Happy New Year!

What will 2012 bring?

Our user figures show that term has definitely re-started, perhaps with a groan if not with a bang, after all the indulgence of Christmas.

The big events in the UK this coming year are rare:

• For only the second time in our history we have a monarch who has clocked up sixty years on the throne – the previous time it was Queen Victoria in 1897. Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee will be celebrated in June
• The Olympic Games come to London – last seen 64 years ago in austerity Britain in 1948, and before that in 1908.

Literary highlights

In the literary world, having just completed had the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible in 2011, 2012 sees the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. As with the Bible, the characters and tales which flowed from Dicken’s fevered imagination have proved indelible within British cultural consciousness. Even recently they have inspired related novels such as Mr Pip by Lloyd Jones and Jack Maggs by Peter Carey.

A visual imagination

Dickens’ typically vivid detail in scene setting and characterisation has always inspired film and progamme makers – more screen versions of his stories have been made than of any other novelist. The anniversary means that there is a plethora of adaptations coming to screens big and small, as well as lots of discussion programmes.

Over Christmas, there was the dark-toned version of Great Expectations, run over three successive hour-long episodes. It omitted much of the humour and domestic intimacy associated with Joe and Biddy, the Pockets and Wemmick’s castle in Walworth. Instead it focused on the desperate machinations of Miss Havisham and Orlick. It will be interesting to compare it with the film of Great Expectations being released later in the year.

Speaking of films

Crossref-it.info is still on the look out for A Level teachers (active or retired) to submit their resource ideas to accompany short film clips of particular exam text extracts which draw on biblical allusions (all supplied). If you need help there is a sample worksheet based on one of the extracts. However, we are also looking for any interesting ways of handling this material appropriate for English A Level teaching.

Key facts

• The deadline for new submissions has been extended to Monday 30th January
• The successful resource selected for each extract will earn its creator £50
• We are looking for resources on the following texts:
  • Elizabethan / Jacobean: Donne - Death be not proud, Hymn to God in my sicknesse / Measure for Measure
  • Romantic Lit.: Wordsworth - Intimations of Immortality
  • Victorian Lit.: Jane Eyre / Great Expectations / Our Mutual Friend / Tess of the d’Urbervilles
  • Modern Lit.: The Handmaid’s Tale / Clough – The Latest Decalogue (not a set text – but a fun introductory tool if you are looking at intertextuality).

There is a wealth of experience amongst those who have taught these texts – why not put it to good use and get paid for your ideas! Do get in touch soon at admin@crossref-it.info!

The background to pop music

Paul Gambaccini

As the 400^th anniversary year of the publication of the King James Bible draws to its close, UK DJ Paul Gambaccini has examined the influence of this text in some unexpected places – on the songs of Elvis, George Michael and The Rolling Stones to name but a few.

Where do the stories come from?

Contemporary music draws more consistently on the Old and New Testaments than on any other text. Crossref-it.info already carries a list of literary works whose titles allude to the Bible, but in a recent BBC Radio 4 programme, Gambo reeled off a list of popular songs whose writers were influenced by characters, stories and actual verses from scripture.

Ranging across the genres of rock, blues, country & western, pop and soul, artists keep using biblical references because they anticipate that we, the audience, will have a rich cache of associations to draw on:

• For example, by simply calling the protagonist of his song about betrayed love Delilah, Tom Jones expects us to bring to mind the whole sorry tale of how love for a fickle woman destroyed a hero
  • At Crossref-it.info we know that many may not have that story in their ‘culturalkit-bag’, which is why you can read about it here or in the source version.
• Springsteen’s powerful lyric, Adam raised a Cain, resonates with the whole idea of disappointed idealism, of the inescapability of parental influence and of love bound up with pain – all issues that are seeded by the loss of Eden and Fall of humankind depicted in Genesis 3 and 4.
• The plaintive anthem of the first Shrek film, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, is actually inspired by the troubled love life of the Old Testament King David.

If you can spare 30 mins, why not listen to the programme, originally broadcast on Saturday 17^th December, 2011.

We need your help!

If you didn’t get to see Dec 7^th’s blog, please check it out and pass the message on!

We need your help!

New resources

Crossref-it.info has recently created some audio-visual clips taken from a variety of A Level texts. Featuring performances by current UK A Level pupils, each demonstrates how the author has been influenced by their own - and their audience’s - awareness of a culturally pervasive text – the Bible.

Teachers to the rescue!

We now need some teaching ideas / resources to accompany each AV clip (average length three minutes). As guidance we will send interested teachers a prototype worksheet based on one of the extracts. However, we are also looking for your own interesting ways of handling this material, whilst keeping an eye on A Level syllabus requirements.

Key facts

• The deadline for submission is Monday 9th January
• The successful resource selected for each extract will earn its creator £50.

Students, encourage your teachers to have a go!

If any of you are studying (and could tell your teacher) or teaching any of the following texts for A Level we would love to hear from you.

We are looking for resources on the following texts:

Elizabethan / Jacobean

• Dr Faustus
• Herbert - The Agonie
• Donne - Death be not proud, Hymn to God in my sicknesse
• Measure for Measure
• Paradise Lost Bk 1

Romantic Lit.

• Blake – Introduction, The Lamb
• Frankenstein
• Wordsworth - Intimations of Immortality

Victorian Lit.

• Wuthering Heights
• Jane Eyre
• Great Expectations
• Hopkins – I wake and feel
• Our Mutual Friend
• Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Modern Lit.

• Clough – The Latest Decalogue
• The Handmaid’s Tale

We can’t promise your name in lights, only that lots of other educationalists will bless you for helping them in their hour of need.

Do get in touch soon!

A theatrical response to 1611

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s winter season contains an interesting combination of dramas. The majority of actors in their new production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure are also appearing in David Edgar’s new play, Written on the Heart.

Why did 1611 matter?

Written on the Heart makes vivid the tensions and undercurrents of those involved in producing a new version of the Bible – what we know today as the King James Version. For anyone studying Shakespeare or other drama of the era (and who at A Level does not?) it provides a dynamic context for the moral dilemmas of characters as diverse as Malvolio and Hamlet.

The playwright demonstrates why exactly which word selected to convey beliefs mattered so greatly – that the committee members really were dealing with matters of life and death, in an era where the ‘wrong’ beliefs were punished by the state.

Passionate protest lives on

• Think of the passion and commitment shown by those involved in the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 - people putting their lives on the line for what they believe in.
• The debate was just as meaningful 400 years ago in Britain, which had its own uprising just thirty years after the KJB was published.

In a telling contrast to modern Western ‘been there, done that’ ennui, people like William Tyndale went to the stake for daring to create a text that could be read by everyone, rather than just those in control. In the play he haunts the consciences of the translation committees four monarchs later. This stuff matters.

Belief in Measure for Measure

So why has the RSC chosen to stage Shakespeare’s ‘problem play’ alongside a debate about beliefs? In the video below, Measure for Measure's Director speaks about the overlap and how the knowledge gained by the cast for one production informs the other.

Measure for Measure is not a neat and tidy text to pigeonhole – dramas of ideas rarely are. With an ending open to interpretation, it presents the difference between espousing a doctrine and actually living by it, and the difficulties that creates. It asks what has the greater hold over people – sexual desire or moral beliefs.

Ways in to the text

Inevitably Shakespeare refers to the ethical debates of the day, with which he would have expected his audience to be familiar. However 21st century students do not necessarily inhabit the same moral universe. It helps therefore to have a guide to this complex play which clearly defines and explains the concepts and why they were important – Measure for Measure to the rescue!

As with the context of Written on the Heart, this stuff matters. Having the ‘wrong’ beliefs is punishable by the state. Though no longer the case in Britain, our news-screens show us what it is like to die for strongly held beliefs – and at the RSC drama set 400 years ago bring it vividly home.

The White Devil

New kid on the block

Shakespeare you always expect to see on A Level exam syllabuses.
Marlowe’s Dr Faustus continues to pull in the gothic crowd.
Now Webster’s dark revenge tragedy, The White Devil, is under examination.

Full of dark deeds and tortured imaginings, this complex plot hinges on a variety of characters and motifs typical of the revenge genre.

Rather than a hero, the play has a range of anti-heroes, each trying to outwit the other, until most of them are killed, by a variety of grisly means.

Often the female roles in plays of the era are used as receptacles of virtue – think Portia in The Merchant of Venice, or Isabella in Measure for Measure – to counterpoint male machinations. But Webster eschews this approach. Although one woman does provide a positive moral balance in the drama, there are two other feisty and amoral female roles, one of which is the ‘white devil’ of the title.

Moral ambiguity

But no-one is wholly good or bad, even though Webster tries to shape his contemporaries’ response to certain roles by overlaying them with a traditional Christian or evil iconography.

Modern audiences and students do not find that these visual or verbal references register so immediately, which is why the new Crossref-it.info guide aims to make everything clear, from what is happening in each scene, to the sophisticated allusions with which Webster peppers the text.

Don’t take our word for it

A senior British academic wrote of our White Devil Guide:

‘This guide introduces students to some of the contexts that will help them understand how The White Devil fits into the wider culture of Jacobean England. Its scene-by-scene glosses and questions are very well designed to support individual study, while the discussion of critical approaches and its suggestions for further reading, provide valuable pointers… . A thorough, very useful, learning
resource.’

Dr Pascale Aebischer (D.Phil., Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Studies, Dept. of English, University of
Exeter)

The influence of the KJB on culture

Not only were Webster and his contemporaries inspired by some of the ideas and stories
from the Bible – the world of music was shaped by it for centuries too.

Until 28th November, try and catch a performance of the Concert trio In Voice and Verse,
who tell the story of Genesis to Revelation using the words of the King James Bible
interspersed with the famous pieces of music which those words inspired.

The music will include excerpts from:

• Haydn's Creation
• Handel's Messiah
• Mendelssohn’s Oh for the Wings of a Dove
• Several modern compositions.

To discover performance venues and dates, click here.

Significant anniversaries

In the coming months there are three major literary anniversaries being celebrated.

Written on the Heart

Regular followers of this blog will know that 2011 marks the 400th birthday of the King James Bible. As a dramatic marker of this, acclaimed playwright David Edgar has written a new play for the RSC called Written on the Heart.

Previewing from 27th October at the Swan Theatre, it will prove a fascinating insight for any students wanting to understand the world in which Shakespeare and other Jacobean dramatists operated. Meanwhile, it is well worth checking out the KJBT website which has a variety of helpful resources.

200 years young

Claire Tomalin has recently brought out an acclaimed new biography of Charles Dickens. Born almost 200 years ago on 7th February 1812, he has shaped our whole perception of what a novel should be. Heavily influenced by the popular theatre of his day, he created memorable villains and cliff-hanger chapter endings to engage a whole new sector of the reading public.

As a tireless social campaigner, he also used literature to change people’s perception about issues such as industrial conditions, legal reform and the treatment of the poor, to name but a few. At the same time, his mature novels explored motivation and compulsion at a deeper level, through engaging yet flawed heroes, such as Pip in Great Expectations.

At Crossref-it.info you will find lots of information to back up your knowledge of the great man, regardless of which text you are studying, as well as our invaluable guide to Great Expectations itself.

100th birthday

Last month, on 19th September, was the 100th anniversary of the birth of William Golding. This British novelist, poet, playwright, who was a Nobel and Booker prize winner, was best known for his seminal novel, The Lord of the Flies. Check out Crossref-it.info to discover where this intriguing title comes from and the ideas that lie behind the premise of the novel.

Let us know

If you are aware of any literary festival or celebration coming up which you think we ought to know about, or you want others to hear about, please contact us here and we will pass the message on.

New beginnings

Starting out

Welcome to all who are starting a new course in English at AS / A2 / Undergraduate Level! You are probably already experiencing the significant change of academic rigour compared to your studies so far.

If you have only just found out about www.crossref-it.info you will discover that there are a huge number of resources designed to help you make sense of the literature you are studying. Give yourself some time to surf around the site to get a flavour of what’s on offer.


Exciting developments

For existing users, there are some real highlights to look forward to this term:

• Two new text guides –
  • John Webster’s The White Devil
  • Jane Austen’s Persuasion

• Lots of handy biographies on frequently studied authors, from Achebe to Wordsworth

• New resources for teachers –
  • Lesson sequences on
    • Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale
    • Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale
  • Homework task sheets on many existing Crossref-it.info texts.

Language and film

Later in the autumn watch out for two entirely new Crossref-it resources:

• Audio-visual material linking passages of literature with a source text
• A Level English Language materials addressing the development of English.

Tell us what else you want

So that we can keep making www.crossref-it.info helpful and relevant to your studies, please let us know what else you would love to see on-site. Write here and we will see what we can do!