Oral Bac / 0

[AmandineB]

Bonjour, j'ai écrit mon oral pour la littérature anglaise au bac, je voudrais savoir s'il y a des fautes etc... Merci d'avance pour l'aide

 

I’m going to talk about the theme : «voice and experimenting with language ». The voice could be the author’s voice so it’s an autobiography. It could be a first person narrative, it’s a text where one of the characters is the narrator or even a third person narrative, here, the narrator is outside the story. Besides, « experimenting » means that writers often have fun by playing with words, they play with the setting of the text. I’m going to show you how do the documents illustrate that notion through the idea that a writer uses words to paint pictures and imaginary universes. First, we’ll see special characters and then the style of the artists.

Let’s start with the characters. Lewis Carroll, a writer of world-famous children’s fiction from the 19th century notably Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a novel written in 1865. He was noted for his facility at word play. We studied an excerpt of this work which is called « A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale ». The characters come out of the ordinary. Indeed, Alice meets many weird and wonderful animals. Here a mouse is actually telling a story to Alice and a group of animals. Lewis Carroll uses personnification by making his creations speak. They are rather phantasmagorical but they all share something in common : they all have human traits. This serves to make the characters come alive.

Benjamin Zephaniah, a british writer, dub poet and rastafarian still alive today uses the same trick to make the humble turkey take on a life of its own. In his poem Talking Turkeys, Zephaniah imagines what a turkey’s thought might be if it could talk. He comes up with the idea that maybe the bird would not want to end up on people’s Christmas dinner tables. It would rather be friends with us. Once again, it doesn’t look as if it comes from our planet since the turkey comes to life, it is given human characteristics through the poet’s use of personification.

My last and personal document is an image with scenes from Tim Burton’s movie Alice in Wonderland released in 2010, largely inspired by the eponymous novel by Lewis Carroll that we’ve already talked about. In my opinion, this document perfectly illustrates this aspect of the theme first of all thanks to the characters. To begin with, like others documents, animals are personified. In the foreground, a rabbit is wearing a coat and he’s holding a clock. In the center, a caterpillar is smoking and in the background, we can see a cat’s head in the sky which is smiling. Moreover, the other characters are not typical too. Right in the middle of the picture, there is a man whose clothes and makeup are extravagant. The three female characters all wear a long dress as in fairy tales. Besides, the two women on the right hand side have a crown which hightlights this fairy-like appearance.

 

This leads me to my second part where we’re going to talk about the way artists created their work. In fact, some poets do not stop at manipulating words. They also manipulate the form of their poem. These are called visual poems. Lewis Carroll included one in the extract we studied. The Mouse’s story takes on the shape of a mouse’s tail. The calligram adds even more to the visual effects of the writing. The author here literally uses words to paint pictures. Lewis Carroll is also making puns throughout the text on many level including personification. For instance, when Alice says «it is a long tail», she’s talking about the mouse body part instead of the story which is also called «tale». These are homophones.

In Talking Turkeys,Zephaniah by using a common vocabulary, makes his poem easy to understand. He spells words the way he pronounces them. Therefore, it becomes simple to visualize the scene. He includes details that are visual and tangible to paint picture for the readers.

Eventually, the fantastic universe of Lewis Carroll is faithfully adapted in Tim Burton movie. Everything on this picture is unrealistic : the mushrooms are much bigger than humans, in the bottom left hand corner we can see a kind a human face in roses. This world is clearly imaginary and unearthly.

 

Thus, these 3 documents show that a writer can, thanks to words, metaphors and stylistic devices create wonderful new creatures for the reader’s entertainment, creatures that stay in our imagination as they jump out from the writer's pens and off the paper and take on a life of their own. However, they can also influence the reader to view things in a diffenrent way, to feel empathy for the subject of their work.

[Jean B]

Bonjour,

Bien que " j'ai écrit mon oral ..." soit contradictoire, je veux bien lire ton laïus et y apporter d'éventuelles corrections.

I’m going to talk about the theme : «voice and experimenting with language ». The voice could be the author’s voice so it’s an autobiography. It could be a first person narrative, it’s a text where one of the characters is the narrator or even a third person narrative, here, the narrator is outside the story. Besides, « experimenting » means that writers often have fun by playing with words, they play with the setting of the text. I’m going to show you how do <(*) the documents illustrate that notion through the idea that a writer uses words to paint pictures and imaginary universes. First, we’ll see special characters and then the style of the artists.

<(*) Ici l'adverbe "how" n'introduit pas une question =>> construction affirmative.

Let’s start with the characters. Lewis Carroll, a writer of world-famous children’s fiction from the 19th century notably Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a novel written in 1865. He was noted for his facility at word play. We studied an excerpt of this work which is called « A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale ». The characters come are out of the ordinary. Indeed, Alice meets many weird and wonderful animals. Here a mouse is actually telling a story to Alice and a group of animals. Lewis Carroll uses personnification by making his creations speak. They are rather phantasmagorical but they all share something in common : they all have human traits. This serves is used to make the characters come alive.

Benjamin Zephaniah, a British writer, dub poet and rastafarian still alive today uses the same trick to make the humble turkey take on a life of its own. In his poem Talking Turkeys, Zephaniah imagines what a turkey’s thought might be if it could talk. He comes up with the idea that maybe the bird would not want to end up on people’s Christmas dinner tables. It would rather be friends with us. Once again, it doesn’t look as if it comes from our planet since the turkey comes to life, it is given human characteristics through the poet’s use of personification.

My last and personal document is an image with scenes from Tim Burton’s movie Alice in Wonderland released in 2010, largely inspired by the eponymous novel by Lewis Carroll that we’ve already talked about. In my opinion, this document perfectly illustrates this aspect of the theme first of all thanks to the characters. To begin with, like others < C'est un adjectif, attention ! documents, animals are personified. In the foreground, a rabbit is wearing a coat and he’s holding a clock. In the center, a caterpillar is smoking and in the background, we can see a cat’s head in the sky which is smiling. Moreover, the other characters are not typical too. Right in the middle of the picture, there is a man whose clothes and makeup are extravagant. The three female characters all wear a long dress as in fairy tales. Besides, the two women on the right hand side are wearing/have/ a crown, which hightlights this fairy-like appearance.

 

This leads me to my second part where we’re going to talk about the way artists created their work. In fact, some poets do not stop at manipulating words. They also manipulate the form of their poem. These are called visual poems. Lewis Carroll included one in the extract we studied. The Mouse’s story takes on the shape of a mouse’s tail. The calligram adds even more to the visual effects of the writing. The author here literally uses words to paint pictures. Lewis Carroll is also making puns throughout the text on many levels including personification. For instance, when Alice says «it is a long tail», she’s talking about the mouse body part instead of the story which is also called «tale». These are homophones.

In Talking Turkeys, Zephaniah by using a common vocabulary, makes his poem easy to understand. He spells words the way he pronounces them. Therefore, it becomes simple to visualize the scene. He includes details that are visual and tangible to paint pictures for the readers.

Eventually, the fantastic universe of Lewis Carroll is faithfully adapted in Tim Burton movie. Everything on this picture is unrealistic : the mushrooms are much bigger than humans, in the bottom left hand corner we can see a kind a human face in roses. This world is clearly imaginary and unearthly.

 

Thus, these 3 documents show that a writer can, thanks to words, metaphors and stylistic devices create wonderful new creatures for the reader’s entertainment, creatures that stay in our imagination as they jump out from the writer's pens and off the paper and take on a life of their own. However, they can also influence the reader to view things in a diffenrent way, to feel empathy for the subject of their work.

Le moins que je puisse dire, c'est que tu as potassé le sujet et que tu le possèdes. Ton anglais est globalement bon, bravo !

Ceci dit, attends-toi le jour J à être interrompue par des questions ou demandes de précision sur tel ou tel autre point. Ne risques-tu pas de perdre le fil alors ?

All the best anyway!