Macbeth

I had talked about Shakespeare and his unforgettable work Romeo and Juliet before. Now, I want to talk about his another important work Macbeth.

Macbeth is the most powerful and intense work in terms of literature in the world and it is still be taught. What makes it important is it has some universal values.  Although Macbeth is the shortest work of Shakespeare, it is one of the most important tragedies of him. That’s why it is still be performed today.

Macbeth is a successful commander and while he comes back from military expedition with Banquo, they encounter with 3 witches. They say that one day Macbeth will become a king. So, his wife begins to encourage Macbeth in order to kill King Duncan. She doesn’t wait until the fate will happen spontaneously. Then, Macbeth become a king and he gets Banquo killed. Banquo’s ghost begins to appear to Macbeth and he goes to witches to question why this is happen. Witches say that no one is going to kill him but if they were born by woman. Meantime, Macduff builds an army to kill Macbeth and he strikes out. Macduff and Macbeth fight and Macduff kills him because he was born by caesarean section. 

In this play, Macbeth’s wife plays an important role. She is the most frightening character of Shakespeare’s created and she always stimulates Macbeth to make prophecy happen. Macbeth chose harm because of his wife, he was aware of what could happen. If I were Macbeth, I would never listen to my wife and choose the harm. If one day I became a king, I would wait that day but the main idea is to see results of desires.

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is one of the best well-known works of Shekespeare. It is accepted as an important work in the world because of not only it handles the love story but also Shakespeare has own expression forms.

Romeo and Juliet has not lost its importance since it is written but its topic is known by all especially Turks. This topic has been used so many in Turkish movies so when I read it for the first time, I found it very familiar. Although it seems very simple in terms of its topic, ending in tragedy makes it an important masterpiece. I has an important place in literature because it has not only the richness of expression but also excellent use of language and written like poetry.

If Romeo and Juliet did not end with death of lovers and they lived happily till the forever, then it would not regarded as important. Maybe it would not be performed even today. Romeo and Juliet has such a significant story that its story is performed in so many movies. According to me, what I like mostly in this masterpiece is Shakespeare uses words very well and he uses metaphors very romantic. 

To sum up, this masterpiece is necessary for all people in the world because it provides to look at the life with a different perspective. I think, the most important thing is writing literary works not only to create a story but also to be attractive is important and Shakespeare did this very successfully. 

SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE

Our topic in this week was Shakespeare who is the most successful author not only in English Literature but also in the world literature and we talked about his unforgettable work of art Romeo and Juliet. This is a famous work that I’ve always curious about but I had never a chance to read it. I’m regretful for this but now I have a chance to read it thanks to English Literature course.

Although I could not read Romeo and Juliet, I know that it is one of the most important gigantic works in the history of literature. It is about a love story between children of two feuding families. Once I’ve read some sonnets of it, I thought that Shakespeare was very professional at writing. I thought his wife actually did the right thing to him by being a bad wife because if he never interested in literature, we would be deprieved of his using language accurately and such  beautiful stories.  He created such powerful stories that many are still memorized, read, studied and performed, maybe even after centuries.

As well as Shakespeare wrote beatutiful stories, he used his own grammatical rules and words. This was an important event for the history of English. Many of them are used today. For example, he created words such as ‘’amazement’’, ‘’dislocate’’, ‘’premeditated’’, ‘’windle’’ etc. and used masculine singular pronoun ‘’his’’ for ‘’its'’. If Shakespeare was never born, English would  never have beauties of own language. 

In conclusion, works of William Shakespeare should be studied in any foreign language department because like Ben Jonson said, Shakespeare is not of an age, but for all time.

Dr. Faustus

If you made a deal with demon, why would you do that and what would you sacrifice in return? Firstly, when I came across with this question, I deeply thought about my favorite tv series Supernatural which is still popular in these days. As far as I remember from Supernatural, you should not make a deal with demons.

Like everybody guess,  this question is related to Dr. Faustus which we mentioned this week. Dr Faustus is a doctor who sells his soul to demon called Mephastophilis for knowledge. According to the movie we watched this week in the course, Faustus is a doctor who is  arrogant and he doesn’t believe in God so he believes that God doesn’t give us a chance to choose.  I think he makes a deal with demon because of his own thoughts. He sells his soul because he thinks that if there is no God, then there is no hell as well although Mephastophilis warns him against hell.

The another author who examines this topic is Goethe. He was affected by Christopher Marlowe and his work Dr. Faustus. Goethe mentioned  a person who  bet a demon on his work. Although two play looks like the same, Goethe discussed the topic in a different way. He examined Faustus as a person who was not defeated to demon whereas Marlowe examined Faustus as a person who lost the deal with demon.

Consequently, devil was mentioned by authors many times and they were affected from each other. It reflects the characteristic features of age they were written. I think it shows weakness of human. 

A General View of Last Course

Last lesson, Renaissance and Shakespeare were the major topics. I like attending this course because when we have discussed about a new topic, I want to have information about it more than we have studied. So, I search on my own about it and learn many more useful information. These information are usually permanent.  Then, I want to mention Renaissance period and a little bit Shakespeare.

Renaissance was the period of enlightenment in the field of literature, art, science etc. This period is also described as rebirth. Starting of this period shows differences according to countries. The most important feature of this period was humanism. The idea of Christianity in Middle Age lost its value and humanism gained importance. Humanists dealt with this world, on the contrary Christianity dealt with the other world. According to humanism, this world is created in order to be made use of by humans. All caused self-discovery of humans. Therefore, this idea was reflected to literature and works. 

Shakespeare was one of the most important writers of this time and he used humanism on his works. Because he was visionary, he was described as ''not just one period, he's for all periods.'' in a poetry of Ben Jonson. Some researchers say that Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare were the same person because their works were close to each other. Although Shakespeare had no education and lack of travel experiences, how could he write all of his works? I think, he was so genius. 

To sum up, learning many new historical events and examining different works of art are enjoyable. I can not wait to see all different works and different thoughts reflecting works.

A Glance of Middle Ages

In the last Literature course, firstly we talked about Middle Ages and Europe. Then, we continued with Canterbury Tales. We learned a lot of new and useful information. There were things to make me interested in this course. So, I want to share some of them.

One of the most important things that I deeply paid attention in the last course while we were talking about Middle Ages was there was no freedom of thought in Europe. Also, there were no scientists because the church did not allow to think. But at that times, The Ottoman Empire had medresseh in which was taught positive sciences and moral. This showed how Ottomans was different from Europe in terms of education at that times. After the Crusades, the West took many inventions from us like paper, compass, powder etc. Western people got a lot of information from us and they realized they had been deceived by church for a long while. 

The another thing that I want to share is Canterbury Tales whose writer was Geoffrey Chaucer. They are stories that were told by pilgrims to make their travel more enjoyable while they were on road to visit the grave of St. Thomas Backet. Geoffrey intended to create 120 tales but only 24 tales was created because he died. 
Geoffrey always used irony and ridicule in these tales and he critisized society. So, he was the first author and poet to write about real characters and criticize the society. Tales are about topics of non-religious and daily life. 

Consequently, literature can shape social life and people's thought. Thanks to literary works, people can be enlightened by authors and philosophers even if they had lived in dark period. 

Fearless warrior Beowulf

At the last course, we continued with the superhero Beowulf. Beowulf is the oldest English epic poem that was saved. It was written in Anglo-Saxon period and it has up to the present.

The main character’s name is Beowulf who is fearless warrior.  The other characters’ names are Grendel who is a  monster, Grendel’s mother, Hrothgar etc. The reason why Beowulf is a warrior that he wants to be a hero and help their relatives, I think. Beowulf hears that a monster attacks Hrothgar’s country and he sails. He fights with the monster and he cuts it’s hand. Afterwards, the monster dies. After winning a victory against the monster, Beowulf becomes a king. After a long time, a new monster appears, a dragon. Beowulf decides to fight against it. He kills the dragon. Unfortunately, Beowulf gets injured fatally. So, he dies as a hero. Because he achieves killing the monster.

In the poem, there is a statement of Beowulf that effects me very deeply. ‘’We’re all going to die some day, so it is better for us to achieve glory before that happens.’’ It reflects that at that time, it was important to die while fighting.

 Every person can learn many things from artifacts like being fearless, courage, importance of kinship and heroism. As a teacher, we have to transfer to students every detail that shapes our life in the best way.

First Lecture

I have always interested in history. I enjoy learning about history whatever the nation is.  I think it’s true that we started to the course with the history of England which we don’t have much information before learning about English Literature. I think that as an ELT student, we have to know both literature and history of the language we’ll teach. Because we don’t lose anything when we know, on the contrary we obtain a lot.

One of the nations that I’ve interested is Vikings. When our teacher talked about Vikings, the first thing came to my mind was the cartoon of Vikings that I watched everyday when I was a kid. And this helped me concentrate on the course. So, when I was thinking of what I would have to write my blog, I searched about history of English.  Although English people are one of the legend nations, I found lots of disgusting things, and I want to share some of these. For example, long time ago (I don’t know the date exactly) English provided food and shelter for their little pets like dogs and cats in the roof. This was the only place that animals lived. When it rained,  the roof  became slippery and sometimes animals fell down.  This is the story of expression ‘’it’s raining cats and dogs.’’

In the other example, long time ago people used to have a bath in May every year in England,  that’s why couples got married in June and  brides carried bouquets of flower on their hands in order not to smell dirty. I don’t know how much the story is true but I’ve searched lots of examples like these.

Consequently, I believe that we have to become familiar with the different areas as a teacher of the future. When our students ask us a question, we have to have an answer to reply. Hence, I’m interested in history as well as literature. I can’t say that I have a knowledge of literature and read large numbers of books but I consider I’ll have much to learn thanks to this course. 

Literature and Language

Firstly, I think that students who study English Language Teaching should have some information about  English Literature because a language cant be exactly learned without knowing its history and culture. I think, thanks to this course we can both develop our level of English and have some information about the culture of language which we’ve learned.

Personally, I think that I wont get bored in this course because I really like reading books. But I’ve always read Turkish novels until this time so reading English novels and poetry in this course makes me feel a little bit nervous. At the same time, I think I will learn new patterns and structures by reading.  However, I dont have more information about English Literature except some novelists who are the world-reowned. And, I want to learn more  thanks to this course. More than that, some topics in this course will be placed in KPSS so I want to pay importance to this course.

To sum up, this course both provides benefits to me and helps me  to be informed things which I didnt know so I am looking forward to study  this  course.