Table Of ContentМИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ
РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ
Государственное образовательное учреждение
высшего профессионального образования
ОМСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ
им. Ф.М. ДОСТОЕВСКОГО
СОВРЕМЕННЫЕ
АНГЛИЙСКИЕ РОМАНЫ
CONTEMPORARY
ENGLISH NOVELS
Учебное пособие
по работе с книгами современных британских авторов
для студентов гуманитарных специальностей,
изучающих английский язык
Омск
2010
УДК 802.0 + 82.09
ББК 81.2Англ. – 93 + 83я73
С 56
Рекомендовано к изданию редакционно-издательским советом ОмГУ
Рецензент – канд. пед. наук О.С. Дворжец
Составители:
Е.Г. Воскресенская (part 1, 2), Е.В. Никитенко (part 2),
Д.В. Трашков (part 3), О.А. Щеглова (part 4),
С 56 Современные английские романы = Contemporary
English Novels: учебное пособие по работе с книгами совре-
менных британских авторов для студентов гуманитарных спе-
циальностей, изучающих английский язык / [сост. Е.Г. Вос-
кресенская, Е.В. Никитенко, Д.В. Трашков, О.А. Щеглова]. –
Омск: Изд-во Ом. гос. ун-та, 2010. – 346 с.
ISBN 978-5-7779-1232-9
Цель пособия – развитие навыков чтения и лингвокультуроло-
гического анализа художественных текстов на основе четырех рома-
нов современных английских авторов: Дж. Коу «Какое надувательст-
во!» (Jonathan Coe ‘What a Carve Up!’), Дж. Барнс «История мира в
10 ½ главах» (Julian Barnes ‘A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters’),
Г. Свифт «Земля воды» (Graham Swift ‘Waterland’) и М. Фрейн «Одер-
жимый » (Michael Frayn ‘Headlong’).
Предназначено для использования на занятиях по курсам
«Домашнее чтение» и «Лингвокультурологический анализ художест-
венных текстов» со студентами I–V курсов факультета иностранных
языков, отделения «Регионоведение» исторического факультета, для
студентов групп специализации филологического факультета и фа-
культета международного бизнеса, а также студентов других гума-
нитарных специальностей, изучающих английский язык.
УДК 802.0 + 82.09
ББК 81.2Англ. – 93 + 83я73
© Е.Г. Воскресенская, Е.В. Никитенко,
Д.В. Трашков, О.А. Щеглова, состав-
ление, 2010
ISBN 978-5-7779-1232-9 © Оформление. ГОУ ВПО «Омский гос-
университет им. Ф.М. Достоевского»,
2010
INTRODUCTION
Цель настоящего издания – формирование у студентов
коммуникативной и лингвокультурологической компетенций на
основе художественных произведений английской литературы,
развитие навыков чтения, интерпретации и лингвокультуроло-
гического анализа художественных текстов.
Развитие умения выявлять стилистические особенности и
анализировать языковые и культурологические реалии в худо-
жественных произведениях английских авторов играет важную
роль в формировании представления о языковой картине мира
как феномене национальной культуры и способствует более глу-
бокому пониманию художественных произведений.
В данном пособии особое внимание уделяется развитию
такого общеучебного умения как умение критически мыслить.
Исходя из целей обучения в соответствии с системой уров-
ней владения языком Совета Европы, представленных в доку-
менте «Общеевропейские компетенции владения иностранным
языком: Изучение, преподавание, оценка» (Common European
Framework of Reference: Learning, Teaching, Assessment), данное
пособие ориентировано на уровни B 2 (пороговый продвинутый
уровень) – С 1 (уровень профессионального владения).
Материалом для пособия послужили четыре неадаптиро-
ванных романа современных английских писателей: Дж. Коу
«Какое надувательство!», Дж. Барнс «История мира в 10 ½ гла-
вах», Г. Свифт «Земля воды» и М. Фрейн «Одержимый».
Пособие состоит из четырех разделов, каждый из которых
посвящен одному из романов:
Part 1. Jonathan Coe ‘What a Carve Up!’,
Part 2. Julian Barnes ‘A History of the World in 10 ½ Chap-
ters’,
Part 3. Michael Frayn ‘Headlong’
Part 4. Graham Swift ‘Waterland’.
В каждом разделе представлено несколько частей, состоя-
щих из блоков заданий:
– первая часть нацелена на подготовку студентов к чте-
нию данного произведения, знакомит их с биографией автора,
критическими отзывами и историей создания романа;
3
– вторая часть состоит из упражнений, разбитых по гла-
вам каждой из книг, предназначенных для работы на дотексто-
вом, текстовом и послетекстовым этапах, содержит упражнения
на отработку лексики, проверку понимания текста и его обсуж-
дение, анализ лингвокультурологической информации, перевод.
– третья часть содержит заключительные задания на про-
верку степени усвоения лексического материала, а также зада-
ния дискуссионного характера, темы для написания эссе и под-
готовки презентаций по проблемам произведения.
Предложенные задания предполагают использование раз-
личных форм работы – групповую, фронтальную, парную и ин-
дивидуальную.
Основу пособия составляют аутентичные материалы, раз-
вивающие не только лингвистическую, но и социо-культурную
компетенцию учащихся.
К пособию прилагается аудио-диск.
Авторы пособия выражают особую признательность
Оксфордскому Российскому фонду (The Oxford Russia Fund) и
лично К. Хьюитт, благодаря которым эти замечательные
книги попали на факультет иностранных языков ОмГУ им.
Ф.М. Достоевского
4
PART 1
Jonathan Coe
WHAT A CARVE UP!
5
ABOUT JONATHAN COE AND WHAT A CARVE UP!
1 Read some of the blurbs given on the front page and back
cover of What a Carve Up! Penguin Books 1994 edition.
What do you think the book is about? Do these blurbs
sound intriguing, captivating? Will they make people
buy and read the book?
‘One of the most ambitious novels I have read in years and one which has pulled off
the seemingly impossible trick of managing to be both amiable and angry at the same
time’ – Tom Shone in the Spectator
‘Coe effortlessly spans fifty years of British political and social change in this hugely
entertaining novel, packed full of period detail, from forties schoolboy slang to mod-
ern media wars’ – Lavinia Greenlaw in Vogue
‘A carve-up of contemporary Britain, What a Carve Up! is also a carve-up of a book,
a vertiginous, exquisitely calculated collage of texts-within-texts ... one of the few
pieces of genuinely political post-modern fiction around’ – Terry Eagleton in the
London Review of Books
‘An unusually entertaining novel, as well as being politically ambitious ... it manages
to switch from one tone to another with extraordinary deftness. It reminded me of
something like Catch-22, which keeps you laughing and yet doesn't shy away from
the horrors that it's writing about’ – Nicolette Jones on Kaleidoscope,
BC Radio Four
‘“They’re not monsters you know. Not really,” says Mortimer Winshaw, heir to deso-
late Winshaw Towers, of his clan. Oh, but they are, really, real monsters. And Jona-
than Coe's novel is, really, something to get excited about... [a] big, hilarious, intri-
cate, furious, moving treat of a novel’ – Shaun Whiteside in the Guardian
‘What a Carve Up! is a sustained feat of humour, suspense and polemic, full of nar-
rative twists and deft ironies’ – Hilary Mantel in the Sunday Times
‘[A] riveting social satire on the chattering and all-powerful upper classes ... craftily
contrived and often breathtakingly clever. Here is gothic, here is parody, here is po-
litical acuity ... an absolute delight’ – Steve Grant in Time Out
‘A remarkable achievement; intelligent, funny, and important’ – Nicholas Lezard in
The Times Literary Supplement
6
2 Read the information below and try to interpret the title
of the book WHAT A CARVE UP!.
1. What a Carve Up! is the title of the film that inspired Michael,
the main character.
2. What a Carve Up! is an exclamation at the sight of many vio-
lent deaths.
3. ‘Carve up’ may also mean the following:
carve up 1) to cut (something) into pieces
(vb tr) 2) to divide or dismember (a country, land, etc.)
carve-up 3) informal an act or instance of dishonestly pre-
(noun) arranging the result of a competition
4) slang the distribution of something, as of booty
(From ABBYY Lingvo 12)
carve up 1) разг. обманывать; надувать
(vb tr) 2) сл. дербанить, делить имущество, особ. неза-
конно
carve-up / 1) дербан (власти, собственности и т.п.)
carve up 2) мошеннический сговор; раздел; делёж (до-
(сущ.) бычи, территории, сферы влияния); делёж (до-
бычи, территории, сферы влияния и т.п.)
(From Мультитран http://www.multitran.ru)
3 Now, read the following sentences and try to find out
which meaning of CARVE UP is used in each of them,
replace it with a synonym. Translate the sentences into
Russian.
1) The British carved up the Ottoman Empire after World War I.
2) Portugal Faces Carve-Up by Financial Speculators
3) Worrying economic indicators and gloomy forecasts by the In-
ternational Monetary Fund (IMF) are rapidly making Portugal
a magnet for international speculative capital.
4) Google offers more ways to carve up search results, brightens
up logo in latest tune up
5) SAN FRANCISCO – Google is fine-tuning the way it presents its
Internet search results to make it easier for people to find infor-
mation and images they want.
7
6) You didn’t need a visit to the Delphic Oracle in order to figure
out what would happen, in any case I doubt that many want to
visit Greece these days. So, on 8 May the carve-up began with
Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats meeting a team of
Tory advisors in order to strike a deal to try and form a ‘coali-
tion’ government.
7) Every year at this time millions of people buy pumpkins (more
often large orange squashes) to carve up Jack-o-lanterns for
the celebration of Halloween.
8) Coyotes carve up Red Wings
9) The Phoenix Coyotes scored their first three goals on special teams
and Ilya Bryzgalov made 31 saves in a 5-2 win over the Detroit
Red Wings on Sunday at Joe Louis Arena to force Game 7.
4 Read the synopsis of the original film What a Carve Up!
(1961). What are the possible links between the film and
the book?
The relatives of Uncle Gabriel are summoned to an old country
house in the middle of nowhere to hear the reading of his will. They
all stay in the mansion overnight, and one by one the guests are
murdered. The remaining guests must solve the mystery as to who
is committing these murders before they too are killed.
It was released in the United States in 1962 as No Place Like
Homicide. The film starred Sid James, Kenneth Connor, Donald
Pleasence, Shirley Eaton, Dennis Price, Alastair Sim, Timothy
Bateson, and Esma Cannon, as well as Michael Gough, Michael
Gwynn, Valerie Taylor, Philip O'Flynn, George Woodbridge, Adam
Faith and Frederick Piper.
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_a_Carve_Up!_
(film))
5 After learning different meanings of CARVE UP and
reading the synopsis of the original film What a Carve
Up! (1961) could you guess what the book is about?
Share your ideas with the class.
8
6 Have you read any books by Jonathan Coe? Do you
know anything about him? Read the biography of J. Coe
and find out some interesting facts about him.
Jonathan Coe: Biography
Jonathan Coe was born on 19 August 1961
in Lickey, a suburb of south-west Birmin-
gham. His father worked in the motor in-
dustry as a research physicist; his mother
was a music and PE teacher.
Jonathan began writing at an early age. His
first surviving story, a detective thriller
called The Castle of Mystery, was written at
the age of eight. The first few pages of this
story appear in What a Carve Up.
He continued writing all through his schooldays, and at the age of
fifteen sent his first full-length novel to a publisher. A few years
later, after re-reading this book (a comedy entitled All The Way) he
felt so embarrassed by it that he burnt it on a bonfire in his par-
ents' back garden.
He went to King Edward's school in Birmingham, and from there to
Trinity College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge he wrote numer-
ous short stories and another novel, The Sunset Bell. He then went
on to Warwick University where he was awarded a doctorate for
his thesis on Henry Fielding's Tom Jones. While working on this
thesis he also completed The Accidental Woman, which was the
first of his novels to be accepted for publication. It was published in
the UK by Duckworth in April 1987.
In the late 1980s Jonathan moved to London to pursue his literary
and musical enthusiasms, writing songs for his short-lived band
The Peer Group and an even shorter-lived feminist cabaret group
called Wanda and the Willy Warmers. When it became obvious that
his talents did not lie in a musical direction, he decided to concen-
trate exclusively on writing, publishing A Touch of Love in 1989
and The Dwarves of Death in 1990.
9
He now began work on his most ambitious novel to date, What a
Carve Up. Not having any advance from a publisher, he supported
the writing of it with two short biographies of film stars: Humphrey
Bogart: Take It and Like It (1991) and James Stewart: Leading
Man (1994). The novel was completed in early 1993 and published
by Penguin books one year later. It became his first international
success, with translations in sixteen languages.
It was followed by The House of Sleep (1997), The Rotters' Club
(2001), The Closed Circle (2004) and The Rain Before It Falls
(2007). Jonathan also spent many years during this period re-
searching and writing a biography of B S Johnson, the famous Brit-
ish experimental novelist of the 1960s. This biography, Like a Fiery
Elephant, was published by Picador in 2004.
Among Jonathan's awards are the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger
for What a Carve Up in 1995, the Prix Médicis Étranger for The
House of Sleep in 1998, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize
for The Rotters' Club in 2001, and the Samuel Johnson Prize for
Like a Fiery Elephant in 2005. In 2004 he was made Chevalier
l'Ordre des Arts and des Lettres.
His ninth novel, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, was pub-
lished in the UK in May 2010.
Jonathan lives in London with his wife and two daughters.
(From Jonathan Coe’s Official Site and Blog http://www.jonathan-
coewriter.com/ biography.html)
7 Read the text once again and arrange the following lit-
erary works by J.Coe in the order of creation.
James Stewart: Leading Man
The House of Sleep
All The Way
The Closed Circle
The Accidental Woman
A Touch of Love
Humphrey Bogart: Take It and Like It
The Dwarves of Death
10
