Text Interpretation

                1.Функционально-стилевая дифференциация текстов.Разговорный стиль как средство речевой характеристики(на примере отрывков из произведений Ч.Диккенса "Посмертные записки Пиквиккского клуба" и М.Твена "Янки при дворе короля Артура".)

POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF THE PICKWICK CLUB

C hap t e r XVI

Too Full of Adventure to Be Briefly

Described

                "Delightful prospect, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick.

                "Beats the chimbley pots, * Sir," replied Mr. Weller, touching his hat.

                “I suppose you have hardly seen anything but chimney pots and bricks and mortar, al! your life, Sam, “ said MI'. Pickwick, smiling.

                "I worn't * always a boots, * Sir, said Mr. Weller, with a shake of the head. "I was a vagginer's * boy, once."

                "When was that?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.

                "When I was first pitched neck and crop into the world,to play at leapfrog with its  troubles," replied Sam. "I was a carrier's boy at startin': then a vagginer's, then a helper, then a boots. Now I'm a gen'lm'n's tit servant. I shall be a gen'lm'n myself one of these days, perhaps, with a pipe in my mouth, and  summerhouse in the back garden. Who knows? I shouldn't be surprised, for once."

                "You are quite a philosopher, Sam," said Mr. Pickwick. "It runs in the family, I b'lieve Sir," replied Mr. Weller. "My father's wery much in that line, now. If my mother-in-law blows him up, he whistles. She flies in a passion, and breaks his pipe; he steps out, and gets another. Then she screams wery loud, and falls  into 'sterics; '" and he smokes  wery comfortably till she eomes to agin. That's philosophy, Sir, ain't: it?"

                “A very good substitute for it, at all events," replied Mr'. Pickwick , 1aughing."It must have been of great service to you, in the course of your rambling life, Sam."

                "Service, Sir," exclaimed Sam. "You may say that. After I run away from the carrier, and afore I took up with the vagginer, I had unfurnished lodgin's  for a fortnight. "

                "Unfurnished lodgings?" said Mr. Pickwick.

                "Yes - the dry arches of Waterloo Bridge. Fine sleeping place - within ten minutes' walk of all the public offices - only if there is any objection to it, it is that the sitivation's  rayther  too airy. I see some queer sights there. "

                "Ah, I suppose you did," said Mr. Pickwick, with an air of considerable interest.

                "Sights, Sir," resumed Mr. Weller, "as'ud penetrate your benevolent heart, and come out on the other side. You don't see the reg'lar wagrants there; trust'em, they knows better than that. Young beggars, male and female, as hasn't made a rise in their profession, takes up their quarters there sometimes; but it's generally the worn-out, starving, houseless creaturs  as rolls themselves in the dark corners o'them lonesome places - poor creaturs as ain't  up to the twopenny rope."

                And pray Sam, what is the twopenny rope?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.

                 "The twopenny rope, Sir," replied Mr. Weller, "is just a cheap lodgin's house, vere the beds is twopence a night."

                "What do they call a bed a rope for?" said Mr. Pickwick.

                "Bless your innocence, Sir, that ain't it," replied Sam. "Ven the lady and gen'lm'n as keeps the hotel first begun business, they used to make the beds on the floor; but this wouldn't do at no price, 'cos instead o'taking a moderate twopenn'orth o'sleep, the ledgers used to lie there half the day. So now they has two ropes, 'bout six foot apart, and three from the floor, which goes right down the rooms; and the beds are made of slips of coarse sacking, stretched across 'em."

                "Well," said Mr. Pickwick.

                "Well," said Mr. Weller, "the adwantage o' the plan's hobvious. At six o'clock every morn in', they lets go the ropes at one end, and down falls all the lodgers. Consequence is, that being thoroughly waked, they get up wery quietly, and walk away!

bricks and mortar – here :the houses of London

a boots –  a servant at the hotel whose duty is to polish shoes.

Questions and tasks

1. What features  of colloquial style are traced both in Mr.Pickwick and in Sam Weller’s conversation? (Pay   special attention to  the syntax of  their speech.

2. Try to formulate some grammar rules for  Sam Weller’s speech. How are verbs conjugated, for instance? Are these rules always observed in his speech?

3. Why does the author sometimes copy  Sam Weller’s original statements in Mr. Pickwick’s speech ? Find cases of this phenomenon, comment on them.

4. Find cases of litotes and irony in Sam Weller’s speech. How are these stylistic devices combined with the features of  the functional style?

5. In what meaning do   both Mr. Pickwick, and Sam Weller use the  word philosopher?

M.Twain's contemporary, a pragmatic,enterprising American,miraculously gets to the ancient place of Camelot,King Arthur's residence.

A Connecticut Yankee

In King Arthur's Court

Mark Twain

Chapter V
An Inspiration

"Ah,Clarence,good boy,only friend I've got - for you're my friend,aren't you? -don't fail me:help me to devise some ways of escaping from this place!"

                "Now do but hear  thyself! Escape? Why, man, the corridors are in guard and keep of men-at-arms."

\               "No doubt, no doubt. But how many, Clarence? Not many, I hope?" "Full a score. One may not hope to escape." After a pause hesitatingly: "and there be other reasons- and weightier."

                "Other ones? What are they?"

                "Well, they say - oh, but I daren't, indeed I daren't!"

                "Why, poor lad, what is the matter? Why do you blench?

                Why do you tremble so?" "Oh, in sooth, '" there is need! I do want to tell you, but-" "Come, come, be brave, be a man - speak out, there's a good lad!"

                 He hesitated, pulled one way by desire, the other way by fear; then he stole to the door and peeped out, listening; and finally crept to me and put his mouth to my ear and told me his fearful news in a whisper, and all the cowering apprehension of one who was venturing upon awful ground and speaking of things whose mention might be freighted with death.

"Merlin, 'in his malice, has woven a spell  about this dungeon, and there bides  not the man in these kingdoms that would be desperate enough to essay to cross its lines with you! Now God pity me, I have told it! Ah, be kind to me, be merciful to a poor boy who means well; for an '" thou betray me I am lost!"

I laughed the only really refreshing laugh I had had for some time; and shouted:

"Merlin has wrought a spell! Merlin, forsooth! That cheap old humbug, that maundering old ass? Bosh, pure bosh, the silliest bosh in the world! Why, it does seem to me that of all the childish, idiotic, chuckle-headed, chicken-livered superstitions that ev  -  oh, damn Merlinl"

                But Clarence had slumped to his knees before I had half finished, and he was like  to go out of his mind with fright.

                "Oh, beware! These are awful words! Any moment these walls may crumble upon us if you say such things. Oh, call them back before it is too late."

Now this strange exhibition  gave me a good idea and set me to thinking. If everybody about here was so honestly and sincerely afraid of Merlin's pretended magic as Clarence was, certainly a superior man like me ought to be shrewd enough to contrive some way to take advantage of such a state of things. I went on thinking, and worked out a plan. Then I said:

                "Get up. Pull yourself together; look me in the eye.Do you know why I laughed?"

                "No - but for our blessed Lady's  sake, do it no more."

                "Well, I'll tell you why I laughed. Because I'm a magician myself."

                "Thou!" The boy recoiled a step, and caught his breath, for the thing hit him rather sudden;  but the aspect which he took on was very, very respectful. I took quick note of that; it indicated that a humbug didn't need to have a reputation in this asylum; people stood ready to take him at his word, without that. I resumed:

"I've known Merlin seven hundred years, and he-"

                "Seven hun-"

"Don't interrupt me. He has died and come alive again thirteen times, and traveled under a new name every time: Smith, Jones, Robinson, Jackson, Peters, Haskins, Merlin - a new alias every time he turns up. I knew him in Egypt three hundred years ago; I knew him in India five hundred years ago - he is always blethering  around in my way, everywhere I go; he makes me tired. He don't amount to, shucks,  as a magician; knows some of the old common tricks, but has never got beyond the rudiments,  and. never will. He is well enough for the provinces – one-night stands'" and that sort of thing, you know - but dear me, he oughtn't to set up for an expert - anyway not where there's a real artist Now look here, Clarence, I am going to stand your friend, right along, and in return you must be mine. I want you to do me a favor. I want you to get word to the king that I am a magician myself -and the Supreme Grand High-yu-Muck -amuck  and head of the tribe, at that; and I want him to be made to understand that I am just quietly arranging a little calamity here that will make the fur fly in these realms if Sir Kay's project   is carried out and any harm comes to me. Win you get that to the king for me?"

Score-archaic -twenty

In sooth(forsooth) -archaic -really

Merlin - a legendary sorcerer, of King Arthur's time.

An-archaic  -if.

High-yu-Muck-amuck -a fictitious title of the Magician.

Sir Kay's project -a plan of one of King Arthur's  knights to burn Yankee alive

Questions and tasks

1.Pick out lexical archaisms and give their modern synonyms.

2.Find grammatical archaisms and obsolete constructions.What are their synonyms in modern English?

3.Find colloquial  and vernacular features in Yankee's conversation.Give neutral equivalents.

4.Comment on the expression a little calamity. What stylistic device is used here?

5.Yankee claims that Merlin died and came alive 13 times under a new name every time. Read these names in the text. Why do you think such names are chosen? What  stylistic effect is achieved?

6.How can you explain the fact that Yankee uses the archaism forsooth?

7.Compare Yankee's direct speech and his narrative.What are the general characteristics of his conversation?

8. Where is the narrator's sense of humour revealed?

                2.Жанровые характеристики текстов. Смешение жанров и стилей. Научный стиль  и стиль научной фантастики (на примере отрывков из произведений А.Кларка "Затерянные миры 2001 года" и Г.Уэллса "Хрустальное яйцо".)

Arthur Charles Clarke

THE LOST WORLDS OF 2001

Abyss

The character of the story is Bowman, a space pilot. He is sent off on a  star journey with the aid of some powerful civilization  . In the extract under study he approaches some strange  inhabited planet.

Now his eyes were drawn to the planet that began to fill the sky ahead, and for the first time he realized that it was entirely covered with sea. On the silent hemisphere turned toward him, there were no continents, nor even

any islands. There was only a smooth and featureless expanse of ocean.

                It was a most peculiar ocean - straw-yellow in some areas, ruby-red over what Bowman assumed were the great deeps. At the center of the disk, almost immediately beneath him, something metallic glittered in the sun- light.

                And now for the first time, the effects of atmosphere became noticeable. A barely visible ovoid appeared to have formed around the capsule, and behind it trailed a flickering wake of radiation. Bowman could not be sure, but for a moment he thought he could hear the shriek of tortured air: one thing was certain - he was still protected by the forces that had drawn him to the stars. This vehicle was designed only for the vacuum of space, and a wind of a few score miles an hour could tear it to pieces. But there was no wind against the fragile metal shell; the incandescent furies of reentry were held at bay by an invisible shield.

                The metallic glitter grew and took shape before his eyes. He could see now that it consisted of a group of incredibly flimsy towers, reaching up out of the ocean and soaring two or three miles into the atmosphere. At their upper levels they supported stacks of dully gleaming circular plates, translucent green spheres, and mazes of equipment as meaningless to him as a radar station would have been to ancient man.

                The capsule was falling down the side of the structure, at a distance of about a mile, and now he could see that all around its base, apparently floating on the surface of the sea, was a mass of vegetation forming a great raft of brilliant blue. Some of the plants climbed for several hundred feet up the lattice-work of the tower, as if struggling to reach the sun from the lightless ocean depths.

                This burst of vegetation did not give any impression of neglect or decay; the great towers climbing through it were obviously quite unaffected by the efflorescence at their feet. On this reddish-yellow sea, the deep blue of the growing plants gave a startling vivid touch of color.

                Now the capsule was only a few feet above the ocean, and Bowman could see that its surface had a curiously indeterminate texture. It was not as sharply defined as a liquid should be; for the first time, he began to realize that it might be some heavy gas.

Immediately under the capsule, it became concave, as if depressed by an invisible shield. The hole in the fluid - Bowman no longer thought of it as water - became deeper. and then closed over him..

Like a fly in amber, he was trapped in a bubble of crys­talline transparency; and it was carrying him down into

unknown depths.

Questions and tasks

1. Give synonyms or paraphrases of the following words: hemisphere. ovoid, radiation, vacuum, incandescent, circular, translucent, sphere. vegetation, efforescence, indeterminate. texture, concave, depressed. fluid. What colouring is given to the text with  the help of such words?

2. Find  and specify tropes in the text. What is described with their help  - Bowmans’ s feeling and actions  or the objects and phenomena he observes?

3. Choose words denoting  color and light, characterize their role in  in the extract.

4. What colouring is given to the text by such words, as peculiar,incredibly, meaningless, start1ing, curiously, unknown? What additional means create and support the same impression?

5.. What is the  position of the observer ( active or passive) and the effect of estrangement... How  is the atmosphere  of the end of XX century reflected in this extract?

The Crystal Egg

H.G.Wells

(extract)

The central character is Mr.Cave, the owner of a curiosity shop of curios and rarities.Among them he has a  crystal egg through which he can see some strange landscapes of Mars.

                Afraid to disturb the family,he would slip quietly from his wife's side,when his thoughts became intolerable,and wander about the house .And about three o'clock one morning,late in August,chance directed him into the shop.

                The dirty little place was impenetrably black except in one spot,where he perceived an unusual glow of light. Approaching this,he discovered it to be the crystal egg. which was standing on the corner of the counter towards the window. A thin ray smote  through a crack in the shutters, impinged upon the object, and seemed as it were to fill its entire interior.

                It occurred to Mr. Cave that this was not in accordance with the laws of optics as he had known them in his younger days. He could understand the rays being refracted   by the crystal and coming to a focus in its interior, but this diffusion  jarred with his physical conceptions. He approached the crystal nearly, peering into it and round it, with a transient revival of the scientific curiosity that in his youth had determined his choice of a calling. He was surprised to find the light not steady, but writhing within the substance of the egg, as though that object was a hollow sphere of some luminous vapour. In moving about to get different points of view, he suddenly found that he had come between it and the ray, and that the crystal none the less remained luminous. {..}

                And one day, turning the crystal about in his hands, he saw something. It came and went like a flash, but it gave him the impression that the object had for a moment opened to him the view of a wide and spacious and strange country: and, turning it about, he did, just as the light faded, see the same vision again.

                Now, it would be tedious and unnecessary to state all the phases of Mr. Cave's discovery from this point. Suffice that the effect was this: the crystal, being peered into at an angle of about 137 degrees from the direction of the illuminating ray, gave a clear and consistent picture of a wide and peculiar country-side. It was not dream-like at all; it produced a definite impression of reality, and the better the light the more real and solid it seemed. It was a moving picture; that is to say, certain objects moved in it, but slowly in an orderly manner like real things, and, according as the direction of the lighting and vision changed, the picture changed also. It must,  indeed, have been like looking through an oval glass at a view, and turning the glass about to get at different aspects. [...]

                The view, as Mr. Cave describes it, was invariably of  an extensive plain, and he seemed always to be looking at it from a considerable height, as if from a tower or a mast. To the east and the west the plain was bounded at a remote distance by vast reddish cliffs, which reminded him of  those he had seen in some picture; but what the picture was Mr. Wace   was unable to ascertain. These cliffs passed north and south - he could tel1 the points of the compass by the stars that were visible of a night  - receding in an almost illimitable perspective and fading into the mists of the distance before they met. He was nearer the eastern set of cliffs, on the occasion of his first vision the sun was rising over them, and black against the sunlight and pale against their shadow appeared a multitude of soaring forms that Mr. Cave regarded as birds. A vast range of buildings spread below him; he seemed to be looking down upon them; and, as they approached the blurred and refracted edge of the picture, they became indistinct. There were also trees curious in shape, and in colouring a deep mossy green and an exquisite grey, beside a wide and shining canal. And something great and brilliantly coloured flew across the picture.

The dirty little place – a shop, where Mr. Cave came at night because of insomnia.

smite – here:strike  - about the ray of light in the darkness.

Mr.Wace – a scientist who helped Mr.Cave with  his observations.

Questions and tasks

1.Find scientific terms and explain their semantic and stylistic function.

2. Scientific terms are usually abstract in meaning. Find cases where they are made more specific through some concrete and symbolic words.

3. Characterize the textual syntax. Which constructions correspond to scientific style  and which of them- to belles-lettres style?

4. The text is a blending of the two above-mentioned styles.Find where they are combined within a short length of the text.

5.Science fiction style creates the effect of estrangement.How is it created here?

3.Жанр "фэнтези" и его концептуальная парадигма.(на примере отрывков из трилогии Д,Толкиена "Властелин Колец.")

Task 1

John Ronald R. Tolkien

FELLOWSHIP  OF THE RING

He walked forward to the wall. Right between the shadow of the trees there was a smooth space, and over this he passed his hands to and fro, muttering words under his breath. Then he stepped back.

"Look!" he said. "Can you see anything now?"

The Moon now shone upon the grey face of the rock;but they could see nothing else for a while. Then slowly on the surface - where the wizard's hands had passed, faint lines appeared, like slender veins of silver running in the stone. At first they were no more than pale gossamer-threads, so fine that they only twinkled fitfully where the Moon caught them, but steadily they grew broader and clearer, until their design could be guessed.

At the top, as high as Gandalf could reach, was an arch of interlacing letters in an Elvish character. Below, though the threads were in places blurred or broken, the outline could be seen of an anvil and a hammer surmounted by a crown with seven stars. Beneath these again were two trees, each bearing crescent moons. More clearly than all else there shone forth in the middle of the door a single star with many rays.

"What does the writing say?" asked Frodo, who was trying to decipher the inscription on the arch. "I thought I knew the elf-letters, but I cannot read these."

"The words are in the elven-tongue of the West of Middle-Earth in the Elder Days," answered Gandalf. "But they do not say anything of importance to us. They say only: The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria, Speak friend, and enter. And underneath small and faint is written: I, Narvi, made them, Celembribor of Hollin drew these signs."

"What does it mean by speak, friend, and enter?"asked Merry. "That is plain enough," said Gimli. "If you are a friend, speak the password. and the doors will open, and you can enter. " "Yes," said Gandalf. "These doors are probably governed by words. Some dwarf-gates will open only at special times, or for particular persons; and some have locks and keys that are still needed when all necessary times and words are known. These doors have no key. In the days of Durin they were not secret. They usually stood open and doorwards sat here. But if they were shut, any who know the opening word could speak it and pass in. At least so it is recorded, is it not, Gimli?"

"It is," said the dwarf. "But what the word was is not remembered. Narvi and his craft and all his kindred have vanished from the earth."

"But do not you know the word. Gandalf?" asked Boromir in surprise.

"No!" said the wizard.

The others looked dismayed; only Aragorn, who knew Gandalf well, remained silent and unmoved. "Then what was the use of bringing us to this accursed spot?" cried Boromir, glancing back with a shudder at the dark water. "You told us that you had once passed through the Mines. How could that be, if you did not know how to enter?"

"The answer to your first question, Boromir," said the wizard, "is that I do not know the word - yet. But we shall soon see. And," he added, with a glint in his eyes un­der their bristling brows, "you may ask what is the use of my deeds when they are proved useless. As for your other question: do you doubt my tale? Or have you no wits left? I did not enter this way. I came from the East."

"If you wish to know, I will tell you that these doors open outwards. From the inside you may thrust them open with your hands. From the outside nothing will move them save the spell of command. They cannot be forced inwards. "

"What are you going to do then?" asked Pippin, undaunted by the wizard's bristling brows.

"Knock on the doors with your head, Peregrin Took," said Gandalf. "But if that does not shatter them, and I am allowed a little peace from foolish questions, I will seek for the opening words."

"I once knew every spell in all the tongues of Elves or Men or Ores, that was ever used for such a purpose. I can still remember ten score of them without 5earching in my mind. But only a few trials, I think, will be needed; I'd 1 shall not have to call on Gimli for words of the secret dwarf-tongue that they teach to none. The opening words were Elvish, like the writing on the arch: that seems certain."

He stepped up to the rock again, and lightly touched with his staff the silver star in the middle beneath the sign of the anvil,

Annon edhellen, edro hi ammen!

Fennas nogothrim, Lasto beth Lommen!

he said in a commanding voice. The silver lines faded, but the blank grey stone did not stir.

                Many times he repeated these words in different order, or varied them. Then he tried other spells, one after another, speaking now faster and louder, now soft and slow. The cliff towered into the night, the countless stars were kindled, the wind blew cold, and the doors stood fast.

Again Gandall approached the wall, and lifting up his arms he' spoke in tones of command and rising wrath. Edro, eoro! he cried, and struck the rock with his staff. Open, open! he shouted, and followed it with the same command in every language that had ever been spoken in the West of Middle-Earth. Then he threw his staff to the ground, and sat down in silence.

At that moment from far off the wind bore to their listening ears the howling of wolves. Bill the pony started in fear, and Sam sprang to his side and whispered softly to him.

"Do not let him run away!" said Boromir. "It seems that we shall need him still, if the wolves do not find us. How I hate this foul pool!" He stooped and picking op a large stone he cast it far into the dark water.

The stone vanished with a soft slap; but at the same instant there was a swish and a bubble. Great rippling rings formed on the surface out beyond where the stone had fallen, and they moved slowly towards the foot of the cliff.

"Why did you do that, Boromir?" said Frocto.

"I hate this place, too, and I am afraid. 1 don't know of what: not of wolves, or the dark behind the doors, but of something else, I am afraid of the pool. Don't disturb it!"

"I wish we could get away!" said Merry.

"Why doesn't Gandalf do something quick?" said Pippin. . Gandalf took no notice of them. He sat with his head bowed, either in despair or in anxious thought. The mournful howling of the wolves was heard again. The ripples on the water grew and came closer; some were already lapping on the shore.

With a suddenness that startled them all the wizard sprang to his feet. He was laughing! "I have it!" he cried. "Of course, of course! Absurdly simple, like most riddles when you see the answer."

                Picking up his staff he stood before the rock and said in a clear voice: Mellon!

The star shone out briefly and faded again. Then silently a great doorway was outlined, though not a crack or joint had been visible before. Slowly it divided in the middle and swung outwards inch by inch, until both doors lay back against the wall. Through the opening a shadowy stir could be seen climbing steeply up; but beyond the lower steps the darkness was deeper than the night. The Company stared in wonder.

"I was wrong after all," said Gandalf, "and Gimli too. Merry, of all people, was on the right track. The opening word was inscribed on the archway all the time! The translation would have been: Say "Friend" and enter. I had only to speak the Elvish word for friend and the doors opened. Quite simple. Too simple for a learned loremaster in those $uspicious days. Those were happier times. Now let us go!"

Questions and tasks

1. Comment on the basic unit of the plot -  two interpretation of an inscription in  the elven language.

2. Pick out  rare words and archaisms in the text, give their synonyms or interpretation.

3. What stylistic function  do phrases in the elven language perform, in your opinion,? Is it only an ornamental  meaningless succession of sounds, or  certain words can be singled out?

4. What elements of the text reveal  the intensity of expectation and  the difficulty of the task  which Gandalf faces? (Pay attention, in particular, to the contents of dialogues and the description of  the lake.)

5. What is the general mood of the  episode?

6. The belief in the magic of  words characterizes  the early period of the development of mankind. Why  do motives  of  literary texts revealing the  magic force of words, still attract attention  ?

4-5.Типологические особенности драмы (на примере произведений Б.Шоу "Дом,где разбиваются сердца" и "Пигмалион").Б.Шоу как продолжатель традиций А.П.Чехова.

6-7.Сказовый стиль повествования и его особенности. Национальная специфика сказок "nonsense tales"(на примере сказок Л.Кэролла"Алиса в стране чудес" и  Р.Киплинга "Вот так сказки")

ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

. The Mock Turtle's story

"This here young lady," said the Gryphon,  "she wants for to know your history, she do." "I'll tell it her," said the Mock Turtle  in a deep, hollow tone, "sit down both of you, and don't speak a word till I've finished." So they sat down, and nobody spoke for some minutes. Alice thought to herself, "I don't see how he can ever finish, if he doesn't begin." But she waited patiently. "Once," said the Mock Turtle at last, with a deep sigh,

"I was a real Turtle." These words were followed by a very long silence, broken only by an occasional exclamation of "Hjckrrh!" from the Gryphon, and the constant heavy sighing of the Mock Turtle. Alice was very nearly getting up and saying, "Thank you, sir, for your interesting story," but she could not help thinking there must be more to come, so she sat still and said nothing.

"When we were little," the Mock Turtle went on at last, more calmly, though still sobbing a little now and then, "we went to school in the sea. The master was an old Turtle - we used to call him Tortoise - " ...

"Why did you cnll him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?"

Alice asked. "We called him Tortoise because he taught us," said the Mock Turtle angrily; "really you are very dull!" "You ought to be' ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question," added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth. At last the Gryphon said to the Mock Turtle, "Drive on, old fellow! Don’t be aIl day about it!" and he went on in these words:

"Yes, we went to school in the sea, though you mayn't believe it-"

"I never said I didn't," interrupted Alice.

"You did," said the Mock Turtle.

"Hold your tongue!" added the Gryphon, before Alice could speak again. The Mock Turtle went on.

"We had the best education - in fact, we went to school every day -".

"I've been to a day-school  too," said Alice; "you needn't be so proud as all that."

"With extras?" asked the Mock Turtle a little anxiously.

"Yes," said Alice, "we learned French and music."

"And washing?" said the Mock Turtle.

"Certainly not!" said Alice indignantly.

"Ah! then yours wasn't a really good school," said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief. "Now at ours they had at the end of the bill, 'French, music, and washing - extra.'"

"You couldn't have wanted it much," said Alice; "living at the bottom of the sea." "1 couldn't afford to learn it," said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. "1 only took the regular course."

"What was that?" inquired Alice.

"Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,"the Mock Turtle replied: "and then the different branches of Arithmetic ~ Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision."

"1 never heard of 'uglification', "Alice ventured to say.

"What is it?" The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. "Never heard of uglifying!" it exclaimed. "You know what to beautify is, 1 suppose. Don't you?"

"Yes," said Alice, doubtfully: "it means - to -make..- anything..- prettier." "Well then," the Gryphon went on, "if you don't know what to uglify is, you are a simpleton." Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said, "What else had you to learn?"

"Well, there was Mystery," the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers.- "Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography:  then Drawling  -the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: he taught us Drawling, stretching, and Fainting in Coils."

"What was that like?" said Alice.

"Well, I can't show it you myself," the Mock Turtle said: "I'm too stiff. And the Gryphon never learned it." "Hadn't time," said the Gryphon: "I went to the Classical master, though. He was an old crab,  he was." "I never went to him," the Mock Turtle said with a sigh: "he taught Laughing and Grief,  they used to say." "So he did, so he did," said the Gryf'fon, sighing in his turn, and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.

"And how many hours a day did you do lessons?" said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.

"Ten hours the first day," said the Mock Turtle: "nine the next, and so on."

"What a curious plan!" exclaimed Alice.

"That's the reason they're called lessons," the Gryphon remarked: "because they lessen from day to day." This was quite a new idea to Alice, and she thought it over a little before she made her next remark. "Then the eleventh day must have been a holiday?"

"Of course it was," said the Mock Turtle.

"And how did you manage on the twelfth?" Alice went on eagerly.

"That's enough about lessons," the Gryphon interrupted n a very decided tone: "tell her something about the games now."

Questions and tasks

 1. Describe  the shift of semantic connections which  are derived  from the word combination Mock Turt1e  on the basis of  mock turt1e soup.

2. Are the words tortoise and taught us homonyms in usual meaning  of the term ? What is the stylistic peculiarity of these  expressions  the text?

3. How do you estimate the realizatation of the play on words in N.Demurova,s translation :»Учителя – старого Котика – звали Спрутиком, потому что он всегда ходил с прутиком»"? What is lost in  the translation and what is preserved?

4. Which two meanings of the word extras are used in the text? Why  did Alice indignantly reject the assumption, that extras at their school included washing?.

5. On what  trope is  the change of  the names of subjects of Mock Turtle’s story based? Study each name in detail in comparison with its source . Do they  create a certain picture of training at  the sea school? Are there any "subjects" among  those listed  which represent the actions of the sea inhabitants?

6.What is the emotional colouring of the subjects taught at  the sea school?

7. Characterize the Mock Turtle ‘s story of from the point of view of logic. Is it  possible to name it  "history"? Do the emotions of the story-teller correspond to the contents of the story?

Rudyard Kipling

HOW THE LEOPARD GOT NIS SPOTS

                In the days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, . the Leopard lived in a place called the High Veldt. 'Member it wasn't the Low Veldt, or the Bush Veldt, or the Sour Veldt, but the 'scluslvely bare, hot, shiny High Veldt, where there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and 'sclusively tufts of sandy-yellowish grass. The Giraffe and the Zebra and the Eland  and the Koodoo and the Hartebeest lived there; and they were 'sc1usively sandy yellow-brownish all over; but the Leopard he was the sc1usivest sandiest-yellowest-brownest * of them all -a greyish-yellowish catty-shaped kind of beast, and he matched the 'sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish color of the High Veldt to one hair. This was very bad for the Giraffe and the Zebra and the rest of them; for he would lie down by a 'sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish stone or clump of grass, and when the Giraffe or the Zebra or the Eland or the Koodoo or the Bush-Buck or the Bonte-Buck came by he would surprise them out of their jumpsome * lives. He would indeed! And, also, there was an Ethiopian * with bows and arrows (a 'sclusively greyish-brownish-yellowish man he was then), who lived in the High Veldt with the Leopard; and the two used to hunt together  - the Ethiopian with his bows and arrows, and the Leopard 'sclusively with his teeth and claws - till the Giraffe and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Quagga and all the rest of them didn't know which way to jump, Best Beloved. They didn't indeed!

                After a long time  -  things lived for ever so long in those days  -  they learned to avoid anything that looked like a Leopard or an Ethiopian; and bit by bit - the Giraffe began it, because his legs were the longest - they went away from the High Veldt. They scuttled for days and days til1 they came to a great forest, 'sclusively full of trees and bushes and stripy, speckly, patchy-blatchy * shadows, and there they hid; and after another long time, what with standing half in the shade and half out of it, and what with the slippery-slidy * shadows of the trees falling on them, the Giraffe grew blotchy, and the Zebra grew stripy, and the Eland and the Koodoo grew darker, with little wavy grey lines on their backs like bark on a tree trunk; and so, though you could hear them and smell them, you could very seldom see them, and then only when you knew precisely where to look. They had a beautiful time in the 'sclusively speckly-spickly shadows of the forest, while the Leopard and the Ethiopian ran about over the 'sc1usively greyish-yellowish-reddish High Veldt outside, wondering where all their breakfasts and their dinners and their teas * had gone. At last they were so hungry that they ate rats and beetles and rock-rabbits, the Leopard and the Ethiopian, and then they had the Big Tummy-ache, both together; and then met Baviaan - the dog-headed,barking Baboon, who is Quite the Wisest Animal in All South Africa.

                Said Leopard to Baviaan (and it was a very hot day),"Where has all the game gone?"

                And Baviaan winked. He knew.

                Said the Ethiopian to Baviaan, "Can you tell me the present habitat of the aboriginal Fauna?" (That meant just the same thing, but the Ethiopian always used long words. He was a grown-up.)

                And Baviaan winked. He knew.

                Then said Baviaan, "The game has gone into other spots;  and my advice to you, Leopard, is to go into other spots as soon as you can."

                And the Ethiopian said, "That is all very fine, but 1 wish to know whither the aboriginal Fauna has migrated."

                Then said Baviaan, "The aboriginal Fauna has joined the aboriginal Flora because it was high time for a change;  and my advice to you, Ethiopian, is to change as soon as you can."

That puzzled the Leopard and the Ethiopian, but they set off to look for the aboriginal Flora, and presently, after ever so many days, they saw a great, high, tall forest full of tree trunks all 'sc1usively speckled, sprottled and spotttled, dotted and splashed and slashed and hatched and cross-hatched with shadows. (Say that quickly aloud, and you will see how very shadowy the forest must have been.)

everybody started fair, high time for a change, go into other spots – cases of play on words.

the High Veldt. – the steppe regions in South Africa

Eland , koodoo , hartebeest, bush-buck , bonte-buck (Afrikaans) – species of African antelopes. Quagga- an extinct South-African donkey

Questions and tasks

1. Single out the words originating from Afrikaans; describe their stylistic effect..

2. How is  the High Veldt represented in the text  - like a real territory or a fantastic country? Find the appropriate details in the text.

3. Find some features in the description of the animals showing them a) as real representatives of  the fauna, b) as characters of a fairy tale.

4..Find cases  of alliteration in the text . What sounds and combinations of sounds occur most frequently?

5. What is the idea of the extracts of the text where allitaration occurs? What your opinion concerning  the function of alliteration in the text?

6. Analyze  the author's neologisms from the point of view of word-formations. List the word-building models used by the author. Define productive and unproductive models..

7. What are the  connotations of the author's neologisms?  How is their expressiveness achieved?

Pay special attention to a role of the phonetic form of the words.

8. How  would you translate Kipling’s neologisms  into Russian?

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8-9.Динамика сюжета в текстах разных жанров (на примере отрывков из произведений Р.Л.Стивенсона

Robert Louis Stevenson

THE PAVILION  ON THE LINKS

Chapter VIII

                The scene of the novel is laid in the first half of the XIX th century  in Scotland. Frank Kassilis, the story-teller, Northmour, a heroic character, ,Mr.Huddlestone, a criminal banker, and Clara, his beautiful daughter, find themselves deadlocked in the pavilion on the links. They are threatened by the Italian  carbonari  who have come to Scotland to take their revenge on the banker who has appropriated their money. When Northmour and Kassilis refuse to give the banker away, the plotters set the house on fire. The captives decide to leave the place risking their lives

                As. we went downstairs, the heat was excessive, and the roaring of fire filled our ears; and we had scarce reached the passage before the stairs window fell in, a branch of flame .hot brandishing through the aperture, and the interior of the pavilion became lit up with that dreadful and fluctuating glare. At the same moment we heard the fall something heavy and inelastic in the upper storey. The whole pavilion, it was plain, had gone alight like n box at matches, and now not only flamed sky-high to land and seal, but threatened  with  every moment to crumble and fall in about our ears.

                Northmour and I cocked our revolvers. Mr. Huddleslone, who had already refused a firearm, put us behind him with a manner of command.

                "Let Clara open the door," said he. "So, if they fire a volley, she will be protected. And in the meantime stand behind me. I am the scapegoat; my sins have found me out."

                I heard him, as I stood breathless by his shoulder, with my pistol ready, pattering off prayers in a tremulous, rapid whisper; and I confess, horrid as the thought may seem, I despised him for thinking of supplications in a moment so critical and thrilling. In the meantime, Clara, who was dead white but still possessed her faculties, had displaced the barricade from the front door. Another moment, and she had pulled it open. Firelight and moon1ight illuminated the links with confused and changeful lustre, and far away against the sky we could see a long trail of glowing smoke.

                 Mr. Huddlestone, filled for the moment with a strength greater than his own, struck Northmour and myself  a backhander  in the chest; and while we were thus for the moment incapacitated from action, lifting his arms аbоvе his head like one about to dive, he ran straight forward out of the раvilion.

                "Неrе am I!" hе cried  -  "Huddlestone! Kill me, and spare the others!"

His sudden арреаrаnсе daunted,'" 1 suppose, оur hidden enemies; for Northmour and I had time to гесоvег, to seize Clara between us, one by еасh arm, and to rush forth to his assistance, ere * anything further had taken place. But scarce had we passed the threshold when there came nеаг а dozen reports and flashes from еvегу direction among the hollows of the links. Мr. Huddlestone staggered, uttered а weird and freezing cry, threw up his arms over his head, and fell backward on the turf.

"Traditore!'" Traditore!" cried the invisible avengers.

And just then, а part of the roof of the раviliоn fell in, so rapid was the progress of the fire. А loud, vague, and horrible noise accompanied the collapse, and а vast volume  of flame went soaring up to heaven. It must have been visible at that moment from twenty mi1es out at sea, from the shore at Grаdеn Wester,  and far inland from the peak of Graystiel, the most eastern summit of the Caulder Нills. Bernard Huddlestone, although God knows what were his obsequies, had а fine pyre at the moment of his death.

a pavilion on the links – a house  among the dunes

backhander – a blow

ere –arch. Before

traditore - traitor

Questions and tasks

1. Choose verbs from the first paragraph of the text(  note their high density in the text). Analyze these verbs from the viewpoint of their general  lexico-grammatic value. Are they dynamic or static? (dynamic  are terminative  verbs  showing the limit  of an action, or creating some change . Static  are non-terminative verbs showing a state or an action of an indefinite duration, such as lie or shine ).

2.From  the whole extract choose verbs, suggestive of conscious actions of  persons. What picture is created through their successive distribution in the text?

3. Choose verbs denoting mental activity. Determine their approximate share in comparison with verbs of action.

 4. How is the dialogue connected with the action?

5.) Read closely the extracts of the text describing the fire. What creates their vizualizing effect - the direct or figurative use of words? Which words in these descriptions seem to be the most important and expressive

ones ?

6. Imagine the extract under analysis as an episode of a silent film. Which captions do you think might be necessary to make it  clear?

7. What sound effects do you think  appropriate for the given episode - music or imitation of background noises ,fire crackling or shots? Motivate your answer with the help of the text.

8. Is everything  in the extract equally successful? If not, specify  some less successful, parts.

R. L. Stevenson

TREASURE ISLAND

C hap t e r XXVI

Israel Hands

The extract relates Jim Hawkins’ life-and death fight with Israel Hands, a pirate, on board the ship Espaniola

                (...) Even then I was still so much interested waiting for the ship to touch  that I had quite forgot the peril that hung over my head, and stood craning  over the starboard  bulwarks and watching the ripples spreading wide before the bows.  I might have fallen without a struggle for my life, had not a sudden disquietude seized upon me, and made me turn my head. Perhaps I heard a creak, or saw his shadow moving with the tail of my eye; perhaps if was an instinct like a cat's, but, sure enough, when I looked round, there was Hands already halfway towards me, with the dirk * in his right hand.

                We must both have cried out aloud when our eyes met; but while mine was the shrill cry of terror, his was a roar of fury like a charging bull's. At the same instant he threw .himself forward, and I leapt sideways towards the bows. As I did so, I left hold of the tiller,  which sprang sharp to leeward; and I think this saved my life, for it struck Hands across the chest, and stopped him, for the moment, dead.

                Before he could recover, I was safe out of the corner where he had me trapped, with all the deck to dodge about. Just forward of the main-mast  I stopped, drew a pistol from my pocket, took a cool aim, though he had already turned and was once more coming directly after me, and drew the trigger. The hammer fell, but there followed neither flash nor sound; the priming * was useless with sea water. I cursed myself for my neglect. Why had not I, long before, reprimed and reloaded my only weapons? Then I should not have been, as now, a mere fleeing sheep before this butcher.

                Wounded as he was, it was wonderful how fast he could move, his grizzled hair tumbling over his face, and his face itself as red as a red ensign * with his haste and fury. I had no time to try my other pistol, nor, indeed, much inclination, for I was sure it would be useless. One thing I saw plainly: I must not simply retreat before him, or he would speedily hold me boxed * into the bows, as a moment since he had so nearly boxed me in the stern. Once so caught, and nine or ten inches of the bloodstained dirk would be my last experience on this side of eternity.  I placed my palms against the main-mast, which was of a goodish bigness, and waited, every nerve upon the stretch.

dirk- a long knife

priming- here : powder

ensign – emblem

boxed – entrapped

Questions and tasks

1. It is easy to notice, that the extract is not purely descriptive. Define its subject-matter ( an insight into the thoughts and feelings, a recollection, a prediction, an evaluation  of events, etc. ') What is the share of dynamic and static statements in the text?   What effect is achieved by this combination?

2.. Choose verbs from the text. Select  those expressing action,and define their share. Compare the result with the one in the extract  from‘The Pavillion on the Links’.

10. "Военная"тематика в поэзии и прозе.Антимилитаризм в  поэзии У.Оуэна и романе  И.Шоу"Молодые львы").

Ambrose Gwinett Bierce

A HORSEMAN IN THE SKY

The scene of the story is laid during the Civil War in the USA. Father and son find themselves in the opposing camps. The son is posted as sentry by the valley  where the troops are hiding. Suddenly he sees a uniformed horseman   of the alien army at the opposite bank . The sentryman is hesitant ; he doesn’t know whether  to shoot or not because he has recognized his father. Finally he shoots.

....His first feeling was a keen artistic delight. On a colossal pedestal, the cliff, motionless at the extreme edge of the capping rock and sharply outlined against the sky, was an equestrian statue of impressive dignity. The figure of the man sat the figure of the horse, straight and soldierly, but with the repose of a Grecian god carved in the marble which limits the suggestion of activity. The grey costume harmonized with its aerial background; the metal of accoutrement * and caparison * was softened and subdued by the shadow; the animal's skin had no points of high light. * A carbine, strikingly foreshortened, lay across-the pommel * of the saddle, kept in place by the right hand grasping it at the "grip"; the left hand, holding the bridle rein, was invisible. In silhouette against the sky, the profile of the horse was cut with the sharpness of a cameo; it looked across the heights of air to the confronting cliffs beyond. The face of the rider, turned slightly to the left, showed only an outline of temple and beard; he was looking downward to the bottom of the valley. Magnified by its lift against the sky and by the soldier's testifying sense of the formidableness of a near enemy, the group appeared of heroic, almost colossal, size.

For an instant Druse had a strange, half-defined feeling that he had slept to the end of the war and was looking upon a noble work of art reared upon that commanding eminence to commemorate the deeds of an heroic past of which he had been an inglorious part. The feeling was dispelled by a slight movement of the group; the horse, without moving its feet, had drawn its body slightly backward from the verge; the man remained immobile as before.

(..) He fired.

                At that moment an officer of the Federal force, * who,in a spirit of adventure or in quest of knowledge, had left the hidden bivouac  in the valley, and, with aimless feet, had made his way to the lower edge of a small open space near the foot of the cliff, was considering what he had to gain by pushing his exploration further. At a distance of a quarter-mile before him, but apparently at a stone's throw, rose from its fringe of pines the gigantic face of rock, iii towering to so great a height above him that it made him giddy to look up to where its edge cut a sharp, rugged line against the sky. At some distance away to his right it presented a clean, vertical profile against a background of blue sky to a point half of the way down, and of distant hills hardly less blue thence to the trees at its base. Lifting his eyes to the dizzy attitude of the summit, the officer saw an astonishing sight - a man on horseback riding down into the valley through the air!

                Straight upright sat the rider, in military fashion, with a firm seat in the saddle, a strong clutch upon the rein to hold his charger * from too impetuous a plunge. From his bare head his long hair streamed upward, waving like a plume. His right hand was concealed in the cloud of the horse's lifted mane. The animal's body was as level  as if every hoof stroke encountered the resistant earth. Its motions were those of a wild gallop, but even as the officer looked they ceased, with all the legs thrown sharply forward as in the act of alighting from a leap. But this was a flight !

                Filled with amazement and terror by this apparition of a horseman in the sky - half believing himself the chosen scribe * of some new Apocalypse, ... the officer was overcome by the intensity of his emotions; his legs failed him and he fell. Almost at the same instant he heard a crashing sound in the trees - a sound that died without an echo? and all was still.

accoutrement – soldier’s uniform , mostly leather  parts.

caparison – horse’s harness

high light – a brightly lit territory (often used in painting)

Federal force – Yankee troops during the Civil War in the USA.

charger - battlehorse

scribe – the one who copies manuscripts.

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1. Try to explain in detail how the author  motivates the transformation of reality in the text.

2. Describe the lapse of time in the two given extracts of the text. Give the approximate time a)between the moment when Druse noticed the horseman on the rock and  the shot; b) the moment   when the officer saw the horseman in the sky and the fall of the charger and the horseman. Pay attention to the slowing  of the progress of time.

3. Describe the space of the text. What are its directions?

4. Single out the military terms in the text. How are they connected with the textual time?

5. There are terms related to the sphere of painting. What is their role in the presentation of the textual events?

6. Can we say that the description of the horseman builds up the background against which the scene is set?

Motivate your answer.

7. Does the story reflect the author’s attitude to war?

11. Авторская модель  действительности в художественном контексте. (на материале поэзии О.Уайльда и  С.Кольриджа)

Oscar Wilde

HARLOT' S HOUSE

We caught the tread of dancing feet,

We loitered down the moonlit street,

And stopped beneath the harlot's house.

Inside,above the din and fray,

We heard the loud musicians play

The "Treues Leben Herz" of Strauss.

Like strange mechanical grotesques,

Making fantastic arabesques,

The shadows raised across the blind.

We watched the ghostly dancers spin
 To sound of horn and violin,

Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.

Like wire-pulled automatons,

Slim silhouetted skeletons

Went sliding through the slow quadrille.

They took each other by the hand,

And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter  echoed thin and shrill.

Sometimes  a clockwork puppet pressed

A phantom lover to her breast,

Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.

Sometimes a horrible marionette

Came out,and smoked its cigarette

Upon the steps like a live thing.

Then,turning to my love,I said,

"The dead are dancing with the dead,

The dust is whirling with the dust."

But she - she heard the violin,

And left my side,and entered in;

Love passed into the house of lust.

Then suddenly the tune went false,

The dancers wearied of the waltz,

The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.

And down the long and silent street,

The  dawn,with silver-sandalled feet,

Crept like a frightened girl.

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1.The metaphor may be reversible - the tenor and the vehicle can change places(e.g.eyes like stars and stars like eyes). How is it used in Wilde's poem?

2.Do you think the metaphor in the last stanza to be a good one?Does it create a concrete image or it mostly has emotional or similar connotations?

3.Define the rhyme and metre of the poem.

4.Study the lexical layers of the text(borrowings,barbarisms,etc.)

5. Describe the development of imagery.What is the climax and the message of the poem?

Coleridge's poem tells about  some sinister and fantastic adventures of a sailor who has killed an albatross. This bird has been tamed by the crew who think the bird brings them luck.The character breaks the spell only after he comes to love every living creature. Now he tells  his own  story to a stranger.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

All in a hot and copper sky,

The bloody Sun,at noon,

Right up above the mast did stand,

No bigger than the moon.

Day after day,day after day,

We stuck,nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

The Sun now rose upon the right:
Out of the sea came he,

Still hid in mist,and on the left

Went down into  the sea.

And the good south wind still blew behind,

But no sweet bird did follow,

Nor any day for food or play

Come to the mariner's hollo!

And I had done a hellish thing,

And it would work 'em woe,

For all averred,I had killed the bird                

That made the breeze to blow!

...............................

The fair breeze blew,the white foam  flew,

The furrow  followed free;

We were the first that ever burst

Into that silent sea.

Down  dropt the breeze,the sails dropt down,

" Twas sad  as sad could to be;

And we did speak only to break

The silence of the sea.

rime  -here:poem.

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1.Find lexical and grammatical archaisms in the text.What is their function ?

2.Comment on the cases of repetitions in the text.What is  their  general and individual function ?

3.Pick out cases of antitheses.Show how the antithesis expresses both the likeness and the contrast(both in form and contents)

12.Нарушение предсказуемости и напряженность в текстах разных типов  (О Генри «Комната на чердаке»  и К.Мэнсфилд

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O. Henry

THE SKYLIGHT ROOM

Mrs. Parker, a landlady,shows respect to her tenants  according to the rent,so those of modest  means are often humiilated.

                First Mrs. Parker would show you double parlors.You would not dare to interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits of the gentleman who had occupied them for eight years. Then you would manage to stammer forth the confession that you were neither a doctor nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker's manner of receiving the admission was such that you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your parents, who had neglected to train you in one of the professions that fitted Mrs. Parker's parlors.

                Next you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the second-floor back at $ 8. Convinced by her second-floor manner that it was worth the $ 12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left to take charge of his brother's orange plantation in Florida near Palm Beach, where Mrs. McIntyre always spent the winters that had the double front room with private bath, you managed to babble that you wanted something still cheaper.

                If you survived Mrs. Parker's scorn, you were taken to look at Mr. Skidder's large hall-room  on the third floor. Mr. Skidder's room was not vacant. He wrote plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long. But every room-hunter was made to visit his room to admire the lambrequins. After each visit, Mr. Skidder, from the fright caused by possible eviction,  would pay something on his rent.

                Then  -  oh, then  -  if you still stood on one foot, with your hot hand clutching the three moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs. Parker be cicerone  of yours. She would honk  loudly the word "Clara", she would show you her back, and march down -stairs. Then Clara, the colored maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder  that served for the fourth flight, and show you tlle Skylight Room. I t occupied 7 by 8 feet of floorspace  in the middle of the hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber closet or store-room.

                In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser. I Is four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coffin. Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as from a well - and breathed once more. Through the glass of the little skylight you saw a square of blue infinity.                 "Two dollars, suh," * Clara would say in her half -contemptuous, half- Tuskegeenial  tones.

                One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room. She carried a typewriter made to be lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very little girl, with eyes and hair that kept on growing after she had stopped and that always looked as if they were saying: "Goodness me! Why didn't you keep up with us?"

Mrs. Parker showed her the double parlors.

Tuskegeenial - ungrammatical (about speech).From Tuskegee -a small Indian tribe.

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1. The extract contains an introduction to the story and the beginning of the narrative.Find a linguistic and   a semantic borderline between them.

2.Find the phrase would show(all the repetitions) and explain their meaning.How do you explain the fact that this expression disappears after the words One day Miss Leeson...

3.What semantic chains build a gradation here? What  episode forms a climax? Motivate your explanation.

4.The extract is narrated in the third person;at the same time it relates the dialogue between Mrs.Parker and the tenant(marked as you) .What can you say about the personages on the basis

of the text?Try to dramatize the dialogue.

5.What are the features of the reader (marked by the second person)?

6.Find verbs introducing the second person and comment on their meanings.

7.Does the potential reader correspond to the imaginary one?Should every reader possess the qualities of the textual"second person"(according to the author)?

Katherine Mansfield

SUN AND MOON

The story gives a child's vision of a coming  festivity in a rich house.

                In the afternoon the chairs came, a whole big cart full of little gold ones with their legs in the air. And then the flowers came. When you stared down from the balcony at the people carrying them the flowerpots looked like funny awfully nice hats nodding up the path.

                Moon thought they were hats. She said: "Look. There's a man wearing a palm on his head." But she never knew the difference between real things and not real ones.

                There was nobody to look after Sun and Moon. Nurse was helping Annie alter Mother's dress which was much-too- long-and-tight- under- the-arms and Mother was running all over the house and telephoning Father to be sure not to forget things. She only had time to say: "Out of my way, children ! "

                They kept out of her way - at any rate Sun did. He did so hate being sent stumping back to the nursery. It didn't matter about Moon. If she got tangled in people's legs they only threw her up and shook her till she squeaked. But Sun was too heavy for that. He was so heavy that the fat man who carne to dinner on Sundays used to say: "Now, young man !Let's try to lift you." And then he'd put his thumbs under Sun’s arm and groan and try and give it up at last saying: "He's a perfect little ton of bricks!"

                Nearly all the furniture was taken out of the dining-room. The big piano was put in a corner and then there

came a row of flower pots and then there came the goldy chairs.That was for the concert. When Sun  looked in a white-faced man sat at the piano - not playing,but banging at it and then looking inside. He had a bag of tools on the piano and head stuck his hat ona statue against the wall.Sometimes he just started to play and then he jumped up again and looked inside. Sun hoped he wasn't the concert.

The  Sun and the Moon-children's pet names in the family.

Goldy- (child.) –golden

 QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1.Characterize  the lexical layer of the text with reference to the main characters(children)-concrete and abstract nouns,etc.
2.Analyze the  syntax of the poem in a similar way(e.g.,such phrases as a whole big cart of them)

3.What are the following nouns suggestive of:Mother,Father,Nurse without articles,Annie,without any other identifications,the fat man without any name?How would the author have marked them in an objective authorial narrative?

4.Which of the children is older and how can you understand it?How old can they be?

5.Whose viewpoint is central- that of the Sun or the Moon?

6. Why is the attribute much-too-long-and-tight-under-the-arms punctuated like that?

7.The personage of a piano-tuner appears in the final part of the extract, but the very word is never given.Define the stylistic effect of this device.

13.Системное использование лексики .Синонимия и антонимия и их стилистическая функция

Jack London

THE HOUSE OF MAPUHl

Mapuhi,a Polynesian, finds a fIne pearl. He means to sell it and build a  European-st yle house. The extract describes a hurricane which resulted in  human casualties.There are two personages  involved -Raoul, a half-caste, and old Captain   Lynch.

                The air seemed filled with the rush of something. The house quivered and vibrated, and they heard the thrumming of a mighty note of sound. The windows rattled. Two panes crushed; a draught of wind tore in, striking them and making them stagger. The door opposite banged shut, shattering the latch. The white door-knob crumbled in fragments to the floor. The room's walls bulged like a gas balloon in the process of sudden inflation. Then came a new sound like the rattle of musketry, as the spray from a sea  struck the wall of the house. Captain Lynch looked at his watch. It was four o'clock. He put on a coat of pilot cloth,  unhooked the barometer, and stowed it away in a capacious pocket. Again a sea struck the house, with a heavy thud, and the light building tilted, twisted quarter-around  on its foundation, and sank down, its floor al an angle of ten degrees.

                Raoul went out first. The wind caught him and whirled him away. He noted that it had hauled  around to the east. With a great effort he threw himself on the sand, crouching and holding his own. Captain Lynch, driven like a wisp of straw, sprawled over him. Two of the Aorai's sailors, leaving a cocoanut-tree to which they had been clinging, came to their aid, leaning against the wind at impossible angles and fighting and clawing every Inch of the way.

                The old man's joints were stiff and he could not climb, so the sailors, by means of short ends of rope tied together, hoisted him up the trunk, a few feet at a time, till they could make him fast, at the top of the tree, fifty feet from the ground. Raoul passed his length of rope around the base of an adjacent tree and stood looking on. The wind was frightful. He had never dreamed it could blow so hard. A sea breached  across the atoll, wetting him to the knees ere . it subsided into the lagoon. The sun had disappeared, and a lead-colored twilight settled down. A few drops of rain, driving horizontally, struck him. The impact was like that of leaden pellets. A splash of salt spray struck his face. It was like the slap of a man's hand. His cheeks stung, and involuntary tears of pain were in his smarting eyes. Several hundred natives had taken to the trees, and he could have laughed at the bunches of human fruit clustering in the tops. Then, being Tahitian-born, he doubled his body at the waist, clasped the trunk of his tree with his hands, pressed the soles of his feel against the near surface of the trunk, and began to walk up the tree. At the top he found two women, two children, and a man. One little girl clasped a house-cat in her arms.

a sea – here: - a big wave

pilot cloth – waterproof cloth

breach – break

ere-(poetic) – before

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1.Find verbs :a) expressing motion;b) expressing sound.

2.Which of motion verbs is the most frequent one in the text?.Comment on this fact.

3.Single out groups of synonyms among motion verbs.What additional colouring do they add?
4.Do the same with sound verbs and  speak of their stylistic effect.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

FATHER BROWN STORIES

                "Well, do you know the story that is written there very plainly? Though it's not exactly a plain story."

                "I wouldn't be content to call it plain," said Flambeau,"1 should call it quite ugly."

[... ]

"... Of course the flagged  path is quite near, and there are no marks on that; though there might be on the soil between the cracks: it's a crazy pavement."

                By God, it's a crazy pavement; and a crazy garden; and a crazy story!" And Flambeau looked gloomily across the. gloomy and storm-stricken garden, across which the crooked patch work paths did indeed give a queer aptness to the quaint old English adjective. (The Insoluble Problem)

                Hardcastle was a promising politician who seemed in society to be interested in everything except politics. It may be answered gloomily that every politician is emphatically a promising politician. But to do him justice, he had often exhibited himself as a performing politician. No purple  tent in the bazaar, however, had been provided for him to perform in. (The Red Moon of Meru)

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1. How many meanings of the word plain follow each other in the first text? Which are they?

2. Which two meanings are simultaneously realized by the word ugly as compared to  those of the word plain?

3. Which words form a minimal combination for different meanings of the word crazy?

4. How do the words crooked and crazy help to form the image of  a crazy garden?

5. Which two meanings of the word promising are used in the second text?

6. Which of the meanings of the word performing  is accentuated in its contrast to the word promising?

7. The first two extracts represent direct speech. how can you define the narrative type of the third extract/

14.Тропы и их специфика в авторском контексте

Ray Bradbury

DANDELION WINE

Douglas Spolding, a twelve-year-old boy, takes the last ride by the old-fashioned trolley which will  soon give way to the city bus.

                At noon the motorman stopped his car in the middle  of the block and leaned out. "Hey!"

                And Douglas and Charlie and Tom and all the boys and girls on the block saw the gray glove waving and dropped from trees and left skip ropes in white snakes on lawns, to run and sit in the green plush seats, and there was no. charge. Mr. Tridden, the conductor, kept his glove over the mouth of the money box as he moved the trolley on down the shady block, calling.

"Hey!" said Charlie. "Where we going?"

"Last ride." said Mr. Tridden, eyes on the high electric wire ahead. "No more trolley. Bus starts to run tomorrow. Going to retire me with a pension, they are. So - a free ride for everyone! Watch out!"

                He ricocheted   the brass handle, the trolley groaned and swung round an endless green curve, and all the time in the world held still, as if only the children and Mr. Tridden and his miraculous machine were riding an endless river, away. (...)

                And then they were at the end of the line; the silver tracks, abandoned for eighteen years, ran on into rolling. country.  In 1910 people took the trolley out to Chessman's Park with vast picnic hampers. The track, never ripped up,  still lay rusting among the hills.

                "Here's where we turn around," said Charlie.

                "Here's where you're wrong!" Mr. Tridden snapped the emergency generator switch. "Now!"

                The tro1ley, with a bump and a sailing glide, swept past the city limits, turned off the street, and swooped  downhill through intervals of odorous sunlight and vast acreages of shadow that smelled of toadstools. Here and there creek waters flushed  the tracks and filtered through trees like green glass. They slid whispering on meadows washed with wild sunflowers past abandoned way stations empty of all save transfer-punched confetti,  to follow a forest stream into a summer country, while Douglas talked.

                "Why, just the smell of a trolley, that's different. I been on Chicago buses; they smell funny."

                "Trolleys are too slow," said Mr. Tridden. "Going to put busses on. Busses for people and busses for school."

                 The trolley whined to a stop. From overhead Mr. Tridden reached down huge picnic hampers. Yelling, the children helped him carry the baskets out by a creek that emptied into a silent lake where an ancient bandstand stood crumbling into termite dust.

(...)

                Bing! went the soft bell under Mr. Tridden's foot and they soared back over sun-abandoned, withered flower meadows, through the woods, towards a town that seemed to crush the sides of the trolley with bricks and asphalt and wood when Mr. Tridden stopped to let the children out in shady streets.

                Charlie and Douglas were the last to stand near the opened tongue of the trolley, the folding step, breathing electricity, watching Mr. Tridden's gloves on the brass controls.

                Douglas ran his fingers on the green creek moss, looked at the silver, the brass, the wine colour of the ceiling.

"Well... So long again, Mr. Tridden."

"Good-by, boys."

"See you around, Mr. Tridden."

"See you around."

                There was a soft sigh of air; the door collapsed gently shut, tucking up its corrugated  tongue. The trolley sailed slowly down the late afternoon, brighter than the sun, all tangerine,  all flashing gold and lemon, turned a far corner, wheeling, and 'vanished, gone away.

                "School busses!" Charlie walked to the curb. "Won't even give us a chance to be late to school. Come get you at your front door. Never be late again in all our lives. Think of that nightmare, Doug, just think it all over."

                But Douglas, standing on the lawn, was seeing how it would be tomorrow, when the men would pour hot tar over the silver tracks so you would never know a trolley had ever run this way. He knew it would take as many years as he could think of now to forget the tracks, no matter how deeply buried. Some morning in autumn, spring, or winter he knew he'd wake and if he didn't go near the window, if he just lay deep and snug and warm on his bed, he would hear it, faint and far away.

                And around the bend of the morning street, up the avenue, between the even rows of sycamore, elm and maple, in the quietness before the start of living, past his house he would hear the familiar sounds. Like the ticking of a clock, the rumble of a dozen metal barrels rolling,' the hum of a single immense dragonfly at dawn. Like a merry-go-round, like a small electrical storm, the color of blue lightning coming, here, and gone. The trolley's chime! The hiss like a soda fountain  spigot  as it let down and took up its step, and the starting of the dream again, as on it sailed along its way, traveling a hidden and buried track to some hidden and buried destination.

                "Kick-the-can  after supper?" asked Charlie.

                "Sure," said Douglas. "Kick-the-can."

rolling country – small hills

ripped up – dismantled

swoop – descend slowly

flush – lie

tongue-the folding step

spigot – here a tap for mineral water

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1. Find similes and  metahors;single out their components(tenor,vehicle,etc.)

2. Give the idea of the epithet in the phrase odorous sunlight. Compare it with another phrase from the same text: the all-pervasive blue and secret smells of summer storms and lightning.

3. Analyze the similes in the paragraph before the dialogue. What is their emotional colour?

4. The last short dialogue builds a sharp contrast to the preceding text. Expand on the idea of this contrast.

John Galsworthy

THE WHITE MONKEY

C h a p t e r XI

Venture

Tony Bicket, an unemployed Cockney, sells balloons. On impulse Soames Forsyte buys two of them, inflates , and then throws them away. Michael Mont, his son-in-law, finds one balloon on his way home, while he is thinking about his problems with Fleur, his wife.

                At six o'clock, with a profit of three and elghtpence, to which Soames had contributed just half, he began to add the sighs of deflating balloons to his own; untying them with passionate care, he watched his coloured hopes one by one collapse, and stored them in the drawer of his tray. Taking it under his arm, he moved his tired legs in the direction of the Bridge. In a full day he might make four to five shillings - Well, it would just keep them alive, and something might turn up! He was his own master, anyway, accountable neither to employer nor to union. That knowledge gave him a curious lightness inside, together with the fact that he had eaten nothing since breakfast.

"Wonder if he was an alderman," he thought: "they say those aldermen live on turtle soup." Nearing home, he considered nervously what to do with the tray? How prevent Victorine from knowing that he had joined the ranks of Capital, and spent his day in the gutter? Ill luck! She was at the window! He must put a good face on it. And he went in whistling.

"What's that, Tony?" she said, pointing to the tray. "Ah! That Great stunt · - this! Look 'ere!"

Taking a balloon out from the tray, he blew. He blew with a desperation he had not yet put into the process. They said the things would swell to five feet in circumference. He felt somehow that if he could get it to attain those proportions, it would soften everything. Under his breath the thing blotted out Victorine, and the room, till there was just the globe of coloured air. Nipping its neck between thumb and finger, he held it up, and said:

                "There you are; not bad value for sixpence, old girl!" and he peered round it. Lord, she was crying! He let the "blymed"  thing go, it floated down, the air slowly evaporating till a little crinkled wreck rested on the carpet. Clasping her heaving shoulders, he said desperately:

                "Cheerio, my dear, don't quarrel with bread and butter.I shall get a job, this is just to tide us over. I'd do a lot worse than that for you. Come on, and get my tea. I'm hungry, blowin' up those things."

C h a p t e r XIII

Tenterhooks

                He came in sight of Westminster. Only half-past ten!

Suppose he took a cab to Wilfrid's rooms, and tried to have it out with him. It would be like trying to make the hands of a clock move backwards to its ticking. What use in saying: "You love Fleur - well, don't!" or in Wilfrid saying it to him? "After all, I was first with Fleur," he thought. Pure chance, perhaps, but fact! Ah! And wasn't that just the danger? He was no longer a novelty to her  -  nothing unexpected about him now! And he and she had agreed times without number that novelty was the salt of life, the essence of interest and drama. Novelty now lay with Wilfrid ! Lord! Lord! Possession appeared far from being nine points of the law! He rounded-in from the Embankment towards home - jolly part of London, jolly Square; everything jolly except just this internal complication. Something, soft as a large leaf, tapped twice against his ear. He turned, astonished; he was in empty space, no tree near. Floating in the darkness, a round thing - he grabbed, it bobbed. What! A child's balloonl He secured it between his hands, took it beneath a lamppost - green, he judged. Queer! He looked up. Two windows lighted, one of them Fleur's! Was this the bubble of his own happiness expelled? Morbid! Silly ass! Some gust of wind - a child's plaything lodged and loosened! He held the balloon gingerly. He would take it in and show it to her. He put his latchkey in the door. Dark in the hall- gone up! He mounted, swinging the balloon on his finger. Fleur was standing before a mirror.

                "What on earth's that?" she said.

                The blood returned to Michael's heart. Curious how he had dreaded its having anything to do with her! "Don't know, darling; fell on my hat - must belong to heaven."

to add the sighs of deflating balloons to his own –  the sound of deflating baloons is likened to a sigh

alderman – member of the City Council. Such was Bicket’s impression of Soames.

stunt- here: a difficult or unusual task

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1.Pick out the realistic details of the scene of selling balloons.Name the words used to describe the balloons.

2.Comment on the following devices of style: a)the sighs of deflating balloons;b)his coloured hopes;c)the bubble of his own happiness .What is their stylistic value?

3.What is the balloon for Tony Bicket  - the reality of his life or a symbol? Motivate your answer.

4. Is the the balloon  a symbol for Michael Mont?Why is he superstitious about it?

5.What is the significance of coloured balloons in Chapter XIII?

6.Define different tenors of the image of coloured balloons .

15,Метафора-символ в тексте.( на материале отрывков из романа Г.Мелвилла Моби Дик)

Herman Melville

MOBY DICK

Moby Dick is a white cashalot to whom some seamen ascribe certain supernatural qualities.For Captain Ahab he  is both personified evil and  an object of hunting. Ahab tries to revenge upon the whale for his crippled  leg and  the lives of his fellow-seamen.

 (...)

                 One captain, seizing the line knife  from his broken prow, had dashed at the whale, blindly seeking with a six-inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life  of the whale. That captain was Ahab. And then it was that, suddenly sweeping his sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Moby Dick had reaped away Ahab's leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. Ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale. He at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. All that most maddens and torments, all truth with malice in it, all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain, all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down.

The Chase-First Day

(...)

                Like noiseless nautilus shells,. their light prows sped through the sea; but only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew still more smooth; seemed drawling a carpet over its waves; seemed a noon-meadow, so serenely it .spread. At length the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring of the finest, fleecy, greenish foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkle of the slightly projecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged waters,  went the glittering white shadow from his broad, milky forehead, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and behind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into the moving valley of his steady wake;  and on either hand bright bubbles arose and danced by his side. But these were broken again by the light toes of hundreds of gay fowls softly feathering the sea, alternate with their fitful flight; and like the some flag-staff rising from the painted hull of an argosy, the tall but shattered pole of a recent lance projected from the white whale's back; and at intervals one of the cloud of soft-toed fowls hovering, and to and fro skimming like a canopy over the fish, silently perched and rocked on this pole, the long tall feathers streaming like pennons.

                And thus, through the serene tranquilities of the tropical sea. Moby Dick moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his submerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hi deousness of his jaw. But soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water ;but for an instant his whole marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia's Natural Bridge, and warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air, the grand god revealed himself, sounded and went out of sight.

argosy – a big ship

pennon – here: a flag

wrenched – broken

marbleized- spotted like marble

Virginia’s National Bridge- a landmark in the USA, a bridge-like rock

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1. What is the motive for Ahab's hatred to Moby Dick?

2. Expand on the phrase all truth with malice in it.

3. Define the emotional colour of the second extract by picking out words denoting emotions and summarizing their meaning.

4. Find lofty words, archaisms and poetic words. What is their function in the text?

5. Analyze the metaphors and similes used to describe:a) the sea;b)sea birds.

6. Find cases of alliteration and sound imitation. State their function.

7. Find contrasting features in Moby Dick' s description. Why do you think the description is so controversial?

16.Авторское повествование и внутренняя речь.(М.Дрэббл

Jane Grey,the first-person narrator,visits James, the man she  loves ,in the hospital.

Margaret Drabble

THE WATERFALL

                I t may have been true, too, that need and weakness bound us: but they had bound us effectively, so what need had we to protest against the terms of our bondage? What right had I to deny the conditions of our meeting? We were starving, when we met, James and I, parched and starving; and we saw love as the miraged oasis, shivering on the dusty horizon in all the glamour of hallucination: blue water, green fronds and foliage breaking from the dry earth. Like deluded travellers we had carefully approached, hardly able to trust the image's persistence, afraid that it would fade into yet more dry acres as we drew nearer: believing ourselves blinded by our own desires: but when we got there - when I got there, for how can I speak for him, so dead and speechless - when I got there, the image remained, it sustained my possession of it, and the water that I drank, the so much longed for water, was sweet, not sour and brackish to the taste. Nor were the leaves green merely through the glamour of distance, through the contrast with the preceding waste: they remained green to the touch, dense, endless foresting boughs, an undis­covered country, no shallow quickly-exhausted, quickly-drained sour well, but miles of verdure, rivers, fishes, coloured birds, miles with no sign of ending, and, perhaps,beyond them all, no ending but the illimitable, circular, inexhaustible sea.

                That evening, when I went to the hospital, the sister in charge of the ward led me to James with pride, and said that he was lightening. I asked what she meant, and she said that she meant that he was less deeply unconscious, he was regaining some of his reflexes: she flashed a torch for me into his sightless eye, and I saw the iris, very faintly, contract. Life was restoring itself to that glaucous, opaque, visionary globe. I felt such relief, and I too felt pride: I felt that he was responding to my faith, as to the nurses' care. I told myself, at that point, that I would not care if he were lost to me forever, if that eye never again mirrored mine and saw in mine, as he had once said, proximity: I would be grateful if-he survived, to see other things, having been removed from me by fate and not by infidelity. I was lying to myself, of course I was lying, but how can one face such depths of selfishness? I sat by his bed for the accustomed half hour, staring not at him, because he did look too dreadful, despite the alleged lightening, but at the weave of my basket which I carried everywhere in place of a handbag - I had not had a handbag for years because I never went near handbag shops, but it was quite easy to buy baskets in the local ironmongers. It was a new basket, foreign, woven of rushes, and at first glance it seemed to be merely a neutral pale brown and yellow straw colour: but as I stared I noticed in the dried colourlessness of it faint watery tender streaks of green. I can't say how much this discovery affected me. I t seemed the green of the marshes where those rushes had once flourished: I saw suddenly a vision of vast acres of growing things, and it seemed so hopeful that the colour of growth should persist so obstinately in such dry tender shades. Even if James had died he would have been beautifully resolved into other elements. But it was no longer possible that he should die. When I touched his hand at parting I thought it stirred, very slightly, at my touch.

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1. The extract is a sample of the inner monologue. Which elements of the text develop this narrative type?

2. The first paragraph introduces the image of an oasis symbolizing the emotions overwhelming the characters. It is developed by a convergence of various stylistic means.Trace them in the text.

3.What  prevails in the tropeic complex of the first paragraph- the tenor(love) or the vehicle (oasis-water, vegetation)?

4.The metaphoric image of the first paragraph consists of two elements. Which are they?

5.In the second part Jane looks at her basket; because James looks dreadful. What does she see in the rushes that make it?What trope is used here to connect the realistic image of the basket and the metaphor of the first paragraph?

6.What is the symbolism of the green colour in the text? Compare it with the general symbolism of the word.

Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray

                The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses,and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying ,smoking,as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes,Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the  burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window ,producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile,seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass,or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

1.Enumerate the objects mentioned in the description,and form semantic groups.Which of them prevails?

2.Find metaphors,similes,other tropes.Which semantic group do they mostly belong to?What is their emotional colour?

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

3.Analyze the epithets:a) jade-faced;B)the heavy scent of  the lilac;c)the  dim roar of London;c) the burden of a beauty as Flame-like as theirs, state their meanings and connotations.

4. Study the details of the description. Through which details is the image of Sir Henry Wotton introduced?

5.Comment on the details descriptive of the studio. Is it a generalized description or the study of one summer day? How is it connected with the artistic trend of Impressionism?

6. The text introduces a static description.Which articles(pronouns,personal and geographical names) prevail here?

7.Is there any dynamism  and progress of time in the text?

 17.Классический и свободный стих  на материале классического стихотворения А.Теннисона и современной поэзии  У.К. Уильямса) 

Break,Break,Break

Alfred Tennyson

Break,breaK,break,

   On thy cold gray stones,O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,

That  he shouts with his sister at play!

Oh well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in  his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for  the touch of a vanish'ed hand,

And the sound of the voice that is still!

Break,break,break,

At the foot of thy crags,O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1.Which metre is used in the poem?Are there any deviations from it?

2 .Analyze the phonetic imagery of the

first and the last stanzas of the poem.

3.Name the emphatic and lofty archaic structures of the  text.

4.The central image is that of the sea.Do you think it is symbolic?If so,what does it symbolize?
5.Try to find S.Marshak's translation of the poem and compare it with the original.

THE LOCUST TREE IN FLOWER

William Carlos Williams

Among

of green

stiff

old

Bright

broken

branch

came

white

sweet

May
again

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1.What stylistic effect is created by placing each word of the poem into a separate line?

2.Write the poem into one line.What kind of sentence does it make? What is its rhythm?

3.There are no rhymes in the poem.Are there any other sound combinations?

4.What semantic contrast is in the centre of the poem?Which oppositions build this contrast?

5.Is the poem connected only with the blooming trees ,or is it more symbolic?

18.Деталь в поэтическом контексте разных эпох.

Д.Левертов"Одинокий человек".

Lonely Man    Denise Levertov

An open world

within its mountain ruin

trees on the plain lifting

their heads,fine strokes

of grass stretching themselves to breathe

the last of the light

Where a man

riding horseback raises dust

    Under the eucalyptus trees,a long way off,

the dust

is gray-gold,a cloud

of pollen.A field

Of cosmea turns

all its many faces

of wide-open flowers west,to the light,

It is your loneliness

your energy

baffled in the stillness

gives an edge in the shadows-

the great sweep of mountain shadow,

shadows of ants and leaves

the stones in the road each with its shadow

and you with your long shadow

closing your book and standing up

To stretch,your long shadow-arms
 stretching back of you,baffled.

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1.Find metaphors describing trees and herbs.What kinds of metaphors are they?

2. Comment on the use of the verb to stretch in the first and the final lines(with reference to herbs and human shadow)

3.What is the progress of time between the first and the final lines?Does  the time progress slowly or fast?

4.Is the only man really so lonely in the world created by the textual imagery?

19.Деталь в прозаическом контексте.С.Хилл,256

Susan Hill

THE ALBATROSS

The central character  is Duncan Pike, a retarded  boy,whom his invalid mother keeps close by herself. Since early childhood  Duncan has been obsessed with one idea - to be like other boys. They mock at him, calling  him a fool. But one of the boys, Ted Flint, tries to help him. For Duncan Ted Flint  is an ideal. In one of the  episodes  of the novel Ted Flint offered Duncan  to go fishing  with him, but  Duncan got scared and ran away. In the episode under study Duncan watches Ted returning, then the two boys talk..

                At first, there was nothing, as far as he could see on the heaving, steely water. A fine rain had started, blowing into his face from off the sea. He stood by one of the stakes, screwing his eyes up to look ahead. Then, out of nowhere, the boat appeared coming in fast towards the shore and pitching, like a train on a switchback. Ted Flint was standing up, his bright yellow oilskin like a beacon against the sky.

                Down at the water's edge, Davey Ward stood, waving his arms up and down to guide the boat in. It would have been all right, Duncan thought, he's here, he has come back. It would. I could have gone. He wanted to cry, and he wanted to go and hi de in the alleys, out of sight of Ted Flint's eyes, the jeers of the other men. But he did not move, he stayed, looking on, needing to be by the sea.

                The boat came in on the swell of a wave, and there was the scrape of the wood grazing to a halt on sand and shingle. Duncan saw the water streaming down off Ted Flint's oilskins. His bare hands were purple as plums, laying down the planks to guide the boat up. Someone shouted from the huts and he shouted back, but the words were lost on the wind. Duncan thought, they are friends, they help him, men shouting like that to one another, asking questions and answering, knowing the right things to say. I could have gone, they would have been shouting down to me.

                He pictured the inside of the huts, and himself, standing there, and drinking tea and rum, his own red hands around the steaming mug, being one of the others. There was nothing else he wanted.

                The cut from the trowel  throbbed across his bare knuckles. It was raining harder, his mother would be wanting tea. He thought suddenly of how much he left her alone. But he would have changed that, some way, if he could, and she had never let him. "Mrs. Ward might come," he had told her, in the weeks after her accident, "Mrs. Napp sent this... Mrs. Carr asked... Old Beattie would push you out... Mrs. Ward might come..."

                But she would have none of them. Send them away, don't answer the door, don't take it, no, no, we don't need them, we can manage. And she had taught him to manage, the house and caring for her, and then his job at the Big House, after he left school.

                "Blood's thicker than water... We keep ourselves to ourselves in this town... You're not my son for nothing, Duncan Pike."

Besides, he was too young and simple, she said, if anyone came and sat with her in his place, what good would that do, where would he go? "I bore you, I bred you, you'd not have managed anything without me."

                So he should go back .to her now. He wondered what things went on inside his mother's head, as she sat an day in her wheelchair, doing the white crochet. He did not know what comparison there might be with others, or with himself, and his own muddled thoughts and feelings, he mended a hammock or dug over the Big House garden, he did not know anything about any other people. He should go back now. There was a fine cobweb of raindrops over his jersey, clinging to the hairs on the surface of the wool.

                "You're a case, Duncan Pike! Daft beggar!"

                Ted Flint had come out of the hut again, and down the beach towards him.

                "You!"

                But he spoke mildly enough. "That's only a bit choppy,"he said now, looking at the sea, "Nothing to hurt you."

                Duncan looked up, rubbing his fingers anxiously about on the wooden stake. Ted Flint's expression was strange to him, sharp and mocking, but at the same time friendly, genial, as though none of it mattered.

                "You'd be all right on the boat, you'd do, give yourself half a chance. I'd shape you."

He said nothing.

                "That's getting up, though." The sky was darkening. "Want a fish for your tea then, our Duncan?"

                His eyes were wide open, glinting with amusement. Duncan felt wary, remembering. But it was Ted Flint. "It's not... I can't. No. Wednesday's fish day, we buy our fish on Wednesdays."

                "Not buy. I asked you if you wanted a fish, not buy it. I'm giving you one, aren't I?"

                He walked off, back into the hut, and came out again a moment later, standing on the step and holding out a package. "Hey up, then!" Duncan hesitated, then made his way very slowly across the shingle. In two of the other huts, he could see lights on, the shadows of the men, knew that they watched him.

                "Herring that is, make you grow up a big lad." After a moment, Duncan took the parcel. The paper was wet already from the fish inside. "Come out and catch it yourself," Ted Flint said, "next time." .

                Duncan turned. His limbs felt queerly heavy, and his head light, his ears singing. He had to make an effort to lift his feet up and put them down again, to get himself over the shingle. He carried the newspaper parcel just as Ted Flint had given it to him flat across his outstretched hands. Next time, he had said, come and catch it for yourself next time. Next time, next time, next time. .

                When he reached the cottage and stood beside the unfinished wall in the drizzle, he remembered that he had not thanked Ted Flint for the fish.

the cut from the trowel –  Duncan cut himself with a trowel mending the brick wall near his cottage.

you’re a case – you’re mad

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1.Find details which depict : a)the sea;b) the return of the boat;c)Ted Flint;d)the present he gave to Duncan(fish);What spheres of sense perception are these details connected with?

2. Do these details help you to imagine the described events? Analyze the following phrases :hands..purple as plums, a fine cobweb of raindrops over his jersey;wet already from the fish inside;

3 .Define the narrative types :author's narrative,direct speech,represented speech,inner monologue.Is direct speech here always punctuated?In what cases is there no punctuation?

4. When the character's inner world is described,emotions are hardly given directly,but mostly through details.How can we characterize this method of presentation and point of view?

5. Do you share Mrs.Pike's point of view upon Duncan(she considers her son to be absolutely helpless and inadequate) or do you think like Ted Flint(You'll be all right)?Motivate your viewpoint with  the  help of the text.

6. Can the story be connected only with inadequate) people like Duncan Pike or it can be interpreted more richly? Which way?

Anthony Trollope

HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT

The etxract introduces the final episode of the novel where the author links all the plot lines together and gives ideas  about the possible development of each of them. Many of  them are not reflected  in the text including those connected with the central character (Hugh Stanbury).

                We must now go back to Exeter and look after Mr. Brooke Burgess and Miss Dorothy Stanbury. It is rather hard upon readers that they should be thus hurried from the completion of hymeneals in Florence to the preparations for other hymeneals in Devonshire; but it is the nature of a complex story to be entangled with many weddings towards its close. In this little history there are, we fear, three or four more to come. We will not anticipate by alluding prematurely to Hugh Stanbury's treachery, or death,- or the possibility that he after all may turn out to be the real descendant of the true Lord Peterborough and the actual inheritor of the title and estate of Monkhams, nor will we speak of Nora's certain fortitude under either of these emergencies. But the instructed reader must be aware that Camilla French ought to have a husband found for her; that Colonel Osborne should be caught in some matrimonial trap, ~ as, how otherwise should he be fitly punished? -:- and that something should be at least attempted for Priscilla Stanbury, who from the first has been intended to be the real heroine of these pages. That Martha should marry Giles Hickbody, and Barty Burgess run away with Mrs. Mac Hugh, is of course evident to the meanest novel-expounding capacity; but the fate of Brooke Burgess and of Dorothy will require to be evolved with some delicacy and much detail.

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1.How is the author's irony revealed in the description of Hugh Stanbury's future? (through which particular words).

2.How should you understand the phrase the instructed reader? What are the features of such a reader?

3.Do you think Colonel Osborne will be "caught in some matrimonial trap"?Comment on the cases of irony with reference to this character.

4.Which of the offered plot lines  impress you as doubtful  and why?

Слияние речевых планов и форм речи

Truman Capote

MASTER MISERY

Sylvia,a young girl, is almost lost in her struggle for existence.Lonely and hungry,she  opens her window to face the winter cold and becomes unconscious.She is saved by  Oreilly,another lost soul,who happens upon her  and becomes her only intimate friend.In her delirium,she  imagines  Mr.Revercomb whom  she calls Master Misery. He is a mysterious and sinister character,who buys dreams from people,thus destroying their inner world.Sylvia and Oreilly  also used to earn by collecting dreams.

.

                For two days following Oreilly's arrest Sylvia did not leave her room: sun on the window, then dark. By the third day she had run out of cigarettes, so she ventured as far as the corner delicatessen. She bought a package of cup-cakes, a can of sardines, a newspaper and cigarettes. In all this time she'd not eaten and it was a light, delicious, sharpening sensation; but the climb back up the stairs, the relief of c1osing the door, these so exhausted her she could not quite make the daybed. She slid down to the floor and did not move until it was day again, she thought afterwards that she'd have been there about twenty minutes. Turning on the radio as loud as it would go, she dragged a chair up to the window and opened the newspaper on her lap: Lana Davies, Russia rejects, Miners Conciliate; of all things this was saddest, that life goes on: if one leaves one's lover, life should stop for him, and if one disappears from the world, then the world should stop, too; and it never did. And that was the real reason for most people getting up in the morning: not because it would matter but because it wouldn't. But if Mr. Revercomb succeeded finally in collecting all the dreams out of every head, perhaps  -  the idea slipped, became entangled with radio and newspaper. Falling temperatures. A snowstorm moving across Colorado, across the West, falling upon all the small towns, yellowing every light, filling every footfall, falling now and here; but how quickly it had come, the snowstorm: the roof, the vacant lot, the distance deep in white and deepening, like sheep. She looked at the paper and she looked at the snow. But it must have been snowing all day. It could not have just started. There was no sound of traffic; in the swirling wastes of the vacant lot children circled a bonfire; a car, buried at the kerb, winked its headlights: help! help! silent, like the heart's distress. She crumbled a cupcake and sprinkled it on the windowsill: north-birds would come to keep her company. And she left the window open for them; snow-wind scattered flakes that dissolved on the floor like April-fool jewels. Present Life Can Be Beautiful: turn down that radio! The witch of the woods was tapping at her door: Yes, Mrs. Halloran, she said, and turned off the radio altogether.

                Snow-quiet, sleep-silent, only the bonfire far-away songsinging of children; and the room was blue with cold, colder than the cold of fairy-tales: lie down my heart among the igloo flowers of snow.

Mr. Revercomb, why do you wait upon the threshold? Ah, do come inside, it is so cold out there.

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1.Some parts of the text are italicized.What speech form do these quotations represent?

2.There are cases of direct speech in the text,though they are not properly punctuated.Find them and define whose speech it is.What stylistic effect is achieved by the absence of punctuation?

3.Despite the variety of speech forms in the text, there is only one point of view.Whose is it and how is it revealed?

4.Find cases of alliteration,assonance,rhythmically organized patterns and comment on them.
5.Comment on the following stylistic devices:a car...winked his headlights;help!help!silent,like the heart's distress;lie down my heart among the igloo flowers of snow.

6.Sylvia does not say what would happen if Mr.Revercomb collected all the dreams out of every head.How would she have finished her sentence?

7.How is the progress of time marked in the text?How does the author create the impression of suspense and  shows the long period of time needed to open the door?

?

The  Open Cage    Ronald Hall

p.246

The novel is a "warning"for the mankind.It speaks of the necessity of a union of man and nature.

                The storm enveloped Cornwall,darkening the Ram peninsula and the sea around it.The wind grew in strength and coldness.All sea birds vanished from sight in the hut.A mile off shore a man was hurled about in a yellow life-jacket.Alec and Jacob sipped tea as he drowned.

Too far away to shed light on the hut a man became a screaming torch of flesh and napalm.

Scarcely beyond the sound of his agony children played carelessly,and sang songs and were beyond time.Beyond the storm,in fierce sun,men were destroying or maiming men and women and children and animals and birds and insects and fish and forests.

Beyond the storm men danced sensitively with women at weddings and feasts.Beyond and within the storm there was not one particle of person,creature or stone,river or continent that was not changing.

And they were thinking of the flux of time,the ceaseless change;sharing an identical mood without speaking of it and without knowing

they shared infinitely more than a pot of tea and shelter.

y and much detail.

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1. While reading the first  paragraph,did you think that ALec and Jacob were watching the man drowning while they sipped their tea,or these events were  only taking place simultaneously? What is the reason for their contrast ?

2.In the second paragraph you see the image of a victim of military actions.How can this image be connected with the possible place of action - a hut at the sea coast in Cornwall?

3.In the first paragraph all the actions are expressed by the Present Indefinite forms(no Continuous,though it would be more natural to see:...were sipping tea as he drowned.Similarly,there could be cases of Past Perfect:...all sea birds had vanished,a man had become...a torch.(but there are again Indefinite forms).How can you explain such a levelling of temporal planes?

4.Why do you think the verbs destroy and maim are used in the Continuous?(pay attention to the change of meaning with the Indefinite tense).

5.What stylistic effect is achieved by the Continuous forms in the final paragraph?

6.Analyze how the definite articles are used in the text.(e.g.,with the nouns the hut and the storm)?What other nouns with the definite articles can be referred to the same semantic sphere? What about the personal and geographical names?

7.What other grammatical,lexical or stylistic phenomena do you find in the text

Употребление артиклей и введение новых предметов и явлений в повествование

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Crome Yellow

Chapter 1

Denis Stone, a beginning  writer,commutes in a suburban train to Crome Yellow.

                Along this particular stretch of line no express ever passed. All the trains – the few that there were -  stopped at all the stations. Denis knew the names of those stations by heart.  Bole, Tritton, Spavin Delavarr, Knopswich for Timpany, West Bowlby, and, finally, Camlet-on-the-Water. Camlet was where he always got out, leaving the train to creep indolently onward, goodness only knew whither, into the green heart on England.

They were snorting out of West Bowlby now. It was the next station, thank Heaven. Denis took his chattels off the rack, and piled them neatly in the corner opposite his own. A futile proceeding. But one must have something to do. When he had finished, he sank back into his seat and closed his eyes. It was extremely hot.

                Oh, this journey! It was two hours cut clean out of his life; two hours in which he might have done so much so much – written the pefect poem, for example, or read the one illuminating book. Instead of which – his gorge rose at the  smell of the dusty cushions against which he was leaning.

Two hours. One hundred and twenty minutes. Anything might be done in that time. Anything. Nothing. Oh, he had had hundreds of hours, and what he head done with them? Wasted them, spit the precious minutes as though his reservoir were inexhaustible. Denis groaned in the spirit, condemned himself utterly with all his works. What right had he to sit in the sunshine, to occupy corner seats in third-class carriages, to be alive? None, none, none.

his gorge rose – he felt sick

AMBROSE GWINETT BIERCE

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Station

The scene is set diring the Civil War of 1861-1865. The Federal army soldiers are going to hang a planter, accused of an attempt of destroying the bridge.

                A man stood upon a railroad bridge in Northern Alabama, looking down into the swift waters twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, his wrists bound with a cord. A rope loosely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head, and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners – two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant, who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank armed. He was a captain.

                Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view.  Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground – a gentle acclivity crowned with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge.

slack – the hanging part of the rope

at a short remove – at a short distance

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1. Define the number of definite and indefinite articles in the first in the second texts. Make a conclusion about the subjectivity and the objectivity of the narrative with the first and the second texts.

2. Can we say that the definite in the first text perform an expressive function or are they used simply according to the rules of grammar?

3. Which objects, persons or phenomena are singled out in the second text by means of an indefinite article? Are they important for the described episode?

4 .Is the first text more subjective and emotional? If so, what helps to develop such an attitude (except the articles?)

5. What is the general impression produced by the use of  articles in the second text? How can it be connected with the context and with the subject-matter of the  story?

6. Which linguistic means in the first text perform the same stylistic  function as the definite article?

7. What is the meaning of the article in the expressions the perfect poem, the one illumination book?

8. Define the emotional tone of the texts in accordance with the contents.

Метонимия и художественная деталь

George Eliot

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS

Maggie Tulliver, a lonely , outcast girl, hires a room by the river at  Bob Jakin’s , who was a former friend of her  brother Tom’s. Overcome by the flood, she tries to get to the  old Mill by boat to save her brother and her mother.

                At that moment Maggie felt a startling sensation of sudden cold about her knees and feet: it was water flowing under her. She started up: the stream was flowing under the door that led into the passage. She was not bewildered for an instant – she knew it was the flood!

                The tumult of emotion  she had been enduring for the last twelve hours  seemed to have left a great calm in her;: without screaming, she hurried with the candle up-stairs for Bob Jakin’s bedroom. The door was ajar; she went in and shook him by the shoulder.

“ Bob, the flood is come! It is in the house! Let us see if we can make the boats safe.”

                She lighted his candle, while the poor wife, snatching up her baby, burst into screams; and then   she hurried down again to see if the waters were rising fast. There was a step down into the room at the door leading from the staircase; she saw that the water was already on a level with the step. While she was looking, something came with a tremendous crash against the window, and sent the leaded panes and the old wooden framework inwards in shivers, - the water pouring in after it.

                “ It is   the boat!” cried Maggie. “ Bob, come down to get the boats!”

And without a moment’s shudder of fear, she plunged through the water, which was rising fast to her knees, and by the glimmering light of the candle she had left on the stairs, she mounted on to the window-sill, and crept into the boat, which was left with the prow lodging and protruding through the window. Bob was not long after her, hurrying without shoes or stockings, but with the lanthorn in his hands.

                “              Why, They’re both here – both the boats,” said Bob, as he got into one where Maggie was. “It’s wonderful this fastening isn’t broke too, as well as the mooring.”

                In the excitement of getting into the other boat, unfastening it, and mastering an oar, Bob was not struck with the danger Maggie incurred. We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger, and Bob’s mind was absorbed in possible expedients for the safety of the helpless in-doors. The fact that Maggie had been up, had waked him, and had taken the lead in activity, gave Bob a vague impression of her as one who would help to protect, not need to be protected. She too had got possession of an oar, and had pushed off, so as to release the boat from the overhanging window-frame.

                “ The water’s rising too fast, ,” said Bob, “ I doubt it’ll be in at the chambers before long – th’ house is so low I’ve more mind to get Prissy and the child and the mother  into the boat, if I could, and trusten to the water – for th’ old house is none too safe. And if i let go the boat... but you, “ he exclaimed, suddenly lifting the light of his lanthorn on Maggie, as she stood in the rain with the oar in her hand and her black hair streaming.

                Maggie had no time to answer, for a few tidal current swept along the line of the houses, and drove both the boats out on to the wide water, with a force that carried them far past the meeting current of the river.

                In the first moments Maggie felt nothing, thought of nothing, but that she had suddenly passed away from that life which she had been dreading: it was the transition of death, without its agony – and she was alone in the darkness with God.

                The whole thing had been so rapid – so dream-like- that the threads of ordinary association were broken: she sank down on the seat clutching the oar mechanically, and for a long while had no distant conception of her position. The first thing that waked her to fuller consciousness was the cessation of the rain, and perception that the darkness was divided by the faintest light, which parted the overhanging gloom from the immeasurable watery level below. She was driven out upon the flood: - that awful visitation of God which her father used to talk of – which had made the nightmare of her childish dreams. And with that thought there rushed in the vision of the old home – and Tom – and her mother – they had all listened together. “ O God, where am I?  Which is the way home?” she cried out, in the dim loneliness.

What was happening to them at the Mill? The flood had once nearly destroyed it. They might be in danger – in distress: her mother and her brother, alone there, beyond reach of help! Her whole soul was strained now on that though; and she saw the long-loved faces looking for help into the darkness, and finding none.

QUESTIONS AND TASKS

1. Read the last sentence of the extract . Find metonymy in it and explain its stylistic effect.

2. Analyze the metonymic epithet dim loneliness. How can you develop  it into a sentence.

3. Find the semantic significance of the cases of metonymy in the text.

4. Analyze the description of the  start of the flood in the text.

5. The arrival of the boats could have bee described ditrectly:they approached the house , and one of them broke a window. What do we find in the text instead of this?

6. Which features of Bob’s are accentuated through the description of his actions?

7. Which features of Maggie’s are described in the text?

8. What other device does the author use to help the reader imagine Maggie and understand that she is the central character of the novel?

9. Which extract of the text do you consider to be most expressive  one? Are there any  weaker parts of the text ? Motivate your answer.

10. Pick out metaphors or symbols in the text.

11. Imagine this episode  to be a film script. What directions should be given to the cameraman?

Francis Bret Garte

The Devotion of Enriquez

The scene is laid in California . Enriquez who is a young Spaniard, a great dancer and joker,falls in love with Mrs. Mannersley, a sophisticated girl from Boston , the Congregational minister's niece. Throughout the story he tries to win her heart by different means.

When Don Pedro Amador,his uncle ,installed Miss Mannersley, with Spanish courtesy, on a raised platform in the long valley where the rodeo took place ,the gallant Enriquez selected a bull from the frightened and galloping herd and,cleverly isolating him from the band, he lassoed his hind legs, and threw him exactly before the platform where Miss Mannerley was seated. It was Enriquez who caught the unbroken mustang,sprang from his own saddle to the bare back of his captive,and with only the lasso for a bridle ,halted him on rigid haunches at Miss Mannerley's feet. It was Enriquez who, in the sports that followed,leaned from his saddle at full speed , caught up the chicken buried to its head in the sand without wringing its neck,and tossed it unharmed and fluttering toward his mistress. As for her, she wore the same look of animation that I had seen in her face at our previous meeting. Although she did not bring her sketch -book with her, as at the bullfight , she did not shrink from the branding of the cattle, which took place under her very eyes.

Yet I had never seen her and Enriquez together; they had never ,to my actual knowledge even exchanged words. And now although she was the guest of his uncle his duties seemed to keep him in the field , apart from her. Nor,as far as I could detect,did either apparently make any effort to have it otherwise. The peculiar circumstance seemed to attract no attention from anyone else. But for what I alone knew -of their actual relations ,I should have thought them strangers.

But I felt certain that the festa which took place in the broad patio of Don Pedro' s casa would bring them together . And later in the evening , as we were all sitting on the veranda watching the dancing of the Mexican women, ghost white-flounced sayas were monotonously rising and falling to the strains of two melancholy harps, Miss Mannerley rejoined us from the house. She seemed to be utterly absorbed and abstracted in the barbaric dances, and scarcely moved as she leaned over the railing with her cheek resting on her hand. Suddenly she arose with a little cry.

"What is it?" asked two or three.

" Nothing - only I have lost my fan."

She had risen, and was looking abstractedly on the floor.

Half a dozen men jumped to their feet. "L et me fetch it,"they said.

But Don Pedro interposed with Spanish gravity. Such a thing was not t be heard of in his casa. If the senorita would not permit him - an old man - to go for it, it must be brought by Enriquez, her cavalier of the day.

But Enriquez was not to be found. I glanced at Miss Mannerley's somewhat disturbed face, and begged her to let me fetch it. I thought I saw a flush of relief come into her pale cheek as she said, in a lower voice, " On the stone seat in the garden. "

I hurried away, leaving Don Pedro still protesting. I knew the gardens , and the stone seat at an angle of the wall, not a dozen yards from the casa. The moon shone full upon it. There , indeed , lay the little gray-feathered fan. But close beside it,also, lay the crumpled black gold-embroidered riding-gauntlet that Enriquez had won at the rodeo.

I thrust it hurriedly into my pocket and ran back. As I passed through the gateway I asked a peon to send Enriquez to me. The man stared. Did I not know that Don Enriquez had ridden away two minutes ago?

When I reached the veranda, I handed the fan to Miss Mannerley without a word.

Festa( Spanish) -feast

Casa( Spanish) -house

Saya (Spanish) - a skirt as part of folklore dress

Peon - a Spanish field hand.

Questions and tasks

1. Find Spanish words in the text and speak about their stylistic value and the effect produced.

2. How do you understand the meaning of foreign words in the text? Can you find all these words in the dictionary? What helps to understand their meaning ( context , other factors?) Do you understand all the words?

3. Read the description of Miss Mannerley.

Why does the author pay more attention to her nature than to her appearance ?

Comment on her knowing languages. Find irony and contrast and the contrasting ideas (other girls...)

(...) A tall, slender girl, calmly surveying them (the Spanish dancers) through gold-rimmed eye-glasses in complete critical absorption . I stared in amazement and consternation; for I recognized in the fair stranger Miss Urania Mannerley, the Congregational minister's niece!

Everybody knew Rainey Mannerley throughout the length and breadth of the Encinal. She was at once the envy and the goad of the daughters of those Southwestern and Eastern immigrants who had settled in the valley . She was correct , she was critical she was faultless and observant. She was proper yet independent ; she was highly educated; she was suspected of knowing Latin and Greek; she even spelled correctly! She could wither the plainest field nosegay in the hands of other girls by giving the flowers their botanical names. She never said "Ain't you ?" but " Aren't you ?" She looked upon "Did I which ?" as an incomplete and imperfect form of "What did I do ?" She quoted from Browning and Tennyson , and was believed to have read them. She was from Boston . What could she possibly be doing at a free-and- easy fandango?

Rainie - dimunitive of Urania.

Goad -here - a stimulus.

Browning,Robert ( 1812 - 1889 ) - an English poet.

Tennyson, Alfred ( 1809-1892 )- an English poet. Both are the character's contemporaries.

Boston -the capital of Massachusetts ,one of the oldest settlements of the USA and its cultural centre.

Fandango - a Spanish dance

4. Pick out words describing Miss Mannersley's emotions concerning Enriquez' actions. What are they like ? Do they really express love?

5. Find the stylistic device connected with the fan and the gauntlet . How is it related to the context?

6. What is the value of the metonymic description of Enriquez' love to Miss Mannersley? Would the story be better if it contained the descriptions of the young character 's meetings and feelings?

7. The fan and the gauntlet are described in a very detailed way. What would the episode with them be like in case there were a film?

Charlotte Bronte

SHIRLEY

Chapter XII

Shirley and Caroline

(...)" I know how the heath would look on such a day, "said Caroline ; purple-black : a deeper shade of the sky-tint;and that would be livid."

"Yes - quite livid,with brassy edges to the clouds ,and here and there a white gleam ,more ghastly than the lurid tinge,which,as you looked at it, you momentarily expected would kindle into blinding lightning."

"Did it thunder ?"

"It muttered distant peals,but the storm did not break till evening after we had reached our inn:that inn being an isolated house at the foot of a range of mountains ."

"Did you watch the clouds come down over the mountains ?"

"I did: I stood at the window an hour watching them. The hills seemed rolled in a sullen mist,and when the rain fell in whitening sheets,suddenly they were blotted from the prospect they were washed from the world ."

"I have seen such storms in hilly districts in Yorkshire;and at their riotous climax, when the sky was all a cataract , the earth was all flood,I have remembered the Deluge ".

"It is singularly reviving after such hurricanes to feel calm return ,and from the opening clouds to receive a consolatory gleam softly testifying that the sun is not quenched.

Miss Keeldar,just stand still now and look down at Nunnely dale and wood.

They both halted on the green brow of the Common they looked down on the deep valley robed in May raiment; on varied meads, some pealed with daisies, and some golden with king-cups: today all this young verdure smiled clear in sunlight : transparent emerald and amber gleams played over it. On Nunnhood - the sole remnant of antique British forest in a region whose lowlands were once all sylvan chase, as its highlands were breast -deep heather - slept the shadow of a cloud ; the distant hills were dappled, the horizon was shaded and tinted like mother-of-pearl; silvery blues,soft purples,evanescent greens and rose-shades,all melting into fleeces of white cloud,pure as azury snow,allured the eye as with a remote glimpse of heavens foundations. The air blowing on the brow was fresh,and sweet ,and braking."

"Our England is a bonnie island ",said Shirley ",and Yorkshire is one of her bonniest books.

You are a Yorkshire girl too?"

"I am - Yorkshire in blood and birth. Five generations of my race sleep under the aisle of Briarfield Church : I drew my first breath in the old black hall behind us."

Hereupon Caroline presented her hand,which was accordingly taken and shaken. "We are compatriots, "said she.

"Yes, "agreed Shirley with a grave nod.

"And that, "asked Miss Keeldar,pointing to the forest -" that is Nunnwood? "

"It is."

"Were you ever there? "

"Many a time."

"In the heart of it ?"

"Yes."

"What is it like?"

"It is like an encampment of forest sons of Anak. The trees are huge and old. When you stand at their roots,the summits seem in another region : the trunks remain still and firm as pillars,while the boughs sway to every breeze. In the deepest calm their leaves are never quite hushed, and in high wind a flood rushes - a sea thunders above you."

"Was it one of Robin Hoods haunts? "

"Yes,and there are mementos of him still existing . To penetrate into Nunnwood, Miss Keeldar,is to go far back into the dim days of eld. Can you see a break in the forest,about the centre ?"

"Yes,distinctly."

"That break is a dell; a deep,hollow cup,lined with turf as green and short as the sod of this Common ; the very oldest of the trees,gnarled mighty oaks, crowd about the brink of this dell: in the bottom lie the ruins of a nursery."

"We will go - you and I alone,Caroline - to that wood , early some fine summer morning,and spend a long day there . We can take pencils and sketch-books, and any interesting book we like ; and of course we shall take something to eat. I have two little baskets, in which Mrs. Gill,my housekeeper , might pack our provisions, and we could each carry our own. It would not tire you too much to walk so far?"

"Oh, no; especially if we rested the whole day in the wood, and I know all the pleasantest spots: I know where we could get nuts in nutting time; I know where wild strawberries abound; I know certain lonely, quite untrodden glades, carpeted with strange mosses, some yellow as if gilded, some a sober gray, some gem-green. I know groups of trees that ravish the eye with their perfect ,picture -like effects: rude oaks,delicate birch, glossy beech,clustered in contrast; and ash-trees stately as Saul, standing isolated, and superannuated, wood-giants clad in bright shrouds of ivy. Miss Keeldar , I could guide you."

Cataract - waterfall obsolete

The Common here - an empty,no-mans hill.

Sylvan -of a forest (bookish)

Dappled -in radiant spots of sunlight

Evanescent -not easily seen

Heaven's foundation -belonging to paradise

Bracing -envigourating

Bonny- beautiful ,sweet ( Scotch)

Anak - a legendary giant

Eld - old time (archaic)

Saul - the first king of Israel

Questions and tasks

1. Find archaisms and lofty words in the text and give their neutral equivalents.

2. Analyze the distribution of these words in the authorial narration and dialogue. Where do they prevail?

3. Find epithets among them colour-descriptive ones. Characterize their meaning and use. Try to imagine the tints and colours mentioned in the text.

4. How are the colour descriptive and other epithets distributed in the narrative and dialogue?

5. Do the same with metaphors and similes

6. Define the emotional colour of the text and find words with emotive connotations.

7. Can we differentiate Shirley's and Caroline's individual manner? By what features? Motivate your answer by linguistic facts.

8. What information about the personages does their conversation give?

Shirley Keeldar , a proud and beautiful girl and a rich landowner, is having a conversation with her friend ,Caroline Hellstone, a girl of modest means. However ,Caroline is well-bred and well-educated and of a very sensitive nature. This is one of their first talks during a walk about Yorkshire highlands.

William Makepeace Thackerey

Vanity Fair

As the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards and looks into the Fair,the a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place. There is a great quantity of eating and drinking making love and jilting laughing and the contrary smoking, cheating, fighting,dancing and fiddling; there are bullies pushing about , bucks ogling the women,knaves picking pockets, policemen on the lookout quacks (other quacks plague take them!) bawling in front of their booths, and yokels looking up at the tunnelled dancers and poor old rouged tumblers, while the light-fingered folk are operating upon their pockets behind . Yes,this is VANITY FAIR ; not a moral place certainly; nor a merry one , though very noisy. Look at the faces of the actors and buffoons when they come off from their business; and Tom Fool washing the paint off his cheeks before he sits down to dinner with his wife and the little Jack Puddings behind the canvas. The curtain will be up presently, and he will be turning over head and heels, and crying :"How are you?"

A man with a reflective turn of mind,walking through an exhibition of this sort,will not be oppressed, I take it, by his own or other people 's clarity. An episode of humour or kindness touches and amuses him here and there - a pretty child looking at a gingerbread stall; a pretty girl blushing whilst her lover talks to her and chooses her fairing; poor Tom Fool yonder behind the waggon, mumbling his bone with the honest family which lives by his tumbling ; but the general impression is one more melancholy than mirthful. When you come home you sit down in a sober,contemplative, not uncharitable frame of mind, and apply yourself to your books or to your business .

I have no other moral than this to tag to the present story of "Vanity Fair". Some people consider Fairs immoral altogether, and eschew such, with their servants and families : very likely they are right. But persons who think otherwise and are of a lazy , or a benevolent, or a sarcastic mood, may perhaps like to step in for half an hour, and look at the performances. There are things of all sorts some dreadful combats , some grand and lofty horse-riding, some things of high life, and some very middling indeed; some love-making for the sentimental , and some light-comic business ; the whole accompanied by appropriate scenery and brilliantly illuminated by the Author's own candles.

What more has the Manager of the Performance to say? - To acknowledge the kindness with which it has been received in all the principal towns of England through which the show has passed and it has been most favourably noticed by the respected conductor of the public Press , and by the Nobility and Gentry. He is proud to think that his Puppets have given satisfaction to the very best company in his empire . The famous little Becky Puppet has been pronounbed to be uncommonly flexible in the joints, and lively on the wire;the Amelia Doll, though it has had a smaller circle of admirers,has yet been carved and dressed with the greatest care by the artist; the Bobbin figure though apparently clumsy , yet dances in a very amusing and natural manner ; the Little Boys' Dance has been liked by some; and please to remark the richly dressed figure of the Wicked Nobleman, on which no expense has been spared,and which Old Nick will fetch away at the end of this singular performance .

And with this,and a profound bow to his patrons, the Manager retires, and the curtain rises.