listen to ‘After reading TTL’ on Audioboo

Here's my Audioboo. Hope you can understand it! In case you didn't, I´ve already posted the script...

After reading TTL:

After reading TTL:

“Could the body achieve it, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate passages of the brain? Or the heart? Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs. Ramsay’s knee.” Book I, Ch. IX

I’ve chosen this quotation because I feel identified with Lily’s wondering about how one comes to know truly another person, and what bonds people together… Is it intellect or emotion? It makes me wonder what makes me close to people I love and like… In my opinion Lily’s idea that intimacy is knowledge, and that it can´t be put into word is a very feminine way of understanding relationships. What a wonderful quotation! It reminded me of a quotation by Emily Bronte because this same idea of inexplicability is present: "Whatever souls are made of, his and mine were the same".

TTL: Time Passes

Time Passes

Chapter 9

“The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long night seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. The saucepan had rusted and the mat decayed. Toads had nosed their way in. Idly, aimlessly, the swaying shawl swung to and fro. A thistle thrust itself between the tiles in the larder…”

I have chosen this quotation because I think it is really interesting how Virginia Woolf succeeds in dehumanizing the Ramsays’ house, portraying a world where death and desolation reign supreme. Human agency seems to have been superseded by that of natural elements- night, winter, waves, wind, storms. We, as readers can see, through the eyes of the house, how these elements interact and affect the house leaving a sense of emptiness and devastation.

 Woolf experiments with space and time. She makes the reader sense the span of ten years going by before the house is occupied again. As she does not present a definite account of ten years passing, we must actively perceive the text and move into a different frame of mind beyond the absolute of knowing and into one of sensing and perceiving.

I believe that the scene in chapter 7 “In spring the garden urns... and so terrible” is quite effective. By describing a setting that is really contradictory, Woolf makes us feel both, the stillness of the day and the chaos of the night. This scene clearly leaves the reader with mixed feelings.

Mourning in To The Lighthouse

In 2011, Laura Filiputti wrote this post in connection with the topic

I was just re reading chapter 6 (or 7, depends on the copy) of To the Lighthouse and I remembered we discussed Grief and how the death of Mrs. Ramsay had  affected the Ramsays and Lily.
This is actually a transcript from Grey's Anatomy which has, what I believe to be, a very accurate description of how one feels towards grief and losing someone. I think that the different stages presented here can be traced back to Lily in particular and how she feels towards Mrs. Ramsay's death.
Hope you like it and find it useful!

According to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, when we're dying or have suffered a catastrophic loss, we all move through five distinct stages of grief. We go into denial because the loss is so unthinkable we can’t imagine it’s true. We become angry with everyone, angry with survivors, angry with ourselves. Then we bargain. We beg. We plead. We offer everything we have, we offer our souls in exchange for just one more day. When the bargaining has failed and the anger is too hard to maintain, we fall into depression, despair, until finally we have to accept that we’ve done everything we can. We let go. We let go and move into acceptance.
The dictionary defines grief as keen mental suffering or
distress over affliction or loss.
Sharp sorrow, painful regret.
As surgeons, as scientists, we're taught to learn from and
rely on books, on definitions, on definitives.
But in life, strict definitions rarely apply.
In life, grief can look like a lot of things that bear little
resemblance to sharp sorrow.
Grief may be a thing we all have in common,
but it looks different on everyone..
It isn't just death we have to grieve, it's life, it's loss,
it's change...
And when we wonder why it has to suck so much sometimes,
has to hurt so bad, the thing we gotta try to remember is
that it can turn on a dime...
That's how you stay alive. When it hurts so much you can't
breathe. That's how you survive...
By remembering that one day, somehow, impossibly, you
won't feel this way. It won't hurt this much...
Grief comes in it's own time for everyone.
In it's own way...
So the best we can do, best anyone can do, is try
for honesty...
The really crappy thing, the very worst part of grief,
is that you can't control it...
The best we can do is try to let ourselves feel it, when
it comes...
And let it go when we can...
The very worst part is that the minute you think you're
past it, it starts all over again...
And always, everytime, it takes your breath away...
There are five stages of grief.
They look different on all of us.
But there are always five...
Denial...
Anger...
Bargaining...
Depression...
Acceptance...

Literature in English 4th Year: Woolf's suicide note

Literature in English 4th Year: Woolf's suicide note

The only surviving recording of V. Woolf's voice

Art in the 19th and early 20th century

The term Impressionism derives from Claude Monet's painting "Impression Sunrise" (1872)

You can read an interesting chronology of this movement and look at some paintings here.

For an overview of French painting in the 19th century, go to the USA National Gallery of Art, where you will also find a discussion of Post-Impressionism.

Post-Impressionism can be exemplified by Georges Seurat's "The Lighthouse at Honfleur" (1886)

Cubism started in Paris in 1908, reached its peak in 1914, and continued into the 20's. Watch this slideshow of works at the London Tate Gallery for an explanation of its features or read this discussion of its features

Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907) forecasts the new style.

Virginia Woolf dates the change in "human nature" to December 1910, when the first exhibition of French Post-Impressionist and Cubist painting took place in London.

Can you suggest what elements in common you can find with modernism?

This is an optional activity.

To the Lighthouse: getting started

The Voicethread below includes five different covers of To the Lighthouse.

If you haven't started reading the novel, what do you think it's going to be about?
If you have already started, how suitable would you say the covers are?
You don't need to comment on all of them.

Recording a comment on Voicethread is really simple

• Register for a free account
• Click on Comment
• Choose the kind of message you prefer (text, audio or video)
• Click on Record
• Right click and choose “permitir”
• Then choose mike
• Speak.
• After you finish speaking your recording will be played automatically.
• Click on Save if you are happy with it or Cancel if you are not, and try again.

If in doubt, check this site for instructions.

Deadline: July 3rd