Tag Archives: fiction/literature

Corruption

Posted on April 4, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Corruption (noun): Change of an unfamiliar term or form to one more familiar, or departure form correct of standard word use; debased or unorthodox word form; perverted wording of a text or document. Adjective: corrupt; verb. Also BASTARDIZATION

‘His voice was polite again; he even chuckled. ‘After the first shock of seeing the Scrolls destroyed, we realized you’d actually given us a unique opportunity. All the texts are corrupt, you know, even these—copies of copies of copies, full of errata and lacunae—but we never could agree on a common reading, and of course the old Scrolls acquired a great spurious authority for sentimental reasons, even thought the contradict each other and themselves.’ John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Nancy Mitford on Aristocracy

Posted on March 28, 2025 | Leave a comment

“An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off: it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead.”

Nancy Mitford

Excerpted from: Sherrin, Ned, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations. New York: Oxford University Press. 1996.

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Posted on March 28, 2025 | 3 comments

“Elizabeth Barret Browning: (1806-1861) English poet. In childhood she suffered a spinal injury and, until her meeting with Robert Browning, seemed to be doomed to invalidism and seclusion from the world. Barrett and Browning’s courtship under the eyes of her jealous, tyrannical father, their elopement, and subsequent happy married life in Italy form one of the most celebrated of literary romances. Hawthorne describe Mrs. Browning as ‘a pale, small person scarcely embodied at all,’ and this ethereality of her physical appearance is reflected by the palpitating fervor and unworldly tenderness and purity of her work. Often, however, these qualities decline into stridency, diffuseness, and confusion. Her themes were dictated by her broad humanitarian interests; a deep if unorthodox religious feeling, her affection for her adopted country, Italy; and her love for Browning. Her greatest work, Sonnets from the Portuguese, a sequence of love sonnets addressed to her husband, remains an extraordinary and living achievement. Her other works include Essay on Mind, with Other Poems (1826), a translation of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (1833), The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838), Poems (1844), Casa Guidi Windows (1851), Aurora Leigh (1856), Poems before Congress (1860), and Last Poems (1862). See THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN, LADY GERALDINE’S COURTSHIP.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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The Weekly Text, 28 March 2025, Women’s History Month Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Edith Wharton

Posted on March 28, 2025 | Leave a comment

For the fourth and final Friday of Women’s History Month 2025, here is a reading on Edith Wharton with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

And that is it for Women’s History Month for 2025.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, New York City, Social Sciences, The Weekly Text, Worksheets

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Rebecca West on Anthologies

Posted on March 21, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Anthologies are mischievous things. Some years ago there was a rage for chemically predigested food, which was only suppressed when doctors pointed out that since human beings had been given teeth and digestive organs they had to be used or they degenerated very rapidly. Anthologies are predigested food for the brain.”

Rebecca West

Excerpted from: Sherrin, Ned, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations. New York: Oxford University Press. 1996.

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Colette

Posted on March 21, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Colette in full Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette: (1873-1954) French writer. Her first four Claudine novels (1900-03), the reminiscences of a libertine ingenue, were published by her first husband, an important critic, under his pen name, Willy. She later worked as a music hall performer. Among her later works are Cheri (1920), My Mother’s House (1922), The Ripening Seed (1923), The Last of Cheri (1926), Sido (1930), and Gigi (1944; musical film, 1958), a comedy about a girl raised to be a courtesan. Her novels of the pleasures and pains of love are remarkable for their exact evocation of sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and colors. She collaborated with Maurice Ravel on the opera L’enfant et les sortileges (1925). In her highly eventful life, she freely flouted convention and repeatedly scandalized the French public, but by her late years she had become a national icon.”

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Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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Cultural Literacy: Ayn Rand

Posted on March 21, 2025 | Leave a comment

Here, against my better judgment, is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Ayn Rand. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of two sentences–beware the first of them, a doozy of a compound that I am convinced would best be revised and shortened for struggling and emergent readers–and four comprehension questions.

Why “against my better judgment”? I suppose because I find Ayn Rand’s (born in Russia as Alisa Zinoyevna Rosenbaum) “objectivist” philosophy to be little more than a simple minded rationale, dressed up in the most tawdry, yet soaring, rhetoric, for the worst kind of selfishness.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Sarah Barnwell Elliot

Posted on March 21, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Sarah Barnwell Elliott: (1848-1928) American writer and feminist activist. Elliott was one of the “local color” (or regionalist) writers, and is best known for her novel Jerry (1891). Her most powerful fiction represents the displaced slave-owning class into which she was born, as it confronts hard economic times and a new social order. Elliott was a feminist activist in the South and led the fight for Tennessee to ratify the 19th amendment. Her fiction is often valued for its liberal attitudes toward women, as in The Making of Jane (1901). Her stories about race relations during Reconstruction are extremely problematic: the portraits of ex-slaves in An Incident, and Other Stories (1899) are both nostalgic and derogatory, and seem to contradict her family’s sense of noblesse oblige and well-known resistance to virulent racism. The title story is the first representation in American literature of a black man pursued by a lynch mob for raping a white woman. Elliott’s work raises questions about the attitudes toward race among Southern white women and the roles they played in reestablishing white supremacy in the postbellum South.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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Cultural Literacy: Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Posted on March 7, 2025 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Ella Wheeler Wilcox, who authored the famous, if insipid, saying “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone.” Her biography is quite rich, and she was apparently prolific.

This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions. A spare, but effective, introduction to a poet who, I’ll hazard a guess, is largely forgotten–which arouses the question: is any poet remembered today?

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Lydia Maria Child

Posted on March 7, 2025 | Leave a comment

“Lydia Maria Child originally Lydia Maria Francis: (1802-1880) U.S. abolitionist. Born in Medford, Massachusetts, she wrote historical novels and a popular manual, The Frugal Housewife (1829), and founded the first children’s periodical, Juvenile Miscellany. After meeting William Lloyd Garrison in 1831, she became active in abolitionist work. Her Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833) was widely read and induced many to join the abolitionist cause. She edited the National Anti-Slavery Standard (1841-43) and made her home a stage on the Underground Railroad.”

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Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

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