Lesson Seven: Tourists
Nancy Mitford
From The Water Beetle, 1962
Warming-Up
⏹ Do you like travelling (making tour)? Why or why not?
⏹ What is the purpo of a tourist?
for knowledge or culture; for sighteing pleasure; for relaxation;
for eking novelties; for showing-off of their having physically been to places; for no purpo.
⏹ What are the advantages and disadvantages for a tourist attraction?
Economy (hotel, restaurant, shop, entertainment, transportation); new idea; new life-st
yle…
pollution (air, sound, litter, spit); being materialistic (greedy for posssion, cunning and dishonesty, turning tourist attractions into a stage tting for the mounting of cheap shows )…
Nancy Mitford (1904–1973)
⏹ Born: November 28,1904, London, England.
⏹ Died: January 30,1973 (aged 68), Versailles, France.
⏹ Occupation: novelist, biographer.
⏹ Life Experience
⏹ Born and brough up in London.
⏹ Moved to Paris at the end of the Second World War and later to Versailles in1967.
⏹ A well-known public personality, invariably elegantly dresd,lived a busy social and literary life, had a huge number of friends and acquaintances in the English, French and Italian aristocracies, travelled frequently and established a pattern of visits to country hous in England, Ireland and France as well as annual visits to Venice.
⏹ Mitford Sisters
⏹ She was one of the noted Mitford Sisters and the first to publici the extraordinary family life of her very English and very eccentric family, giving ri to a 'Mitford industry' which continues.
⏹ Politically a moderate socialist, she somehow kept on good terms most of the time with her sisters, despite the extreme political views of Diana, Jessica and Unity, mainly by deploying her acerbic wit. Some of their letters are republished in The Mitfords: Letters between six sisters.
⏹ Style
⏹ She had a particular "Mitford" brand of humour which became very well known through her novels and newspaper articles and attracted a cult following.
⏹ Her novels,letters, articles and essays are notable for their humour, irony, "teas" and cultural and social breadth.
⏹ Genre
⏹ She is best remembered for her ries of novels about upper-class life in England and France, particularly the four published after 1945;
⏹ She also wrote four well-received, well-rearched popular biographies (of Louis XIV, Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire, and Frederick the Great).
Major Works
⏹ Highland Fling (1931)
⏹ Christmas Pudding (1932)
⏹ Wigs on the Green (1935)
⏹ Pigeon Pie (1940)
⏹ The Pursuit of Love (1945)
⏹ Love in a Cold Climate (1949)
⏹ The Blessing (1951)
⏹ Madame de Pompadour (1954)
⏹ Voltaire in Love (1957)
⏹ Don't Tell Alfred (1960)
⏹ The Water Beetle (1962)
⏹ The Sun King (1966)
⏹ Frederick the Great (1970)
Paragraph I
1. What is the topic ntence of this paragraph?
⏹ Torcello which ud to be lonely as a cloud has recently become an outing from Venice.
2.What is the first part of this paragraph (lines 1-10) about?
⏹ A brief description of the islet Torcello.
⏹ How much do you know about Torcello?
⏹ The name “Torcello” means “Tower and Sky”.
⏹ Torcello is an island in the Venetian Lagoon, 10 km to the north-east of Venice.
⏹ Torcello was officially part of the Byzantine Empire and was ruled by the Bishop of Altino who made the island his official See in the venth century.
⏹ Torcello became inaccessible in the twelfth century after the lagoon silted up. The incread volume of swampland led to malaria epidemics and the island's inhabitants migrated to the neighbouring ttlements of Venice, Murano and Burano, so that Torcello became a ghost town virtually overnight.
⏹ Torcello now has a population of around 20-100 people.
⏹ Torcello's main attractions
⏹ The Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, founded in the 7th century and rebuilt in the 11th century, with much Byzantine work including mosaics (e.g. a vivid version of the Last Judgement) surviving. The Gothic bell tower was added to the cathedral in the 11th century.
⏹ Church of Santa Fosca, built in the 11th and 12th century, surrounded by a porticus in form of a Greek cross.
⏹ Attila's Throne, a large stone roughly hewn into the shape of an over-sized armch
air, located in the vicinity of the Santa Fosca. It is reputed to be Attila's throne.
