- For free diagnostic lesson: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-trial-class.html
Registration for seminars/workshops: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-seminar.html
Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com
Registration for seminars/workshops: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-seminar.html Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com Did these prejudices prevail only among the meanest and lowest of the people, perhaps they might be excused, as they have few, if any, opportunities of correcting them by reading, traveling, or conversing with foreigners; but the misfortune is, that they infect the minds, and influence the conduct even of our gentlemen; of those, I mean, who have every title to this appellation but an exemption from prejudice, which, however, in my opinion, ought to be regarded as the characteristical mark of a gentleman: for let a man's birth be ever so high, his station ever so exalted, or his fortune ever so large, yet if he is not free from national and other prejudices, I should make bold to tell him, that he had a low and vulgar mind, and had no just claim to the character of a gentleman. And in fact, you will always find that those are most apt to boast of national merit, who have little or no merit of their own to depend on, than which, to be sure, nothing is more natural: the slender vine twists around the sturdy oak for no other reason in the world but because it has not strength sufficient to support itself.
0 Comments
Registration for seminars/workshops: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-seminar.html Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com Irish poet, essayist, and dramatist Oliver Goldsmith is best known for the comic play She Stoops to Conquer, the long poem The Deserted Village, and the novel The Vicar of Wakefield. In his essay "On National Prejudices," Goldsmith argues that it is possible to love one's own country "without hating the natives of other countries." Compare Goldsmith's thoughts on patriotism with Max Eastman's extended definition in "What Is Patriotism?" and with Alexis de Tocqueville's discussion of patriotism in Democracy in America (1835).
Registration for seminars/workshops: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-seminar.html Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com The first two paragraphs of Ernest Hemingway's short story "In Another Country" illustrate the author's effective use of repetition and polysyndeton. In The Art of Fiction (Viking, 1992), David Lodge notes that "repetition on this scale would probably receive a black mark in a school 'composition,'" but that Hemingway "breaks the rules" deliberately--to convey a sense of experience as it was experienced, "using simple, denotative language purged of stylistic decoration."
Hemingway's stripped-down style has often been imitated for comic effect, as demonstrated in our glossary entry for parody.
Registration for seminars/workshops: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-seminar.html Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com Hyperbole, circumlocution, inflated diction, and abstruse allusions are just a few of the characteristics of S.J. Perelman's comic prose style. In these opening paragraphs from an essay on the animate and articulate groceries in his icebox, Perelman exuberantly illustrates Erasmus's definition of copia: "a magnificent and impressive thing, surging along like a golden river, with thoughts and words pouring out in rich abundance."
Registration for seminars/workshops: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-seminar.html Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com My Life and Hard Times is one of the shortest autobiographies on record--not because James Thurber had so little to say about himself but because he expressed himself so clearly and concisely (and, we must add, humorously). In the following paragraph, notice how Thurber helps to maintain our interest by varying the length of his sentences.
Registration for seminars/workshops: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-seminar.html Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com The narrator of Bernard Malamud's third novel, A New Life (1961), is Sy Levin, a troubled English teacher who abandons New York City in search of renewal at a mythical college in the Pacific Northwest. In this paragraph from early in the novel, Levin relates his encounter with his first class on the opening day of the fall term. Notice the various kinds of subordination used by Malamud, in particular participial phrases andabsolutes.
Registration for seminars/workshops: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-seminar.html Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com Best known for her prize-winning novel The Color Purple (1983), Alice Walker is also a notable poet and essayist. In the opening paragraphs of the narrative essay "Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self," Walker employs the historical present as she mingles the point of viewof her childhood self with that of the adult who is recalling the experience.
Registration for seminars/workshops: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-seminar.html Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com From the Latin word stylus, "a pointed instrument used for writing." That, according to our glossary entry, is what the word style meant 2,000 years ago. Nowadays, definitions of style point not to the instrument used by the writer but to characteristics of the writing itself:
Registration for seminars/workshops: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-seminar.html Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com This is the order of nature to prevent animals being infected by their own perspiration. He will now be sensible of the difference between the part exposed to the air and that which, remaining sunk in the bed, denies the air access; for this part now manifests its uneasiness more distinctly by the comparison, and the seat of the uneasiness is more plainly perceived than when the whole surface of the body was affected by it.
Registration for seminars/workshops: http://www.lecturesbymarymoore.com/registration-for-seminar.html Website: www.lecturesbymarymoore.com In an essay first published in 1786, American statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) offers advice on "preserving health" and avoiding "unpleasing dreams." Consider which of Franklin's recommendations may still be worth heeding in our own time.
|
Mary MooreInternational Lecturer of Lectures International by Mary Moore Archives
September 2013
Categories
All
|