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7right and worth expressing. Books teach us to live. In this respect we all are students who keep learning. It is this fact that gives us an opportunity to experience a wonderful feeling of freedom while thinking and speaking. Life is so complicated and finds its reflection in good literature. And these books are good literature.
So to my mind our journal should present this liveliness and freedom of thought. I remember what a great pleasure it was to be at the seminar: new people, interesting discussions and unexpected views! I do want to experience this delight reading our journal.
Natalia Tambovtseva
University of the Russian Academy of Education ' ■ .
Chelyabinsk
What about Drama? -
Dear Editors,
For several years already we, teachers of English for Russian university students, have taken part in the project about contemporary English Literature. We feel gratitude to the organizers who have chosen fifteen novels for us to use with our students. However there is a tangible gap in what has been chosen by the directors of the project. I would like to draw their attention to the genre of drama, so far unduly disregarded. The texts of theatrical plays have a number of advantages, or at least peculiarities, against pieces of fiction. The principal feature of dramatic literature is that the material any play consists of is, with the exception of the author’s remarks, colloquial speech, that is the speech of the characters who argue and agree with each other, express their emotions, evaluations, attitudes, and so on. In most cases the language used by a personage is a means employed by the author to give him or her additional, and rather vivid characteristics. The personage’s speech, and language in general, marks the speaker’s social status, age, gender, perhaps background, and here is the principal value for us to teach our students how to distinguish all this information hidden inside cues. .
Perhaps the Directors of this project will choose a play for the next Perm Seminar.
In Rostov we are also successfully using those books issued by Perspective Publications. Among other books on British life, English literature, the institutions of contemporary Britain, and the history of Britain, there are books of original British literature prose (Contemporary British Stories and A New Book of Contemporary British Stories) and poetical (An Anthology of Contemporary English Poetry). These three books contain fine and helpful commentaries tailored for the young Russian readers. But so far there is also no drama published by Perspective Publications. Hopefully we will see such a book in the future.
I could add here that I and my colleagues, as we are working at a philology department of a university, offer our students rather serious themes for their yearly essays and final diploma papers. A deep linguistic analysis of the language of modern English (maybe British?) plays could make a good topic for quite a number of such works.
I would like to express one other wish concerning the choice of the plays intended for such a publication in case my proposal is upheld by other Russian teachers of English. I think that avoided should be historical plays like The Brass Butterfly by William Golding and pieces based on ‘foreign material’ like The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard. Vivid contemporary colloquial English would be best of all, therefore the newest plays (published in the last decade) would be per- < haps of the greatest interest - both to those concerned with the latest trends and tendencies in the development of modem English drama and those scrutinizing the style of up-to-date colloquial English.
Finally: if it is going to be a book of plays, then, in my judgment, such a collection should include not less than 3 pieces of drama. In case the compilers choose one-act plays, or include one-act plays in the collection, then the number of pieces could even reach 5. . : ,; y.
Prof. Sergei Nikolaev English Philology Department Southern Federal University Rostov-on-Don
