My Featured Film

A Christmas Carol

I. About the Film

A Christmas Carol was the most successful book of the 1843 holiday season.  By Christmas it sold six thousand copies and it continued to be popular into the new year.  Eight stage adaptations were in production within two months of the book’s publication.

The book is as popular today as it was over 150 years ago.  Charles Dickens, through the voice of Scrooge, continues to urge us to honor Christmas in our hearts and  try to keep it all the year.

Works Cited （参考文献）

http://www.charlesdickensinfo.com/christmas-carol/

II. Versions of the Film

1.Mickey's christmas carol - Disney Christmas - Disney Classics 2015  

2.Animated Christmas Carol Movies - Christmas Animated Classic Movies 2015  

III. About the Author-Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens is much loved for his great contribution to classic English literature. He was the quintessential Victorian author. His epic stories, vivid characters and exhaustive depiction of contemporary life are unforgettable.

His own story is one of rags to riches. He was born in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812, to John and Elizabeth Dickens. The good fortune of being sent to school at the age of nine was short-lived because his father, inspiration for the character of Mr Micawber in 'David Copperfield', was imprisoned for bad debt. The entire family, apart from Charles, were sent to Marshalsea along with their patriarch. Charles was sent to work in Warren's blacking factory and endured appalling conditions as well as loneliness and despair. After three years he was returned to school, but the experience was never forgotten and became fictionalised in two of his better-known novels 'David Copperfield' and 'Great Expectations'.Like many others, he began his literary career as a journalist. His own father became a reporter and Charles began with the journals 'The Mirror of Parliament' and 'The True Sun'. Then in 1833 he became parliamentary journalist for The Morning Chronicle. With new contacts in the press he was able to publish a series of sketches under the pseudonym 'Boz'. In April 1836, he married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of George Hogarth who edited 'Sketches by Boz'. Within the same month came the publication of the highly successful 'Pickwick Papers', and from that point on there was no looking back for Dickens.As well as a huge list of novels he published autobiography, edited weekly periodicals including 'Household Words' and 'All Year Round', wrote travel books and administered charitable organisations. He was also a theatre enthusiast, wrote plays and performed before Queen Victoria in 1851. His energy was inexhaustible and he spent much time abroad - for example lecturing against slavery in the United States and touring Italy with companions Augustus Egg and Wilkie Collins, a contemporary writer who inspired Dickens' final unfinished novel 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood'.He was estranged from his wife in 1858 after the birth of their ten children, but maintained relations with his mistress, the actress Ellen Ternan. He died of a stroke in 1870. He is buried at Westminster Abbey.

Works Cited （参考文献）

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/dickens_charles.shtml

IV. My Reaction

A. Reaction Point - character

• Characters are persons, or animals or natural forces represented as persons, in a work of film or literature.
• In Christmas carol, the main characters are ⓵an old man called Scrooge and ⓶⓷⓸three genies. ⓵Scrooge is this story's main character. He is engage in the office and very greed, ruthless and stinginess. ⓶One of the genie is about past. He pulls back Scrooge to the past and reminds him when he had a rustic heart. ⓷Second genie is about present. He takes Scrooge to many places in London and shows various home placed in the various situations. ⓸The last genie is about future. He takes Scrooge to the future and shows his future.

B. Reaction Point -setting

• The context in time and place in which the action of a story occurs.
• time→christmas eve, place→London
  

C. Reaction Point - messege

• The central idea or statement of a story.
• I think the messege of this story is that be kind for everyone is very nice act.

D. My General Opinion
This is one of my favorite christmas film and so it was very interesting to study. I think we have to take care our family, friends and even stranger. This movie told me that, if I take them care with kind heart, they would treat me just like I do to them.

My Featured Novel

I. About the Novel:The Last of the Mohicans

The most popular of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, The Last of the Mohicans takes place in 1757 during the French and Indian War and recounts the story of an unarmed massacre, the kidnapping of two sisters, and their rescue by Hawk-eye and his two Mohican friends Uncas and Chingachook. The novel was quite popular when published (1826) and is still a staple in most American Literature courses.

Works Cited （参考文献）

"The Last of the Mohicans." The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. N.p., n.d. Web. <http://americanliterature.com/author/james-fenimore-cooper/book/the-last-of-the-mohicans/summary>.           

II. Versions of the Novel in the Mass Media

A. Movie Versions
Much has been made about how authentic "The Last of the Mohicans" is, about how the cast learned wilderness survival skills and how every bow, arrow, canoe and moccasin was constructed according to the ancient ways. That's the kind of publicity Cecil B. DeMille used to churn out, as if he had created a brand new world from scratch, like God.

B. Stage Versions

The music of The Last of the Mohicans.

Stage performance

III. About the Author:James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper was born on September 15, 1789 in Burlington, New Jersey, the eleventh of twelve children. When he was one year old, he moved with parents William and Elizabeth to Cooperstown on Ostego Lake in central New York. During Cooper's boyhood, there were few backwoods settlers left and even fewer Indians. However, Cooper's early experiences in this frontier town gave him the background knowledge used in the Pioneers (1923).

In 1826, at the height of his popularity, he sailed for Europe for what became a seven year stay. He wrote The Prairie (1827) and Notions of the Americans (1828) a defense of the United States against the attacks of European travelers. Under the half-patronizing epithet of "the American Scott" he wrote three historical novels that mimicked the writing of Sir Walter Scott. Returning to the US in 1833, Cooper was so hurt by a review that he penned A Letter to his Countrymen (1834) which was a bitter attack on American provincialism. He also became involved in disputes in Cooperstown where he was attacked by newspapers as a false aristocrat poisoned by European influences. In response, Cooper immersed himself in law suits aimed at gaining damages that would tame the irresponsibility of the press. Cooper established the principle that reviewers must work within the bounds of truth when they deal with an author rather than the book. Even with this scandal at his heels, Cooper continued to write a school primer, The American Democrat (1838) and three more Leatherstocking Tales: The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Pathfinder (1840), and The Deerslayer (1841). Then came Cooper's obsession with the sea from his previous experience in the Navy. He penned The History of the Navy of the United States of America (1839), The Cruise of Sommers (1844), and The Distinguished American Naval Officers (1846). At the time of his death on September 14, 1851, Cooper was more successful and respected abroad than at home. Out of step with his countrymen, his work was very influential to European writers like Honore de Balzac and Leo Tolstoy. Yet, the weaknesses of Fenimore's fiction are quite well known and wide-spread. Mark Twain tore apart Fenimore's romanticism in Fenimore Coopers Literary Offenses (1895). Clearly, Fenimore's tone was criticized as being reactionary, romantic, and pedagogical in tone. However, Cooper did contribute a great deal to the genre of American fiction. In the grand enterprise, even today, everyone has read books and seen films that are directly and indirectly affected by Cooper's conception of Natty Bumppo and his creation of the American novel.

Works Cited （参考文献）

"Biography of James Fenimore Cooper." Biography of James Fenimore Cooper. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2016. <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG02/COOPER/cooperbiography.html>.           

IV. My Reaction

A. Reaction Point - setting

・Setting means the story of background, configuration or place.
・This is the story about the fight between the French and the British in North America in 1757. In this story, most things happens near the Hudson River.

B. Reaction Point - theme

・Theme means that the story of gist and subject.
・The theme of this story is the fight between two countries and also the love too.

C. Reaction Point - protagonist

・Protagonist means the main character of this book.
・Mainly four people appeared in this story. Cora, Alice, Uncas and Hawkeye.

Cora and Alice are sisters, whose father is the British Colonel Munro.

Uncas and Hawkeye are Chingachgook's son and they are the last of the mohicans.

D. My General Opinion

This story is a little bit difficult for me to understand because fight is not so familiar for us now, and difficult to imagine. But it was very interesting and so I want to recommend this book for many people. And I want to read more of his book.