Notes, abstracts, papers, exams and problems of Language Arts to University

How can uncountable nouns counted or measured?

1. - We can do it if we use shape or portions, and also with Indefinite pronouns such as: much, any and some. We also use little, no and a lot of. It’s important to remember that an uncountable noun describes qualities, actions; are substances and concepts that we cannot divide in separate elements so we cannot count them for real.

What is the difference between concrete and abstract nouns?

2. - The difference between them is that a concrete noun name things that you can perceive with your senses and they are measured. On the other hand, an abstract noun name qualities, ideas, emotions or attitudes.

Do words in English always have the same function?

3.- Many words in English have more than one function because we can apply them as nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs according to the context where we are using them.

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3. The Romantic period.

3.1. Social and historical context.
It would be convenient to believe that the Romantic Movement in Literature began with the storming of the Bastille in Paris. What had been unorthodox became orthodox. Romanticism developed its own rules and standards, and the rebels became the lawful government.
When, however, we consider that the Romantics were really returning to the old way of writing (the Elizabethans and even of the ballad-poets), we can then see the classical age in truer perspective. It was Dryden and Pope who broke away from the great English tradition and joined, for a brief age of stability, the classical tradition of France.

2.2. Romantic poetry.
The key year for English Romanticism is not 1987, but 1798, when the Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge was published.
Wordsworth was against poetic diction. He wanted a return to imagination, legend, the human heart. He also conceived of poetry as more than the mere correct versification of philosophical truths: the poet was a prophet, not the transcriber of other mens truths but the initiator of truth itself. The poet had the key to the hidden mysteries of the heart, of life itself; the poet was not a mere embellisher of everyday life, but the man who gave life its meaning.

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3. The Romantic period.

3.1. Social and historical context.
It would be convenient to believe that the Romantic Movement in Literature began with the storming of the Bastille in Paris. What had been unorthodox became orthodox. Romanticism developed its own rules and standards, and the rebels became the lawful government.
When, however, we consider that the Romantics were really returning to the old way of writing (the Elizabethans and even of the ballad-poets), we can then see the classical age in truer perspective. It was Dryden and Pope who broke away from the great English tradition and joined, for a brief age of stability, the classical tradition of France.

2.2. Romantic poetry.
The key year for English Romanticism is not 1987, but 1798, when the Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge was published.
Wordsworth was against poetic diction. He wanted a return to imagination, legend, the human heart. He also conceived of poetry as more than the mere correct versification of philosophical truths: the poet was a prophet, not the transcriber of other mens truths but the initiator of truth itself. The poet had the key to the hidden mysteries of the heart, of life itself; the poet was not a mere embellisher of everyday life, but the man who gave life its meaning.

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Coleridge's contribution to the Romantic Movement lay in a return to the magical and mysterious. It was on this question of the introduction of the supernatural into poetry that Coleridge and Wordsworth could never see eye to eye. Coleridge wanted poetry to fly into the regions of the marvellous and choose themes that, though fantastic, should be acceptable through willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Coleridges three great poems are The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan.Byron became a legend. His poetry is essentially self-centred. He became the great sneerer at the laws and conventions of his country, and a spirit of satire which allies him to Pope. Don Juan is perhaps not strictly a Romantic poem at all: there is too much laughter in it, too much of the sharp edge of social criticism.

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4.3. The rise of the novel.
These writers were quite happy about their society of their age. They had a strong sense of propaganda, since their literature was used to speak about Victorian values: family, domesticity, and religion. Associated with this sense of propaganda, they will speak about a society full of economical improvements, but with strong differences among the classes. They will take characters from reality, as people living in streets. They will tell real stories, taken from everyday life, in an attempt of depicting their own society, and conditions of England.
We have also to speak about the value of individualities: linear stories in which the characters will succeed using those Victorian values. Autobiography was a very recurrent genre, especially writers speaking about their own lives. For this reason, we will speak about semi-autobiographical material as well.

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4. The Victorian age.

4.1. Social and historical context.
It covers a wide period of time, and it is very productive literary speaking. We find the so-called professional writing: writers devoted their own life to write. Literature became a profession. It constituted an outstanding moment for the development of non-fictional works. Poetry was cultivated, but it was the novel the preferred genre.
Queen Victoria ruled Britain from 1837 to 1901. She brought an important political and economical development in her country. It was the age of Colonialism, and a new Philosophy was introduced. We are speaking about expansion and development. Queen Victoria was very young when she became queen. She was born in 1819, and she died in 1901. She was in her teens when she became queen, married quite young, and had a lot of children. In her expansionist policy, she worked in a double way: she ruled the country, establishing many relations with other countries and places, and she reinforced the idea of colonialism. She focused on adopting the idea of

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Minor Victorian novelists
Elizabeth Gaskell. She deals with the social conditions existing in the North and South of England in her novel called North and South.

Disraeli. His most important novel was Sybil of the Two Nations. He was also a politician. He dealt with the conditions of England, particularly, the community of London.

Brontë Sisters

·Charlotte Brontë: Her most important novel was Jane Eyre, in which she speaks about the independence of women.
·Emily Brontë: Her most important novel is ... (Continue)

5. The coming of Modern Age.
Queen Victorias reign ended in 1901, but the Victorian age ended about twenty years earlier. That peculiar spirit called Victorianism began to disappear with men like Swinburne the rebel, Fitzgerald the pessimist, Butler the satirist, and others. The literature produced from 1880 to 1914 is characterised either by an attempt to find substitutes for a religion which seems dead, or by a kind of spiritual emptiness, a sense of the hopelessness of trying to believe in anything.
There were many possible substitutes for religion. One was Art. Walter Pater was its prophet. Art for Arts sake was the theme of books like Marius the Epicurean. It was ones duty to cultivate pleasure, to drink deep from the fountains of natural and created beauty. In other words, he advocated hedonism as a way of life.

5.1. The nineties.

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