И.В.Бондаренко
Н.В. Бхатти
О.С.Федорович
BATTLE WITH THE LIONS
Практикум
по домашнему чтению для студентов 1-го курса
ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКОГО ФАКУЛЬТЕТА
ИЛ и МК МГОУ
Москва 2011
Московский Государственный Областной Университет
Институт Лингвистики и Межкультурной Коммуникации
Рецензенты:
Директор ИЛ и МК, профессор Туголукова Г. И.
Кандидат филологических наук, доцент Донскова И.И.
Бондаренко И.В., Бхатти Н.В., Федорович О.С. Battle with the Lions. (Практикум по домашнему чтению). - М.: Издательство МГОУ, 2011.
Издание 5-е
Москва 2011
Практикум по домашнему чтению предназначен для студентов 1-го курса лингвистического факультета. Материалом для обсуждения и работы над лексикой и грамматикой послужили главы из романов Д. Уэбстер «Длинноногий дядюшка» и Л. Олкотт «Маленькие женщины». Эти произведения в полной мере дают материал для обсуждения темы «Семья», проблемы истинных и ложных ценностей, а также для изучения особенностей становления американской нации.
Пособие является частью учебно-методического комплекса по практике речи первого иностранного языка для студентов I курса.
Московский государственный
областной университет, 2011
Издательство МГОУ, 2011
Бондаренко И.В., Бхатти Н.В.
Федорович О.С., 2011
Предисловие
Целью пособия является дальнейшее развитие учебно-методического комплекса освоения программы английского языка студентами 1 курса лингвистического факультета.
Работа предназначена для студентов, изучающих английский язык и осваивающих чтение английской прозы и поэзии в подлиннике. С целью более глубокого понимания художественных произведений и лучшего усвоения активной лексики приводится специальный блок грамматических и лексических упражнений.
Подобное формирование стартовых позиций для развития дискуссионной формы освоения учебного материала, как показывает практика, существенно увеличивает потенциальную продуктивность проведения занятий в системе очного обучения.
Актуальность такого методологического приема определяется современной спецификой студенческого контингента. Пособие обеспечивает материалом для активизации речевой деятельности, повышает эффективность усвоения активной лексики в объемах изучаемых тем («Внешность», «Черты характера», «Семья», «Дом», «Традиции и обычаи»). Текстологический материал и задания, направленные как на освоение лексики, так и на организацию дискуссии, дают возможность выйти на серьезное обсуждения вечной проблемы «истинных и ложных ценностей», что особенно актуально на современном этапе развития нашего общества.
Отрывки, предлагаемые на перевод с русского языка на английский позволяют не только активизировать лексику, но и сравнить образные средства, используемые для отражения действительности и создания картины мира средствами этих языков, обсудить лексические сходства и различия.
Федорович О.С.
UNITE I
Introduction
Read the extract from Judy’s letter.
19th December
Dear Daddy-Long-Legs,
…
9.45 p.m.
I have a new unbreakable rule: never, never to study at night no matter how many written reviews are coming in the morning. Instead, I read just plain books--I have to, you know, because there are eighteen blank years behind me. You wouldn't believe, Daddy, what an abyss of ignorance my mind is; I am just realizing the depths myself.
The things that most girls with a properly assorted family and a home and friends and a library know by absorption, I have never heard of.
For example:
I never read Mother Goose or David Copperfield or Ivanhoe or Cinderella or Blue Beard or Robinson Crusoe or Jane Eyre or Alice in Wonderland or a word of Rudyard Kipling. I didn't know that Henry the Eighth was married more than once or that Shelley was a poet. I didn't know that people used to be monkeys and that the Garden of Eden was a beautiful myth. I didn't know that R. L. S. stood for Robert Louis Stevenson or that George Eliot was a lady.
I had never seen a picture of the `Mona Lisa' and (it's true but you won't believe it) I had never heard of Sherlock Holmes.
Now, I know all of these things and a lot of others besides, but you can see how much I need to catch up. And oh, but it's fun! I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an `engaged' on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read one book isn't enough. I have four going at once. Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and Vanity Fair and Kipling's Plain Tales and - don't laugh - Little Women. I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on Little Women. I haven't told anybody though (that WOULD stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month's allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I'll know what she is talking about!
(Ten o'clock bell. This is a very interrupted letter.)
…
Goodbye, Daddy, I hope that you are feeling as happy as am.
Yours ever,
Judy
Tasks
Pay attention to the underlined passage.
What do you know about the author of “Little Women”?
Do you know all the names mentioned in the letter? If not, look them up in the Encyclopedia.
Prepare the report about one of the famous people mentioned in the letter.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888). Now best remembered for her classic tale “Little Women”, Alcott was a prolific and varied writer who did much to promote the cause of women's suffrage.
Louisa May Alcott was born on 29 November, 1832; her father's (the prominent transcendentalist, Amos Branson Alcott) thirty-third birthday. She was the second of Amos and his wife Abba May's four daughters, and was brought up in Concord, Massachusetts. Educated at home, Louisa was fascinated by books and from an early age recalls 'playing with books in my father's study . . . looking at pictures, pretending to read, and scribbling on blank pages whenever pen or pencil could be found'. As she grew older she devoured the books in the family library, reading widely from both American and European authors. She also found great intellectual stimulation in the men in her father's circle, eminent figures such as Emerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne. Her father's strong anti-materialism, coupled with his complete financial ineptitude, often meant that the family found it difficult to make ends meet, and from an early age all the children were expected to help out by taking in sewing, teaching or doing domestic service. After the death of her sister Lizzie in 1858 and her sister Anna's marriage, Louisa became more involved with her writing, often contributing articles, short stories and poems to periodicals. Alcott never married ('I'd rather be a free spinster and paddle my own canoe'), and many of her essays explore the possibilities of a single life for women. In 1862 she volunteered as a nurse in a Civil War army hospital in Washington but after only six weeks she contracted typhoid fever and was forced to return home. The break from her family and her experiences gave her the material for her first successful book, “Hospital Sketches”. During the next few years, as her writing became more profitable, she was able to give up her other jobs and write full-time. Alcott experimented with several different styles of writing and pseudonyms, at one time calling herself Flora Fairfield. She also wrote several lurid thrillers under the ambiguous pen-name 'A. M. Barnard', and of these “Behind a Mask” is probably the best known. The success of “Little Women” in 1868 brought both fame and the financial security she had so long desired for her family and she went on to write other stories in the same vein: “An Old-Fashioned Girl” (1870), “Little Men” (1871), “Eight Cousins” (1875), “Rose in Bloom” (1876), “Jo's Boys” (1886) and others. In 1871 Alcott visited Europe and on her return to Boston became involved with women's suffrage and temperance movements. Alcott died in Boston in 1888, the same day her father was buried.
“Little Women” was originally published in two volumes (October 1868 and April 1869), the first entitled “Little Women, or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy” and the second simply known as 'Part Second'. In England, however, the second volume was given the title “Good Wives”, a decision Alcott played no part in. The sisters in the book are modelled on Alcott's own siblings, May, Elizabeth and Anna, who appear respectively as Amy, Beth and Meg; Alcott herself is the model for Jo.
Tasks
Work with the Encyclopedia. Speak on the following:
transcendentalist
Emerson
Thoreau
Hawthorne.
Essential Vocabulary
prolific - а) плодородный (о почве) Syn: fertile, fruitful
б) плодовитый, плодоносный (о животных, растениях)
to promote - а) способствовать, помогать, содействовать; поддерживать;
создавать благоприятные условия для продажи
б) рекламировать; содействовать продаже какого-л. товара Advertising companies are always having to think up new ways to promote products. — Рекламные компании всегда должны изобретать новые способы заинтересовать потребителя в покупке товара.
suffrage - а) право голоса, избирательное право;
to extend, grant suffrage — предоставить право голоса, наделить
избирательным правом;
female suffrage, women's suffrage — избирательное право для женщин
fascinated - заколдованный; очарованный; загипнотизированный
fascinate - 1) восхищать, приводить в восторг, очаровывать, пленять (at, with); His eloquence fascinates and astonishes. — Его красноречие завораживает и изумляет. Syn: charm; enchant
scribble - писать быстро и небрежно
ineptitude - неспособность, неумелость, неумение (at, in)
to demonstrate, display ineptitude — проявлять неспособность
Syn: incapacity , inability, irrelevance, unsuitableness, unfitness
take in - 1) принимать (гостя); предоставлять приют;
брать (жильцов и т. п.); брать (работу на дом)
to take in washing — брать на дом стирку
(taking in sewing, teaching…)
involved - связанный, вовлеченный (in; with);
to become involved with smth. - увлечься чем-л.
emotionally involved with… - эмоционально связанный с…
contribute - вносить вклад (в науку, литературу и т. п.);
сотрудничать (в газете, журнале) (to)
to paddle one's own canoe - ни от кого не зависеть; действовать независимо
lurid - страшный, зловещий, угрожающий
to cast/throw a lurid light on - бросать зловещий, мрачный свет
ambiguous – двусмысленный, сомнительный; неопределенный, неясный;
допускающий двоякое толкование; неоднозначный
Comment on the following:
Her father's strong anti-materialism, coupled with his complete financial ineptitude, often meant that the family found it difficult to make ends meet.
The Alcotts
“In those days the prophets were not honored in their own land, and Concord had not discovered her men. It was a sort of refuge for reformers of all sorts whom the good natives regarded as lunatics, harmless but amusing.”
“Recollections of my childhood”
Louisa May Alcott,
May, 1888
Bronson Alcott called it "Hillside" before Hawthorne changed its name to The Wayside. Here Louisa May Alcott and her sisters lived many of the childhood adventures recalled in her 1868 classic, “Little Women”
Bronson and Abby Alcott instilled ideals that Louisa would champion throughout her life, in her writings and in her actions. In 1847, with hardly enough money to feed themselves, the Alcotts sheltered a fugitive slave at Hillside. "His stay with us has given image and a name to the dire entity of slavery, and was an impressive lesson so my children, " Bronson recorded.
Bronson remained the primary teacher of his children: encouraging self expression, a love of Nature, helping others, tempering independence with self control and finding one's own niche in life. Many of these ideas were put into practice at "Plumfield" in 1871 in Louisa's “Little Men”.
Her father's Concord friends and neighbors, fellow writers and reformers Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ellery Channing also filled Louisa's childhood with rich and varied experiences and inspired many characters that appeared later in her written works.
While many of her novels and stories possess a warm, human quality that for over a century has won her millions of admirers throughout the world, her writing at Hillside was of a different sort.
Writing at the Wayside
While living at "Hillside,” Louisa, thrilled at getting her own room for the first time, got down to the business of writing. Her early literary efforts were drawn from "real imagination", not real life - fairy tales, like "The Frost King." that she told to Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter, Ellen; fanciful stories about places she had never been ("The Rival Painters - A Tale of Rome.”) and chilling plays filled with loathsome villains and damsels in distress, written with her sister, Anna, and performed by the four girls.
From these youthful literary efforts came her first published book, “Flower Fables” (1855), dedicated to Ellen Emerson and her first I published story ("The Rival Painters") in 1852.
Her best known works from the Hillside years still live on the pages of “Little Women”, providing some of its most endearing and entertaining scenes. While the plays, including "Norna; Or, The Witch's Curse," "Captive of Castile: Or, The Moorish Maiden's Vow," and "The Unloved Wife; Or, Woman's Faith" were products of youthful imagination, the performances of the "Little Women" in the book recaptured fond memories of plays created and staged at Hillside.
You can imagine as you tour The Wayside and stroll the grounds some of the activities that filled the Alcott sisters' days - playacting Louisa's "lurid tales" in the barn, climbing the colonial staircase and the hill outside during a game of "Pilgrim's Progress," borrowing books from the Emerson's library, walking to Walden Pond, doing household chores, or enjoying quiet moments together.
Tasks
Comment on the following:
“In those days the prophets were not honored in their own land, and Concord had not discovered her men. It was a sort of refuge for reformers of all sorts whom the good natives regarded as lunatics, harmless but amusing.”
Essential Vocabulary
instill - исподволь внушать; вселять (надежду, страх и т. п.; in, into; with)
Parents try to instill in (to) their children the best of moral principles. —
Родители пытаются внушить детям лучшие моральные принципы.
dire - а) страшный, ужасный, жуткий; внушающий ужас; предвещающий
несчастье Syn: dreadful, evil
неприятный, противный, мерзкий /dire entity/
entity - суть, существо, сущность
About the Novel
Little Women
“Little Women” is a novel by Louisa May Alcott published on September 30, 1868, concerning the lives and loves of four sisters growing up during the American Civil War. It was based on Alcott's own experiences as a child in Concord. Massachusetts. After much demand, Louisa May Alcott wrote a sequel, “Good Wives”, which was published in 1 869 and is often published together with “Little Women” as if it were a single work. “Good Wives” picks up three years after the events in the last chapter of “Little Women” ("Aunt March Settles The Question"), and includes characters and events often felt by fans to be essential to the “Little Women” story.
Alcott later wrote “Little Men” and “Jo's Boys, (which followed the lives of the girls' children) and “An Old Fashioned Girl”, “Rose in Bloom” and “How They Turned Out”.
Plot introduction
Alcott's original work explores the overcoming of character flaws by following the example of Christian in Pilgrim's Progress (many of the chapter titles in this first part are allusions to the allegorical concepts and places in Pilgrim's Progress). The girls' "guidebooks" in their figurative quest are the bibles they each receive on Christmas morning in Chapter Two. Each of the March girls displays a major character flaw: Meg, greed; Jo, anger; Beth, crippling shyness; and Amy, selfishness. They overcome their flaws through lessons learned the hard way. Most of the flaws are in check for a time after lessons are learned, but even as young women the girls must work out these flaws in order to become archetypal mothers, wives, sisters, and citizens.
In the course of the novel the girls become friends with their next-door neighbour Laurie, who becomes a special friend of Jo. As well as the more serious themes outlined above, the book describes the activities of the sisters and their friend, such as creating a newspaper and picnicking, and the scrapes that Jo and Laurie get into.
Characters
Josephine or "Jo": The protagonist of the novel. Jo is a tomboy and the second-oldest sister. She is very outspoken and has a passion for writing. Her bold nature often gets her into trouble. She is especially close to her younger sister Beth, who helps her become a gentler person. Jo cuts off her long hair "her one beauty" - as Amy calls it, and sells it to a wig shop to get money for her mother to visit their father, a wounded Civil War chaplain. She refuses the proposal of marriage from family friend Theodore Laurence ("Laurie"), and later marries Professor Fritz Bhaer.
Margaret or "Meg": The eldest sister. She is described as being very pretty and somewhat vain about her looks, with smooth hair and small, white hands. She is the most responsible and helps run the household in her mother's absence. Meg also guards Amy from Jo when they have fights, just like Jo protects Beth. Due to the family's poverty she must work as a governess for wealthy friends. After having bad experiences with some rich people. Meg learns to tolerate being poor, and eventually discovers that true worth does, not lie with money. She falls in love with Mr. John Brooke. Laurie's pour tutor. She eventually marries Mr. Brooke and bears twin children. Margaret ("Daisy") and John. Jr. (“Demi”, short for “Demi-John”)
Elizabeth or "Beth": The second-youngest sister, is a quiet, kind young woman who loves playing the piano and looking after her dolls. She is docile and sin almost to a fault. Beth also engages with charily. While her mother is nursing their father, she contracts scarlet fever from a poor family and ultimately dies, never recovering from her illness. She is described as having a round face, and appearing younger than her years.
Amy: The youngest sister and a talented artist. Amy is described as a beautiful young girl with golden hair (in curls) and blue eyes (she is described as having the general traits of a "snow maiden"). She cares about her family, but is also very self-centered and vain, often feeling the need to have what all of the other girls have and feeling that she is of "high importance". In her youth she is slightly spoiled and is inclined to throw tantrums when things do not go her way, being often "pelted" since she was the youngest. She eventually travels abroad thanks to her aunt Carrol, and finally marries Laurie in “Good Wives”.
Margaret March or "Marmee": The girls' mother and head of household while her husband is away. She engages in charitable works and attempts to guide her girls’ morals and shape their characters.
Theodore Laurence or "Laurie": A charming, playful, and rich young man who lives next door to the March family with his stern grandfather. He is often misunderstood by his grandfather, who loves him, yet worries that Laurie will follow in his father's footsteps. His father was a free-spirited young man who eloped with an Italian pianist and was disowned for that, only to die young of illness along with his wife and eldest daughter. Laurie is the only one of their little family who survives, and then he's sent to live with Mr. Laurence. Alter Jo refuses to marry him he flees to Europe to study art. While there, he falls in love with and marries Amy.
Hannah Mullet: The maid оf the March family, an older woman, who (from a letter written in the first person in the text) is described as kind and loyal, if lacking in formal education.
Aunt March: A rich widow. She lives alone in her mansion and Jo is employed to wait on her each day. Actually Mr. March's aunt, she disapproves of his family's charitable work and loss of wealth, while throwing her weight around with hers. Amy is sent to be Aunt March's "companion" when Beth is ill; though at first she is dismayed, her tenure there does the spoiled little girl good.
Mrs. Kirke: A friend of Marmee's who runs a boarding house in New York, She employs Jo as governess to her two girls, Kitly and Minnie, for a time.
Professor Fricdrich (Fritz) Bhaer: A poor German immigrant, who lives in Mrs. Kirke's boarding house and tutors her children. He and Jo become friends and he critiques Jo's work, encouraging her to become a serious writer instead of writing "sensation" stories for weekly tabloids. The two eventually marry.
Mr. March: Formerly wealthy, it is implied that he helped unscrupulous friends who did not repay the debt, resulting in the family's poverty. A great scholar and a minister, he serves as a chaplain for the Union Army.
Mr. Laurence: A wealthy neighbor to the Marches. Lonely in his mansion, and often at odds with his high-spirited grandson, Laurie, he finds comfort in becoming a benefactor to the Marches. He admires their charity, and develops a special friendship with Beth, who reminds him of his dead granddaughter (Laurie's deceased sister).
John Brooke: Tutor to Laurie, a naturalized citizen (he is English). He falls in love with Meg: she initially rejects him until Aunt March prohibits the match, at which point she realizes she is in love as well. He serves in the Union Army after late 1861 and marries Meg after the war.
Other characters:
Franz and Emil: Mr. Bhaer's two nephews whom he looks after following the death of his sister.
Miss Norton: A worldly tenant living in Mrs. Kirke's boarding house. She occasionally takes Jo under her wing and entertains her.
The Kings: Family who employ Meg as a governess.
The Hummels: Very poor German immigrant family. Marmee and the girls, though poor themselves, try to help them. Their baby dies of scarlet fever and Beth contracts it while caring for the child.
The Gardiners. Wealthy friends of Meg's. Before the Marches lost their wealth, the two families were societal equals. The Gardiners are portrayed as good-hearted but vapid, and believing in marriage for money and position. Meg's friend Sallie Gardiner eventually marries Ned Moffat, but is unhappy in her marriage.
Uncle and Aunt Carrol: Sister and brother-in-law of Mr. March. Amy travels to Europe with them and their daughter Florence.
This is just a little sketch of the four sisters and other characters.
What the characters of the four sisters were and how they developed we will leave to be found out while reading.
Tasks:
From every chapter write out additional details about the characters. Pay special attention to the way they “struggled with the Lions” and overcame their drawbacks.
Study the following material. Arrange the discussion.
Major themes
The Christian theme of the novel is usually lessened in film versions. Of the many popular versions, the four-hour miniseries with Dey, Birney, and Plumb is considered most faithful to the novel.
Notable adaptations
Literature
In 2005, Geraldine Brooks published March, a novel exploring the gaps in Little Women, telling the story of Mr. March during the Civil War. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Film
1933 version: Katharine Hepburn as Jo, Spring Byington as Marmee.
1949 version: Elizabeth Taylor as Amy. June A. Hyson as Jo. Janet Leigh as Meg. Margaret O'Brien as Beth. Man Astoras Marmee and Peter Law Ford as Laurie.
1978 version: Meredith Baxter as Meg, Susan Dey as Jo, Eve Plumb as Beth, William Shatner as Friedrich Bhaer. Greer Garson as Aunt March, and Robert Young as Grandpa James Lawrence.
1994 version: Susan Sarandon as Marmee. Winona Ryder as Jo, Kirsten Dunst as the younger Amy, Claire Danes as Beth. Christian Bale as Laurie and Samantha Math is as the older Amy.
Additional versions appeared in 1917, 1918, 1946, 1948, 1950, 1958. 1970, 1979, and 2001 [1] (http://www.imdb.com 'narne/nm0017301/).
Anime
In 1987 the Japanese animation studio Nippon Animation did an anime adaptation titled Ai no Wukakusa
Orchard House - the home of the extraordinary Alcott family, where Louisa May Alcott wrote and set “Little Women”.
Translate the following texts from English into Russian in writing.
1. Orchard House – Home of the Alcotts is a historic house owned and operated by the Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association. The Louisa May Alcott Memorial Association is a private, not-for-profit corporation, founded in 1911. The Association provides the financial and human resources required to conduct public tours, exhibits and the curatorial work which continue the tradition of the Alcotts, a unique Nineteenth Century family.
2. Since its publication more than 125 years ago, Louisa May Alcott’s autobiographical classic has never been out of print. Now this enduring tribute to feminine strength and independence, the moving story of how the four “little women” of the March family cope with life, love and death during the last days of the Civil War, comes alive for a new generation in the spectacular Columbia Tristar film.
Now listen to the recording of this novel read by Gayle Hunnicutt, enjoy yourself and be ready to discuss it.