Yale University Online Lectures

http://oyc.yale.edu/

The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

Often, on returning home from one of those mysterious and prolonged absences that gave rise to such strange conjectures among those who were his friends, or thought that they were so, he himself would creep upstairs to the locked room, open the door with the key that never left him now, and stand, with a mirror, in front of the portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him, look­ing now at the evil and aging face on the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass. The very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more inter­ested in the corruption of his own soul. He would examine with minute care, and sometimes with a monstrous and terrible delight, the hideous lines that seared the wrinkling forehead or crawled around the heavy sensual mouth, wondering sometimes which were the more horrible, the signs of sin or the signs of age. He would place his white hands beside the coarse bloated hands of the picture, and smile. He mocked the misshapen body and the failing limbs.

                There were moments, indeed, at night, when, lying sleepless in his own delicately-scented chamber, or in the sordid room of the little ill-famed tavern near the Docks, which, under an as­sumed name, and in disguise, it was his habit to frequent, he would think of the ruin he had brought upon his soul, with a pity that was all the more poignant because it was purely selfish. But moments such as these were rare. That curiosity about life which Lord Henry had first stirred in him, as they sat together in the garden of their friend, seemed to increase with gratification. The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.

Notes and exercises:

1.     Mark that the digraph “ai” is pronounced as [i] in a final unstressed syllable: portrait, fountain, mountain, captain, bargain.

2.     Read paying attention to the spelling and pronunciation of the following words:

þ    box       sex       execution          reflexive           exile     xylophone

þ    extra     extract  executor            execrate            sexual   exaggerate

þ    examine            execute axe       Xerxes  except   existence

þ    exercise            existent anxious excess   anxiety  exhibition

þ    exact     excel     luxury   exhaust luxurious          complexion

þ    exert     excellent           example            mixture xenon   sexuality

þ    wax      obnoxious         exhibit  exigent  exceed  Xenophobe

þ    exist     exclaim axiom   exhort   excite    xylograph

3.     Verbs ending in “e” preserve this letter in the present participle form in cases where omission of it would lead to ambiguity. The preserved “e” shows what the pronunciation of the preceding letter should be. For example, if the “e” is omitted from the verb “to singe” in the formation of its present participle, the resulting form will coincide with the present participle of the verb “to sing”. The “e” is preserved in: singeing, cringeing, hingeing, impingeing, swingeing, tingeing. It is preferred in ageing, and is preserved, too, in the present participle forms of verbs ending in “–oe”: canoeing, hoeing, shoeing, tiptoeing, eyeing, dyeing.

4.     The word canvas (a noun meaning “strong coarse cloth used for large bags and for oil paintings”) should not be confused with the verb to canvass (to go from person to person and ask for votes, subscriptions, etc.).

5.     Learn the spelling of the following words in which the “g” is mute:

þ    poignant            sigh      gnash    resign   gnu       sovereign

þ    foreign  gnaw     reign     campaign           diaphragm         align

þ    gnome   feign     champagne        malign   gnostic  deign

þ    lorgnette           benign   gnarled  phlegm  physiognomy     gnat

6.            Spell the words given in phonetic transcription:

Ü      Did you [ri´si:v] the letter I sent you from London?

Ü      It suddenly [¶´k¶:(r)d] to Jane that she might try to become a [moudl].

Ü      We were [´konò¶s] of the fact that he had done it for [´konò¶ns] sake.

Ü      What’s the [hait] of that building over there?

Ü      Some aspects of the use of [moudl] verbs are difficult for [´forin] students of English.

Ü      [´ru:m¶tizm] is not an infectious [di´zi:z].

Ü      A [k¶´na:l] is an artificial water [´tòæn(¶)l] used for carrying water to the fields, for town supply, or for purposes of navigation.

7.            Word study:

conjecture                opinion formed on slight or defective evidence; a guess

sear                            to dry up; to scorch; to render callous and insensible; seared—dried, withered

poignant                   distressing to the feeling, deeply moving, keen

gratification            pleasing, indulging

ravenous                   hungry, greedy, intensely hungry; rapacious, voracious

8.     Translate the following expressions and use them in sentences of your own:

a fair young face, the fair sex, a fair aim (a careful, deliberate aim), a fair copy, a fair deal, fair and square (just, openly honest), a fair-weather friend (a false friend), a fair name, fair water, fair handwriting, fair wind, fair play, it is only fair to say, it is all fair and above board, a fair share, all is fair in love and war, by fair means, a fair chance, a fair judge of, fair and softly, none but the brave deserve the fair, fair-dealing, vanity fair

The Picture of Dorian Gray

by Oscar Wilde

H

is eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him. What was it, he wondered. He went towards the little pearl-coloured octagonal stand, that had always looked to him like the work of some strange Egyptian bees that wrought in silver, and taking up the volume, flung himself into an armchair, and began to turn over the leaves. After a few minutes he became absorbed. It was the strangest book he had ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world, were passing in dumb show before him. Things that he had dimly dreamed of were suddenly made real to him. Things of which he had never dreamed were gradually revealed.

      It was a novel without a plot, and with only one character, being indeed, simply a psychologi­cal study of a certain young Parisian, who spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own, and to sum up, as it were, in himself the various moods through which the world spirit had ever passed, loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin. The style in which it was written was that curi­ous jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once full of argot and of archaisms, of technical expres­sions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some of the finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes. There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in colour. The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. The heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain. The mere cadence of the sentences, the subtle monotony of their music, so full as it was of complex refrains and movements elaborately repeated, produced in the mind of the lad, as he passed from chapter to chapter, a form of rev­erie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows.

Notes and exercises:

1.   The sound [i] is transcribed by the letter “a” in the adjective-forming suffix “–ate”: separate, elaborate, affectionate, etc.

2.   Memorize the spelling of the following words which have a silent “p”:

psychology         psyche        coup             psychic         psalm psychological     raspberry    coup d’état    pseudonym    Sappho psychoanalysis   cupboard    pneumonia    sapphire        Ptolemy psychiatry           pseudo-      pneumatic     receipt           Hampstead

3.   The long [i:] in the following words is spelt “ae”: mediaeval, encyclopaedia, formulae, paeon, Aesop, Caesar, aegis, aeon, aesthete, anaemia, anaesthetize, anapaest, larvae, antennae.

4.   Mark that the following words of French origin are spelt with an “ie” in the end: reverie, bourgeoisie, bonhomie, gaucherie, sortie.

5.   Read paying attention to the pronunciation of the digraph “ch”: archaism, orchid, technique, technical, technician, characterize.

6.   Word study:

raiment      clothing

dumb show           the communication of ideas by means of acting but without words, a pantomime

incense      smoke of a substance producing a sweet smell when burning

cadence     rhythm in sound; the rise and fall of the voice in speaking

7.   Translate the following expressions and use them in sentences of your own:

he took up the volume, to take after, to take advantage of, to take chances, to take effect, to take hold of, to take pains, to take offence, to take it out of, to take pride in, to take to, to take the rough with the smooth (to accept philosophically both pleasant and unpleasant things: If one becomes a soldier, one must be ready to take the rough with the smooth.), to take in tow;

to turn over the leaves, to turn a new leaf, beautiful enough to turn any man’s head, success turned his head, to turn one’s back on an old friend, to turn a deaf ear to, he kept turning the matter over in his mind, to turn failure to account, to turn up one’s nose at, to take turns, by turns, one good turn deserves another, he was waiting for the turn of the tide, to turn up, the turn of events, to turn tail (to turn and run away: When the thief heard the police he turned tail and fled.), a turncoat

The War of the Worlds

by Herbert G. Wells

T

he fifth cylinder must have fallen right into the midst of the house we had first visited. The building had vanished, completely smashed, pulverized and dispersed by the blow. The cylin­der lay now far beneath the original foundations, deep in a hole, already vastly larger than the pit I had looked into at Woking. The earth all round it had splashed under that tremendous impact—"splashed" is the only word—and lay in heaped piles that hid the masses of the adjacent houses. It had behaved exactly like mud under the violent blow of a hammer. Our house had collapsed backward; the front portion, even on the ground floor, had been destroyed completely; by a chance, the kitchen and scullery had escaped, and stood buried now under soil and ruins, closed in by tons of earth on every side, save towards the cylinder. Over that aspect we hung now on the very edge of the great circular pit the Martians were engaged in making. The heavy beating sound was evidently just behind us, end ever and again a bright green vapour drove up like a veil across our peep-hole.

            The cylinder was already opened in the centre of the pit, and on the further edge of the pit, amidst the smashed and gravel-heaped shrubbery, one of the great fighting machines stood, de­serted by its occupant, stiff and tall against the evening sky. At first I scarcely noticed the pit and the cylinder, although it has been convenient to describe them first, on account of the extraordi­nary glittering mechanism I saw, busy in the excavation, and on account of the strange creatures that were crawling slowly and painfully across the heaped mould near it.

            The mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first. It was one of those complicated fabrics that have since been called handling machines, and the study of which has already given such an enormous impetus to terrestrial invention. As it dawned upon me first it presented a sort of metallic spider with five jointed, agile legs, and with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars, and reaching and clutching tentacles about its body. Most of its arms were retracted, but with three long tentacles it was fishing out a number of rods, plates and bars which lined the cov­ering of, and apparently strengthened the walls of, the cylinder. These, as it extracted them, were lifted out and deposited upon a level surface of earth behind it.

Notes and exercises:

1.   Remember that the following words are spelt with a “y”:

cylinder	rhythm	symphony	nymph	mystery	cynic	sycophant
crystal	symmetry	system	hymn	syringe	abyss	synonym
symbol	sympathy	syntax	myth	Cyril	syllable	mysterious

2.         The digraph “gh” is not pronounced in the following words:

fight	drought	might	borough	slough	brougham
fighter	tight	though	neigh	caught	throughout
sigh	taught	sought	although	naughty	neighbour
high	night	blight	dough	sleigh	haughty
right	sight	sleight	bough	weigh	daughter
bought	light	straight	plough	weight	thoroughfare
highlight	slight	playwright	sough	ought	thorough
height	fright	brought	fought	heighten	nightingale

3.   The suffixes “–ise” and “–ize” are used in the formation of verbs. The following words are spelt with “–ise”:

advertise	excise	incise	surmise	disguise	compromise
apprise	demise	exercise	surprise	enterprise	merchandise
chastise	despise	franchise	comprise	prise	advise
devise	improvise	premise	supervise	circumcise	customise

4.   Finish the following words by adding “–ise”, “–ize”, or “–yse”:

anal...	civil...	agon...	adv...	improv...
exerc...	surpr...	enterpr...	compr...	comprom...
dem...	rev...	prem...	dev...	superv...

a clever disgu...	exc...d parts in a book	to be right in surm...
an improv...d meal	anal...d sentence	to advert... goods
jeopard...d life	to exerc... one’s rights	urban...d areas

5.         Spell the words given in phonetic transcription:

a)       It’s [kwait] clear that it is necessary to keep [kwai¶] for a time after dinner.

b)      When I came up to him for a [fo:(r)q] time there were already [´fo:(r)ti] fishes in the bucket. He told me that the [nainq] fish he [ko:t] was a large pike.

c)       The [´biskits] I [bo:t] were so fresh that we [i´mi:di¶tli] [eit] them.

d)      [´ænt¶ni] was [´berid] at sea.

e)       The landlady [¶´mitid] giving him tea [¶n´til] he said he would no longer put up with it.

f)        Howard is [´laiih] on the [kautò] because he has a terrible [´hedeik].

g)      You should [si:z] the opportunity to make his [¶´kweint¶ns].

h)       The [´kofih] of the people in the hall made it impossible to hear the [spi: tò].

6.         Word study:

pulverize    to grind or be ground into powder

scullery      a room in a large house next to the kitchen where dishes, pots, etc. are washed up

tentacle      long, slender, flexible, snake-like, boneless growth on the head or round the mouth of certain animals used for touching, feeling, holding, moving, etc.

7.   Translate the following expressions and use them in sentences of your own:

Handling Machines, handle with care, to handle a gun, he is hard to handle, to be roughly handled, to handle others, rough handling, a handle to one’s name (a title): I knew Sir John long before he had a handle to his name.

The Life Guard

by J. Wain

T

he sea was dotted with heads where people were swimming about. Here and there, little groups stood in the water; parents and two or three children, sometimes swinging the youngest child up and down by its wrists so as to duck it in and out of the water, squealing and gaining confidence. Red Rocks was a wonderful place to spend a happy day. As a resort it was surely coming into its own. Long-legged boys crawled up and down the rocks, imagining themselves in wonderful danger, and two ice-cream vans were selling fast.

                Jimmy counted a hundred, quite slowly, before he even allowed himself to look out to sea in Hopper’s direction. Hopper was standing in the water, exactly where he had been. When he saw Jimmy look towards him he began to swim slowly away from the shore, turning his head every few strokes to see if Jimmy was watching. Jimmy pretended not to be looking at Hopper, turning his head slightly away from him but keeping his eyes steadily on his slowly bobbing head. This was it. At any moment, Hopper’s arm would go up and his cry for help would come to Jimmy across the water.

                Jimmy turned once more, moving his feet and going round in a complete circle. The Life Guard’s hut stood proudly at the upper edge of the beach, a sign that Red Rocks meant business and that there was enough work there for any honest young man who had no wish to go off to the city and be apprenticed and live in a hostel. As Jimmy’s eyes rested on the hut, Hopper’s sharp cry came suddenly to his ears. “Help.” It was a single, high stab of sound. If Jimmy had not been listening for it he would probably never have heard it among all the other sounds that littered the water, the laughter and the shouts of children and the insistent barking of a small dog that ran along the beach.

NOTES AND EXERCISES:

1.     The suffixes “–ence” and “–ent” are used to form nouns and adjectives respectively. The suffix “–ent” can sometimes be used to form nouns, too. Memorize the spelling of the following nouns and derive adjectives from them wherever possible:

confidence	sentence	independence	benevolence	existence
insistence	accidence	magnificence	excellence	audience
absence	innocence	abhorrence	turbulence	equivalence
evidence	eloquence	adolescence	coincidence	opulence
silence	reference	transference	indolence	residence
impudence	disobedience	corpulence	sequence	virulence
influence	coherence	deference	consequence	correspondence

2.     Remember that the following words are spelt with a double “p”:

apprentice	appease	applause	appraisal	approve
apparent	appetite	apply	appreciate	approach
apparatus	appoint	application	apprehend	upper
appeal	appointment	appliance	appropriate	pepper
appellation	happy	supper	happen	disappear
copper	apple	cripple	ripple	suppress
suppose	applaud	appraise	approximate	eavesdropper
appear	stopper	stoppage	grasshopper	appendix

3.     If a verb ends in a short, closed, and stressed syllable, the addition of the inflections –ing and –ed will lead to the doubling of the final consonant: swim—swimming, hop—hopping—hopped, stop—stopping—stopped, begin—beginning—beginner, run—running—runner, etc.

4.     Word study:

to duck          1) to move quickly to avoid being seen or hit; 2) to go or push somebody quickly under water for a short time: The big boy ducked all the small boys in the swimming-pool.

to bob            to move up and down: The cork of his fishing line was bobbing on the water.

to litter          to make untidy with odds and ends; to scatter

litter               (n.) 1) odds and ends, bits of paper, discarded wrappings, bottles, etc. left lying about in a room or public place: Pick up your litter after a picnic.” 2) a state of untidiness that results when things are left lying about instead of being put away: Her room was in such a litter that she was ashamed to ask me in.

5.     Translate the following expressions and use them in sentences of your own:

to guard a prisoner, to guard a tradition, to guard one’s tongue, a guard of honour, on guard, under (close) guard, to go on (mount) guard, to come off guard, to keep (stand) guard, to relieve guard, to run the guard, advance guard, rear guard, to be off one’s guard, to be on one’s guard, to put somebody off his guard, to throw somebody off his guard, to get past someone’s guard