Contemporary British literature
The most prestigious award in the British literature how is the Booker Prize which is given annually to the best novel published in Britain. The novels that can get it must be written in English by a citizen of Britain, the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize in 1997 was Arundhati Roy for her novel «The God of Small Things». Another Booker Prize winner is Bernice Rubens, who got it for her book «The Elected Member». The leading contemporary Scottish writer is Glasgow-born James Kelman whose book «A Disaffection)) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
The most read British poets are the Welshman Dylan Thomas, whose best-known work is the play «Under Milk Wood», Ted Hughes, who was made Poet Laureate in 1984 and whose duty was to compose odes in celebration of state occasions, and the Northern Ireland poet Seamus Heaney, whose poems give a vivid and beautiful picture of Irish rural life and work.
Activity. Fill in the blanks in the following story and find out some interesting facts about Robert Burns. Bear in mind that more than one variant is possible.
Robert Burns was a son of a poor farmer and himself a______(1) labourer until he was 27, when he became__(2) after publication of his first book of poems. The book ___(3) mostly songs and narrative poems about common people, their life and work. Burns' countrymen _____ (4) his poetry, and the poet himself for his jolly and friendly character. Here is one of the numerous ___(5) told about the poet.
One day Robert was in the docks ___ (6) the sea and heard a cry for help. He saw a drowning man and ran _(7) the water. At the same moment he heard a splash of water and _(8) a sailor jump into the water from the nearest boat that stood at the dock and ____(9) towards the man who was calling for help. In several _(10) the sailor returned with the rescued man. By that time a crowd of people had ____ (11) on the shore, and they cheered the brave sailor. The rescued man turned out to _____ (12) a rich merchant. When he came to himself, he thanked the sailor and_: (13) him one shilling as gratitude for what he had done. The crowd was indignant. They started to ______ (14) loudly and demand that the merchant should give more money to the sailor who had _____(15) his own life while saving the ungrateful merchant. At that moment Burns stopped the shouting ___(16) and said, «Leave him alone. The gentleman is, of course, the best judge of what his life is worth!».
PAINTING
Do you like painting?
Who was a "Comic History Painter"?
Who is your favourite painter?
WILLIAM HOGARTH
William Hogarth /1697-1764/ was die dominant artistic personality in England in the "18th century. He set up as an independent engraver in 1720. By 1729 he had achieved amajor success with a painting of The Beggar's Opera. Heestablished a new genre of "Modern Moral Subject. The series of satirical engravings, made after his paintings, include "The Harlot's Progress" /1732/, a tragic story of a country girl in a series of 6 paintings /now lost/ and "The Rake's Progress" /1735/, portraying the seamier side of London with stark realism.
Hogarth made paintings of London life in the Four Times of Day. He also painted portraits culminating in the spectacular one of Captain Coram /1740/. His decorative paintings were made in the manner of Thornhill /1676-1734/, English baroque painter.
He proclaimed himself a "Comic History Painter", and the result was the most accomplished of his moral cycles. In "Marriage a la Mode" /1745/ he makes savage sport of London high society.
Other series were directed towards cruelty and the effects of gin. In the 1750 he became the target of caricature himself and attacks on satire in general. His response was depression and feelings of national decline. Yet his paintings became more sensuous than ever. He had shown that a painter could be a man of intellect and wit. Hogarth had no pupils, but almost all art in England bears the mark of his personality.
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH
Thomas Gainsborough /1727-88/ is English painter and foundation member of the Royal Academy. Practically self-taught, he was influenced in his earlier work by the Dutch masters and Vandyke. He broke from tradition by painting his native country-side as he saw it and not as an idealized version of the Roman campagna.
His landscape backgrounds to portraits are free, almost impressionistic, with strong feeling for woodland, solitude. His portraits typically are images of patrician breeding, elegance and self-assurance.
Thomas Gainsborough was one of the founding fathers of the British landscape school. He created works of a delicacy and poetic sensibility.
In 1739, already a prodigy, from his native Sudbury, he was sent to London where he absorbed something of the French Rococo, the elegance of Hayman and the directness of Hogarth. By 1745 he had his own studio in London.
He returned to Sudbury in 1748. The masterpiece of the Sudbury period is Mr. and Mrs. Andrews. At first his paintings were strongly Dutch in flavour, then he moved towards a more French pastoral.
With his arrival in Bath in 1789 Gainsborough rid of provincialism and made a reputation for 1. self as a portrait painter of facility and grace. His first great portrait in the Van Dyck manner was Mrs. Philip Thickness /1760/. Though he had difficulty in selling them he continued to paint as many landscapes as portraits.
The works of his London period /1774-1788/ were characterized by monumentality presenting я challenge to the masters of the past. The Watering Place /1777/ was a direct response to the landscapes of Rubens /1577-1640/. More sympathetic are his paintings of his friends like Johann Fisher /1780/, which is elegant and genial.
In his last years he developed "Fancy Pictures" in which rustic figures, usually children, are posed in a landscape and generate a poetic melancholy.
JOHN CONSTABLE
John Constable /1776-1837/ is the greatest of the English landscape painters who has never been surpassed. He is remarkable for the boldness of his handling, the "dewy freshness" of his atmospheric effects, and for using actual recognizable parts of the English landscape, not idealized reminiscences of Italy. He painted many well-known works, such as "Flatford Mill", "The Haywain", and «The Lock". He is the first landscape painter to make his sketches direct from nature. He introduced green into painting. He was the last great painter in the tradition received from the Dutch 17th -c. landscape painters and a forerunner of the impressionists.
WILLIAM TURNER
Joseph Mallord William Turner /1775-1851/ is English landscape painter. He presents us with one of the many paradoxes of English Romantic art. He was self-taught but lifelong supported the royal academy. He led a solitary life and was ambitious for social recognition and royal patronage. In some ways a cockney humorist in the tradition of English satirical art, he brought to English painting its sense of the tragedy of landscape.
The son of a London barber, Turner passed his childhood as an assistant to printsellers. He entered the Royal Academician /RAJ Schools in 1789 and began exhibiting watercolours in 1790 and his first oil in 1796. In 1799 he was elected Associate of the Royal Academy /ARA/. At 27 he became Royal Academician /RA/ in 1802. He was Professor of Perspective in the Academy. In 1804 he opened his first private gallery. Turner was a dedicated traveller. He was especially attracted to the scenery of mountains and to the river Coastal sites to show the luminous effect of sky reflected in water.
At first he worked in watercolour, and later worked in oil as well. He began as an emulator of Claude's /1600-82/ calm, static landscapes bathed in clear liquid light.
Later he evolved towards another vision: of the broken light and prismatic colours of an atmosphere, which partly revealed, partly concealed the accidents of an actual scene.
After Turner's first trip to Italy in 1819 his works became remarkable for their colour and luminosity and the swirling movement of his brush Work. Rushing wind, tossing water, broken and reflected light, a rainbow of pure colours: such things characterize his latter art.
He incorporated the iron ships, the trains and bridges of the industrial age, but they seem as visionary and phantasmal. Turner dealt with a wide range of subjects, some taken from classical legend. His most famous canvases include Yacht Approaching Coast /1840; Tate/, Peace: Burial at Sea/1842/ and Norham Castle Sunrise /1845; Tate/. His style had very little effect in England. It is in France in the1900's that we must look his successors. As a keen analyst of the effects of light, Turner led to the French Impressionists.
HENRY MOOR
Henry Moor /1898-/ is English sculptor and one of the greatest sculptors of the 20th century. He is principally a carver, and mostly in stone. He believes in truth to material: he releases from the block of' stone the simple form which seems to him implicit in its shape, size and texture. .
His most original works were the abstract sculptures of the 1930s such as Composition /1931/ and Square Form /1936/. They reflect his contact with European surrealism of Picasso, Arp and Brancusi. Moor's work is distinguished by its constant preference for analogies between the figure and landscape.
Holes pierced right through the block are a feature of his work, giving a direct sense of the relationship of all the surface planes. His human forms constantly suggest larger forms, e.g. hills and cliffs: the shapes of the earth itself.
His postwar production is very uneven in quality. Yet it includes a number of works which fully justify Moor's stature, ranging from Reclining Figure /1950/ to Sheep-Piece /1972/.