As a future English teacher I have being constantly wondering how we can teach our students the value of reading, as well as how they can understand the role that it plays in their lives. Besides, I have to recognize that through this year I have been trying to find the answer to explain my students the intimate connection between literature and life. However, what this literature course has been teaching me is that life provides the raw material on which literature imposes an artistic form and that its use can also be a powerful pedagogic tool. Literature to me is the communication of the writer's experience of life, but this connection between literature and life is not as simple as it seems. It has always been open to polemics among the great and noted critics of the world. Moreover, both reality and imagination play their role in great literature. Thus, literature is not merely a photographic copy of real life, nor is it a complete denial of life.

As an internship student I have been realizing that students do not like to read nor enjoy such process and most of them share the same idea about what literature means to them. The typical answer I got from them was that they do not understand what they read, because they were not motivated to read while being children, as well as they did not have the habit of reading. I strongly believe that in order to face this situation with our students, we as teachers need to teach them the value of literature by telling them that literature is part of our cultural heritage which is freely available to everyone, and which can enrich our lives in all kinds of ways. Hence, once we have broken the barriers that make studying literature seem daunting, we find that literary works can be entertaining, beautiful, funny, or tragic. We can also teach to our students, that through literature they can convey profundity of thought, richness of emotion, and insight into character. Literature takes us beyond our limited experience of life to show us the lives of other people at other times. Pieces of literature stir us intellectually and emotionally, and deepen our understanding of our history, our society, and our own individual lives.

In the following lines of this essay I will present some ways to make literature more interesting to our students by using the novel Oliver Twist written by Charles Dickens. Besides, I will provide some ideas to apply it inside the classroom.

I strongly believe that what we can teach to our students about literature is that we can gain a lot from it in many ways, but the most rewarding experiences can come in those moments when we feel the author has communicated something personally to us, one individual to another. Such moments can help validate our personal experience at a depth which is rarely reached by everyday life or the mass media. At some level, whether we believe in pleasure , politics or philosophy as the goal of reading, all of us who study literature believe that it is important not only in education but in life.

Regardless of the difficulties the practitioner can encounter, using literature is motivating to students. They are exposed to different themes which as rule curricular textbooks do not include. In addition, novels like Oliver Twist can be helpful to educate the whole person by examining the values that the story presents us therefore, we as teachers can encourage learners to develop attitudes towards them. It is important to observe that most of the values and attitudes that we can encounter, students can relate them to the world outside the classroom. And last but not least, literature broadens the sense of language as more than just for practical use, it encourages interaction. Literary texts can be effectively mined for discussions and sharing feelings or opinions.

As I mentioned before, literature as a tool in the EFL classroom is a viable option. A well thought selection of literary texts, such as Oliver Twist can help educators to create inside the classroom groups discussions based on students reading and the different approaches of understanding of the novel. Group discussions are fun and magic for students, because they have the power to transform our students from passive, rather shy, reticent students into students who eagerly point at their texts in order to support their arguments while sharing their opinions in English.

Using Dickens’s Oliver Twist we as teachers can introduce students to the novel by making them research and report on the social context of Victorian society and through the identification of social problems in our contemporary society make them relate both realities. As a second step of this activity, teachers can create group of students in which they can collaboratively research Dickens’s life, his concerns, his style of writing, his plot construction, etc. Other collaborative groups can research about the social context of the Victorian period, for instance about women's rights, education, the prison system, and social classes. After doing all that research process group discussions can start, even if they have not read a single page of the book. In the last step of this activity each group of students prepares a multimedia presentation for the class. As students read the novel, presentations are held at appropriate points. For example, students researching the prison system make their presentation early on, when Dickens portrays the first convict as a dehumanized animal. The teacher and the class can evaluate presentations using a mutually devised rubric, combining measures for depth and breadth of content as well as quality of presentation.

To conclude, I believe that since school teachers start to use group discussions of the books they read, the process of reading can be more fun and challenging, because such process is going to be share with their classmates and guided by the teacher and they are not going to be reading by their own, alone with their thoughts. It is amazing to observe how students really enjoy to share their experiences, so we have to take advantage of what they really like in order to make them feel part of the class, as if it they were constructing the course. In a nutshell, we as English teacher in foreign context can promote the language by opening student’s minds and making them to express their feelings and the emotions that they can get from a novel, though such amazing opportunities, educators and learners can create new waves of thought and calm the idle minds of this generation of students.

Works Cited

Brumfit,C.J. and R. Carter. Literature and Language Teaching. 1994, Oxford University Press.

David H. Jonassen. Evaluating Constructivist Learning. University of Colorado.

W.F. Collier. History of English Literature. Thomas Nelson & Sons. New York.

The Power of Literature in EFL Classrooms: “Literature trains the mind and sensibility.”

Final Paper.

OUTLINE:

Introduction:

- Why use literature
- Literature and cultural competence

Body:

- Literature and real life issues: Applying the case of “Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens”
- Teaching students to understand how writers respond to social conditions when witing.
-Advantages of implementing Literature discussions inside our EFL classrooms

Conclusions

September 1, 1939 by W.H. Auden.

I strongly believe that W.H. Auden was probably the first poet in English who felt that his writing during the twentieth century was an exactly representation of the disordered conditions and events that the world was facing during those war times.

As I mentioned before I believe that this poem is a work that is not so much far from a description or criticism of the German-Nazi decision to invade an innocent country; this work, these words and all these stanzas to me are a representation of his feelings, from the heart of a man who was living in a society filled with an oppressive nature.

Besides, I blive that despite such risk of oppression Auden went ahead and published this fabulous piece of poetry with conscious thought he was probably had to mask his true intentions because he was maybe afraid of what others would think or do against him. That it is why I think that for Auden was crucial to use allusion and symbolism as a way to depict in a better way his real feelings related what was surrounding him.

I have to recognize that this poem was really easy to understand and feel it, due to the fact that most of us were able to understand the consequences that a war can cause, even though we, the new generations have never experienced such a huge war like the first or second world War. For instance, we could observe through out this poem, that the author hypothesizes that the reason behind all of the recent evils (World Wars) that have occurred is "those to whom evil is done do evil in return". That was a way to Auden to show to the readers that; “what goes around comes around”, but at the end of the poem, in the last stanza, he mentioned that we all have a voice and seek a connection with one another that "dotted everywhere, ironic points of light flash out wherever the Just exchange their messages".

From my perspective his way of writing represents a way to tell thw society that we, human beings should learn how to live together and in that way build a better place to live. All of this leads to one main thesis; he stated that Evil exists, and that it will always exist, but one way to survive it is through the use of our voices, to love one another, to connect, and to speak with the truth.

In short, I believe that what Auden was trying to tell us, was that we at least have hopes to live in a better place, but such better place we will be able to reach it only of we love one another, if not we must die.

My comment about Alicia's reflection

First of all I have to recognize that I totally agree with Alicia's reflection about the short novel called "Odour of Chrisantemums" because in each line that she wrote I felt the same feelings she had about the plot. For instance, it was really interesting to read her thoughts about this story and the Rocking horse, in the sense that she believed that women like the main characters of each story were the guilty ones for making people believe that we were the weak gender.

From my personal point of view I completely believe that whta Lawrence did with this story was explore emotions and human imperfections in oder to show that it is really complicated to understand human nature. That it is why we are able to find through the story reality, as the reality that the bates' marriage represents in the story, an unfortunate woman who felt pity for her husband and her sad life living in the wrong place with the wrong man, a drunk one.

As Alicia mentioned in her reflection, I also have to say that the descriptions of the story were writen by Lawrence in a very realistic manner. For example, when Lawrence described the image of the traib rolling by, the woman backing up into the hedge and it workers image, we as readers can understand in a very easy way the realistic setting that Larence wanted to depict and in that way we are able to imagine the setting and feel that we are there.

Finally, it is important to mention that everyone of us can interpret this short story in our own way, due to the fact that we have different approaches of understanding according to our own experiences of life and in that sense we can interpret the story as we want, but it is really amazing to see how Alicia and I interpreted in the same way this story, both of us agree on the fact that even though the story is a chouvinist one, it is completely realistic view of the past world and today's world.

Alicia's Post

The Odour of Chrysanthemums

Independent women??

The Odour of Chrysanthemums and The Rocking-Horse Winner (both written by D.H. Lawrence) had something in common: MATERIALISM.. The worst of it? Materialistic women!

In the Rocking-Horse Winner we "met" Hester, the cold-hearted mother who couldn't love her children and blamed her husband for being "unlucky". When she thought about luck, she thought about rich people, because luck is what causes you to have money.

In The Odour of Chrysanthemums we met Elizabeth Bates, the woman who waits for her husband and when she realizes he's dead she gets worried about money! How is she supposed to live without her husband's salary??

I think these two short stories are very interesting. First, because they're realistic and familiar to us. Second, because I believe that women like Hester and Elizabeth are the guilty ones for making people believe that we are the weak gender!

When women think that men are the responsible ones of supporting a home and working for their families, they are saying that women aren't able to take the control of some situations.. Or is it just a matter of laziness? Anyway, this doesn't sound good for women..I think that many women try to fight for their rights, but they don't take this issue really seriously. From my point of view, society, in general, has been very unfair with women, but not because of this women need to make themselves look as the poor victims of History.

I really enjoyed reading Lawrence. I think he gave us very good examples of what we shouldn't do as women.

The Waste Land by TS Elliot.

Since the moment I started to read “The Waste land” by Elliot I wondered why it has been called “one of the most important poem s of the 20th century”, but I jut had to read the first lines to realized why it has been considered as one of the most important poems, because a phrase like; “April is the cruellest month" (its first line); "I will show you fear in a handful of dust"; and (its last line) are quite difficult to forget, due to the fact that they are very meaningful for anyone who has a sensitive heart.

Elliots’ greatest masterpiece “The Waste Land” impressed me a lot, because we can find all Eliot’s knowledge, about Latin, Greek, German and Sanskrit elements from mythology and history. Moreover what really called my attention was the first part of the poem in which it is intended to show the problems of life and death, on existentialism.

From that point of view in the first part of the poem we can come up with a final conclusion of it; life brings death and death brings life, like in a closed perpetual circle.

To conclude I’d like to mention that even though the poem was hard to read and understand, I could get at a first glance the importance of the poem as it was written in a realistic way, because if we observe the first stanza of the poem we are going to realize that it contains a few romantic and beautiful imagery from the past, which will not again reappear in the rest of the poem. These past almost pastoral imagery serve as a sharp contrast to the horrifying and real images depicted throughout the rest of the poem-degenerating, destructive, decomposing and debilitating, which in result creates a very disturbing picture of the wasteland-the world we live in.

D.H Lawrence: "Odour of Chrysanthemums" & "The rocking Horse winner."

D. H. Lawrence short stories such as “The rocking Horse winner” and “Odour of Chrysanthemums” are closely connected to me, because both are full of symbolism and realism.

I believe that these two stories are connected because even though they differ in the plot both are related to one another in the sense in which they show family issues with real and possible stories. That it is why both stories are full of descriptions of the spaces and emotions in order to keep a real and believable story to their readers and in that way engage more easily to the readers with the stories.

On the one hand we have "Odorous of Chrysanthemums” which from my own perspective, Chrysanthemums symbolize the Bate's broken marriage in this story. Mrs. Bates, Elizaberh does not like the smell of Chrysanthemums because it reminds her of Mr. Bates. She tells to the readers her dislike of the flowers to her children by saying "It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his buttonhole." When Mr. Bates dies at the end of the story, a vase chrysanthemums was knocked over and breaks. Mrs. Bates is quick to clean up the mess of the chrysanthemums, symbolizing her marriage.

To me, Mrs. Bates has an epiphany towards the end of the story. She is more upset about the financial aspects of her husband's death than the actual loss of him. She realizes that she wasted her time getting angry with her husband and judging him, even though he was just a hardworker trying to support his family. She realizes that she is the worse spouse and fears meeting him again in death.

On the other hand, “The rocking horse winner” that sustains its perfect pitch from start to finish. This story also tells to the readers another family conflict such as the lack of money inside the family house. The main point to compare both stories is to put on discussion both female characters of the story to realize that the major problem of 19 century women was that they tend to feel unhappy and frustrated, because of their lives as mothers and wives that weren’t allowed to be free or succeed.

To conclude, it is relevant to mention that these two short stories share an empathic point of view of the female characters, as well as they show the strong role of men in society. Besides, are simply realistic because in every detail of the stories we as readers are able to associate real life to the story and be more engage to the stories.

A room of one's own by Virginia Wolf.

I strongly believe that we all enjoy Virginia Woolf’s book title; a room of one’s own, because we have had probably being interrupted while writing or reading something and as far as I’m concerned, most of people tend to stop that process of thinking while being interrupted. However, for many of us, this just isn't an option. But a lack of writing space should never keep us from writing. With a little determination and some creativity, we'll always find some way to work. From my own perspective, as a future teacher I’ll probably use this book to teach my students the importance of having a space to write or be alone when thinking.

First of all, I believe that we as human beings are lack of privacy due to the fact that we live in a society and we have to share our sapce with others. Secondly, we have had the ones that for example, while being children had to share our room with our sisters or brothers and when being an adult our children interrupt our private space, but we must have always a room of our own in which to write, a space internal that is fully and wholly our own, if not a physical space where we can quietly fold our hands, not dishcloths or the pijamas of small children, and ponder. And in our writing, we must strike matches in the dark, starting with the dark that lies within us. Because that dark will connect to the dark of another and another, like the thin thread of a spider web. And those threads connecting will keep us all whole.

From a feminst perspective I think that it is important for us, women, to know the importance of having a private space to think, to write, to read, to feel, etc. leaving aside all those daily duties and enjoy the time with ourselves in order to know us better and in that way the ones that love to write can have more inspiration and take a piece of paper and write their emotions and moments with themselves.

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.

Progress, for whom?...

I truly believe that no one is against "progress”, because the word progress supposedly implies an “improvement" for the society that is changing. But, the big problem that the social-economical progress has it is related to how just some people can have access to that change, take advantage of it and be influenced in a positive way. On the other side there is a very expensive price of progress that some people have to pay, due to the fact that progress is not just measured in a monetary way it also can be measured in the amount of suffered lives, especially those lives that didn’t have the opportunity to take advantage from the progress.

As far as we are concerned Governments have been pushed progress on non educated people to obtain monetary gains and increase their economic development, but we just need to observe what is really happening; poor people is becoming more vulnerable and rich people is increasing their profitst at the expense of those disadvantaged population.

During the Victorian era in England this situation was not completely different from the situation that we are living in today’s world. The British considered themselves as the model of the civilized world. However, beneath the surface of this great empire laid millions of subjugated people. This unfair social and economical situation experienced among the poorest it is also very well depicted in “Oliver Twist”, a novel written by Charles Dickens in the XIX Century. The main character of this novel, Oliver Twist was a poor and an orphan child who also experienced the injustices of life paying the price of the British progress during the industrialization process.

From my personal point of view, I believe that Oliver's experiences demonstrate the legal silence and invisibility of the poor, because the main character also represents the typical stereotype of the poor. However, Dickens himself exhibits middle-class prejudice, because he reproduced through the story the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes in Fagin, the"old" and "villainous Jew” who abused of some children to obtein money. This is in itself another problematic in our contemporary society, as the inherent anti-Semitism which attaches to Dickens’ descriptions of him are difficult for the modern reader to dispassionately assimilate.

To conclude, I think that we have to bear in mind the Universal Declaration of Human rights when we contemplate what is happening in our society and we cannot forget that this Declaration is not only concerned with civil and political rights but also with what are known as economic and social rights. Changes and progress for all societies should be always part of every single human being.

"The Signal-Man" by Charles Dickens.

This English literature course have made me think about how through fictional and non-fictional stories, literature makes us reflect and appreciate societal issues. Since we have been reading and discussing some literature pieces we are being able to realize that literature is the mirror of society and it gives voice to those who are voiceless, it gives life to the lifeless and it also gives hope to the hopeless. However, because literature is the mirror of the society, some writer attempted to write or describe the flaws of life and weaknesses of humanity to justify both sides of mortal and immortal life.

If we start to analyze the book called “The Signal-man” a ghost story written by Charles Dickens we are going to realize that his author wanted to portray to the readers societal issues that were occurring during the Victorian time as well as his own view of life. As we know “The signal-man” was setting in the middle of the 19th century, a period of time in which industrialization and progress were the main issues among the European society.

As I mentioned before, there are many real elements of a society that we can find in a literature piece and sometimes those real elements are mixed up with non-fictional literature elements in order to represent in an enjoyable way of reading the society problems. In the signalman both elements; societal issues, non-fictional elements and metaphors were portrayed to show to the readers how the main character saw the society, he was just a specter of what was happening in the 19th century mechanized environment.

Literature elements such as; supernatural things (the ghost) and the box in which the signalman used to lived, represent Charles Dickens’ state of mind. He also wanted to depict in his book his realistic perspective in which he was feeling the societal changes and the mechanization of humanity.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

While I was reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley I had the opportunity to imagine the entire story and I felt like a little child while reading it, because I was able to open my mind and think as a kid who is always wondering why things happen.

According to the period in which Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, she was very influenced on the nature of Romanticism as well as her own experiences with life. If we think about the hidden message that Mary Shelley presented us in the book, we are going to realize that the story can be read as a tale of what happens when a man tries to create a child without a woman. Furthermore, the fact that the main character, Victor the modern scientist who created the monster was challenging the nature through his experiment represents how science and religion were confronting at each other, because it can be represented the powerful idea that man could change nature and being seen as God when having control of technology.

If we want to see the societal issues that Shelley depicted in her book, we just have to focus our attention in the main character, Victor, the modern scientist who unleashed upon an unsuspecting society. He was not fully aware of the consequences of his creation, the monster called Frankenstein, a new race of human beings. He spent his entire life trying to destroy the same creation. His excesses finally destroy him. From my point of view Victor represented the part of the psyche that is governed by the instinctive impulses of sex or aggression, as probably Freud could also describe him in his office.

To conclude I’d like to mention that I really like this book, because even though I’ve had read it before, this second time I could realized the context in which it was written. Besides, I also was able to open my mind and read as a child, due to the fact that through the image of Frankenstein I remembered the period when I was a child and as him I had to learn through my observations and by imitating what I saw, as well as Frankenstein Jr.

"I wandered lonely as a Cloud" by William Wordsworth.

Wordsworth poem “I wandered lonely as a cloud” can be very easy for us to interpret it if we know something about the Romantic era and its poetry, due to the fact that it emphasized on feelings such as freedom from rules, spontaneity, solitary life, intuition, love of beauty and nature and some irrational ideas about the self.

From my point of view, I believe that this poem puts the reader in the poet's state of mind, because it describes his process of thinking as someone who was wandering of a cloud, in its celestial route above earth in order to represent a peaceful factor such as loneliness. Although, to me loneliness does not carry a negative connotation; one can read this line as peaceful solitude as opposed to loneliness. Moreover, we can see through the poem that Wordsworth was not only alone, in fact he was happy to be alone as he enjoyed the tranquility of solitude while contemplating daffodils’ beauty.

To conclude, I’d like to relate this poem to my own experience with loneliness and what I always do to fight against that feeling. In Wordsworth case, the contemplation of nature was his only way to avoid sadness. In my own case to look at the stars give me the strengths and the hope I need to proceed when I feel sad and alone. Some other times I just appreciate the stars and the sky without having any reason, just to observe God's creation and realize what life has giving me. Some people sometimes fail to appreciate nature's wonders as they go about their daily routines. We have to learn to appreciate our environment.

"When I have fears that I may cease to be" John Keats.

Death, an enormous word, a cruel meaning that provokes us fears because of our own end of life as well as our loved one’s death. Probably most of us think about death once a while, wondering what happens after death in order to find any convincing answer to this question that no philosopher, scientist or religious can answers us.

Keats poem “When I have fears that I may cease to be” perhaps shows us the immensity of death which leaves a person standing isolated and alone metaphorically on "the shore of the wide world”. Furthermore, this poem represents the worst fears that a young person has while thinking about his or her early decease. In my own case I have the same feelings that Keats captured in his poem, such as: “not having enough time to love another fully, or write till the point where his pen glean'd his teeming brain, or reaching the level of fame he has always desired”, to me those words represent all my horrible feelings when thinking about death, although those last lines of the poem are beautiful well written.

As I mentioned before through this poem we can figure it out that the author knew that he will die being a young man because of his disease, and what hurts him the most is not being able to write his poems which will lead him to fame, and the loss of his beloved one.

To conclude, I believe that it is important to see in this poem how Keats uses a sonnet to discuss human fears about death through his own different fears of death.

"Kubla Khan". Poem written by Samuel Coloridge.

“Poetry is an art…of representing, in words, external nature and human thoughts and affections, both relatively to human affections, by the production of as much immediate pleasure in parts, as is compatible with the largest sum of pleasure in the whole”.

I strongly believe that in order to conceive the meaning of the story behind Coleridge’s poem called Kubla Khan, it is necessary to understand the circumstances and language techniques in which was written in, because in my opinion it seems that the poem was written by someone with mental disease.

I still remember that during one of our classes we talked about the importance that poetry takes in our lives. In the case of Kubla Khan poem I believe that the author wrote it as a way to express his medical condition. It is known that Coloridge took opium as antibiotic which helped him with his health issues. Probably, that is the reason why the poem seems so strange at times. But as the above quotation mentions; poetry is an art of representing human thoughts in this case Coloridge thoughts.

One topic of the poem that Coloridge points out is the nature of poetic inspiration. According to my own experience while reading the poem, I felt that Coleridge made use of the experience of being possessed by a daemon or guiding spirit in which the poet can’t control the daemon and what the daemon only wants it is to try to take advantage of it when it comes. To me this poem shows us in a paradoxically way the voices and the frustration of a poet whose daemon has dead.

To conclude, whether the poem displays or only simulates wild inspiration, whether the poet is out of his mind or fully in control, “Kubla Khan” is a magical poem full of human representations of feelings, thoughts and nature in order to illustrate the power of imagination to represent fragments of his own life.

"The little Black Boy" Poem written by William Blake.

“Pretty Baa lams” by Ford Madox Brown (1851-1859)

At a first glance in this poem Blake showed that human beings are ultimately the same despite the fact that we can have some physical differences. Through the innocence of a “little black boy” readers are able to see his desire of being accepted by a white English child. Although, we can see that this black boy felt different being a black person, I don’t see racial self-hatred in the poem. What I see is a confident guarantee that in God’s eyes everybody is “equal”.

In Blake's poem it is very clear and well represented an affectionate relationship between the mother and the little black boy. Through this representation the mother is very connected with God’s words and represented the figure of God on earth, due to she explained to her child that they will be vindicated in heaven where they will get closer to Jesus.

The painting “Pretty Baa lams” by Ford Madox Brown (1851-1859) made me feel closely connected to this poem, because its natural space and the way in which the mother holds in her hands the little boy depicts an interesting comparison within the poem. As example, the lambs and the grass field to me are connected with the idea of a symbolic God place in which eternity and heaven are represented through nature.

Final Essay.

Applying Literature inside the classroom.

“The Faerie Queene”: A Representation of the power of a new Female identity.

The following essay will discuss allegorical points of view in the poem; “Faerie Queene” by Edmund Spencer. By looking into the moral lesson in the poem, we are going to be able to understand the deeper dimensions that this knightly tale shows us. Moreover, through this discussion we are going to recognize how the Faerie Queene represented a construction of cultural aspects of the English society during the Elizabethan period.

Besides, this discussion will allows us to relate how literature and specifically the Faerie Queene contributed to be a representation of the literary ideal, as well as the new female image of the Elizabethan period, and how it created a social change. Furthermore, at the end of the discussion, this essay will guide us to find the reasons for using literature or a poem such as the Faerie Queene in the EFL classroom.

If we want to start to examine Spenser’s Faerie Queene we are going to realize that he used faery mythology to represent and celebrate a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. As an example of it the “Letter to Raleigh” provides the most direct expression of Spenser’s intentions for fairy and tells us how he uses the image of the faery queen and fairyland to present Elizabeth and her kingdom.

As we can see the poet of the Faerie Queene used the allegories to show a representation of a perfect image that people must had about Queen Elizabeth I and her reign, as well as the values of the Elizabethan society in order to cause an effect on readers and to establish some sense of meaning for them.

Throughout the The Faerie Queene, Spenser emphasizes the importance of performing one's duty and accepting responsibility to complete the quest. Several heroic figures emerge during the course of the poem and each is given a question to undertake, a monster or demon to extinguish. Each time, the hero must overcome disadvantage and hurdles to succeed, but the importance of the quest is always the overriding concern.

Having provided a motivation for the characters to fight against everything and overcome different types of situation to reflect values that every men should have, Spencer proceeds to supply a topical identification for the allegoric character of Gloriana, the Faerie Queene representing different aspects of the most excellent and glorious person, as well as the most virtuous and beautiful lady.

Probably, all of these representations that Spencer gave to Elizabeth I may have plenty of theories to explain why the poet wrote in favor of the Queen. But, from my personal point of view I think that all of the characterizations that Spencer gave to the Queen were based on the hypothesis of the phenomenon of female power that women started to have in England.

Regarding to the female power that Spencer demonstrated in the Faery Queene we can see reflected the rule that women had in general as a specific and unique aspect of Elizabeth’s rule that was beginning to dominate through when Spencer was writing. Queen Elizabeth, the virgin Queen, had, by virtue her virginity, the singular opportunity to name her own heir and shape England’s destiny. In Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queene, the female characters hold the same power over their male companions.

At this point of the discussion we are able to see how the Faerie Queen figure is part of Elizabeth’s strategy to construct and manipulate her political iconography and idealized her representation as a Queen in order to legitimate her integrity and identity.

As I mentioned before, Elizabeth’s sex required a form of negotiation achieved through the construction of a series of mythological identities. All of the strategies used by Spenser in the construction of the perpetuation of the “cult” of Queen Elizabeth I were part of the creation of an ideal world where men behave with dignity and with truth and valor.

Edmund Spenser’s fairyland represents a world in which personal values were more important than greed or lechery. From my own perspective, I think that when Spencer was creating his utopia, he was also responding to changes in English life, as English society moves from the middle Ages into the Renaissance.

To sum up, on the one hand we can say that The Faerie Queene represents in an allegorical way the image of female dominion over male identity, because through the characterization that Spencer gave to the Queen, we as readers are able to interpret the figure that Elizabeth I wanted to spread over the English Empire. On the other hand, the poem gives us as readers the opportunity to reflect on the values that were important during the Elizabethan period, and through the image of the characters of the poem find in the hidden messages of this knightly tale some cultural aspects of the English society.

Clearly, until this point of the discussion we are ready to figure out how we as teachers of a foreign language can apply this kind of topic to our classroom. One of the main answers is to teach to our students the capacity of understand what they are reading, even though when most of the times they have to read old texts with different contexts or periods of time that they cannot empathize.

Consequently, we can say that it is crucial for teachers to empathize with our students and guide them when they are in the labor of understanding a literature piece. Similarly, we as teachers must teach our students how through reading they can find messages, so their attitude towards what they are reading must be active, instead of passive. In a nutshell, what I’m trying to explain is what we as teacher must do at the moment of bringing the literature into the classroom. As a first step we need to teach to our students how they can feel part of what they are reading in order to think in a critical way and in the same way practice with them the capacity of critical literacy.

Finally, as we may know literature is authentic material. In the case of The Faerie Queen we can see how through the reading and understanding of it, we are exposing our learners to deal with difficult unknown periods of time, indeed, students are also dealing with new language which expands their language awareness, so they can also used them outside the class. In the same way literature encourages interaction, we can bring discussions about a specific topic of a literature piece, such as the one we were discussing, the representation of Queen Elizabeth I in the Faery Queen.

Literature, also gives us the opportunity to share students’ feelings and opinions. In all respects, literature educates the whole person, by examining values in literary texts, such as the way in which Spencer showed his intention to make readers conscious about the attitudes that a person in the Elizabethan period must had. As we know, these values and attitudes relate to the world outside the classroom, and that is exactly the way in which a teacher can collaborate to students’ meaningful learning.

Work Cited.

Carter, R. and M. Long. Teaching Literature. 1991, Longman.

References:

http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/The_Faerie_Queene

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=13567293

http://www.eslelite.com/biz/articles_for_teachers/articles_literature_in_an_esl_classroom.htm

Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austin.

Chapter 39.

Elinor and Marianne were invited by the Palmers to Cleveland, due to the insistence of Mrs Jennings, they decided to accept the invitation. Once they were at Cleveland, Colonel Brandon visited them and asked Elinor to inform Edward that he is prepared to give him a position at the Delaford rectory. While Elinor and Colonel Brandon were talking about how Edward could lead a comfortable life, but he wasn't able to afford a wife, Mrs. Jennings, who was observing the conversation, she concluded that they look nice as a couple and instead of talking about Edward they must be talking about a wedding.

Chapter 40.

Mrs. Jennings approaches Elinor soon after the Colonel's exit. She congratulates her and asks her many questions, which reveal her mistaken assumption that there is an engagement between Elinor and the Colonel. Elinor showed to Mrs. Jennings that she really appreciate Brandon's generosity towards Edward. When Edward arrives, Elinor tells him the good news, he is pleseantly surprised.

Elinor goes off to visit Fanny Dashwood, who has not been feeling well since the news of Edward and Lucy's engagement. She is greeted at the door by John Dashwood, who shares the news that Robert Ferrars will inherit his mother's estate in place of his brother. Just then, Robert Ferrars arrives and expresses his pity for his older brother. John leaves them to inform his wife of Elinor's presence, and Fanny Dashwood, upon receiving Elinor, expresses her regret that the Dashwood sisters will be leaving town so soon.

Women: A Real Force...

The film "The Merchant of Venice" is an adaptation from the play written by William Shakespeare between 1596 and 1598. The story takes place in Venecia during the XVI century. Those times in history are remembered because in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, the Jews are God's chosen people, while Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and they follow his teachings in the New Testament, so in that way the Jews were castigated as the people who crucified Jesus. That's the reason why in the Middle Ages the Jews left Israel and spread across the world, but they had to live in getthos separated themselves from others specialy from Christians, due to all those diferences the Jews were considered as non-citizens, so as medieval Jews they couldn't own land.

One of the main characters of the movie was a Jewish moneylender called Shaylock. He lent money to monarchs like Antonio a merchant venturer who was much more glamorous than Shylock the usurer.

This moneylender felt all the discrimination that Christians such as Antonio had against those men wearing a red hat, that's why Shylock becomes all his angry to the point of murderous revange against Antonio who had a debt with him since his beloved friend Bassanio asked him for some money to travel and marry with Portia, a beautiful heiress who lives in Belmont. Due to the fact that Antonio invested all his money in his merchant ships, he just could help his friend being Bassanio's loan guarantor.

Shylock, who hates Antonio because he had insulted him for being a Jew, saw the opportunity to optain revange from this loaning, so he lent Bassanio the money without charging any interest, but with one condition, that was if Antonio the guarantor of Bassanio will not pay the money he will pay it with a pound of his own flesh.

Portia's role in the film is extremely important in the way she influences in a dramatically way the story. She becomes in the heroine of the story since she demonstrates that she's a good counterpart of Shylock who represents the evil.

The beauty and wealth of Portia made her an exceptional figure. There was the rule that any man who could solve the mystery of the Cascade would be able to marry her and enjoy her wealth. Although Portia was very rich, at the same time she was very romantic. When sweeter from different countries came to seek her for marriage she gave interesting opinions about them.

It is clear in the film that she liked Bassanio who was a good man. He was not a rich or a powerful man. He was only the friend of Antonio. This clearly shows that Portia gives more value to love and romance than wealth and power.

Portia was a very smart and skilled person. She was educated and at the same time she was a very intelligent person. She could out with Shylock in his own game. This meant a lot of mental strength, because she knows what to say in which condition and this smartness in the end saved Antonio from the death by hands of the evil Shylock. Portia was also a very brave woman. When she heard the news of Antonio she decided that she must try to save him because he had fallen into danger only by helping Bassanio to come to her to get married. So, she took the disguise of a man and went to Venice to fought with Shylock.

At the very end of the movie none of the dukes who were at court could convince Shaylock to be a little bit softer towards Antonio. But Portia had the mental courage to fight against him through the power of persuasion with the law in her words, through all her intelligence at the right moment in the court she successfully defeated Shylock.

From my point of view, one of the qualities that attract me from Portia's character is that she was an obedient daughter and at the same time she was a very loyal person with all the personality to fight against the injustice. She agreed with the wish of her father about the matter of cascade. She waited patiently to get married. If she wanted she could easily told Bassanio or another person what was the secret of three cascades and could get married but she waited patiently and even allow other princess to try for it. This quality of her personality really makes her an exception among all the characters in the film.

On the one hand Portia is one of the finest characters created by William Shakespeare. As a general knwoledge, normally, the women characters of Shakespeare and from most of the writters during those times didn't give an important role for women or even worst they tend to create an image of women showing them like a human being that weren't very strong in terms of personality and self-awareness, they were always dependant. On the other hand, the characters of the comedy are not that strong but I think that Portia is an exception to this matter. She was not only strong, she had many qualities that makes her a strong character. All her characteristics have made her into a very exceptional woman of Elizabethan time. I have no doubt that there were very few women in that time in England and Europe who possessed remarkable qualities like Portia.

To conclude, I'd like to repeat that Portia is a very good character and characters like her are very rare in the drama genre.

• Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_of_Venice

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/merchant/canalysis.html

OUTLINE: "THE MERCHANT OF VENICE".

Outline:

1. Introduction

2. Summary of the film

3. Opinion

4. Thesis statement:

-The role of Portia in "The Merchant of Venice" in terms of her status as women during those times.

5. Conclusion

Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh.

The letter addressed to Sir Walter Raleigh, written by Spenser was very difficult for me to understand at the begining because it was very hard to figure it out what was the intention and also was very hard to understand the meaning of some old fashioned words, but even though all that difficult process that I had reading it, at the end, I could understand in a very general way the idea of this letter.

At a first glance what I understood from this letter taken from one part of the "Faeri Queene", is that this historicall fiction has an intention or a hidden message which was to glorify Queen Elizabeth, and also to show the virtuous image of a gentleman or noble person by using the much loved Arthurian knights. The main aim of Spencer with this letter as I said before is to demonstrate human virtues as well as the lives of knights, using them as a way to convey their virtues. This letter, from my point of view also represents a demonstration of political favor with the Queen.

In the letter Spencer showed to his readers the importance of six virtues, holinness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice and courtesy, with all those virtues he expressed the representation of "magnificence" and perfection. What this letter represented to me is the importance of the good things in life, that's why it's a direct characterization of Queen Elizabeth, because Spencer wanted to demonstrate in Elizabeth's figure the goodness to define the eternal struggle in all of us; the good versus evil.

Through this letter to Sir Walter Raleigh and our Literature course I was able to understand the real intention of this passage of the Faerie Queen and why it's an allegory, because it symbolizes and answer to Catholics against Protestantism and the Queen. Spencer uses the character of Sir Walter Raleigh as a symbol and meaning, and each one symbolizes other aspect of the powers and factors that were in that era in the crisis that I mentioned before, the conflict between the Catholic Church and the protestants.

• Source:

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Faerie_Queene