The English Miscellany

  Mourning in Testopolis Anxiously, the English students joined the exam queue behind an ostentatious Fronted Adverbial, setting the scene. Angry clouds scudded across a melancholy sky. Sometimes a shaft of Sibilance pierced the gloom. Something sparkly was lurking beside a Colon: showy, shimmering, and seductive. Was it success? Indeed, the Semantic Field of Testopolis was strewn with Pathetic Fallacies and hot-headed Personifications; it was a Gothic graveyard where dead Metaphors haunted the graves of highly sophisticated and profoundly erudite scholars; they snoozed forever in a bed of sleepy Semi-colons. Sometimes a bitter sweet Oxymoron leapt out of a coffin and boldly bashed a passing Plosive. Tension was rising as the Pace quickened. Splatter! Lady Allegory had lifted the long lance of Hyperbolic Alliteration and skewered the deadliest of Superlative orthographic monsters: the dreaded Onomatopoeia . What a premature climax! Clatter! Or was it buzzing of ...

  Shakespeare’s plays have never been far from political and cultural controversy. Today, Shakespeare still sits at the centre of the cultural establishment. However, this canonical status is under renewed attack from critics and detractors. Is it time to jettison Shakespeare from the syllabus and the stage, making way for new voices? Alternatively, what are the opportunities and strengths of working/woking with Shakespeare’s texts? This new edited volume aims to explore some of the most recent conversations about teaching and performing Shakespeare in the age of woke cultural politics and poetics. In the context of media hostility and panic, what are the challenges faced by new audiences and learners? How should Shakespeare be positioned in the twenty-first century cultural landscape? Is it still possible to have a civilized conversation about Shakespearean scholarship, pedagogy and performance? Contributors are invited to consider the following (indicative) topics for discuss...

    “Murtagh McDermott” has edited a collection of historic letters that provide a vivid picture of student life at the University of St Andrews . ·          Encounter a culture of arcane traditions and elite parties. ·          Enter a world increasingly fraught with class conflict. ·          Savour the scandal and the gossip. ·          Follow the crises of faith, sexuality, and sanity as students emerge from closets and cloisters. Read the private correspondence of public schoolboy Julian Arnaud, decadent addict Caspar Dixon-Bailey, Kelvin Digby the Zealot, Socialist “Red” Liam Duffy, Rugby star Antony Reece,   Mother Ailsa Lockhart, confidant Anne Brodie, randy philosopher Dr Lionel Blackthorn, matchmakers Rhona Ballantyne and Morag Strachan, queer Yankee Boyd R. Burrows Jr., field sport enthusiast H...

This practice book will help you to explore the strange world of shuffled sentences and how your brain solves them.  A shuffled sentence is a string of words that have been jumbled up. The words are in the wrong order. Can you unscramble the words to make a sentence?  • An excellent INTRODUCTION to the art and science of solving these linguistic challenges.  • TWENTY techniques that could help you to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your exam tactics and strategy.  • FIVE levels of difficulty, which makes it ideal for exam preparation for various kinds of school entrance exams such as 11+ and other employment proficiency tests.  • 595 shuffled sentences to use for your exam practice.  • Some of the tests involve deciding on a word that is not needed in the sentence. This is called a REDUNDANT word.  • Some of the tests ask you to find the LAST WORD in the sentence.  • The tests are designed to practise VOCABULARY and GRAMMAR (different ...

  Antithesis / Juxtaposition: The Battle of Opposites Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities (1859) Book the First—Recalled to Life CHAPTER I. The Period It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom , it was the age of foolishness , it was the epoch of belief , it was the epoch of incredulity , it was the season of Ligh t, it was the season of Darkness , it was the spring of hope , it was the winter of despair , we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven , we were all going direct the other way —in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil , in the superlative degree of comparison only. Now create your own version It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: it was the age of________________, it was the age of ________________; it was the epoch of ________________, ...