Havisham
"Havisham" is a poem written in 1993 by Carol Ann Duffy. It responds to Miss Havisham, a character in Charles Dickens' novel ''Great Expectations'', looking at her mental and physical state many decades after being left standing at the altar, when the bride-to-be is in her old age. It expresses Havisham's anger at her fiancé and her bitter rage over wedding-day trauma and jilted abandonment. Duffy's use of language is very powerful and passionate. Throughout the poem oxymorons and juxtaposition such as "''Beloved sweetheart bastard''" and "''Love's hate''" portrays the ambivalence and restless uncertainty of the character, while a sexual fantasy reveals both the unrequited love and the passion that remains within Havisham following the wedding, a devastation from which her heart has never recovered. The poem is featured in the examining board AQA's English Literature Anthology for its GCSE qualification in English Literature. It is featured alongside works by Duffy, and three ot ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Great Expectations
''Great Expectations'' is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (Great Expectations), Pip (the book is a ''bildungsroman''; a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens' second novel, after ''David Copperfield'', to be fully narrated in the first person.''Bleak House'' alternates between a third-person narrator and a first-person narrator, Esther Summerson, but the former is predominant. The novel was first published as a serial (literature), serial in Dickens's weekly periodical ''All the Year Round'', from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. In October 1861, Chapman and Hall published the novel in three volumes. The novel is set in Kent and London in the early to mid-19th century and contains some of Dickens's most celebrated scenes, starting in a graveyard, where the young Pip is accosted by the escaped convict Abel Magwitch. ''Great Expectations'' is full of extreme imagery – poverty, prison ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Miss Havisham
Miss Havisham is a character in the Charles Dickens novel ''Great Expectations'' (1861). She is a wealthy spinster, once jilted at the altar, who insists on wearing her wedding dress for the rest of her life. She lives in a ruined mansion with her adopted daughter, Estella. Dickens describes her as looking like "the witch of the place". Although she has often been portrayed in film versions as very elderly, Dickens's own notes indicate that she is only in her mid-thirties at the start of the novel. However, it is indicated in the novel that her long seclusion without sunlight has aged her. She is one of the most gothic characters in the work of Dickens. Character history Miss Havisham's father was a wealthy brewer and her mother died shortly after she was born. Her father remarried and had an illegitimate son, Arthur, with the household cook. Miss Havisham's relationship with her half-brother was a strained one. She inherited most of her father's fortune and fell in love w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school at the age of 12 to work in a boot-blacking factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. After three years he returned to school, before he began his literary career as a journalist. Dickens edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, for education, and for other social re ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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AQA Anthology
The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (the AQA) has produced Anthologies for GCSE English and English Literature studied in English schools. This follows on from AQA's predecessor organisations; Northern Examinations and Assessment Board (NEAB) and Southern Examining Group (SEG). 2000 Anthology The 2000 AQA anthology covered four sections: poets in the English Literary Heritage, poems from other cultures and traditions, 20th-century prose, and 20th- or pre-20th-century poetry. English: Poets in the English Literary Heritage Simon Armitage *"I Am Very Bothered When I Think" *"Poem" *"It Ain't What You Do, It's What It Does To You" *"Cataract Operation" *"About His Person" Ted Hughes *"Works and Play" *"The Warm and the Cold" *"The Tractor" *"Wind" *"Hawk Roosting" Carol Ann Duffy *"War Photographer" *"Valentine" *"Stealing" *"Before You Were Mine" *"In Mrs. Tilscher's Class" English: Poems from other cultures and traditions *Sujata Bhatt: " Search for My Tongue" * Tom Le ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Carol Ann Duffy
Dame Carol Ann Duffy (born 23 December 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, resigning in 2019. She was the first female poet, the first Scottish-born poet and the first openly gay poet to hold the Poet Laureate position. Her collections include ''Standing Female Nude'' (1985), winner of a Scottish Arts Council Award; ''Selling Manhattan'' (1987), which won a Somerset Maugham Award; ''Mean Time'' (1993), which won the Whitbread Poetry Award; and ''Rapture'' (2005), which won the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her poems address issues such as oppression, gender, and violence in accessible language. Early life Carol Ann Duffy was born to a Roman Catholic family in the Gorbals, considered a poor part of Glasgow. She was the daughter of Mary (née Black) and Frank Duffy, an electrical fitter. Her mother's parents were Irish, and her father had Irish grandparen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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GCSE
The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification in a particular subject, taken in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. State schools in Scotland use the Scottish Qualifications Certificate instead. Private schools in Scotland may choose to use GCSEs from England. Each GCSE qualification is offered in a specific school subject (English literature, English language, mathematics, science, history, geography, art and design, design and technology, business studies, classical civilisation, drama, music, foreign languages, etc). The Department for Education has drawn up a list of preferred subjects known as the English Baccalaureate for England on the results in eight GCSEs including English, mathematics, the sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, computer science), history, geography, and an ancient or modern foreign language. Studies for GCSE examinations take place over a period of two or three academic years (depending upon the subject, scho ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Simon Armitage
Simon Robert Armitage (born 26 May 1963) is an English poet, playwright, musician and novelist. He was appointed Poet Laureate on 10 May 2019. He is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds. He has published over 20 collections of poetry, starting with ''Zoom!'' in 1989. Many of his poems concern his home town in West Yorkshire; these are collected in '' Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems''. He has translated classic poems including the ''Odyssey'', '' The Death of King Arthur'', ''Pearl'', and ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight''. He has written several travel books including ''Moon Country'' and '' Walking Home: Travels with a Troubadour on the Pennine Way''. He has edited poetry anthologies including one on the work of Ted Hughes. He has participated in numerous television and radio documentaries, dramatisations, and travelogues. Early life and education Armitage was born in Huddersfield, West Riding of Yorkshire, and grew up in the village of Marsden, where his fa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Seamus Heaney
Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.Obituary: Heaney ‘the most important Irish poet since Yeats’ ''Irish Times,'' 30 August 2013.Seamus Heaney obituary ''The Guardian,'' 30 August 2013. Among his best-known works is '''' (1966), his first major published volume. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gillian Clarke
Gillian Clarke (born 8 June 1937) is a Welsh poet and playwright, who also edits, broadcasts, lectures and translates from Welsh into English. She co-founded Tŷ Newydd, a writers' centre in North Wales. Life Gillian Clarke was born on 8 June 1937 in Cardiff. She was brought up in Cardiff and Penarth, though for part of the Second World War she was in Pembrokeshire. She lived in Barry for a few years, at a house called Flatholme in The Parade. Although her parents were Welsh speakers, she was brought up to speak only English and learnt to speak Welsh as an adult – partly as a form of rebellion. She graduated in English from Cardiff University. Career After university Clarke spent a year working for the BBC in London. She then returned to Cardiff, where she gave birth to her daughter, Catrin, and two sons. About Catrin she wrote a poem under her name. Clarke worked as an English teacher, first at the Reardon-Smith Nautical College and later at Newport College of Art. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Scottish Qualifications Authority
The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA; Gaelic: ''Ùghdarras Theisteanas na h-Alba'') is the executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government responsible for accrediting educational awards. It is partly funded by the Education and Lifelong Learning Directorate of the Scottish Government, and employs approximately 750 staff based in Glasgow and Dalkeith. SQA is best known for the delivery of the annual diet of public examinations within Scotland for school pupils. SQA Higher examinations are the general acceptable level for entry to university, with Scottish universities usually requesting a minimum of 3 Highers, all above C level. However, a greater number of candidates of all ages participate in SQA specialist, vocational and higher education qualifications. SQA is accredited by the UK government to offer educational qualifications. On 21 June 2021 it was announced that the SQA would be replaced following a review by the OECD. Despite such announcem ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |