2012/2013 English 10

The objective for English this year was to deepen my understanding of English literature and to analyse literary texts in greater detail.
I read literary works and analysed these in detail, including historical background, author''s life, literary epoche and style, stylistic elements and narrative, main and secondary characters and character development, etc. 

English Literature

In addition to the 20th century literature and poetry, I read medieval works, like Beowulf, the Old English epic poem, and excerpts of other Old English works. Because I have bean learning about the ethymology of the Western Germanic language group, I was able to recognize linguistic elements that are related in other languages.
In ''clockwork orange'' for example, the author uses language to emphasize the vastly different world in which the book is situated and at the same time uses these synthetic ''slang'' words to prevent the book from becoming dated too soon.
I analysed two poems about dead and dying of soldiers in the First World War, which were practically polar opposites in the feelings that they try to evoke.
Apart from literature I analyzed some Essays to practise summarizing and analyzing arguments. Also I worked on the right way to integrate the sources in essays by means of citation.

These are some of the works I read:

Beowulf                - Anonymous
Romeo and Juliet  - William Shakespeare
Hamlet                 - William Shakespeare
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
The great Gatsby  - F. Scott Fitzgerald
House of Night    - P.C. and Kristen Cast
The soldier           - Rupert Brooke
When you see millions of mouthless dead - Charles Hamilton Sorley

The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:  

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; 

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam; 

A body of England’s, breathing English air, 

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, 

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less  

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; 

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; 

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, 

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke

The poem "The Soldier", that was written about the "Great War", WWI, has pathos and aims to evoke emotions in its readers. Another poet, Charles Hamilton, wrote a poem that is somewhat of a persiflage of "The soldier". It takes away all romance and concentrates on the grim face of death, of the bare and gruesome war. Rupert Booke's "corner of a field will be forever England" and "pulse in the eternal air" against >say only this; "They are dead."<.   

'When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead'

When you see millions of the mouthless dead

Across your dreams in pale battalions go,

Say not soft things as other men have said, 

That you'll remember. For you need not so. 

Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know 

It is not curses heaped on each gashed head? 

Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow. 

Nor honour. It is easy to be dead. 

Say only this, “They are dead.” Then add thereto, 

“Yet many a better one has died before.” 

Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you 

Perceive one face that you loved heretofore, 

It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.

Great death has made all his for evermore. 

Charles Hamilton Sorley, 1895–1915

Ethymology