Suddenly, Sunday nights have become my favorite time of the week for watching TV. Masterpiece Theater on PBS is running a series of dramatizations of classic English novels. So far, I have watched two of my favorite novels--Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Next is Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, which will be followed by 4 stories by Charles Dickens. In short, Sunday nights have become this English teacher's dream.
Tess, which takes place in the gentle southwestern English countryside, is the grim tale of a simple girl's love and circumstances that drive her to a disturbing end. Tess (on the upper left) is in many ways the opposite of another lead fictional character Anna Karenina, and I hope someday to have the time to write an article comparing and contrasting them. And Wuthering Heights, which takes place on the wild Yorkshire moors, is the unrivaled tale of a love that could not be contained. The lead characters of Heathcliff and Cathy (on the upper right) are perhaps the most memorable lovers in English literature.
So if you are at home on Sunday nights, tune in to Channel 13, and bring great literature into your living room. But don't forget to read the books too , if you haven't already.
Books
Tess of the d"Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Place:
Yorkshire moors --
an area of open land in northern England with poor drainage, bogs (soft ground full of water), and heather (an evergreen shrub with purple flowers)Vocabulary
novel-- a long fictional narrative
dramatization--adapting a novel or other work for TV, movies, etc.
disturbing -- upsetting
fictional -- not true
unrivaled -- unequaled, has no better
memorable --easy to remember
tune in -- turn on (the program)
1.The story I read last night is better than anything else I have ever read; it is ___________.
2. When the president gives his speech, remember to _______________.
3. The newspaper article is not _____________. The events really happened.
4. The bad news was very _______________.
5. I love the ______________ of the Sherlock Holmes stories for TV.
6. The Three Musketeers is a French ___________ by Alexander Dumas.
7. I will never forget our meeting. It was _________________.
Grammar Point
Can you start a sentence with and? Find the example above. Write your own paragraph with a similar example.
