Mrs. Dalloway / Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning — fresh as if issued to children on a beach. What a lark! She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall’s van to pass. For having lived in Westminster — how many years now? For it was the middle of June. “Good-morning to you, Clarissa!” “I love walking in London,” said Mrs. They had just come up — unfortunately — to see doctors. She could remember scene after scene at Bourton — Peter furious; Hugh not, of course, his match in any way, but still not a positive imbecile as Peter made out; not a mere barber’s block. (June had drawn out every leaf on the trees. For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say? Edgar J.
Spies by Michael Frayn What is a plot? For the reader, it is the discovery of concealed connections between events in a narrative. Michael Frayn's Spies is a novel with a carefully engineered plot, and a story whose two main characters are determined to uncover the sinister logic of apparently ordinary events. They are themselves looking for a plot. During the second world war, Stephen and his friend Keith live in a suburban cul-de-sac on the edge of the countryside. We do not exactly know how old the boys are (this uncertainty will itself serve the plot). "There's something clearly wrong about her, if you really look at her and listen to her as we now are." Some of the data that the sexually innocent Stephen records does seem to hold clues about adult sexuality. Spies is divided into 11 numbered sections and the first and last of these are like a prologue and an epilogue. The narrator knows what has really happened, and our sense of a plot relies on his holding back from explanation.
The Gospel of Wealth "Savage Wealth",[2] more commonly known as "The Gospel of Wealth",[3] is an article written by Andrew Carnegie in 1889[4] that describes the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich. Carnegie proposed that the best way of dealing with the new phenomenon of wealth inequality was for the wealthy to redistribute their surplus means in a responsible and thoughtful manner. This approach was contrasted with traditional bequest (patrimony), where wealth is handed down to heirs, and other forms of bequest e.g. where wealth is willed to the state for public purposes. Carnegie argued that surplus wealth is put to best use (i.e. produces the greatest net benefit to society) when it is administered carefully by the wealthy. Give to give anew[edit] Carnegie based his philosophy on the observation that the heirs of large fortunes frequently squandered them in riotous living rather than nurturing and growing them. Assertions[edit] Carnegie Libraries[edit] See also[edit]
Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie (/kɑrˈneɪɡi/ kar-NAY-gee, but commonly /ˈkɑrnɨɡi/ KAR-nə-gee or /kɑrˈnɛɡi/ kar-NEG-ee;[2] November 25, 1835 – August 11, 1919) was a Scottish American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He was also one of the highest profile philanthropists of his era and had given away almost 90 percent – amounting to, in 1919, $350 million[3] (in 2014, $4.76 billion) – of his fortune to charities and foundations by the time of his death. His 1889 article proclaiming "The Gospel of Wealth" called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, and stimulated a wave of philanthropy. Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, and emigrated to the United States with his very poor parents in 1848. Carnegie started as a telegrapher and by the 1860s had investments in railroads, railroad sleeping cars, bridges and oil derricks. Biography Early life Railroads Carnegie age 16, with brother Thomas 1860–1865: The Civil War
Fabian Society Originally, the Fabian society was committed to the establishment of a socialist economy, alongside a commitment to British imperialism as a progressive and modernizing force.[3] Organisational history[edit] Establishment[edit] Blue plaque at 17 Osnaburgh St, where the Society was founded in 1884. Fabian Society was named after "Fabius the Delayer" at the suggestion of Frank Podmore, above. Tortoise is the symbol of Fabian Society, representing its goal of gradual expansion of socialism.[1] The Fabian Society, which favoured gradual change rather than revolutionary change, was named – at the suggestion of Frank Podmore – in honour of the Roman general Fabius Maximus (nicknamed "Cunctator", meaning "the Delayer"). An explanatory note appearing on the title page of the group's first pamphlet declared: Organizational growth[edit] Immediately upon its inception, the Fabian Society began attracting many prominent contemporary figures drawn to its socialist cause, including George Bernard Shaw, H.
In Memory of W. B. Yeats Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, on February 21, 1907. He moved to Birmingham during childhood and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. As a young man he was influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, as well as William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Old English verse. At Oxford his precocity as a poet was immediately apparent, and he formed lifelong friendships with two fellow writers, Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood. In 1928, his collection Poems was privately printed, but it wasn’t until 1930, when another collection titled Poems (though its contents were different) was published, that Auden was established as the leading voice of a new generation. He visited Germany, Iceland, and China, served in the Spanish Civil war, and in 1939 moved to the United States, where he met his lover, Chester Kallman, and became an American citizen. W. Selected Bibliography Poetry Prose Anthology Selected Poems by Gunnar Ekelöf (1972) Drama
Scientific Speed Reading: How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes (Photo: Dustin Diaz) How much more could you get done if you completed all of your required reading in 1/3 or 1/5 the time? Increasing reading speed is a process of controlling fine motor movement—period. This post is a condensed overview of principles I taught to undergraduates at Princeton University in 1998 at a seminar called the “PX Project.” The below was written several years ago, so it’s worded like Ivy Leaguer pompous-ass prose, but the results are substantial. In fact, while on an airplane in China two weeks ago, I helped Glenn McElhose increase his reading speed 34% in less than 5 minutes. I have never seen the method fail. The PX Project The PX Project, a single 3-hour cognitive experiment, produced an average increase in reading speed of 386%. It was tested with speakers of five languages, and even dyslexics were conditioned to read technical material at more than 3,000 words-per-minute (wpm), or 10 pages per minute. The Protocol 1) Trackers and Pacers (to address A and B above)
Open Source Shakespeare: search Shakespeare's works, read the texts TS Eliot's The Waste Land describes a sickness, without a prescription | Roz Kaveney TS Eliot in 1919. 'What did the first readers of The Waste Land see, knowing little of Eliot as a person and nothing of his private life?' Photograph: EO Hoppe/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images We are so used to it now. It's worth remembering just how radical it was. What, then, did the first readers of The Waste Land see, knowing little of Eliot as a person and nothing of his private life? The Waste Land replaces the assumed single voice of dramatic monologues such as The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock with a polyphony of many different speakers – declasse European aristocrats, a neurotic woman who might be Vivienne, another distraught woman "the hyacinth girl", a couple of cockneys bickering in a pub, a modern Dante wandering London as if it were Limbo – "I had not thought death had undone so many" – a ragtime singer, a couple of Wagnerian tenors. • This footnote was added on 22 April 2014.
Poem of the week: In the Trenches "Here's a little poem a bit commonplace I'm afraid," Isaac Rosenbergwrote to his friend, Sonia Rodker in the autumn of 1916. The poem, In the Trenches, was written by Rosenberg while serving with the British Expeditionary Force in France. A year and a half later, in April 1918, the poet was killed during a wiring patrol near Arras. In the Trenches turned out to be one of those poems a poet in a hurry considers finished, only later to discover, it was actually draft. It's still worth reading in its own right, and for the illumination it lends to the better-known and more achieved Break of Day in the Trenches. Born in Bristol in 1890, of Lithuanian-Jewish descent, Rosenberg had been raised in considerable poverty in London's East End. It's possible that In the Trenches was suggested by John McCrae's patriotic poem In Flanders Fields. Corn poppies grew abundantly in Flanders, and sprang up quickly from battle-devastated fields. Humanity and humour are snatched like rations. In the Trenches
Poem of the week: Returning, We Hear Larks by Isaac Rosenberg Nature returns... A poppy field. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian This week's poem, Returning, We Hear Larks, is one of Isaac Rosenberg's most popular war poems, but I often wonder if he'd have made further revisions, given time. It's among the last handful of poems he wrote, working on scraps of paper in circumstances that would have silenced a less motivated artist. Rosenberg's life and work are a fusion of conflicting energies. Most critics have favoured those of his war poems that use a vernacular idiom and free-verse structure to expose the misery and grotesqueness of everyday soldiering. One revision we know about comes in the first line, which originally read, "Sombre the night hangs." From the next tercet we learn the men are returning to camp at dawn after a nocturnal sortie. Linguistic excess can pay off. Rosenberg's challenge in the poem is to lend combat-credibility to a subject bathed in Romantic luminescence. This reading may be borne out by the ensuing similes.
Matthew Arnold: Poems Study Guide : Summary and Analysis of "The Scholar-Gipsy" (1853) Arnold opens "The Scholar-Gipsy" describing a beautiful rural setting in the pastures. Oxford is in the distance, and the speaker discusses the setting around him, painting an image of the shepherd and the reapers who work there. The speaker tells the shepherd he will be in the field until sundown, enjoying the scenery and looking at the towers of Oxford. His book tells the famous story by Joseph Glanvill, in which an impoverished Oxford student leaves his studies to join a band of gypsies. The speaker continues the story, saying that every once in a while the scholar-gipsy is said to be spotted in the Berkshire moors. He insists that even though this much time has passed, there is no way that the scholar-gipsy could have died, since long ago he renounced the life of mortal men and the things that wear them out and bring death, "that repeated shocks, again, again/exhaust the energy of strongest souls."
Renaissance Literature - Literature Periods & Movements Literature Network » Literary Periods » Renaissance Literature The Renaissance in Europe was in one sense an awakening from the long slumber of the Dark Ages. What had been a stagnant, even backsliding kind of society re-invested in the promise of material and spiritual gain. There was the sincerely held belief that humanity was making progress towards a noble summit of perfect existence. Several threads can be said to tie the entire European Renaissance together across the three centuries which it spanned. The single greatest innovation of the Renaissance era was the printing press, put into service around 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg. Every nation in Western Europe experienced its own incarnation of the Renaissance. The dominant forms of English literature during the Renaissance were the poem and the drama. English court life and the opinions of noble patrons had a profound influence on the direction of the arts. This article is copyrighted © 2011 by Jalic Inc.
How Shakespeare’s great escape from the plague changed theatre In late July 1606, in the midst of a theatrical season that included what may well be the finest group of new plays ever staged – Shakespeare’s King Lear and Macbeth, Ben Jonson’s Volpone, and Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy – Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, lowered their flag at the Globe theatre and locked their playhouse doors. Plague had returned. Two years earlier, after an outbreak in which more than 30,000 Londoners had died, the privy council decreed that public playing should cease once the number of those who died every week of plague rose “above the number of 30”. In practice, though, there seems to have been some leeway, with players intent on earning a living occasionally bending the rules, resuming performances when plague deaths dipped under 40 or so. Plague’s symptoms were horrible: fever, a racing pulse and breathlessness, followed by pain in the back and legs, thirst and stumbling. John Flint, a Cambridge-educated vicar, kept the parish register.