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.