Class VII English Unit-4 Rhythm of Friendship

English Unit-4 Rhythm of Friendship

Class VIII English Unit-4 Within and Without

English Unit-4 

Class IX Unit - IV Glimpses of a Green Planet - On the Grasshopper and Cricket (Poem )

John Keats 

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was born on 31 October 1795. His poems were not generally well received during his life, his reputation grew after his death. Later he became one of the most beloved of all English poets. Today his poems are some of the most popular in English literature. 

The poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of Odes. 

After completing hi basic schooling, Keats registered as a medical student at Guy’s Hospital (now part of King’s College, London) and began studying there in October 1815.  In 1816, Keats received his apothecary's licence, which mrade him eligible to practise as an apothecary, physician, and surgeon, but before the end of the year he announced to his guardian that he was resolved to be a poet, not a surgeon.

"Ode to Psyche", "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode on Melancholy"  were some of his famous Odes.

John Keats died in Rome on 23 February 1821 because of tuberculosis and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome.

John Keats' tombstone in Rome

Class IX Unit - IV Glimpses of a Green Planet - Memories of a Dying River (Article)

M. T. Vasudevan Nair

Popularly known as MT, Madathil Thekkepaattu Vasudevan Nair, was born on 15 July 1933, in Kudallur, a small village in the present day Palakkad district. He is well-known as author, screenplay writer and film director. He is one of the most prolific and versatile writers in modern Malayalam literature. His three seminal novels on life in the matriarchal family in Kerala are ‘Naalukettu’, ‘Asuravithu’ and ‘Kaalam’. 

He spent his early days in a village called Punnayurkulam in the present day Thrissur district. Nair completed his schooling from Kumaranelloor High School and obtained a degree in chemistry from Victoria College, Palakkad. 

In 2005, India's third highest civilian honour Padma Bhushan was awarded to him. He was also awarded the highest literary award in India, 1995 Jnanpith, for his overall contribution to Malayalam literature. His novel Randamoozham (The Second Turn) is widely credited as his masterpiece.

His first short stories were published in several magazines while he was a youth. The first  "Valarthumrugangal", in 1953. It was a short story on the pathetic condition of the artists in circus.  The noted collections of his stories are ‘Iruttinte Athmavu’, ‘Olavum Theeravum’, ‘Bandhanam’, ‘Varikkuzhi’, ‘Dare-e-Salam’, ‘Swargam Thurakkunna Samayam’, ‘Vaanaprastham’ and ‘Sherlock’. "Iruttinte Athmavu" ("Creature of Darkness"), one of the most celebrated among his short stories, is the heart wrenching story of a 21-year old man, regarded as a lunatic by everyone and treated abominably. The story reveals the insanity behind the civilised and supposedly sane world. 

His most famous novels include ‘Naalukettu’, ‘Manju’, ‘Kaalam’, ‘Asuravithu’ and ‘Randamoozham’. His debut novel ‘Naalukettu’ is a veritable depiction of the situation which prevailed in a typical joint family when its fortunes is on a steady decline. 

‘Randamoozham’, widely regarded as the author's masterpiece, retells the story of the Mahabharatha from the point of view of Bhimasena. MT's only novel with a female protagonist (Vimala) is ‘Manj’. In the novel ‘Kaalam’, MT returns to his favourite milieu, the dilapidated joint-family Nair tharawad set against the wider backdrop of the Valluvanadan village in the backdrop of the crumbling matrilineal order of Kerala in a newly independent India. MT wrote ‘Arabipponnu’ along with N. P. Mohammed. MT's latest novel is Varanasi (2002) which is an emotional journey to Varanasi.

MT has authored two books on the craft of writing, ’Kaathikante Panippura’ and ‘Kaathikante Kala’. His articles on various topics and speeches on different occasions have been compiled under the titles ‘Kilivaathililude’, ‘Kannanthalippookkalude Kaalam’, ‘Vakkukalude Vismayam’ and ‘Eekakikalude Sabdam’. ‘Manushyar Nizhalukal’ and ‘Aalkkoottathil Thaniye’ are his travelogues.

He served as an Executive Member of the Kendra Sahitya Akademi. He was the editor of Mathrubhumi periodicals and Chief Editor of Mathrubhumi weekly. On 2 June 1996, he was bestowed with honorary D.Lit degree by the Calicut University.

MT joined the Mathrubhumi Group of Publications in 1956. When he retired from there in 1998, he was their editor of periodicals and Chief Editor of Mathrubhumi weekly. On 2 June 1996, he was bestowed with honorary D.Lit degree by the Calicut University. It was M.T who elevated the screenplay writing as a literary form.

He has directed seven films and written the screenplay for around 54 films. He won the National Film Award for Best Screenplay four times for: Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha (1989), Kadavu (1991), Sadayam (1992), and Parinayam (1994), which is the most by anyone in the screenplay category. MT's screenplays have won social attention for the portrayal of the social and cultural crisis in the contemporary life of Kerala. Some of them are Kanyakumari, Varikkuzhi, Vilkkanundu Swapnangal, Edavazhiyile Poocha Mindappoocha, Akshrangal, Aalkkoottathil Thaniye, Aaroodam etc. 

In 1973, M. T. Vasudevan Nair made his directorial debut with ‘Nirmalyam’ which won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film.

Class IX Unit - IV Glimpses of a Green Planet - To Nature (Poem)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge  was an English poet, literary critic and philosopher. He was one of the  founders of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets.
He wrote the poems ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Kubla Khan’, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria, a volume composed of 23 chapters of autobiographical notes and dissertations on various subjects, including some incisive literary theory and criticism. His critical work, especially on Shakespeare, was highly influential.
Coleridge was born on 21 October 1772 in the country town of Ottery St. Mary, Devon, England. Samuel's father, the Reverend John Coleridge (1718–1781), was a well-respected vicar of the parish and headmaster of Henry VIII's Free Grammar School at Ottery. After John Coleridge died in 1781, 8-year-old Samuel was sent to Christ's Hospital, a charity school founded in the 16th century in Greyfriars, London, where he remained throughout his childhood, studying and writing poetry. At that school Coleridge became friends with Charles Lamb. From 1791 until 1794, Coleridge attended Jesus College, Cambridge. 
In 1795, Coleridge met poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. Besides the Rime of The Ancient Mariner, he composed the symbolic poem Kubla Khan and the first part of the narrative poem Christabel. In 1798, Coleridge and Wordsworth published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads, which proved to be the starting point for the English romantic age.
He died in Highgate, London on 25 July 1834 as a result of heart failure compounded by a lung disorder.

Class X Unit III Reality to Reel-Sunshine through the Rain (Screenplay)

Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa is the most well-known of all Japanese film directors. The son of an army officer, Kurosawa studied art before gravitating to film as a means of supporting himself. He served seven years as an assistant to director Kajiro Yamamoto before he began his own directorial career with Sanshiro Sugata (1943), a film about the 19th-century struggle for supremacy between adherents of judo and ju-jitsu that so impressed the military government, he was prevailed upon to make a sequel (Sanshiro Sugata Part II).    Following the end of World War II, Kurosawa's career gathered speed with a series of films that cut across all genres, from crime thrillers to period dramas -- among the latter, his Rashomon (1951) became the first postwar Japanese film to find wide favour with Western audiences, and simultaneously introduced leading man Toshiro Mifune to Western viewers. It was Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai (1954), however, that made the largest impact of any of his movies outside of Japan. At the same time, American and European filmmakers began taking a serious look at Kurosawa's movies as a source of plot material for their own work -- Rashomon was remade as The Outrage, in a western setting, while Yojimbo was remade by Sergio Leone as A Fistful of Dollars (1964). The Seven Samurai (1954) fared best of all, serving as the basis for John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven (which had been the original title of Kurosawa's movie), in 1960; the remake actually did better business in Japan than the original film did. In the early 1980s, an unfilmed screenplay of Kurosawa's also served as the basis for Runaway Train (1985), a popular action thriller.      Kurosawa's movies subsequent to his period thriller Sanjuro (1962) abandoned the action format in favor of more esoteric and serious drama, including his epic length medical melodrama Red Beard (1965). In recent years, despite ill-health and the problems getting financing for his more ambitious films, Kurosawa has remained the most prominent of Japanese filmmakers. With his Westernized style, Kurosawa has always found a wider audience and more financing opportunities in Europe and America than he has in his own country. His films are frequently copied and remade by American and European filmmakers. 
In December 1971, after a period of suffering from mental fatigue and frustrated with a run of unsatisfying and sub par directing work, Kurosawa attempted suicide by slashing his wrist thirty times with a razor. Fortunately, the wounds were not fatal and he made a full recovery. Because he could not get film financing for a period of time in his career, he directed and even appeared in Japanese television commercials. At over 6' feet tall, he was extremely large by Japanese standards, having stood a head taller than any of his colleagues.
Although the Japanese press tried to paint him as a tyrant, almost all of his casts and crews agreed he was a much more cool and detached presence on sets. Many also described him as "intense".
He was voted the 6th greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly, making him one among only two Asians along with Satyajit Ray (who is ranked in 25th position) on a list of 50 directors and the highest ranking non-American.  He was a fan of the films of Satyajit Ray. Kurosawa worshipped legendary American director John Ford, his primary influence as a filmmaker. When the two met, Ford was uncommonly pleasant to the younger Japanese filmmaker and afterwards Kurosawa dressed in a similar fashion to Ford when on film sets.
Although he received an Honorary Award in 1990 "For cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world," he was only nominated once for a Best Director Oscar for Ran (1985). Also, his only film to have ever received the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar was for Dersu Uzala (1975), which was also his only film not done in Japanese (it was in Russian).

His Dodes'ka-den (1970), Dersu Uzala (1975) and Kagemusha (1980) were Oscar-nominated for "Best Foreign Language Film". "Dersu Uzala" won. Rashomon (1950) won an Honorary Award as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951.
 He was infamous for his perfectionism. Among the related tales are his insisting a stream be made to run in the opposite direction in order to get a better visual effect, and having the roof of  a house removed, later to be replaced, because he felt the roof’s presence to be unattractive in a short sequence filmed from a train. He also required that all the actors in his period films had to wear their costumes for several weeks, daily, before filming so that they would look lived in.
His family, when traced back a few generations, were samurais from the Akira Prefecture. Kurosawa said later that his father, who was tall, with a commanding presence and worked as a fitness instructor, had a bearing he thought was samurai-like. Unlike his father, Kurosawa himself was never athletically inclined.