Literature elevates the mind...good literature, that is!
R.V. Young is a Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in the Department of English at North Carolina State University. He wrote this primer for college students as a part of the ISI Guides to the Major Disciplines series. Young believes, and encourages the reader to consider, that literature needs to be part of the diet of every student wanting to learn and explore the meaning of life. Young's premise is that literature, approached both with caution and abandon, literally elevates the mind, and thus, the person. He proceeds to give a brief summary of various authors and books that every student should consider for their own personal library beginning (of course) with Homer and ending with T.S. Eliot. Young ends with an incredible bibliographical appendix of various authors and titles that would be a great place to begin for readers wanting to expand their horizons and read a wide variety of books.
The book encourages the reader to read more, and I can see how a person could be discouraged and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the books listed - obviously the reader needs to be able to digest these suggestions and take small bites into the large apple of good literature.
Lukacs' fluid writing style is this book's greatest merit. He points out a great deal of classical and modern history of outstanding merit and durability. This booklet, however, is published by the ISI's publishing house. Reading it is like being flung back into the academic culture of East Coast Universities in the 1950s. The sensation is bizarre, and horribly exclusionary. Almost any other introduction to the discipline for undergraduates would be better by showing that non-European, non-Christian stories also have merit. History is not only the study of personal and national heritage, but the trials and value of all human cultures, even those not personally relevant. The book lacks such generosity, often termed imaginative sympathy. Too bad.
English Grammar,
Adapted to the Different
Classes of Learners Murray.s grammar is subtitled .adapted to the different classes of leaners., and, as a result of a strict division into main text and additional linguistic information, it is a graded grammar. It would thus appear to be suitable for learners of different ages. This was one of the reasons for the grammar.s phenomenal popularity.
Murray.s grammar is to a large extent based on Lowth.s (Vorlat 1959), but it also differs in a number of respects. Furthermore, the second half of the eighteenth century saw the birth of grammars written specifically for children, for which there proved to be a real market (Navest 2005). In this paper, I will discuss the question of whether - as would appear to be the case - it was Lowth.s grammar which gave the impetus to this development or not, and what it was that made his grammar unsuitable for children. I will do so by focussing on Lowth.s methodology in codifying the English language and contrasting it with that adopted by Murray and others of the period, thereby taking into account a number of specific linguistic strictures discussed in the grammars. As these grammars were primarily aimed at the rising middle classes (Fitzmaurice1998), I will also argue that the presence of some of these linguistic strictures in the grammars can be explained by what was considered to be a real threat at the time: the possibile linguistic contamination by English nannies in the language acquisition process of young children.
Виталий Левенталь "Я изучаю English" Практический курс английского языка предназначен для начинающего русскоязычного читателя. В курсе содержится 13 уроков грамматики, вводится около 1500 английских слов.
Added by: simonaro29 | Karma: 62.32 | Fiction literature | 2 August 2007
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Time Traders by Andre Norton
Intelligence agents have uncovered something which seems beyond belief, but the evidence is incontrovertible: the USA's greatest adversary on the world stage is sending its agents back through time! And someone or something unknown to our history is presenting them with technologies—and weapons—far beyond our most advanced science. We have only one option: create time-transfer technology ourselves, find the opposition's ancient source . . . and
take it down.
When small-time criminal Ross Murdock and Apache rancher Travis Fox stumble separately onto America's secret time travel project, Operation Retrograde, they are faced with a challenge greater than either could have imagined possible. Their mere presence means that they know too much to go free. But Murdock and Fox have a thirst for adventure, and Operation Retrograde offers that in spades.
Both men will become time agents, finding reserves of inner heroism they had never expected. Their journeys will take the battle to the enemy, from ancient Britain to prehistoric America, and finally to the farthest reaches of interstellar space. . . .
