The impact of one book

The significance of May 2nd, 2011

Three days ago Britain marked what most believe to have been the publication date of one of the most important volumes in the English Language.

On May 2nd, 1611, the ‘Authorised’ or King James Bible rolled off the press and was circulated to every church in the United Kingdom. Not only did it become the ‘official’ Bible of Great Britain, but it was taken even further:

> by early colonisers to North America and Canada
> by traders to India and Africa
> by mission societies to Asia
> by emigrants to Australasia.

It encouraged the spread of the English language around the world, because non English speakers needed to get to grips with the Bible of the traders, colonisers, emigrants and mission societies. Thus the KJB is in part responsible for the fact that the dominant international language of the physical and electronic world today is English.

In Britain it became familiar to everyone in the land:

• through their schooling
• through their weekly religious attendance
• and ultimately through what they read.

From the era of the Metaphysical poets in the seventeenth century to that of D.H. Lawrence in the twentieth, the King James Bible has been imbibed by authors, poets and dramatists. It has shaped their thought and language, to then be shared with their readers.

More important than Shakespeare

There were other translations before it, on which the KJB drew, and there have been many since, which echo its poetry in more modern idioms. But for sheer literary dominance, the KJB cannot be touched.

According to Melvyn Bragg, the KJB has been more influential on English society than Shakespeare. Whilst culturally Shakespeare has often been the preserve of the educated, the KJB was a text for everyone, found in almost every home, sometimes as the only book people owned. And because it was a book of faith, its messages were repeated and learnt, day by day, then re-enforced by weekly readings and sermons in church and chapel. Authors knew that their readers would pick up every reference.

Today many of us do not recognise the impact of the KJB on literature, because we are not familiar with the original. That’s why Crossref-it.info materials explain every Bible reference encountered. They show users where each allusion comes from and thus how authors have created a subtext to their work.

Text / subtext / inter-textuality – these are all terms a student of English needs to get the most from what they are reading. Crossref-it.info is here to help.

The continual re-invention of Hamlet

The young actor’s Everest

Shakespeare’s Hamlet has featured on recent exam syllabuses for a number of years. At over five hours’ playing time (uncut) it calls for massive physical stamina from its lead. But more than that, it demands huge emotional depth and range to inhabit the complex and memorable language with which Shakespeare creates the part.

For most young male actors, the role stands as a benchmark against which they must compare themselves, an Everest there to be climbed, their chance not only to make a mark in the theatre world but to be ranked against their peers.

A variety of readings

Given the play’s credentials, as well as its cultural dominance, it is no surprise that every year sees the staging of a number of productions. This is a gift to any teacher wanting their students to understand the dynamics of the drama which operate beyond the page.

How does Hamlet regard Ophelia for example?

• With disgust at her complicity?
• With pain and loss?
• With confusion and despair?
• In anger that any woman may be fickle like his mother?

Any and all of these interpretations are valid readings of the text, so it relies on the tone and gesture of the actor to clearly demonstrate his decision about Hamlet’s motivation.

If you are studying Hamlet this year, see if you can get to one of the productions outlined below. If you can get to more than one, it will be illuminating to see the changes each performer (and director) make to the drama and discuss your responses to the variations.

There is no one way to read Hamlet, but a multiplicity of ways to appreciate it. Enjoy!

Hamlet productions in 2011

Royal National Theatre. Directed by Nicholas Hytner. Rory Kinnear (Hamlet), Clare Higgins (Gertrude), David Calder (Polonius). Lyttelton Theatre, London, 13 – 23 April (020 7452 3000). www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Northern Broadsides. Directed by Conrad Nelson. Nicholas Shaw (Hamlet), Finetime Fontayne (Claudius), Becky Hindley (Gertrude), Richard Evans (Polonius), Tom Kanji (Laertes) and Natalie Dew (Ophelia). Viaduct Theatre, Halifax, 29 March – 2 April; Canolfan y Celfyddyday Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Aberystwyth, 6 – 9 April; West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, 19 – 30 April; Theatre at the Mill, Belfast, 4 – 7 May; Gaiety Theatre, Isle of Man, 19 - 21 May; The Rose Theatre, Kingston, 24 – 28 May. www.northern-broadsides.co.uk

Brentwood Shakespeare Company. Directed by Glenda Abbott. Brentwood Theatre, 13-16 April (01277 200305). www.brentwood-theatre.org.

Shakespeare’s Globe Company. Directed by Dominic Dromgoole. Joshua McGuire (Hamlet). Strode Theatre, Street, 19 – 21 April (01458 442 846); Shakespeare’s Globe, London, 23 April - 9 July (020 7401 9919); Pavilion Gardens Buxton (adjacent to the Buxton Opera House), 4 – 5 August (0845 12 72190). [Small-scale tour - Part of the Word is God Theatre Season 2011]. www.shakespeares-globe.org

Stamford Shakespeare. Rutland Open Air Theatre in the grounds of Tolethorpe Hall, Little Casterton, 5 July – 27 August (01780 756133). www.stamfordshakespeare.co.uk.

Young Vic Company. Directed by Ian Rickson. Michael Sheen (Hamlet). Young Vic Theatre, London, 28 October - 21 January 2012 (020 7922 2922). www.youngvic.org

What do you make of Frankenstein?

Ways of reading the novel

Mary Shelley’s tale about the human creation of a creature has captured people’s imaginations since it was first published in 1818. What is it ‘about’? For a selection of interesting and varied interpretations, a new section has been added to the current Crossref-it.info guide on Frankenstein which will give you lots of ideas to think about. If you are a teacher, how about distributing them around the class and asking groups to justify each one from the text? A lively classroom debate might ensue!)

Whatever your consensus, why not let us know? (Post them in the ‘Any other comments’ box!)

A live version

Meanwhile, a dramatisation of the novel has been creating waves in the press, with the lead roles of Victor and the Creature being alternated by Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch.

All advance tickets for the production at the National Theatre have sold out, though some will be available each day if you turn up at the box-office. Thanks to the NTs collaboration with national cinemas, there are still some opportunities to see the production on the big screen, where ‘encore’ performances are being shown for those who couldn’t get to the initial screenings on the 17th and 24th of March.

Check out the NT site and see if you can’t get to a performance. Take note though that the production is 15 rated.

Melvyn Bragg: The book that changed the world

Until next Saturday (19th March) you can catch this fascinating hour long programme on BBC iPlayer. Melvyn Bragg sets out to persuade us that the King James Bible has driven the making of the English speaking world over the last 400 years, often in the most unanticipated ways.

He travels to historic locations in the UK and USA where the King James Bible has had a deep impact, including Gettysburg and the American Civil War and Washington's Lincoln Memorial, site of Martin Luther King's famous speech.

He argues that while many think our modern world is founded on secular ideals, it is the King James Version which had a greater legacy. The King James Bible not only influenced the English language and its literature more than any other book, it was also the seedbed of western democracy, the activator of radical shifts in society such as the abolition of the slave trade, the debating dynamite for brutal civil wars in Britain and America and a critical spark in the genesis of modern science.

If you are studying English, the opening sections are particularly useful in relating some of Shakespeare’s ideas to their scriptural background.

Crossref-it.info will fill in the other gaps!

The world they lived in

Nineteenth century English novels

Are you studying Hard Times, Great Expectations or Tess of the d’Urbervilles this year? It is likely that a lot of current A Level Eng Lit students are examining texts like these, which demonstrate the rapid changes in social organisation that took place during the nineteenth century.

Such novels depict the huge shift of the population from rural to city living. They chart the dislocation experienced when intimate communities and familiar landscapes are left behind for faceless streets. In cities it is easier to sink into oblivion without the watchful care of those who have known someone from birth.

The opportunity to develop

Yet cities also offer the chance for change, for re-definition. There are opportunities for a ‘nobody’ to become a ‘somebody’, to escape the social position of their family. New friendships established in new locations mean that people learn to judge others according to their material markers, rather than who their parents were.

Today’s obsession with ‘location, location, location’ is a direct descendant of the nineteenth century’s urban expansion, with its stress on living in a ‘respectable neighbourhood’. If you are studying the era for History, you will have a good grasp of this process and its impact.

No time?

However, for those who don’t have the time to research it for themselves, there are two new articles from Crossref-it.info. Part of an entire section about the world of the Victorians, these give you a useful overview of the situation in Britain that created the backdrop for your set texts. Go to

• World of Victorian writers > Town and country life
• World of Victorian writers > Urbanisation and the Suburbs

Remember, examiners give you marks when you can demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts were written and received (AO4).

All about fiction

Just in time to be of huge help to any students studying for exams this summer, or still facing university interviews to study English, are three TV programmes currently airing. Yes, you really can justify sitting in front of the screen to ‘help you study’!

Wider reading and success

One of the things that a crammed term of revision no longer allows time for is wider leisure reading. And yet something that always impresses examiners and interviewers is a candidate’s ability to refer to more than just the set texts they have studied in class. If you can link your ideas on a particular text to other literature of the time, or trace the concerns of the novelist to the social movements of their era, you will be heading for an A*.

Speedy literary context help

Now the Beeb is running a season on fiction and there are some really illuminating programmes to catch:

• Faulks on Fiction - At 9pm Saturday on BBC2, author Sebastian Faulks is tracing the development of various types of character that recur in novels. So far he has covered ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lovers’, demonstrating how our perceptions of what makes a literary hero or lover have changed through the last three centuries. Lots of clips from TV adaptations bring his observations to life. Catching it on BBC i-player means that you don’t have to sacrifice your social life!
• Birth of the British Novel - At 9pm Monday on BBC4 an even more helpful series is being fronted by Henry Hitchins. This charts developments in novel writing from the earliest Robinson Crusoe to the present day. It is great for demonstrating how authors created, then adapted, different prose genres, either reflecting or subverting the literary context of their times. Again there are numerous drama clips as illustration.

English Language help

If you are taking AS/A2 English Language, another literary themed broadcast focuses on text production:

The Beauty of Books – Just before the Birth of the British Novel, at 8.30pm Monday on BBC4, as this series moves through the centuries it becomes ever more pertinent to the AS/A2 Development of Language modules. Already the second episode has considered the implications of moving from hand scribed manuscripts into print, thereby creating a medieval best seller with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Handy social context help

Meanwhile (in case you didn’t already know), Crossref-it.info has got lots of helpful articles about the worlds inhabited by Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Romantics and Victorians. They will help you to make links between your set texts and the political, social and philosophical movements of the day. Lots of brownie points there!

Every success!

Invisible barriers

One of the hardest aspects to understand about a culture are the unspoken values that govern it – the things that nobody makes clear but everybody assumes. English literature inevitably reflects English culture, which in turn has been shaped by the nation’s position as a democracy, its Protestantism and its geographical location, among other things.

It is hard to gauge how far this history has influenced British attitudes, yet it is surely part of the desire to look outward, to express individual opinions and be self determining, which we see in characters like Elizabeth Bennet, Pip, Jane Eyre and the Mayor of Casterbridge.

Class wars

However, all these literary creations also encountered another invisible value that shaped their existence – that of social class. How one sector of the population judges another is usually a mystery to the outsider, but the problems it poses are real enough. Class can determine:

> who one can marry

> what employment is acceptable

> where one may live.

Of course, encountering such obstacles has provided great material for the English novel in particular. Can the labourer Pip ever really be a gentleman? Should clergyman’s daughter Margaret Hale be united with a cotton manufacturer? Will Miss Bennet’s vulgar mother always ruin her chances in marriage?

Does it matter?

When today’s society is much more mobile and egalitarian, it may seem hard to understand what all the fuss is about. That’s why at Crossref-it.info there is now a helpful article on English class and hierarchy to guide readers through the minefield of these invisible attitudes. Next time you wonder just why Angel Clare’s parents are anxious about his marrying Tess, why not check it out?