Extollager
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Hmm -- curious -- it was available on YouTube from here in the States. I'm going to watch it again now.
Learning English literature
- Thread starter AE35Unit
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I've just stumbled upon this site which has a section discussing literature
Might be of interest
Literature Explained - Literary Synopses and Book Summaries - Writing Explained
In this section of the website, we discuss the importance and significance of classic English literature. 1984 A Tale of Two Cities Animal Farm Atlas Shrugged The Catcher in the Rye Dante’s Inferno Fahrenheit 451 Frankenstein The Grapes of Wrath The Great Gatsby Hamlet Iliad Lord of the Flies...
writingexplained.org
Might be of interest
Really, it is easier to understand classic literature—and especially someone like Dickens who was writing for a broad, popular audience—the more you know about the elements of everyday life during the period in which the writer in question was writing. And conversely, the more you read such books, the broader and deeper will become your understanding of their particular era. It may require a certain amount of stumbling around at first, but if you don't let it stress you out, you'll begin to comprehend more and more of the unfamiliar vocabulary just from the context.
For instance, I started reading Dickens by reading Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol when I was eight or nine—an age where, like most children, I had no expectation I would understand every word in everything I read—and by the time, a dozen or more years later, that I had worked my way through several more of his novels, I had—without quite realizing it—learned enough so that there was very little I didn't understand in those novels or those of his that I went on to encounter even later in life.* I am sure it is much more challenging trying to tackle such books for the first time at a later age, when not understanding a word or a reference is naturally more frustrating simply because our expectations are different.
________
*Also, back when I was eight or nine and into my early teens, this was back when kids were, as a matter of course, given a lot of nineteenth century novels to read. So many books first written for adults to enjoy, had come to be considered particularly appropriate books for young readers of the early and mid- twentieth century. Writers like Dumas, Stevenson, Dickens, the Brontës. etc. were being published in illustrated editions meant for the schoolroom or for children's home collections.
For instance, I started reading Dickens by reading Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol when I was eight or nine—an age where, like most children, I had no expectation I would understand every word in everything I read—and by the time, a dozen or more years later, that I had worked my way through several more of his novels, I had—without quite realizing it—learned enough so that there was very little I didn't understand in those novels or those of his that I went on to encounter even later in life.* I am sure it is much more challenging trying to tackle such books for the first time at a later age, when not understanding a word or a reference is naturally more frustrating simply because our expectations are different.
________
*Also, back when I was eight or nine and into my early teens, this was back when kids were, as a matter of course, given a lot of nineteenth century novels to read. So many books first written for adults to enjoy, had come to be considered particularly appropriate books for young readers of the early and mid- twentieth century. Writers like Dumas, Stevenson, Dickens, the Brontës. etc. were being published in illustrated editions meant for the schoolroom or for children's home collections.
Extollager
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Teresa wrote, "I started reading Dickens by reading Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol when I was eight or nine—an age where, like most children, I had no expectation I would understand every word in everything I read.... I am sure it is much more challenging trying to tackle such books for the first time at a later age, when not understanding a word or a reference is naturally more frustrating simply because our expectations are different."
I'm glad you said this. I'm sure you're right. When our children were growing up, they were used to hearing me read to their mom while she knitted, etc. Sometimes I read mystery novels or ghost stories, but often the selections were classic novels. It was natural for them to feel they could start reading such books whenever they wanted to, and one of the kids especially did so, though a few years older than you were, more like 12 or so. But then she tackled some very long books, such as Collins's The Woman in White, and Jane Eyre and even War and Peace -- yes, and she stuck with them. The fact is that these books and lots of other 19th-century novels are very readable indeed, provided one doesn't worry about too many details, keeps the book going with daily or at least frequent reading sessions, is not struggling against a habit of checking electronic devices every few minutes, and so on. When I was a college English teacher, I gave reading assignments of around 150-200 pages a week. Many of my students were not used to reading classics. They might be most comfortable reading, say, the Harry Potter books. But if their classroom achievement is any indication, many of them found they could get along quite well with just a Penguin Classics edition. I always emphasized that they should try to read sizeable chunks -- really get settled in with the book. This was advice that I'd received myself as a student, and it was good.
I'm glad you said this. I'm sure you're right. When our children were growing up, they were used to hearing me read to their mom while she knitted, etc. Sometimes I read mystery novels or ghost stories, but often the selections were classic novels. It was natural for them to feel they could start reading such books whenever they wanted to, and one of the kids especially did so, though a few years older than you were, more like 12 or so. But then she tackled some very long books, such as Collins's The Woman in White, and Jane Eyre and even War and Peace -- yes, and she stuck with them. The fact is that these books and lots of other 19th-century novels are very readable indeed, provided one doesn't worry about too many details, keeps the book going with daily or at least frequent reading sessions, is not struggling against a habit of checking electronic devices every few minutes, and so on. When I was a college English teacher, I gave reading assignments of around 150-200 pages a week. Many of my students were not used to reading classics. They might be most comfortable reading, say, the Harry Potter books. But if their classroom achievement is any indication, many of them found they could get along quite well with just a Penguin Classics edition. I always emphasized that they should try to read sizeable chunks -- really get settled in with the book. This was advice that I'd received myself as a student, and it was good.
AE35Unit
]==[]===O °
Do you have BritBox?
Extollager
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Nope -- I don't know exactly what that is. We don't have cable TV or anything like Netflix, HBO, etc etc.
I have BritBox (which I subscribed to through Amazon Prime), and at the moment it has a lot of good stuff to watch. Tried it a few years ago and it was a bit disappointing, but I gave it another go recently and have been quite pleased with it.
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Yes there are quite a few Channel 4 dramas from the 80s and early 90s that are long forgotten and would never have been repeated but for BritBox. I watched 'Runners' recently; quite harrowing in parts, but utterly compelling viewing from start to finish about a father looking for his missing daughter. There are very, very few films from the last 5-10 years that I couldn't quite happily leave to watch in 2 sittings; so it's a pleasant surprise to see some genuinely gripping dramas.
Plus there's loads of great scifi stuff like The Survivors, Blakes 7 , Terrahawks and what seems like almost the entire back catalogue of Doctor Who. Plus all the 'ghost story for Christmas' , Shakespeare plays etc etc.
It's disappointing that some stuff is missing that really ought to be there (Elizabeth R, Colditz, Secret Army, I Claudius etc), but for less than £100 a year, you could easily be entertained with 2-4 hours of new tv every day for the forseeable future.
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