cМОКОВСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ОБЛАСТНОЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ

ИНСТИТУТ ЛИНГИСТИКИ И МЕЖКУЛЬТУРНОЙ КОММУНИКАЦИИ

И.В. Бондаренко, Е.М. Фильчакова

УЧЕБНОЕ ПОСОБИЕ ПО ДОМАШНЕМУ ЧТЕНИЮ

ДЛЯ СТУДЕНТОВ 3 КУРСА

ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКОГО ФАКУЛЬТЕТА

Москва, 2010

Данное учебное пособие является частью учебно-методического комплекса, предназначенного для студентов третьего курса индоевропейского отдаления ИЛиМК. МГОУ. Оно состоит из учебно-методического материала, предназначенного для работы с книгой Дафны дю Морье «Моя кузина Рэчел». Рекомендуется к использованию в пятом и шестом семестрах. Пособие состоит из 26 юнитов, включающих практические задания по работе над лексикой и анализу содержания романа, а также заданий, направленных на развитие навыков устной речи на английском языке.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daphne du Maurier - /ˈdæfni duː ˈmɒri.eɪ/) was an English author and playwright. Many of her works have been adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1941, Jamaica Inn, and her short stories The Birds and Don't Look Now. The first three were directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Her elder sister was Angela du Maurier, also a writer. Her father was the actor Gerald du Maurier, and her grandfather was the writer George du Maurier.

Daphne du Maurier was born in London, the second of three daughters of the prominent actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel Beaumont (maternal niece of William Comyns Beaumont). Her grandfather was the author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier, who created the character of Svengali in the novel Trilby. These connections helped her in establishing her literary career. du Maurier published some of her very early work in Beaumont's Bystander magazine, and her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931. Du Maurier was also the cousin of the Llewelyn Davies boys, who served as J.M. Barrie's inspiration for the characters in the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. As a young child she was introduced to many of the brightest stars of the theatre thanks to the celebrity of her father. On meeting Tallulah Bankhead she was quoted as saying that the actress was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen

She married Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick "Boy" Browning,with whom she had two daughters and a son (Tessa, Flavia, and Christian). Biographers have noted that the marriage was at times somewhat chilly and that du Maurier could be aloof and distant to her children, especially the girls, when immersed in her writing. "Boy" died in 1965 and soon after Daphne moved to Kilmarth, near Par, which became the setting for The House on the Strand.

Du Maurier has often been painted as a frostily private recluse who rarely mixed in society or gave interviews. An exception to this came after the release of the film A Bridge Too Far, in which her late husband was portrayed in a less-than-flattering light. Du Maurier, incensed, wrote to the national newspapers decrying what she considered unforgivable treatment. Once out of the glare of the public spotlight, however, many remembered her as a warm and immensely funny person who was a welcoming hostess to guests at Menabilly, the house she leased for many years (from the Rashleigh family) in Cornwall. Letters from Menabilly contains the letters from du Maurier to Malet over 30 years, with Malet's commentary. (Malet's real name is Auriel Malet Vaughan.)

Daphne du Maurier was a member of the Cornish nationalist pressure group/political party Mebyon Kernow. She was spoofed by her slightly older fellow writer P. G. Wodehouse as "Daphne Dolores Morehead".

Novels, short stories and biographies

Literary critics have sometimes berated du Maurier's works for not being "intellectually heavyweight" like those of George Eliot or Iris Murdoch. By the 1950s, when the socially and politically critical "angry young men" were in vogue, her writing was felt by some to belong to a bygone age of fiction. Today she has been reappraised as a first-rate storyteller, a mistress of suspense: her ability to recreate a sense of place is much admired, and her work remains popular worldwide. For several decades she was the number one author for library book borrowings.

The novel Rebecca, which has been adapted for stage and screen on several occasions, is generally regarded as her masterpiece. One of her strongest influences here was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Her fascination with the Brontë family is also apparent in The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë, her biography of the troubled elder brother to the Brontë girls. The fact that their mother had been Cornish no doubt added to her interest.

Other notable works include The Scapegoat, The House on the Strand, and The King's General. The latter is set in the middle of the first and second English Civil Wars. Though written from the Royalist perspective of her native Cornwall, it gives a fairly neutral view of this period of history.

In addition to Rebecca, several of her other novels have been adapted for the screen, including Jamaica Inn, Frenchman's Creek, Hungry Hill and My Cousin Rachel (1951). The Hitchcock film The Birds (1963) is based on a treatment of one of her short stories, as is the film Don't Look Now (1973). Of the films, du Maurier often complained that the only ones she liked were Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca and Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. Hitchcock's treatment of Jamaica Inn involved a complete re-write of the ending in order to accommodate the ego of its star, Charles Laughton. Du Maurier also felt that Olivia de Havilland was totally wrong as the (anti-)heroine in My Cousin Rachel. Frenchman's Creek fared rather better with its lavish Technicolor sets and costumes, though du Maurier later regretted her choice of Alec Guinness as the lead in the film of The Scapegoat which she partly financed.

Du Maurier was often categorised as a "romantic novelist" (a term she deplored), though most of her novels, with the notable exception of Frenchman's Creek, are quite different from the stereotypical format of a Georgette Heyer or Barbara Cartland novel. Du Maurier's novels rarely have a happy ending, and her brand of romanticism is often at odds with the sinister overtones and shadows of the paranormal she so favoured. In this light, she has more in common with the "sensation novels" of Wilkie Collins, which she admired.

Du Maurier's novel Mary Anne (1954) is a fictionalised account of the real-life story of her great-great-grandmother, Mary Anne Clarke née Thompson (1776–1852). Mary Anne Clarke from 1803 to 1808 was mistress of Frederick Augustus, the Duke of York and Albany (1763–1827). He was the "Grand Old Duke of York" of the nursery rhyme, a son of King George III and brother of the later King George IV. In Ken Follett's thriller The Key to Rebecca, du Maurier's novel Rebecca is used as the key for a code used by a German spy in World War II Cairo. Neville Chamberlain is reputed to have read Rebecca on the plane journey which led to Adolf Hitler signing the Munich Agreement. The central character of her last novel, Rule Britannia, is an aging and eccentric actress who was based on Gertrude Lawrence and Gladys Cooper (to whom it is dedicated). However, the character is most recognisably du Maurier herself.

Indeed, it was in her short stories that she was able to give free rein to the harrowing and terrifying side of her imagination; "The Birds", Don't Look Now, The Apple Tree and The Blue Lenses are exquisitely crafted tales of terror which shocked and surprised her audience in equal measure. Perhaps more than at any other time, du Maurier was anxious as to how her bold new writing style would be received, not just with her readers (and to some extent her critics, though by then she had grown wearily accustomed to their often lukewarm reviews) but her immediate circle of family and friends.

In later life she wrote non-fiction, including several biographies which were well-received. This no doubt came from a deep-rooted desire to be accepted as a serious writer, comparing herself to her close literary neighbour, A. L. Rowse, the celebrated historian and essayist, who lived a few miles away from her house near Fowey.

Also of interest are the "family" novels/biographies which du Maurier wrote of her own ancestry, of which Gerald, the biography of her father, was most lauded. Later she wrote The Glass-Blowers, which traces her French ancestry and gives a vivid depiction of the French Revolution. The du Mauriers is a sequel of sorts, describing the somewhat problematic ways in which the family moved from France to England in the 19th century and finally Mary Anne, a novel based on the life of a notable, and infamous, English ancestor—her great-grandmother Mary Anne Clarke, former mistress of Frederick, Duke of York.

Her final novels reveal just how far her writing style had developed; The House on the Strand (1969) combines elements of "mental time-travel", a tragic love-affair in 14th century Cornwall, and the dangers of using mind-altering drugs. Her final novel, Rule Britannia, written post-Vietnam, plays with the resentment of English people in general and Cornish people in particular at the increasing dominance of the US.

In late 2006 a previously unknown work titled And His Letters Grew Colder was discovered. This was estimated to have been written in the late 1920s, and takes the form of a series of letters tracing an adulterous passionate affair from initial ardour to deflated acrimony.

Du Maurier died at age 81 at her home in Cornwall, the region that had been the setting for many of her books. Her body was cremated and her ashes scattered at Kilmarth

MY COUSIN RACHEL

UNIT 1

1. Translate the following words and word combinations and reproduce the situation from the text:

To pay the penalty, to feel sick at heart, to shy away, to grope one’s way home, to lash out at smb, insidious, in wake of smb., to impel disaster.

2. Define the following words and word combinations:

A gibbet, a weather vane, a felon, an old Sally, a scold, a justice of the peace, to be returned to Parliament, to crave affection, to give an annuity for life, to smart at smb’s presence.

3. Translate the sentences using task 1:

1). Вы никогда не сможете расплатиться за услуги подобного мошенника (to pay a penalty).

2). Питер чувствовал себя абсолютно несчастным, узнав о столь изобретательном побеге преступника из тюрьмы (to feel sick at heart).

3). Парочке преступников пришлось пробираться на ощупь в темном и узком коридоре, а все из-за того, что владелец дома решил поменять всю электрическую проводку (to grope one’s way).

4). Джейн опоздала всего на чуть-чуть, а он уже набросился на неё с упрёками и обвинениями в наихудшем (to lash out at smb.).

5). Мальчик еле-еле шел вслед за няней, думая об игрушечной железной дороге (in the wake of smb.).

6). К сожалению, но есть люли, которые таки притягивают несчастья: выйдут на улицу и могут легко сломать или вывихнуть ногу, а на худой случай просто сломать каблук (to impel disaster).

7). Коварная лисица все упрашивала ворону спеть, та каркнула, сыр выпал и была плутовку такова (insidious).

8). Вы не должны уклоняться от возможности поучаствовать в этих соревнованиях: ведь говорят, что одни соревнования равноценны многочасовым тренировкам (to shy away).

4. Comment on the following:

1). He was forever testing me.

2). "There you are, Philip," he said. "It's what we all come to in the end. Some upon a battlefield, some in bed, others according to their destiny. There's no escape. You can't learn the lesson too young. But this is how a felon dies. A warning to you and me to lead the sober life".

3). It is strange how in moments of great crisis the mind whips back to childhood.

4). The point is, life to be endured and lived.

5). But a lonely man is an unnatural man, and soon comes to perplexity. From perplexity to fantasy. From fantasy to madness.

6). We were dreamers, both of us, unpractical, reserved, full of great theories never put to test, and, like all dreamers, asleep to the waking world. Disliking our fellow men, we craved affection; but shyness kept impulse dormant until the heart was touched. When that happened the heavens opened, and we felt, the pair of us, that we had the whole wealth of the universe to give.

7). There is no going back in life. There is no return. No second chance.

UNIT 2

1. Translate the following words and word combinations and reproduce the situation from the text:

Sense of foreboding, fastidious, ineffectual remonstrance, to have green fingers, to do away with smth, it makes no odds, to mould smb, a hit below the belt.

2. Define the following words and word combinations:

To make mischief in the household, to be no crank, to get a rip on smb, to pull a face at smb, to rear a family, to swallow the lump in one’s throat, a Bath chair, a man of habit, to be numb with misery.

3. Give synonyms for the following:

Premonition, ready-made, hunched, at one’s leisure, staunch, to foretell, impecunious, homely, turmoil, a whim, woman-hater.

3. Translate the sentences using task 1:

1). Профессиональная гадалка была обязана воспользоваться своим преимуществом и успокоить этого мрачного господина, предчувствующего дурное (a sense of foreboding).

2). Люди, страдающие тяжелыми заболеваниями, или просто находящиеся в преклонном возрасте, очень часто привередливы (fastidious).

3). У тебя настоящий садоводческий талант! Все деревья и кустарники, посаженные тобой, не только удачно прижились, но и очень выросли за этот год (to have green fingers).

4). Отделайся от этого надоедливого субъекта, тогда мы сможем спокойно поговорить и посидеть в этой кафешке (to do away with).

5). Он был так увлечен своей бредовой идеей, что все попытки его родных и близких остановить его, и все их возражения были совершенно напрасными (ineffectual remonstrance).

6). В свои 64 он по уши втрескался в молоденькую артистку варьете, и все сплетни вокруг них были для него совершенно несущественны ( it makes no odds).

7). Ты у нас молодой и неопытный, тубе нужно жениться и тогда жена сделает из тебя человека, (сформирует тебя)- говорила тетя Агата Берти Вустеру. Но я же не желе, меня не надо формировать (to mould).

8). Беспринципно пользоваться своим преимуществом над таким наивным и ранимым человеком , как Джон (a hit below the belt).