Mister James Teaches English

We are moving on now in the Gymnasium Modersmål course to writing, but that always of course includes reading. Here is a list of just a very few of the major authors and poets from the four eras of modern literature we discussed in the first three lectures. Feel free to browse through the list and choose any one you find interesting. We can do more work on them in the second half of this term. Romantic Era William Blake   (Blake was the artist, writer and poet that ushered in romanticism) George Gordon, Lord Byron   (a long biography and then some of his poetry) Samuel Taylor Coleridge   (a long biography and then some of his writing) Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley   Percy Bysshe Shelley   William Wordsworth  John Keats Walter Scott Jane Austen   (Not a Romantic writer, but a phenomenon that cannot be ignored. Austen is enigma that is actually difficult to place in literary history as she invented a genre and her work remains very popular today). ...

"Araby" is a short story by James Joyce  (PDF) published in his 1914 collection Dubliners. On the purely narrative level the story traces a young boy's infatuation with his friend's sister. On the symbolic level Araby traces the development of the boy as he turns his back on the certainties of childhood and Catholicism and embraces the uncertainties of adult emotions and desires via imagination. Araby is structured in a way that first introduces the childhood world of the narrator, the boy of the story. It is a mysterious but exciting world where even simple things take on great significance, relative to the small size of the world - a single street really. But the story also opens with death, and the abandoned house of the recently deceased, but 'charitable' priest. This death can be understood as the loss of faith and the end of childhood. From there we look forward as readers through what is possibly the first steps into the adult world by the boy telli...

This is a short summary of some of the major currents in English Literature since 1965. The difficulty in making such a summary is that the language rather than nationality has now become the main identifier for the creative use of English. But the language itself has become more varied. Take this passage from the 2020 book Shuggie Bann by queer Scottish/American author Douglas Stuart: “Ah have been lonely fur years now. Lonely long afore ma wife died. Don't get us wrong. She was a guid wummin, a guid wummin just like our Colleen, but we were jist stuck in our wee routine. When ye think about it, ah've been under the ground most of ma life. There wasn't much in me for sharing at the end of a day. After twenty years, what do you talk about? But she was a guid wummin. She used to make me these big hot dinners, with meat and gravy, the plate scalding hot cos she'd warm it up all day in the oven. We ate big hot dinners because we had nothing left to say. Nothing worthwhile ...

Traditionally 'Literature' has been defined as "Literature is a term used to describe written and sometimes spoken material. Derived from the Latin word literature meaning "writing formed with letters," literature most commonly refers to works of the creative imagination, including poetry, drama, fiction, nonfiction, and in some instances, journalism, and song." ( Esther Lombardi ). But there is another important dimension to Literature that seems almost more relevant today than the fact that literature relies upon Language. Culture is an important consideration when we consider "What is Literature?" Culture is the multidimensional system by which we understand societies (and in turn ourselves as members of a society). How we dress, what we eat, how we meet other people, what we do for work, what Education instructs us to know, how we live in our homes, who we love, what we listen to for music, what we read about, what the broadcast news covers and...

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland ) is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a young girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar creatures. The story plays with logic, giving it lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre. One of the best-known and most popular works of English-language fiction, its narrative course, structure, characters, and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre. The work has never been out of print, and it has been translated into at least 97 languages. Its ongoing legacy encompasses many adaptations for stage, screen, radio, art, theme parks, board games, and video games. From Reading Alice in Wonderland you can learn many new ...

"If I can tell you something today, it is that you should never, ever believe your eyes. Or your mind for that matter." -Rat Man (page 56) "I mean, good Lord, how much can these kids take before they'll go crazy on their own?" - Female WICKED worker (page 205) "Too bad we'll never see the end of the Trials.''I know' the man answers. "But the future will thank us.'" -WICKED workers(page 206) "He imagined her having come all this way only to be killed by a vicious man-made creature. He thought of the Grievers..." -narrator (page 332) ” I really liked the concept of the scorch and how it is just miles and miles of desert wasteland. One of the reasons I liked it was because it’s all based on nature; anything dangerous that happens is usually caused by nature and so it wasn’t as though the Gladers could fight off any monsters because everything that’s happening is kind of natural. It’s interesting seeing th...