Summer of '38, by Colm Tóibín

Colm Tóibín at the Wikipedia: click here

Colm Tóibin In the Pyrinees: LRB

Summer of '38: The New Yorker

Colm Tóibín at the Vall Ferrera: El punt Avui

Brooklyn: the movie

Presentation, by Àngels Gallardo

Biography

Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955.
Some of his family were members of the old Irish Republic Army.
His father belonged to the Fianna Fail party.
He studied in a private boarding school, after that, he studied in the College University of Dublin. When he finished, he went to Barcelona for three years, from 1975 to 1978.
He was a publisher from 1982 to 1985.
He was a good literary critic, teacher at Stanford University, University of Texas in Austin and Princeton University.
Also, he got a Honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Ulster for his contribution to the Irish contemporary literature.

Summer of ‘38

This story is about the life of Montse. A man who works for the electric company named Fecsa asked her daughter Ana that he wanted to talk to Montse. He told Ana that he was writing a book about the war in his spare time and he wanted to collect information in this valley and the mountains.
Montse was a person that liked to have all in control and she had become protective of her own space and she disliked surprises.
The man that works in Fecsa Company was waiting for her at the front door of her building and he told her that he wanted to come up to the apartment with her. The man said that he had talked to Rudolfo Ramírez, a general in the army, and that he said he would like to see her and if it was all right to see him.
She remembered situations that happened between them. She didn't forget the sweet smell of his breath, his eagerness and his good humour.
Rudolfo went away and Montse was pregnant. But Montse knew a man called Paco from the town festivals, and she married him five months pregnant with a girl whose father was Rudolfo. Paco took care of the daughter of Montse as if she was his daughter. The name of the baby was Rosa and she looked like Rudolfo.
Montse and Paco had two more daughters.
Rosa went to live in Barcelona, and she studied medicine. She holidayed with her own family in Santa Cristina.
When Paco was dying, Rosa looked after him.
When the man from Fecsa Company came again, she told him that she was not feeling well, and she didn't want to have lunch with him and Rudolfo.
At the end of the story, Montse showed several photos about her family before the war to her daughter Rosa.

QUESTIONS

There’s a feeling that the writer has a point of view of the place, the time and the situation a bit different from a native: Ana (not Anna), fecsa (not FECSA), maiden name (here is the same as married name), Rudolfo (not Rodolfo), Loyalists (not reds; and he never says the others were the fascists => does the author betray any political sympathies?), granja, Rosa travels to Barcelona to the village and back in one day... 

Talk about the characters:
            Montse
            Ana
            Rosa
            Oriol
            The man from fecsa (sic)
            Paco Vendrell
            Rudolfo
Explain the war situation in the village in the summer of 1938.
What things did Montse like in Rudolfo?
How do the village people behave to the soldiers in the summer? And from September on?
Explain Montse-Rudolfo’s courtship.
“It was the change of weather that changed everything.” What did she mean?
What did Montse do when she knew she was pregnant?
Describe the time Montse went to the Mass.
What options did Montse have if Paco didn’t marry her?
Explain Montse-Paco’s courtship.
After they were married, what kind of love did Montse have for Paco?
What kind of love did Paco have for Rosa?
What did Montse do when Rudolfo was in the village with the man from fecsa (sic)?
What do you think of the end of the story?

VOCABULARY

walk (sb) to, mix (sb) up, easygoing, fix, chart, dugout, no one any the wiser, makeshift, swagger, antic, mist, demurely, in the reaches of, withdrawn, stickler, impervious, outing, blow up

The Red-Haired Girl, by Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald at the Wikipedia: click here

Julian Barnes on Penelope Fitzgerald: The Guardian

Penelope Fitzgerald at The Paris Review

Penelope Fitzgerald at Sidney Review of Books

Penelope Fitzgerald's Archive: click here

Obituary at The New York Times

The Means of Escape at the Wikipedia: click here

The Red-Haired Girl at The New Yook Times

The Bookshop trailer

Presentation, by Àngels Gallardo

Biography

Penelope Fitzgerald was born in Lincoln in 1916 and died in 2000. She was a novelist, poetess, essayist, English biographer, and she won the Booker Award in 1979 with The bookshop.
She was the daughter of a publisher and her uncle was a theologian, a writer and a Bible scholar.
In her family, there were men of the Bible with a good academic education, so that it impacted her dedication to her writing. She began to write later in life, and she published her first book in 1975.
She was married to an Irish soldier and they had three children.
She worked in a dramatic art school until she was seventy years old.
A library and a boat house inspired her to write two of her novels.
Another thing was that she used to write early in the morning or very late at night.

The Red-Haired Girl

The story explains the life of five people who had studied in the atelier of Vincent Bonvin.
In 1882 they organized a party to go to Brittany because they wanted somewhere cheap and characteristic types, natural, busy with occupations and in plein air.
They were poor and they brought only the necessary luggage.
When they arrived there, they decided to begin with Sant-Briac-sur-Mer because somebody had recommended it to them.
After that, they went to Palourde on the coast near Cancale.
They didn't wanted to spend time as tourists, they only wanted to paint because they were artists.
They made reservations in the Hôtel du Port and their rooms and food were very simple.
In the kitchen of the hotel was working a red haired girl named Annik. She worked all day but she had a short time every day.
One of them, named Hackett, thought that this girl could be his model.
He asked her if she could be his model an hour a day and only when he finished he would pay her.
He asked her to borrow a red shawl because he wanted her to wear it while he was painting her.
During the next three days Annik stood with her crochet on the back steps of the hotel.
He looked for the contrast between the copper coloured hair and the scarlet shawl, and he accepted that she never smiled.
One of the artists received a telegram from Paris; it said that their professor Bonvin will come on a day to the hotel because he would be delighted to see his pupils in Palourde, and he wanted to look at their portfolios, but them were bad for him and he went away.
At the end of this story, Annik disappeared because she had been dismissed.

QUESTIONS

What can you tell us about art and artists at the end of the 19th century?
What information can you give us about Brittany?
Why did this group of artists decide to go to Brittany?
Describe Palourde.
Talk about the main characters:
            Hackett
            Annik
                        appearance (What did she look like?)
                        personality (What was she like?)
            Bonvin (and his relationship with Palourde: “Palourde was indifferent to artists, but Bonvin had imposed himself as a professor.”)
What was Hackett’s saying about catching a cough and what does it mean?
How did the group of artists accommodate (room, meals) themselves in Palourde?
Describe the Hôtel du Port.
What do Palourde people usually do after lunch?
What happened with the shawl for Annik?
Tell us about Annik’s portrait / painting.
“Oh, everybody wants the same things. The only difference is what they will do to get them.” What do you think about this?
“Once a teacher, always a teacher.” What’s your opinion?
Why, according to Bonvin, are Hackett’s paintings bad?
“It’s only in the studio that you can bring out the heart of the subject...” Do you agree?
When you paint, what do you want to paint: what you see, or the soul of what you see?
Faces are soul’s mirrors?
Who was Chateaubriand?
“Boredom and the withering sense of insignificance can bring one as low as grief.” Is this true?
In the end, what do you think Hackett is going to miss?
Is he going to become an artist? Why?

VOCABULARY

knickerbockers, wideawake, sightseer, intended, digs, down, taxing (tax), gibbering, small hours, boredom

Unseen Translation, by Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson at the Wikipedia: click here

Kate Atkinson website

Unseen Translation: review

Not the End of the World at the Wikipedia: click here

Not the End of the World (The Guardian): review

Kate Atkison and detective Jackson Brodie (Jason Isaacs)

Case Stories (trailer)

Presentation, by Dolors Rossell

Kate Atkinson was born the 20^th of December 1951 in York, the setting for several of her books. An avid reader from childhood, she studied English literature at the University of Dundee in Scotland, gaining her master's degree in 1974. She remained at Dundee to study postmodern American fiction for a doctorate. Though she was denied the degree because she failed at the viva (oral examination) stage, her studies of the postmodern stylistic elements of American writers influenced her later work.
Throughout the late 1970s and for much of the ’80s, Atkinson held various jobs, from home help to legal secretary and teacher, few of which enabled her to make use of her literary interests.
In 1981–82, however, she took up short-story writing, finding the brief narrative form an effective outlet for her creative energy.
Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year and went on to be a Sunday Time bestseller. Since then, she has published another five novels, one play, and one collection of short stories. Her work is often celebrated for its wit, wisdom and subtle characterisation, the surprising twists and complicated plots, and often eccentric characters.
Atkinson has criticised the media's coverage of her work – when she won the Whitbread award, for example, it was the fact that she was a "single mother" who lived outside London that received the most attention.
Atkinson now lives in Edinburgh
 
UNSEEN TRANSLATION
Not the End of the World is Kate Atkinson’s first collection of short stories mostly set in Scotland, and is an experiment in magic realism  (a style of fiction and literary genre that paints a realistic view of the modern world while also adding magical elements, often deals with the blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality).  The collection was first published in 2002.
It contains 12 loosely connected stories. Playful and profound, they explore the world we think we know whilst offering a vision of another world which lurks just beneath the surface of our consciousness. A world where the myths we have banished from our lives are startlingly present and where imagination has the power to transform reality. Each of these stories shows that when the worlds of material existence and imagination collide, anything is possible.
Unseen Translation-summary:
Arthur is a precocious eight-year-old boy whose mother is a glamour model Romney Wright, a B-list celebrity more concerned with the state of her bank account than with her son's development. His father is the lead singer of the rock band Boak. Then an enigmatic young nanny named Missy introduces him to a world he never knew existed. Arthur's father is on tour in Germany and Missy is to take Arthur to visit him.
 
Reviews:
“Following the considerable success of her novels, what a pleasure it is to find Atkinson luxuriating in her original genre. Let’s hope she enjoys her return to it so much that many such inspired collections follow.”
I'm willing to bet that Kate Atkinson didn't colour inside the lines when she was a little girl. She's a born subversive, and her charming, alarming, crazy quilt fiction catches the reader off-balance.
The narratives are neither clearly connected nor totally distinct (Atkinson doesn't do anything conventionally). Occasionally she recycles characters:
Usually I prefer my "magical" and my "realism" well separated, like carrots and peas on a dinner plate. But Atkinson is so adept and her narrative voice so persuasive that after a while I began to enjoy the sudden shifts from ordinary life to fairy tale, from anxiety to horror, from a bad day to the end of the world.

Unseen Translation

(some helpful images)

QUESTIONS

What do you think it’s the relation between the title and the story?
Talk about the characters in the story
    Missy
    Arthur
    Arthur’s mother
    Arthur’s father
    Otto
What do you know about these mythological beings?
    Artemis
    Athene
    Aphrodite
    Meander
    Echo
    Pan
    Nymph
John Berger, in his book Ways of Seeing, says museums and galleries are modern churches because when you enter them you have to show respect, keep silence and touch nothing. In the story they say that museums are soporific. What are your experiences with museums?
What do you know about these places?:
    Natural History Museum
    National Gallery
    British Museum
    V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum)
Missy said that a bit of stoicism is good. What is stoicism?
Explain the scene at the newsagents.
Tell us about the different ideas they have to name the girl just born.
What books do they buy for their flight to Munich?
What happened at the Bayerisher Hof?
What did Missy and Arthur do in Munich?
After Munich, where did they want to go?
How does the story end?
 
“The list of worse is endless. That’s not grammatical, by the way.” What isn’t grammatical?
 
“Fell in love with the master who had a mad wife in the attic and who became hideously disfigured in a fire?” What does it refer to?

 VOCABULARY

stags, avian, window shopping, tidal, stroll, smorgasbord, spoilt, mar, trouble-shooter, NHS, SAS, grating, stage school, tabloid, stuck (stick), Camelot, whorl, wanker, bet, elbowed, Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, held off (hold off –the rain), hauling (haul), love-rat, cocoon, skim-read, as high as a kite, dawdle, china, porcelain, round-the-clock, kraut, sated, shot, nonchalant, primeval, scuffed, queue /kiú/, coiling (coil), tannoy 

The Red Shoes, by Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen at the Wikipedia: click here

The Red Shoes at the Wikipedia: click here

Bibliography (enormous): click here

Some Youtube versions: click here

Presentation, by Tamara Martín

Biography

He was born in Odense, Denmark, in 1805. When he was 14 years old he travelled to Copenhagen because he wanted to be a singer or an actor (but he did not succeed).
While he was there, he met a famous theatre director names Jonas Collin. He recognized his talent and he paid for his studies.
In 1822, he attended Slagelse School. He stayed there for 3 years, and he wrote the poem The Dying Child while he was there.
Between 1828 and 1829 he wrote his short story A Walk from Holmen’s Canal to the East Point of the Island of Amager in the Years 1828 and 1829, and in 1840 he wrote his autobiography, The Adventure of my Life, 1855.
In the next 10 years he visited different countries.
In 1835, he began to become famous for his children’s books, for example The Little Mermaid in 1837 and The Ugly Duckling in 1843.
In Odense there is a museum dedicated to the memory of the life and works of this wonderful storyteller.

 The Red Shoes

The story tells us about a little poor girl. The girl goes barefoot because she doesn’t have any money to buy a pair of shoes. An old rich woman adopts her and takes care of her. One day the rich old lady buys her a new pair of red shoes. An old soldier puts a spell on them that makes them dance. She goes to church with the red shoes, but this is highly improper. Out of the church the girl starts dancing, and she cannot stop her feet. One day, there is a ball; the girl goes there and her feet cannot stop dancing anymore. The woman is sick and dies; the girl goes to the funeral with her red shoes, and she goes on dancing. She goes on dancing along the streets and fields until she finds an executioner; she asks him to cut her feet off. She walks with crutches, but her amputated feet go on dancing before her. Finally, when she feels sorry for dancing in the church and in the funeral, a beam of light takes her to heaven.

QUESTIONS

Karen has three different pairs of shores along the story. Can you describe them?
Talk about the different characters
Karen
Old Mother Shoemaker
The old lady
The queen
The old soldier
The executioner
What does the mirror say to Karen?
The mirror is a very important object in a lot of stories. Do you remember another story where there was a mirror and it had a capital role?
The first time Karen goes to the church, what does she go for?
And the second time?
What kind of shoes do people has to wear at church? Why?
The old soldier casts a magical spell to the shoes. What are the words and the actions?
Talk about the ball.
What was the angel’s curse?
What was the girl’s sin?
What happened to Karen after she had her feet cut off?
Who helped her at last?
Did she go to the church at the end of the story? What happened?

VOCABULARY

barefoot, clumsy, well meant, mourning, parson, sew /sóu/, flocked, train, thriving (thrive), patent leather, aisle, bygone, starched (starch), covenant, choir /kuàia/, knelt (kneel), unfenced (fence), graveyard, sword /sòd/, shrivel down, thorn, window pane, quiver, crutches (crutch), hobble, roll (organ), pew

The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe

Illustration by Harry Clarke, 1919

Edgar Allan Poe at he the Wikipedia: click here

The Tell-Tale Heart at the Wikipedia: click here

The Tell-Tale Heart: video materials on Youtube: click here

Movie based freely on the story: Tell-Tale

Movie based on the story The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether: Stonehearst Asylum

Deathwatch beetle

Deathwatch beetle sound

Presentation, by Àngels Gallardo

Edgar Allan Poe

He was born in 1809 in Boston (USA) and he died when he was 40 years old in 1849.
He was a writer, poet, crític reviewer and journalist, and he has been recognized as one of the best authors of short horror stories. 

The Tell-Tale Heart:

This is a horror story that has been written by Edgar Allan Poe and published in 1843.
The history relates the obsession of a man for an old man who has a pale blue eye.
We don't know the man who explains what happened, which was the relation between two men and what their names were, but we know that they were living together in an old house.
He was so obsessed with the pale blue eye of the old man that he thought he would kill him.
Every night at twelve o'clock, he went to the bedroom of the old man to watch him sleeping to see if he had his pale blue eye open.
After eight nights, he saw that his eye was open and decided to kill him.
The old man shrieked when the man wanted to kill him, and a neighbour who heard it called the police.
The man had a guilty conscience, and, at the end, he confessed the crime to the police officers.

QUESTIONS

“The disease had sharpened my senses”. Do you know a case where an illness can sharpen the senses? They used to say that tuberculosis sharpened the sexual appetite.

Say something about the narrator. Could the narrator be a woman? Why?

Who was the old man?

What was the relationship between the narrator and the victim?

What is the “evil eye”? What are your superstitions?

There is a saying “Better the devil you know (than the devil you don't).” What do you prefer: something /somebody new (unknown) or something /somebody old (known)? Why?

“The beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage”. Do you think this is true? What stimulates you into courage?

Who were the three men, and why did they come to the house?

How long did the murder and the hiding of the body last?

Why didn’t the murderer kill the man one of the seven first nights?

What do you think is the noise of “a watch when enveloped in cotton”?

VOCABULARY

dark lantern, chuckle, awe, well up, marrow, tattoo, yell, stone dead, wan, tub, foam, dissemble

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (fragment):

A scene of the most horrible butchery ensued. The bound seamen were dragged to the gangway. Here the cook stood with an axe, striking each victim on the head as he was forced over the side of the vessel by the other mutineers. In this manner twenty-two perished, and Augustus had given himself up for lost, expecting every moment his own turn to come next. But it seemed that the villains were now either weary, or in some measure disgusted with their bloody labour; for the four remaining prisoners, together with my friend, who had been thrown on the deck with the rest, were respited while the mate sent below for rum, and the whole murderous party held a drunken carouse, which lasted until sunset. They now fell to disputing in regard to the fate of the survivers, who lay not more than four paces off, and could distinguish every word said. Upon some of the mutineers the liquor appeared to have a softening effect, for several voices were heard in favour of releasing the captives altogether, on condition of joining the mutiny and sharing the profits. The black cook, however (who in all respects was a perfect demon, and who seemed to exert as much influence, if not more, than the mate himself), would listen to no proposition of the kind, and rose repeatedly for the purpose of resuming his work at the gangway. Fortunately, he was so far overcome by intoxication as to be easily restrained by the less bloodthirsty of the party, among whom was a line-manager, who went by the name of Dirk Peters. This man was the son of an Indian squaw of the tribe of Upsarokas, who live among the fastnesses of the Black Hills near the source of the Missouri. His father was a fur-trader, I believe, or at least connected in some manner with the Indian trading-posts on Lewis river. Peters himself was one of the most purely ferocious-looking men I ever beheld. He was short in stature—not more than four feet eight inches high—but his limbs were of the most Herculean mould. His hands, especially, were so enormously thick and broad as hardly to retain a human shape. His arms, as well as legs, were bowed in the most singular manner, and appeared to possess no flexibility whatever. His head was equally deformed, being of immense size, with an indentation on the crown (like that on the head of most negroes), and entirely bald. To conceal this latter deficiency, which did not proceed from old age, he usually wore a wig formed of any hair-like material which presented itself—occasionally the skin of a Spanish dog or American grizzly bear. At the time spoken of he had on a portion of one of these bearskins; and it added no little to the natural ferocity of his countenance, which betook of the Upsaroka character. The mouth extended nearly from ear to ear; the lips were thin, and seemed, like some other portions of his frame, to be devoid of natural pliancy, so that the ruling expression never varied under the influence of any emotion whatever. This ruling expression may be conceived when it is considered that the teeth were exceedingly long and protruding, and never even partially covered, in any instance, by the lips. To pass this man with a casual glance, one might imagine him to be convulsed with laughter—but a second look would induce a shuddering acknowledgment, that if such an expression were indicative of merriment, the merriment must be that of a demon. Of this singular being many anecdotes were prevalent among the seafaring men of Nantucket. These anecdotes went to prove his prodigious strength when under excitement, and some of them had given rise to a doubt of his sanity. But on board the Grampus, it seems, he was regarded at the time of the mutiny with feelings more of derision than of anything else. I have been thus particular in speaking of Dirk Peters, because, ferocious as he appeared, he proved the main instrument in preserving the life of Augustus, and because I shall have frequent occasion to mention him hereafter in the course of my narrative—a narrative, let me here say, which, in its latter portions, will be found to include incidents of a nature so entirely out of the range of human experience, and for this reason so far beyond the limits of human credulity, that I proceed in utter hopelessness of obtaining credence for all that I shall tell, yet confidently trusting in time and progressing science to verify some of the most important and most improbable of my statements.

Fleet-Footed Hester, by George Gissing

George Gissing at the Wikipedia: click here

George Gissing, The Guardian: click here

Fleet-Footed Hester: review

Fleet-Footed Hester: summary

George Gissing on feminism: click here

Presentation, by Argemir Gonzàlez

Biography

George Robert Gissing was born on 22nd November 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire. He died on 28th December 1903 in Saint-Jean-de-Luz (France). He was the eldest of five children of Thomas Waller Gissing, who ran a chemist's shop, and Margaret.

Gissing was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield, where he was a diligent and enthusiastic student. His serious interest in books began at the age of ten when he read The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. Gissing's father died when he was 12 years old, and he and his brothers were sent to the Lindow Grove School at Alderley Edge in Cheshire, where he was a solitary student who studied hard. In 1872, after an exceptional performance in the Oxford Local Examinations, Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College, forerunner of the University of Manchester. There he continued his intense studies, and won many prizes, including the Poem Prize in 1873 and the Shakespeare scholarship in 1875.

His academic career ended in disgrace when he ran short of money and stole from his fellow students. The college hired a detective to investigate the thefts and Gissing was prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in Belle Vue Gaol, Manchester, in 1876.

In Manchester, he also began a relationship with Marianne "Nell" Harrison, a prostitute, afterwards his wife.

He travelled to the USA with Marianne Harrison in 1876 but lived in poverty and returned the following year then he worked as a teacher. He began to publish in 1880 but without success until 1891 when he published New Grub Street, a novel about literary bohemian life. That novel and The Odd Women are considered his best works.

His style follows the style of Dickens and Gaskell on social content. In 1898 published his study Charles Dickens: A Critical Study.

Critical review

Fleet-Footed Hester, by George Gissing, is the story of a young woman, immature and capricious, and of a not so young man, of weak character and jealous despite being physically strong.

Fleet-Footed Hester is a story, in my opinion, lineal, plain and not credible, halfway between Victorian morals and a reflection about the female condition.

The end is disappointing. The young and free Hester saves her lover John Rayner doing what she can do best (that is, running), but only to deliver herself to a jealous, impoverished, alcoholised man with whom she never will have what she likes most: running races.

The message of George Gissing is clear: the woman must sacrifice her freedom because it is the reason for the disgrace and misery of a man. 

QUESTIONS

What is Private Eye?
What is Grub Street?
 
Talk about the characters: appearance, personality, job...
John
Hester
Albert
Mrs Heffron
Hester’s father. (He was “married without leave”. What does it mean?)
 
What was John’s opinion about Hester’s first job? What kind of occupation did he want for her?
What was John’s opinion about Hester running races?
John and Hester’s different kind of love: what are these two kinds?
Tell us John and Hester first quarrel.
Tell us John and Hester second quarrel.
How did Hester change after the second quarrel?
How did John change along the two years when didn’t see Hester?
Explain Albert and Hester’s courtship and their breaking up.
Last but one Hester’s race.
Mrs Heffron and Hester’s last meeting.
What was Hester’s proposal when she met John at the station?
What does the last sentence (“the red rift of the eastern sky broadened into day”) mean? What does it symbolize?

 

THEME TO DEBATE

I think that Gissing’s story is useful to debate some topics about feminism, moreover when he wrote a novel about the situation of the women in Victorian (or puritan and traditionalist) society.

So, what do you thing about woman and hobbies (sports, DIY, etc.). Don’t you think that there is a vindication, from women, to do “men” hobbies, but not the other way round?

For the only reason of being a woman, you are discriminated? (E.g. I’m thinking about Mrs Thatcher)

What is your opinion about positive discrimination (that is: in equal conditions, to give preference to a member of a minority or to a member of an unfavoured group)?

Do you think men can /must be involved in the debate about women issues?

VOCABULARY

wiry, foreman, stay, paper-chase, woo, plight one’s troth, stinted, bearing, ploughboy, wages, wrath, pickles, fit of temper, comely, shun, lithe, thew, measure one’s length on the pavement, toss, copper, stich, bale, traps

CLERIHEWS

As you could see on the brief introduction before the story, they mention a kind of poem called clerihew. It was invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956), who was a humorous English writer. It's a comical biographical poem very easy to create.The first line has to contain the name of the person you're telling something about. It has to have four lines of any meter you like, and with the rhyme structure AABB, so they are useful to learn how to pronounce some words, though sometimes the rhymes can be forced. Here you have some exemples:

Edmund Clerihew Bentley

Sir Christopher Wren
Said, “I’m going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls,
Say I’m designing St. Paul’s.”

***

It was a weakness of Voltaire’s
To forget to say his prayers,
And one which to his shame
He never overcame.

***

Dante Alighieri
Seldom troubled a dairy.
He wrote the Inferno
On a bottle of Pernod.

***

Daniel Defoe
Lived a long time ago.
He had nothing to do, so
He wrote Robinson Crusoe.

***

Edgar Allan Poe
Was passionately fond of roe.
He always liked to chew some,
When writing something gruesome.

***

John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote ‘Principles of Economy.’

***

The art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about maps,
But Biography is about chaps.

G. K. Chesterton

The novels of Jane Austen
Are the ones to get lost in.
I wonder if Labby
Has read Northanger Abbey

(Labby was an English journalist.)

***

Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Is now a buried one.
He was not a Goth, much less a Vandal,
As he proved by writing The School for Scandal.

***

Solomon
You can scarcely write less than a column on.
His very song
Was long.

***

The Spanish people think Cervantes
Equal to half a dozen Dantes;
An opinion resented most bitterly
By the people of Italy.

W. H. Auden

Sir Henry Rider Haggard
Was completely staggered
When his bride-to-be
Announced, “I am She!”

***

John Milton
Never stayed in a Hilton
Hotel,
Which was just as well.

***

When Karl Marx
Found the phrase ‘financial sharks,’
He sang a Te Deum
In the British Museum.

***

When the young Kant
Was told to kiss his aunt,
He obeyed the Categorical Must
But only just.

***

Lord Byron
Once succumbed to a Siren:
His flesh was weak,
Hers Greek.

***

Oscar Wilde
Was greatly beguiled,
When into the Café Royal walked Bosie
Wearing a tea-cosy.

***

Thomas Hardy
Was never tardy
When summoned to fulfill
The Immanent Will.

***

William Blake
Found Newton hard to take,
And was not enormously taken
With Francis Bacon.

***

Henry Taylor

Alexander Graham Bell
has shuffled off this mobile cell.
He’s not talking any more
But he has a lot to answer for.

***

John Dryden
wasn’t the sort you’d confide in;
there was no limit to the secrets he’d tell
in lyrics set to music by Henry Purcell.

***

William Wordsworth
considered four-and-twenty birds worth
a walk as far as the banks of the Wye.
There are some things money just can’t buy. 

 George Szirtes

e e cummings’
unpublished hummings
will shortly be published in a book –
just l(oo)k

***
Rene Magritte
liked his rum neat
and would never think of adding Cola.
He’d sooner eat his bowler.

***

Pierre-August Renoir
simply adored Film Noir
and kept nagging at Jean
“Make your old dad a Film Noir! Aw, go on!”

***

Claude Monet
resisted all forms of donné.
When someone suggested he should paint the cathedral at Rheims,
he replied, “In your dreams!”

***

George Braque
decided to pickle a shark
as a kind of tableau,
but then left it to Pablo.

***

J M W Turner
liked a nice little earner
and was untroubled by greed,
painting Rain, Steam AND Speed.

Mark Granier 

Trump
was always at home on the stump,
while the White House, unfortunately,
is more of a tree.

Derek Mahon

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Is still read today;
While other Victorian novels degenerate in the attic,
Its reputation remains static.

***

“Strange Meeting”

Wilfred Owen
And Elizabeth Bowen
Never met;
And yet… 

Sex Lives of Poets by Dick Davis

Did Shakespeare get more joy
From a boy as a girl or a girl as a boy?
Whatever: he liked the nice surprises
Engendered by disguises.

***

Alexander Pope
Hadn’t a hope
With Lady Mary Wortley Montague:
“When it comes to inches,” she said, “you certainly want a few.”

***

When it comes to Christina Rossetti
And a sex life  . . . well, not to get petty
There wasn’t any, or at least none that was visible.
This clerihew’s sad, not risible.

Michael Curl

There’s no disputin’
that Grigori Rasputin
had more will to power
than Schopenhauer.

Dean W. Zimmerman

Jesus Christ
Was sliced and diced,
And punched with holes
To save our souls.

Paul Ingram

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Hardly ever went out to dine.
Be the menu never so abundant,
He found “green leafy lettuce salad” tautological and redundant.

Paul Horgan

Luchino Visconti
Saw ‘The Full Monty’
Which he thought was vile,
Bar Robert Carlyle.

Ian Duhig

 ‘Ingmar’,
said his wife, ‘I wish you would sing more,
not just sit there playing chess against Death and being glum’.
But Ingmar kept shtum.

Katy Evans-Bush

Cary Grant
loved his aunt.
When he was alone,
He would try her eau de cologne.