Sunday, 27 September 2015
Sam's Flags: The longest reigning monarch
Sam's Flags: The longest reigning monarch: Today HM Queen Elizabeth II becomes the longest reigning monarch in history, as well as expressing my own personal congratulations, I want t...
If conditionals
If conditional
0- Zero Conditional :- If + present simple
…. , . present simple
تستخدم للتعبير
عن الثوابت (الطبيعية والعلمية والفيزيائية)
*If you heat water it
evaporates
1- First Conditional :- If +
present simple …. , …
future
تستخدم الصيغة
الأولى للتنبؤ عن المستقبل ولإعطاء وعد
* If you come early, I'll give you a present.
* If you don't hurry,
you won't catch the train.
2- Second Conditional
:- If + past simple …. , would + inf .
تستخدم الصيغة الثانية
للحديث عن شيء غير محتمل الحدوث
* If I had a lot of
money, I would buy a car
* What would you do
if you had a lot of money?
*If I were you, I would
go to the doctor.
*If you didn't go out I would
visit you.
3-The Third
Conditional :- If + (past
perfect) , ( would have + p.p)
Ÿ
تستخدم الحالة الثالثة للتعبير عن تعبر مواقف مستحيلة الحدوث أو التغيير فى الماض
أو مواقف كنا نتخيلها فى الماضى كما تعبر عن الندم.
*If we had
played well , we would have won the match.
*If you had worked hard , you would
have passed the exam
*If only I had listened to
him, I wouldn't have lost my job.( للندم
)
* If I had (I'd) left home on time, I would (I'd)
have caught the school bus.
Review on " Gulliver's Travels" نقد لرحلات جاليفر
Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's
Travels
Swift's greatest satire, Gulliver's Travels, is considered one of the most
important works in the history of world literature. Published as Travels into Several Remote
Nations of the World, in Four Parts; by Lemuel Gulliver in 1726,Gulliver's Travels depicts one man's journeys to several
strange and unusual lands. The general theme of Gulliver's Travels is a satirical examination of human
nature, man's potential for depravity, and the dangers of the misuse of reason.
Throughout the volume Swift attacked the baseness of humankind even as he
suggested the greatest virtues of the human race; he also attacked the folly of
human learning and political systems even as he implied the proper functions of
art, science, and government. Gulliver's Travels, some scholars believe, had its
origins during Swift's years as a Tory polemicist, when he was part of a group
of prominent Tory writers known as the Scriblerus Club. The group, which also
included Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot, among others,
collaborated on several satires, including The Scriblerus Papers. They also planned a satire called The Memoirs of a Martinus
Scriblerus, which was to include several imaginary voyages. An
immediate success, Gulliver's Travels was
inspired by this work. Swift finished Gulliver's Travels was
published anonymously, but Swift's authorship was widely suspected. Alternately
considered an attack on humanity or a clear-eyed assessment of human strengths
and weaknesses, the novel is a complex study of human nature and of the moral,
philosophical, and scientific thought of Swift's time which has resisted any
single definition of meaning for nearly three centuries.
Plot and Major Characters
Written in the form of a travel journal, Gulliver's Travels is the fictional account of four
extraordinary voyages made by Lemuel Gulliver, a physician who signs on to
serve as a ship's surgeon when he is unable to provide his family with a
sufficient income
in London. After being shipwrecked Gulliver first arrives at
Lilliput, an island whose inhabitants are just six inches tall and where the
pettiness of the political system is mirrored in the diminutive size of its
citizens.
Gulliver is referred to as the "Man-Mountain" by the
Lilliputians and is eventually pressed into service by the King in a
nonsensical war with the neighboring island of Blefuscu. Gulliver finally
escapes Lilliput and returns briefly to England before a second voyage takes
him to Brobdingnag. There he finds himself dwarfed by inhabitants who are sixty
feet tall. Gulliver's comparatively tiny size now makes him wholly dependent on
the protection and solicitude of others, and he is imperiled by dangerous
encounters with huge rats and a curious toddler. Gulliver, however, incurs the disdain
of the kindly and virtuous Brobdingnagian rulers when his gunpowder display,
intended to impress his hosts as an exemplary product of European civilization,
proves disastrous. An address Gulliver delivers to the Brobdingnagians
describing English political practices of the day is also met with much scorn.
Housed in a miniature box, Gulliver abruptly departs Brobdingnag when a giant
eagle flies off with him and drops him in the ocean. He soon embarks on his
third voyage to the flying island of Laputa, a mysterious land inhabited by
scientists, magicians, and sorcerers who engage in abstract theorizing and
conduct ill-advised experiments based on flawed calculations. Here Gulliver
also visits Glubbdubdrib where it is possible to summon the dead and to converse
with such figures as Aristotle and Julius Caesar. He also travels to Luggnagg,
where he encounters the Struldbrugs, a group of people who are given
immortality, yet are condemned to live out their eternal existence trapped in
feeble and decrepit bodies. Once again Gulliver returns to England before a
final journey, to the land of the Houyhnhnms, who are a superior race of
intelligent horses. But the region is also home to the Yahoos, a vile and
depraved race of ape-like creatures. Gulliver is eventually exiled from
Houyhnhnm society when the horses gently insist that Gulliver must return to
live among his own kind. After this fourth and final voyage, he returns to
England, where he has great difficulty adjusting to everyday life. All people
everywhere remind him of the Yahoos.
Major Themes
Each of the four voyages in Gulliver's Travels serves
as a vehicle for Swift to expose and excoriate some aspect of human folly. The
first voyage has been interpreted as an allegorical satire of the political
events of the early eighteenth century, a commentary on the moral state of
England, a general satire on the pettiness of human desires for wealth and
power, and a depiction of the effects of unwarranted pride and self-promotion.
The war with the tiny neighboring island of Blefuscu represents England's
rivalry with France. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver's diminutive status serves as a
reminder of how perspective and viewpoint alter one's condition and claims to
power in society. The imperfect, yet highly moral Brobdingnagians represent,
according to many critics, Swift's conception of ethical rulers. The voyage to
Laputa, the flying island, is a scathing attack upon science in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries and reveals Swift's thorough acquaintance with the Philosophical Transactions of
the Royal Society, the leading publication of the scientific
community of his day. The third voyage unequivocally manifests Swift's contempt
and disdain for abstract theory and ideology that is not of practical service
to humans. But it is the voyage to the land of the Houyhnhnms that reveals
Swift's ultimate satiric object—man's inability to come to terms with his true
nature. In particular, the Houyhnhnms are interpreted as symbols and examples
of a human order that, although unattainable, deserves to remain an ideal,
while the Yahoos are found to be the representatives of the depths of
humanity's potential fall if that ideal is abandoned.
Critical Reception
Gulliver's
Travels has always been
Swift's most discussed work. Critics have provided a wide variety of
interpretations of each of the four voyages, of Swift's satiric targets, and of
the narrative voice. But scholars agree that most crucial to an understanding
of Gulliver's Travels is an understanding of the fourth
voyage, to the land of the Houyhnhnms. Merrel D. Clubb has noted that "the
longer that one studies Swift, the more obvious it becomes that the
interpretations and verdict to be placed on the 'Voyage to the Houyhnhnms' is,
after all, the central problem of Swift criticism." Much of the
controversy surrounds three possible interpretations of the Houyhnhnms and the
Yahoos. One school of thought has traditionally viewed the Yahoos as a satiric
representation of debased humanity, while taking the Houyhnhnms as representatives
of Swift's ideals of rationality and order. The two races are thus interpreted
as symbols of the dual nature of humanity, with Gulliver's misanthropy based on
his perception of the flaws of human nature and the failure of humanity to develop
its potential for reason, harmony, and order. Another critical position
considers both the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos to be the subject of satire, with the
Yahoos representing the physical baseness of humans and the Houyhnhnms
representing the fatuousness of the idea that humans will ever achieve a
rationally-ordered existence. The ultimate satiric intent of the work to
critics who accept this interpretation is that the only truly rational or
enlightened beings in existence are not humans, but another species altogether.
Since the 1950s, however, a variety of critics have tempered these readings by
illuminating the complexity of purpose in the fourth voyage. The Houyhnhnms and
Yahoos are now most often discussed as both satiric objects and representatives
of the duality of human nature. The nature of Gulliver is another much-debated
element of theTravels. Early
critics generally viewed him as the mouthpiece of Swift. Modern critics, who
recognize the subtlety of Swift's creation of Gulliver, have discredited that
position. The most significant contemporary debate is concerned with Swift's
intentions regarding the creation of Gulliver—whether he is meant to be a
consistently realized character, a reliable narrator, or a satiric object whose
opinions are the object of Swift's ridicule. This debate over the nature of
Gulliver is important because critics seek to determine whether Gulliver is
intended to be a man with definite character traits who undergoes a
transformation, or an allegorical representative of humanity. In general,
Gulliver is now considered a flexible persona manipulated by Swift to present a
diversity of views or satirical situations and to indicate the complexity, the
ultimate indefinability, of human nature. Many scholars have suggested that Gulliver's Travels has no ultimate meaning but to demand
that readers regard humanity without the prejudices of pessimism or optimism,
and accept human beings as a mixture of good and evil. Eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century critics of Swift were primarily interested in aspects of his
character, although a few did actually discuss the meaning and merits of his
work at length. The eighteenth-century critics were most concerned with
depicting Swift's perceived immorality and misanthropy, and they often argued
their case with the help of misrepresentations, or deliberate fabrications of
facts. Swift's defenders, in attacking these critics, provided the first real
criticism of Swift, in particular pointing out the misrepresentations of his
life. Twentieth-century critics have been confronted with the task of sifting
through the misconceptions to reevaluate Swift's total achievement. There are
many psychological examinations of Swift's character; the psychoanalysts,
however, have often been criticized for neglecting the literary or intellectual
traditions of Swift's age when associating his works with supposed neurotic
tendencies. Some commentators believed that psychoanalytic critics also make an
obvious mistake when they identify Swift with his characters, assuming, for
example, that Gulliver's comments reflect the opinions of his creator. Close
textual analysis has demonstrated the complicated elements of Swift's works and
proven that they do not always reflect his personal opinions, but are carefully
written to reflect the opinions of Swift's created narrators. A master of
simple yet vividly descriptive prose and of a style so direct that if often
masks the complexity of his irony, Swift is praised for his ability to craft
his satires entirely through the eyes of a created persona. He is now regarded
as a complex though not mysterious man who created works of art which will
permit no single interpretation. The massive amount of criticism devoted to
Swift each year reflects his continued literary importance: his work is valuable
not for any statement of ultimate meaning, but for its potential for raising
questions in the mind of the reader.
Saturday, 19 September 2015
Thursday, 17 September 2015
Monday, 14 September 2015
Explorers
Explorers
Explorers
have helped expand the horizons of mankind in more ways than one - they are the
people who have gone to places as yet undiscovered and unexplored. They have
made these new places physically open to new voyagers and by bringing back
stories of these new places, they have opened the minds of people to new
adventures and excitement.
One of the
earliest voyagers whose name comes up in all discussions of explorers is Marco
Polo (1254-1324). This Italian traveler and adventurer visited China and explored
Asia and his notes from his travel were for years the main source of
information for many in the Western world.
Christopher
Columbus (1451-1506) who discovered the Americas on his voyage to find a new
path to the East Indies literally rewrote the history of the World. He opened
the New World to the Old World and many good and bad things stemmed from that
significant journey.
Most of
the dramatic discoveries in terms of new lands and cultures happened in the
15th through the 17th century and at this time many European monarchs funded
the trips of explorers. The hope was that the explorers would find new paths to
wealth and glory. There are several famous explorers from this period. Vasco da
Gama (1469-1524) and Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) from Portugal and Italy
helped their respective monarchs by establishing new paths to two different
corners of the world. Then there were men like Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521)
and Sir Francis Drake (1540-1597) who re-established the ground rules of sea
travel and adventure by sailing around the world. The Spaniard Hernando Cortes
(1485-1547) is well-known for having marched across Mexico and having taken on
the Aztec Empire successfully. The Englishmen Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618),
Henry Hudson (1565-1611) and French explorers Jacques Cartier (1491-1557),
Jacques Marquette (1637-1675) and Samuel de Champlain (1567-1635) are
particularly famous in the context of the United States and Canada as they
helped establish some of the early colonies in these countries.
Much as the
exploration of new lands lead to the expansion of the world and the breaking
down of boundaries in the earlier centuries, the 20th century saw the
dismantling of the air and space boundary and some the men and women who
participated in these early space travels are great explorers also. Charles
Lindbergh (1902-1974), who handled the first successful flight across the
Atlantic Ocean, and Amelia Earhart (1897-1937?) are famous pioneers of air
travel. Neil Armstrong (1930-), as the first man to set foot on the moon, and
Valentina Tereshkova (1937-), as the first woman to be in space are, are some
of the most noteworthy space explorers in human history.
The South
and North Pole have also drawn many an explorer. These places have extreme
climatic conditions. The people who have travelled in these places have needed
extreme courage and determination. Norway's Roald Amundsen (1872-1928?) was the
first man to reach the South Pole. American Robert Edwin Peary (1856-1920) was
the first to reach the North Pole with his assistant Matthew Henson
(1866-1955).
These men
and women have significantly contributed to the expansion of our idea of the
world.
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