her postures, glassed in the gloom there,

Were a strange phantasmal sight.



She had learnt (we heard when homing)

That her roving spouse was dead;

Why she had danced in the gloaming

We thought, but never said.

Eveline, by James Joyce

James Joyce

Born James Augustine Aloysius Joyce on February 2, 1882 in Dublin, Ireland, Joyce was one of the most revered writers of the 20th century, whose landmark book, Ulysses, is often hailed as one of the finest novels ever written. 

Joyce came from a big family. He was the eldest of ten children born to John Stanislaus Joyce and his wife Marry Murray Joyce. His father, while a talented singer (he reportedly had one of the finest tenor voices in all of Ireland), didn't provide a stable a household. He liked to drink and his lack of attention to the family finances meant the Joyces never had much money.

Following an intestinal operation, the writer died at the age of 59 on January 13, 1941 at the Schwesternhause von Roten Kreuz Hospital. His wife and son were at his bedside when he passed.

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. Eveline is one of those 15 stories.

References:
The Biography.com website. (2017) James Joyce Biography. A&E Television Networks.  Last updated: April 27, 2017. Retrieved from: https://www.biography.com/people/james-joyce-9358676 (March 2018)