Part IV. Self-Study Work

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 458.

B. Creative Writing

Working in groups brainstorm a list of depicting details that would appropriately visualise one of the following:

· seaside vacation;

· a wedding ceremony;

· taking State Exam in English.

Choose the list you like best and write a paragraph about the corresponding event, incorporating all of these details.

It is tempting to say that great cities of the world – London, Venice, Paris, New York, Rome and others – have developed distinct personalities of their own. At least many artists have felt so while creating images of these cities. A famous British author Peter Ackroyd, who wrote a biography of London, expressed an opinion that the influence of a place can be very profound: “I truly believe that there are certain people to whom or through whom the territory, the place, the past speaks . . . Just as it seems possible to me that a street or dwelling can materially affect the character and behaviour of the people who dwell in them, is it not also possible that within this city (London) and within its culture are patterns of sensibility or patterns of response which have persisted from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and perhaps even beyond?” (from the interview to The Observer). The greatest novels in the English language are very often unimaginable without the streets and houses of London, Dublin, New York, etc.

Cinematic images of great cities can be very striking. La Dolce Vitta (1960) by Feredico Fellini is a symbolic journey through Rome.
A celebrated project Paris Je T'aime (2006) has united various directors each of who found their own way of showing a love story in the City of Love. A character in the popular series Sex and the City calls New York City her lover. An epoch-making Soviet comedy S legkim parom!, where two main Russian cities of Moscow and Leningrad are juxtaposed, deplores the loss of identity by these cities caused by standardised Soviet building patterns. In each of these cases the city's identity, uniqueness and personality are explored in connection with the people: its inhabitants or visitors.

What is the source of a city's identity? What is its significance for the people who encounter the city? If the city is personified, what kind of personality has it got – friendly, affectionate, hostile, indifferent, menacing? Choose one of great cities of the world and tackle these questions in your project. You can focus on one book / film / poem or compare the image of the same city in several works.