English Literature and its inclusion in secondary education (II).

On todays post I am showing some ideas about how to include English Literature into secondary school classes with activities based on differents arts. I'm dividing this post into two parts, as so you can follow it better. In this second post I'm talking about how to work some characteristics of English prose and theatre.

 English prose and how to work in Social Sciences and English.

The earliest English prose work, the law code of King Aethelbert I of Kent, was written within a few years of the arrival in England (597) of St.Augustine of Canterbury. Other 7th- and 8th-century prose, similarly practical in character, includes more laws, wills, and charters. The writers listed above all use an unpretentious style, enlivened with a vivid vocabulary: the early prose fiction, on the other hand, de lights in ingenious formal embellishment at the expense of narrative economy. Prose was to be decisively transformed through its involvement in the bitter and learned controversies of the 1570s and '80s over the reform of the English Church and the problems the controversies raised in matters of autority , obedience, and conscience. The function of art in different historical moments was: magical, religious, utilitarian, didactics, ornamental, aesthetics, social...

Some contents that can be worked related to the English prose are; on one hand in Social sciences area: the Enlightement, the links between present and past: continuities and changes in Europe from the 20th to the 21st century and the analysis and assessment of the artistic contributions of classical antiquity from past and present examples.  On the other hand, related with the area of English: natural and expressive reading aloud, distinction of relevant and secondary ideas of a text. 

As well, some activities which can be done are: reading some fragments of English laws and analyze them, use the photography of some words in English used in English prose in order to works its vocabulary, study the reform of English Church on 1970's-1980's and create a theater play about it.

English theater and how to work it in English , Classical Culture and Scenic Arts and Dance.

The London theatres were a meeting ground of humanism and popular taste.They inherited, on the one hand, a tradition of humanistic drama current at court, the universities, and the Inns of Court (collegiate institutions responsible for legal education). This tradition involved the revival of Classical plays and attempts to adapt Latin conventions to English, particularly to reproduce the type of tragedy, with its choruses, ghosts, and sententiously formal verse, associated with Seneca. The first generation of professional playwrights in England has become known collectively as the university wits. Their nickname identifies their social pretensions, but their drama was primarily middle class, patriotic, and romantic. Their preferred subjects were historical or pseudo-historical, mixed with clowning, music, and love interest.

Some contents that can be worked related to the English theatre are; on one hand in English area:written small plays. representation of small plays.  On the other hand, related with the area of Classical Culture: recognition of belonging to a culture. Finally, related with Scenic Arts and Dance: types and genres of theatretechnical and lexical elements typical of the scene and dance and the  structure of a show

As well, some activities which can be done are: interpreting a classical English play, study some playwriter and write and article about them, analyze some photographies about clowning, historical events or music.

Web pages and documents consulted online:

• English Literature. Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature.
• Curriculum educació secundaria obligatòria. Àmbit lingüístic: http://xtec.gencat.cat/web/.content/curriculum/eso/curriculum2015/documents/ANNEX-3-Ambit-lingueistic.pdf.
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  Curriculum educació secundaria obligatòria. Àmbit social: http://xtec.gencat.cat/web/.content/curriculum/eso/curriculum2015/documents/ANNEX-6-Ambit-social.pdf.

Published by: Verónica Mallor

English Literature and its inclusion in secondary education (I).

On todays post I am showing some ideas about how to include English Literature into secondary school classes with activities based on differents arts. I'm dividing this post into two parts as so you can follow it better. In this first post I'm talking about how to work a little bit of history of English Literature and some characteristica of its poetry.

A little bit of history of the English literature and how to work it in subjects as English and Social Sciences and Culture and ethical values.

English literature has sometimes been stigmatized as insular. English literature of the subjugated Saxons was leavened by Latin and Anglo-Norman writings, eminently foreign in origin, in which the churchmen and the Norman conquerors expressed themselves. During the Renaissance the renewed interest in Classical learning and values had an important effect on English literature. The Decadents of the late 19th century and the Modernists of the early 20th looked to continental European individuals and movements for inspiration. Additional influence was exercised by deconstructionist analysis, based largely on the work of French philosopher Jaques Derrida.

Some contents that can be worked related to the history of  English Literature are; on one hand in English area: writen comprehension in English language and the majority variants of the English language. On the other hand, related with the area of Social Sciences: cartography and culture and art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Humanism, Renaissance and Baroque. And finally, in the area of Culture and ethical values: the concept of freedom and its limits; and  cultural, political and religious plurality.

As well, some activities which can be done are: a mural of the English literature history, the analyses of some texts of Humanism,Renaissance and Baroque, or a theatre play about English literature history.

English poetry and how to work it in subjects as Social sciences and English.

The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who invaded Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries brought with them the common Germanic metre; but of their earliest oral poetry, probably used for panegyric, magic, and short narrative, little or none survives. Virtually all Old English poetry is written in a single metre, a four-stress line with a syntactical break, or caesura, between the second and third stresses, and with alliteration linking the two halves of the line; this pattern is occasionally varied by six-stress lines. 

The poetry is formulaic, drawing on a common set of stock phrases and phrase patterns, applying standard epithets to various classes of characters, and depicting scenery with such recurring images as the eagle and the wolf, which wait during battles to feast on carrion, and ice and snow, which appear in the landscape to signal sorrow. Most Old English poetry is preserved in four manuscripts of the late 10th and early 11th centuries. The Beowulf manuscript contains Beowulf, Judith, and three prose tracts; the Exeter Book is a miscellaneous gathering of lyrics, riddles, didactic poems, and religious narratives; the Junius Manuscript contains biblical paraphrases; and the Vercelli Book contains saints' lives, several short religious poems, and prose homilies.

Some contents that can be worked related to the English Poetry are; on one hand in Social Sciences area: the stages and chronology of the Middle Ages, the medieval imaginary, Christianity, the Germanic kingdoms and the Byzantine Empire. On the other hand, related with the area of English, we can work : audition of  traditional rhymes, poems and songs, reading of traditional rhymes, poems and songs, audition and reading of contemporary short poems, writing poems.

As well, some activities which can be done are: interpreting one poem as it was theater monologue, audition a poetry recital, astudy Middle Ages through poetry, study the Middle Ages through poetry ans study the Germanic kingdoms and the Byzantine Empire through poetry.

Web pages and documents consulted online:

• English Literature. Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature.
• Curriculum educació secundaria obligatòria. Àmbit lingüístic: http://xtec.gencat.cat/web/.content/curriculum/eso/curriculum2015/documents/ANNEX-3-Ambit-lingueistic.pdf.
• Curriculum educació secundaria obligatòria. Àmbit social: http://xtec.gencat.cat/web/.content/curriculum/eso/curriculum2015/documents/ANNEX-6-Ambit-social.pdf.

Publicado por: Verónica Mallor.