This Is The Day

[poliphilo]

Ailz is sitting her exam today.

So I greeted her first thing with a jolly Christian chorus called "this is the Day". All that was lacking was the tambourine.

This is the day, this is the day
That the Lord has made, that the Lord has made
We will rejoice, we will rejoice
And be glad in it, and be glad in it....

She complained that this wasn't an Olney hymn (The 18th century Olney hymns by Cowper and Newton are course texts) so I changed gear and sang her "How Sweet the Name Of Jesus Sounds". 

It's 20 years since I last sang it and I still know nearly all the words. 

Til then I shall thy love proclaim
With ev'ry fleeting breath
And may the music of thy Name
Refresh my soul in death.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

She been doing a course called From Enlightenment To Romanticism c. 1780-1830. It covers everything from the Marquis de Sade to Mozart to David to Byron to Goethe. I've been tagging along to tutorials and studying some of the texts and it's been fascinating.

Next year- all being well- she's booked to do a Shakespeare course.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I loved the OU Shakespeare course I did for my degree. School and O-level study had totally turned me off him, but I really became a convert. I think the current one is the updated and slightly expanded version of the one I did, so I'm sure Ailz will enjoy it.

One thing I found helpful was to buy all the plays on cassette. Because I was working long hours, I had neither the time nor the mental energy to read the plays on the page, so I made use of my long commute and just listened to them over and over again. It really helped with the understanding. The actors, of course, had mastered the meaning of the lines and used tone of voice and inflection to convey it, thus making everything much easier to understand.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea.

I'm mad-keen for Shakespeare and am looking forward to a thoughly bardtastic year next year.

[shullie.livejournal.com]

I did that with Milton's Paradisde Lost as part of my Undergraduate work.. I found it gave me a lot better understanding, than just reading it. Helped me focus