Literary Great Upper - Worldwide School of English

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Task A Answer these questions about the lesson's title: A Literary Great!

(1) Click on the dictionary below! Find out what "literary" means! (Anytime you see this picture, it is a dictionary!)

(2) In this context, what part of speech is the word "great"? (a) an adverb (b) an adjective (c) a noun (d) a verb

(3) What do you think today's lesson will be about?

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 Task B

Look at the picture of the man above. Make some predictions: Where do you think he was born (what nationality is he)? What is his occupation? He is a famous man. What do you think he is famous for? Do you think he would be more interested in sport or politics? Do you think he is a native speaker of English?

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Read the biography of Russell below and answer the questions that follow:

Bertrand Russell ? Biography

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1950

"in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought"

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was born in Trelleck, Wales. His parents died when he was three years old. He was educated privately and went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a brilliant student of mathematics and philosophy. In 1900, Russell became acquainted with the work of the Italian mathematician Peano, which inspired him to write The Principles of Mathematics (1903), expanded in collaboration with Alfred North Whitehead into three volumes of Principia Mathematica (1910-13). The research, which Russell did during this period, is preserved in many books and essays and establishes him as one of the founding fathers of modern analytical philosophy. Throughout his life Russell has also been an extremely outspoken and aggressive political activist. He was a lecturer at many prominent Universities around the world, including Britain and the United States, in his later years. His greatest literary achievement has been his History of Western Philosophy (1946) and his dying essay entitled What I have Lived For, which he wrote during the last stages of his life. Russell died in 1970 but will be remembered fondly as a great philosopher and provocative author.

Worldwide School of English, 2003.

1. What did Russell study when he was at Cambridge? 2. Using context, what does acquainted mean:

(a) to become upset by something/someone (b) to become familiar with something/someone (c) to be shocked by something/someone 4. Scan the text and order the words in accordance with how they appear in the text:

__ provocative ___ outspoken ___ aggressive ___ humanitarian

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5. What part of speech are the words in question 4?

a. Adjectives b. Nouns c. Verbs d. Adverbs

`What I Have Lived For' is a beautiful example of English literature. The vocabulary that Russell uses in this piece is quite unique and varied. Although some of the words are quite formal and sophisticated, the words that are highlighted in red are frequently used in newspaper headlines, etc.

Check to see how many of these words you know before you read:

1. ecstasy

2. abyss 3.prefiguring

4. sought

5. flux 6. longing

7. overwhelming 8. wayward 9. anguish

10. verge 11. reverberated 12. oppressors

13. unfathomable 14. burden 15. mockery 16. alleviate

Match the words in the box above with their meanings below. You could use the dictionary to help!!

A adv: incapable of being resisted, overpowering and irresistible.

B n: to have a heartfelt desire for something beyond reach.

C adj: resistant to guidance or discipline.

D n: extreme mental distress.

E n: the limit beyond which something happens or changes.

F n: extreme pleasure.

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 G adj: difficult or impossible to understand. H n: a bottomless gulf or pit. I vb: imagining or picturing oneself in advance. J vb: to have tried to locate or discover, searched for. K n: flowing, unstable or variable. L v: to be repeatedly reflected, as sound waves, heat, or light. M n: a person of authority who subjects others to undue pressures. N vb: to weigh down or to load or overload. O n: behaviour that imitates somebody's style in a humorous way. P vb: to make easier or provide relief.

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Task A

Ask yourself these questions before you read. Write down your answers or talk with a friend.

1. What have you lived for? 2. What are your three passions?

Task B

Read the text. What was different or the same between you and Bertrand Russell?

What I have Lived For by Bertrand Russell.

Three passions, so simple yet overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life ? the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me around, on a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy ? ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed the rest of my life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relives loneliness ? that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I have sought. And though it might seem too good for human life, this is ? at last ? what I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the heart of humankind. I have wished to know why the stars shine, and the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway over the flux of the universe. A little of this, but not very much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens, but compassion, always, brought me back to Earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberated in my head ? children in famine, their children, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and so I too suffer.

This has been life for me. I have found it worth living, and I would gladly live it again were the chance offered me.

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 Part A One of the reasons why this particular piece of writing is so interesting is because of the number of stressed words ? remember Russell was also a great mathematician! If this piece were spoken, you would hear a very large number of stressed words in each sentence. Look at the paragraph below and see if you can count the stressed words:

"Echoes of cries of pain reverberated in my head ? children in famine, their children, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty and pain make a mockery

of what human life should be." Below is a suggestion of how many words could be stressed, if spoken:

Echoes of cries of pain reverberated in my head ? children in famine, their children, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty

and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.

Try to say the sentence yourself and listen for the stressed words.

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 Part B

Syllable stress is also important to make your speech sound more natural!

Look at the example of how we show syllable stress in individual words:

nurse

1

teacher

2

police

3

manager

4

professor

5

See if you can match the words below with the appropriate syllable stress patterns shown above (1,2,3,4 or 5):

problem

balloon

continent

banana

tobacco

address

shoe

music

mother

island

defence

umbrella

paragraph eye

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