Reading modern British literature. Part 2. Учебное пособие

out, down and up. Vic threads the tunnels, switches lanes, swings out on to a long covered ramp that leads to a six-lane expressway thrust like a gigantic concrete fist through the backstreets of his boyhood. Every morning Vic drives over the flattened site of his Gran's house and passes at chimney-pot level the one in which he himself grew up, where his widower father still stubbornly lives on in spite of all Vic's efforts to persuade him to move, like a sailor clinging to the rigging of a sinking ship - buffeted, deafened and choked by the thundering torrent of traffic thirty yards from his bedroom window.

Vic swings on to the motorway, going north-west, and for a few miles gives the Jaguar its head, moving smoothly up the outside lane at go, keeping a watchful eye on the rear-view mirror, though the police rarely bother you in the rush hour, they are as eager as anyone to keep the traffic flowing. To his right and left spreads a familiar landscape, so familiar that he does not really see it, an expanse of houses and factories, warehouses and sheds, railway lines and canals, piles of scrap metal and heaps of damaged cars, container ports and lorry parks, cooling towers and gasometers. A monochrome landscape, grey under a low grey sky, its horizons blurred by a grey haze.

8.What stylistic devices are employed in the description of the factory?

A factory is sustained by the energy of its own functioning, the throb and whine of machinery, the clash of metal, the unceasing motion of the assembly lines, the ebb and flow of workers changing shifts, the hiss of airbrakes and the growl of diesel engines from wagons delivering raw materials at one gate, taking away finished goods at the other. When you put a stop to all that, when the place is silent and empty, all that is left is a large, ramshackle shed - cold, filthy and depressing.

9.Identify the stylistic value of the expression Mr New Broom used in reference to Vic (p.34).

10.Name the narrative technique that might be observed in the following passage (p.39):

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And there, for the time being, let us leave Vic Wilcox, while we travel back an hour or two in time, a few miles in space, to meet a very different character. A character who, rather awkwardly for me, doesn't herself believe in the concept of character. That is to say (a favourite phrase of her own), Robyn Penrose, Temporary Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Rummidge, holds that `character' is a bourgeois myth, an illusion created to reinforce the ideology of capitalism.

11.Comment upon the description of Robyn from the point of stylistics:

Charles's success in landing a job provoked in Robyn the first twinge of jealousy, the first spasm of pique, to mar their relationship. She had grown used to being the dominant partner, the teachers' favourite, the victrix ludorum (p.47).

12.Find examples of detached constructions and nominative sentences on pages 55-59. Comment upon the usage of these syntactical patterns.

13.What stylistic device is employed to describe Rupert Sutcliffe (p.63)

in the following passage: “… he had not been embarrassed by a large number of

invitations”?

14.Who does the author allude to naming Robyn “a female Pied Piper”?

15.Find an example of simile used to describe students present at

Robyn’s lecture (p.72). Comment upon its relevance.

16.Explain the stylistic value of the phrase mentioned by Robyn: “the Industrial Revolution had completely dislocated the traditional structure of English society, bringing riches to a few and misery to the many” (p.73). Give a general linguistic and stylistic analysis of Robyn’s speech.

17.Comment upon evaluative component of Robyn’s phrase “rugbyplaying boys in the back row” (p.74).

18.Point out the denotative and connotative meanings of the phrase

“pancake make-up” (p.82).

19.What is meant by universities being referred to as “’ivory tower’

institutions” (p.85)?

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20.Find examples of pun in the speech of Philip Swallow.

Post-reading activities

1.Comment on the following words.

1)“If you make college too comfortable nobody will ever want to leave it to do proper work”.

2)“Now the workforce has shrunk to less than a thousand, and much of the

plant is in disuse. It is cheaper to it rot than to clear it away”.

3) “The novelist is a capitalist of the imagination. He or she invents a product which consumers didn't know they wanted until it is made available, manufactures it with the assistance of purveyors of risk capital known as publishers, and sells it in competition with makers of marginally differentiated products of the same kind”.

4) “We produce our ‘selves’ in language”.

2.How tall is Vic? How much does he weigh? Present the results in centimeters and in kilograms accordingly.

3.Prepare a mind map comparing the houses of Vic and Robyn. Use www.mindmeister.com or www.xmind.net to help you with your project.

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Part 2

Pp.91-150

Pre-reading tasks

1.Search the Internet and find out information about the state of the British industrial and educational institutions in the 1980s.

2.Study the secondary sources and report about the feminist movement in the world and Britain, in particular. Comment upon its influence on the state policy and society.

Focus on the contents

1. Answer the following questions.

1)Describe the town as Robyn saw it.

2)What reasons made the main characters take part in the Shadow

Scheme?

3)How did Vic react to the news he was going to be “shadowed” by a

woman? Why did he react in that way?

4)What impression did Vic and his work produce on Robyn?

5)What is the main characters’ attitude to strikes?

6)What does each of them think about the job of their “shadow”?

7)Describe the factory as Robyn saw it.

8)How is Robyn perceived by the factory workers?

9)Why did Robyn decide to warn Danny Ram that he was likely to be

fired?

Focus on vocabulary

1. Glossary. Note down the words and word combinations, memorize

them.

Nouns: a tenure (94), a suspicion (95), a vehicle (96), a pushchair (97), barbed wire (97), a child-molester (97), a loop (98), a rear-view mirror (100), a

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juggernaut (100), a steering wheel (100), windscreen wipers (100), exasperation (101), shambles (102), a pump (103), johnny (103), a martinet (103), a glove compartment (103), a testimonial (104), a dodge (108), cufflinks (109), a rebuke (110), a strike (112), a PR stunt (114), shop floor (119), overalls (120), an assembly line (121), a swing door (123), an aisle (124), debris (125), a carpenter (129), resin (129), goggles (132), nostrils (134), a bottle-neck (143), a bonnet (149).

Verbs: to sacrifice (93), to demur (94), to hiss (95), to postpone (95), to ponder (95), to hoot (99), to stoop (99), to usher (104), to underestimate (109), to relent (121), to grunt (122), to dedicate (p.140).

Adjectives: attired (96), artificial fur (96), treacherous (96), mundane (97), dingy (98), snug (98), swarthy (99), tortuous (103), ludicrous (107), exalted (111), ominous (117), almighty (119), deafening (121), perceptible (121), bleak (122), sallow-faced (122), medieval (128), transparent (129), rickety (130).

Adverbs: radiantly (94), aloft (96), perversely (96), affectedly (106), precariously (108), jauntily (108), unctuously (109), irritably (112), defiantly (116), jocularly (118), incredulously (122), genuinely (124), poignantly (125), relentlessly (128), earnestly (128), frantically (129), placatingly (138), gruffly (150).

Phrases: to exert leverage on … (95), to start an engine (96), a cast-iron excuse (96), in deplorable taste (98), at random (99), for some inscrutable reason (104), an ailing pet (104), to go spare (107), to have a dekko (108), to grow into (109), in a pregnant silence (112), in the red (113), a blurred memory (120), to take smth for granted (120), in reverse (122), to be on song (129), pride and joy (129).

2.Transcribe the following words: a vehicle, exasperation, tenure, demur, usher, treacherous, tortuous, exalted, perceptible, an aisle, debris.

3.Guess the word by its definition.

1) to make a long ‘s’ sound like the sound that a snake makes to say

something in a low angry voice;

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2)thick wire with a lot of sharp points sticking out of it, used for making

fences;

3)used for emphasizing how great, loud, or serious something is;

4)the wheel in a vehicle that you hold and turn to control the direction it

travels in;

5)someone having dark skin;

6)a piece of equipment for making a liquid or gas move into or out of

something;

7)a formal statement about someone’s qualities and character, usually

provided by an employer; a more usual word is reference;

8)ordinary and not interesting or exciting, especially because of happening too regularly;

9)to make a short low sound in your throat and nose at the same time;

10)making you think that something bad will happen.

4.Define the following words: a pushchair, cufflinks, overalls, a glove compartment, to stoop, to hoot, artificial fur, deafening, ludicrous, bleak, debris, resin, rickety.

5.Provide the context for the adverbs from the glossary list.

6.Use the phrases from the glossary list in the sentences of your own.

7.Study the context and extra sources to explain the meaning of the following expressions; decipher the abbreviations:

1)a boiler suit (p.95);

2)Yuppies (p.97);

3)seeing is believing (p.107);

4)finger mittens (p.101);

5)to know which side bread is buttered on (p.113);

6)toffee-nosed (p.114);

7)Nancy boys (p.114);

8)MoD (p.119);

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9)bird’s-eye-view (p.132);

10)a golden handshake (p.135);

11)off your trolley (p.138);

12)a laughing stock (p.141);

13)forewarned is forearmed (p.147);

14)AA (p.148).

Focus on culture

1.What information does the author convey saying that “a cinema [was]

converted into a bingo hall, a church converted into a community centre, a Co-op

converted into a Freezer Centre” (p.97).

2.Comment upon the proper names in the following passage “she passes

…Sketchleys, Motaparts, Currys” (p.98). What do they refer to?

3.On her way to the factory “Robyn consults her A to Z” (p.99); explain

what is meant by “A to Z”.

4.Who is “a Peeping Tom” (p.109)? Why is Vic compared to this

character?

5.What “weapon” does the author allude to in the passage “a Thatcherite weapon against the working class” (p.120). What can you say about Mrs Thatcher’s policy in the sphere of British industry?

6.What kind of activity is Robyn’s mother involved in? What does

“coffee morning” have to do with it (p.130)?

Focus on style

1.Study the epigraph to the part (p.91), identify its source and report how it reflects the contents of the book.

2.Identify what narrative techniques are employed in the following

passages:

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- “After all, if the University wasn’t going to keep her on (Swallow’s request had come, rather tactlessly, later in the same very day on which he had communicated this gloomy prognosis) why should she put herself out to oblige the University?” (p.93);

-“I wish I hadn’t now’, said Robyn. ‘I wish I’d told him to, to …” (p.93);

-“Prison is just a word to Robyn, a word in a book or a newspaper, a

symbol of something - the law, hegemony, repression ('The prison motif in Little Dorrit is a metaphorical articulation of Dickens's critique of Victorian culture and society' - Discuss)” (p.97);

3. Analyze Penny Black’s speech from the stylistic point; quote the text to provide the proofs.

Why does she oppose to being called Jack-in-the-box (p.94)? What is the denotative and connotative meaning of this expression?

4.Comment upon the stylistic value of the following weather description “a sky swirling with snowflakes, like a shaken paperweight” (p.95). Does it make a vivid image?

5.What does Robyn compare shop windows to (p.98)?

6.Analyze speech of the local people Robyn met on her way to the factory.

What is the normative received pronunciation phrase for their “The weed, man,

wudjerthink” (p.100)?

7.Who is referred to with a name “Ali Baba” (p.101)? Comment upon the stylistic value of this lexeme.

8.Analyze Brian Everthorpe’s speech, his choice of words, etc. What image

is created due to your observations? For example, what quality is deduced from his

mispronunciation of the original phrase “not exactly cordon blue” (p.138)?

9.How do you understand the remark made by Brian Everthorpe “You’re never Vic Wilcox’s shadow?” Comment upon its stylistic value.

10.Find examples of slang words in the chapter; note them down.

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11.Study the origin of the phrase “to have a dekko” (p.108). Comment on the contextual usage of it.

12.Reflect on the usage of graphon in the following passage “the master

was a toffee-nosed southerner who used to take the pito make fun of our accents”

(p.114).

13. Comment upon the stylistic effect and means that might be observed in the following passage:

“Jesus wept! Not just a lecturer in English Literature, not just a woman lecturer in English Literature, but a trendy lefty feminist lecturer in English Literature! A tall trendy leftist feminist lecturer in English Literature!” (p.116).

14. How can you account for Robyn using the definite article in the following phrase: “The noise. The dirt. The mindless, repetitive work. The … everything” (p.120).

15. Analyze the following passage, reflect upon its stylistic value: “The whole place seemed designed to produce, not goods for the outside world, but misery for the inmates. What Wilcox called the machine shop had seemed like a prison, and the foundry had seemed like hell” (p.121). Explain what has made the bases for comparison.

16. What stylistic effect is produced by the following phrases referring to the factory and its workers: “oily-pawed mechanic” (p.124), “machines are blind”

(p.125), “hulks of machinery crouched, bleeding rust into their blankets of snow”

(127), “the workers looked more like devils or the damned” (p.128), “it was like a small pinnacle in Pandemonium, dark and hot, and the two squatting Sikhs who rolled their white eyeballs and flashed their teeth in her direction, poking with steel rods at the molten for no discernible purpose, looked like demons on an old fresco” (p.130), ‘metal splashed like pancake batter” (p.132)? Define their stylistic nature.

17. What image of a girl is created in your mind if she is described in the following way “she looks like a double helping of pink blanc-mange, and about as

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exciting” (p.139). Who is described like this? Comment upon the stylistic value of the passage.

18. What allusion can you trace in the following passage “returning from this expedition into the cultural heart of darkness” (p.141)?

Post-reading activities

1.Comment on the following words.

1)“Clothes do not merely serve the practical purpose of covering our

bodies, but also convey messages about who we are, what we are doing, and how

we feel”.

2)“Well, it’s nice work. It’s meaningful. It’s rewarding. I don’t mean in money terms. It would be worth doing even if one wasn’t paid anything at all”.

3)“That’s the trouble with capitalism, isn’t it? It’s a lottery. There are winners and losers”.

2.Would you like to follow Robyn’s steps and visit the factory of the

similar profile. Do you think you may also feel “like Dante in the Inferno”?

3. Do you think Robyn will ever come back to the factory? Try to predict the further events unfolding in the novel.

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