A Tale of Two Cities—Charles Dickens
It is a novel by
Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and
during the French Revolution. The novel depicts the plight of the
French peasantry demoralized by the French aristocracy in the years leading up
to the revolution, the corresponding brutality demonstrated by the
revolutionaries toward the former aristocrats in the early years of the
revolution, and many unflattering social parallels with life in London during
the same period. It follows the lives of several characters through
these events. A Tale of Two Cities was published in weekly installments from
April 1859 to November 1859 in Dickens's new literary periodical titled All the
Year Round. All but three of Dickens's previous novels had appeared only as
monthly installments.
--Dickens's famous opening sentence introduces the
universal approach of the book, the French Revolution, and the drama depicted
within:
It
was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it
was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of
hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all
going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the
period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest
authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the
superlative degree of comparison only.
Charles Dickens
He was an English writer and social critic. He created
some of the world's best-known fictional characters
and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works
enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth
century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His
novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.
Edith Wharton
was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story
writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1927, 1928 and 1930. Wharton combined her insider's view of
America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous,
incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was
well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures,
including Theodore Roosevelt.
Roman Fever
is a short story by American writer Edith Wharton. It
was first published in the magazine Liberty in 1934, and was later included in
Wharton's last short-story collection, The World Over.
Summary--The protagonists
are Grace Ansley and Alida Slade, two middle-aged American women who are
visiting Rome with their daughters, Barbara Ansley and Jenny Slade. The elder
women grew up in Manhattan, New York, and were friends from childhood. A youthful and romantic rivalry led Mrs. Slade to nurture
feelings of jealousy and hatred against Mrs. Ansley.
In the opening
pages of the story, the two women compare their daughters and reflect on each
other's lives. Eventually, Mrs. Slade reveals a secret about a letter written
to Mrs. Ansley on a visit to Rome many years ago. The letter was purportedly
from Mrs. Slade's fiancé, Delphin, inviting Mrs. Ansley to a rendezvous at the
Colosseum. In fact, Mrs. Slade herself had written the letter, in an attempt to
get Mrs. Ansley out of the way of the engagement by disappointing her with
Delphin's absence (and, it is implied, to get Mrs. Ansley sick with Roman
Fever). Mrs. Ansley is upset at this revelation, but reveals that she was not
left alone at the Colosseum—she responded to the letter, and Delphin arrived to
meet her. Mrs. Slade eventually states that Mrs. Ansley ought not to feel sorry
for her, because "I had [Delphin] for twenty-five years" while Mrs.
Ansley had "nothing but a letter he didn't write." Mrs. Ansley
responds, in the last sentence of the story, "I had Barbara."
Discussion of textbook
What
is literature do?
What
does literature do?
What
are the Genres of Literature?
Why
read Literature?
Why
study Literature?
Harold Bloom
is an American literary critic and Sterling Professor of Humanities
at Yale University. Since the publication of his first book in 1959,
Bloom has written more than 20 books of literary criticism, several books
discussing religion, and a novel. He has edited hundreds of anthologies
concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House
publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40
languages.
Bloom came to
public attention in the United States as a commentator during the Canon wars of the early 1990s.
The Western Canon: The Book and School
of the ages
is a 1994 book by Harold Bloom on Western literature,
in which he defends the concept of the Western canon by discussing 26 writers
whom he sees as central to the canon. The Western
Canon is Bloom's best-known book alongside The Anxiety of Influence, and was a
surprise bestseller upon its release in the United States
Bloom defends the
concept of the Western canon by discussing 26 writers whom he sees as central
to the canon:
William
Shakespeare
Dante Alighieri
Geoffrey Chaucer
Miguel de
Cervantes
Michel de
Montaigne
Molière
John Milton
Samuel Johnson
Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe
William Wordsworth
Jane Austen
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Charles Dickens
George Eliot
Leo Tolstoy
Henrik Ibsen
Sigmund Freud
Marcel Proust
James Joyce
Virginia Woolf
Franz Kafka
Jorge Luis Borges
Pablo Neruda
Fernando Pessoa
Samuel Beckett
Vocabulary
ast: star
astronaunt
Example: He wants
to be an astronaunt.
chapel vs. cathedral
chapel is a religious place of
fellowship, prayer and worship that is attached to a larger, often nonreligious
institution or that is considered an extension of a primary religious
institution. It may be part of
a larger structure or complex, such as a college, hospital, palace, prison,
funeral home, church, synagogue or mosque, located on board a military or
commercial ship, or it may be an entirely free-standing building, sometimes
with its own grounds. Many military installations have chapels for the use of
military personnel, normally under the leadership of a military chaplain.
cathedral is a Christian
church which contains the seat of a bishop, thus serving as the central church
of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. The counterpart term for such a
church in German is Dom from Latin domus ecclesiae or domus episcopalis; also
Italian Duomo, Dutch Domkerk and cognates in many other European languages.
Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to
those Christian denominations with an episcopal hierarchy, such as the Roman
Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and some Lutheran and Methodist churches. Church
buildings embodying the functions of a cathedral first appear in Italy, Gaul,
Spain and North Africa in the 4th century, but cathedrals did not become
universal within the Western Catholic Church until the 12th century, by which
time they had developed architectural forms, institutional structures and legal
identities distinct from parish churches, monastic churches and episcopal
residences.
Music
Pachelbel-Canon in
D major
