Tag Archives: readings/research

Bell, Book, and Candle

Posted on July 12, 2022 | Leave a comment

“bell, book, and candle: A reference to features of the solemn ritual of major excommunication, as performed in the medieval Church of Rome. The decree of anathema, the official curse of excommunication, was read from the book of church ritual; the attendant priests held candles, which were dashed to the ground, symbolizing the extinction of grace and joy in the soul of the accused; and a bell was tolled, perhaps to simulate the tolling for the dead.

The phrase bell, book, and candle appears in Shakespeare’s King John (III, 3): ‘Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back/ When gold and silver becks me to come on.’ Here, as in general usage, it represents the power and authority of Christianity.

Bell, Book, and Candle (1950) is also the title of a play by John Van Druten (1901-57), about a beautiful present-day witch who falls in love with a man and loses her powers as a sorceress.”

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

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Pop Art

Posted on July 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on pop art along with its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I suspect, with the right student or students, this reading and worksheet could be the beginning of a high-interest unit on pop art that would include the artists specified in the reading–Andy Warhol (of course), Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Rivers, Roy Licthenstein, Duane Hanson, Claes Oldenburg–and grow to include Jean-Michel Basquiat and perhaps some graffiti artists. Futura comes to mind.

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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Realism (In Literature)

Posted on July 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

“realism: In literature, the theory or practice of fidelity to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization. The 18th-century works of Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett are among the earliest examples of realism in English literature. It was consciously adopted as an aesthetic program in the mid-19th century in France, when interest arose in recording previously ignored aspects of contemporary life and society; Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857) established the movement in European literature. The realist emphasis on detachment and objectivity, along with lucid but restrained social criticism, became integral to the novel in the late 19th century. The word has also been used critically to denote excessive minuteness of detail or preoccupation with trivial, sordid, or squalid objects. See also naturalism.

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

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Realism (In Visual Art)

Posted on July 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

“realism: In the visual arts, an aesthetic that promotes accurate, detailed, unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favor of close observation of outward appearances. It was a dominant current in French art between 1850 and 1880. In the early 1830s, the painters of the Barbizon school espoused realism in their faithful reproduction of the landscape near their village. Gustave Courbet was the first artist to proclaim and practice the realist aesthetic; his Burial at Ornans and The Stone Breakers (1849) shocked the public and critics with their frank depiction of peasants and laborers. In his satirical caricatures, Honore Daumier used an energetic linear style to criticize the immorality he saw in French society. Realism emerged in the U.S. in the work of Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. In the 20th century, German artists associated with the Neue Sachlichkeit worked in a realist style to express their disillusionment after World War I. The Depression-era movement known as Social Realism adopted a similar harsh realism to depict the injustices of U.S. society. See also naturalism.

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

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Cultural Literacy: Avatar

Posted on July 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

Here is a Cultural Literacy on the concept of the avatar. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three short sentences and three comprehension questions. Interestingly, the reading in this worksheet deals with the concept of the avatar in Hinduism, but not the avatar as a graphical representation of a computer user that is usually reflective of a person’s character or persona.

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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Realism (In Philosophy)

Posted on July 11, 2022 | Leave a comment

“realism: In philosophy, any viewpoint that accords to the objects of human’s knowledge an existence that is independent of whether they are perceiving or thinking about them. Against nominalism, which denies that universals have any reality at all (except as words), and conceptualism, which grants universals reality only as concepts within the mind, realism asserts that universals exist independently of their being expressed in language and conceived by human minds. Against idealism and phenomenalism, it asserts that the existence of material objects and their qualities is independent of their being perceived. Similarly, moral realism asserts that moral qualities of actions (such as being morally good, bad, or indifferent, or being ethically right, wrong, or obligatory) belong to the actions themselves and are not to be explained as mere products of a mind that perceives and feels attracted to or repelled by the actions. In opposition to conventionalism, realism holds that scientific theories are objectively true (or false) based on their correspondence (or lack or it) to an independently existing reality.

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

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Basic English

Posted on July 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Basic English: A simple form of English designed by C.K. Ogden (1889-1957). It has 850 words, with rules of their use and expansion of sense, and 150 more bridge words for specific fields, such as medicine, chemistry, and physics, which have themselves a body of internationally common words or signs. Working with Ogden on its development was I.A. Richards, who took the system to schools and universities in China as a help in the teaching of English at all levels. Its possible use as an international language was the reason Sir Winston Churchill, one of its strong supporters, gave part of his talk at a Harvard commencement in Basic English. Before his death in 1979, Richards was again in China, working on the use of basic English for international purposes. [Ed. Note: This entry is written in Basic English.]”

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

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Unified Science or Unity-of-Science View

Posted on July 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Unified science or unity-of-science view: In the philosophy of logical positivism, the doctrine holding that all science share the same language, laws, and method. The unity of language has been taken to mean that either that all scientific statements could be restated as a set of protocol sentences describing sense-data or that all scientific terms could be defined using physics terms. The unity of law means that the laws of the various sciences must be deduced from some set of fundamental laws (e.g. those of physics). The unity of method means that the procedures for supporting statements in the various sciences are basically the same. The unity-of-science movement that arose in the Vienna Circle held to those three unities, and Rudolf Carnap’s ‘physicalism’ supported the notion that all the terms and statements of empirical science could be reduced to terms and statements in the language of physics.”

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

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Nuclear Fission

Posted on July 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

Moving along, here is a reading on nuclear fission with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Science teachers take note (I guess): This is a good general introduction to a complicated topic.

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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The Doubter’s Companion: Zeno

Posted on July 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

“Zeno: Father of the paradox. Philosopher of the fifth century BC, A source of Socrates’ technique and of humor as a weapon against power and pedantry. The other Zeno, also a philosopher and father of the Stoic movement, committed suicide.”

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

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