The Alcotts

Essential Vocabulary

Tasks

Work with the Encyclopedia. Speak on the following:

transcendentalist

Emerson

Thoreau

Hawthorne.

prolific - а) плодородный (о почве) Syn: fertile, fruitful

б)плодовитый, плодоносный (о животных, растениях)

to promote - а) способствовать, помогать, содействовать; поддерживать;

создавать благоприятные условия для продажи

б) рекламировать; содействовать продаже какого-л. товара Advertising companies are always having to think up new ways to promote products. — Рекламные компании всегда должны изобретать новые способы заинтересовать потребителя в покупке товара.

suffrage - а) право голоса, избирательное право;

to extend, grant suffrage — предоставить право голоса, наделить

избирательным правом;

female suffrage, women's suffrage — избирательное право для женщин

fascinated - заколдованный; очарованный; загипнотизированный

fascinate - 1) восхищать, приводить в восторг, очаровывать, пленять (at, with); His eloquence fascinates and astonishes. — Его красноречие завораживает и изумляет. Syn: charm; enchant

scribble - писать быстро и небрежно

ineptitude - неспособность, неумелость, неумение (at, in)

to demonstrate, display ineptitude — проявлять неспособность

Syn: incapacity, inability, irrelevance, unsuitableness, unfitness

take in - 1) принимать (гостя); предоставлять приют;

брать (жильцов и т. п.); брать (работу на дом)

to take in washing — брать на дом стирку

(taking in sewing, teaching…)

involved - связанный, вовлеченный (in; with);

to become involved with smth. - увлечься чем-л.

emotionally involved with… - эмоционально связанный с…

contribute - вносить вклад (в науку, литературу и т. п.);

сотрудничать (в газете, журнале) (to)

to paddle one's own canoe - ни от кого не зависеть; действовать независимо

lurid - страшный, зловещий, угрожающий

to cast/throw a lurid light on - бросать зловещий, мрачный свет

ambiguous – двусмысленный, сомнительный; неопределенный, неясный;

допускающий двоякое толкование; неоднозначный

Comment on the following:

Her father's strong anti-materialism, coupled with his complete financial ineptitude, often meant that the family found it difficult to make ends meet.

“In those days the prophets were not honored in their own land, and Concord had not discovered her men. It was a sort of refuge for reformers of all sorts whom the good natives regarded as lunatics, harmless but amusing.”

“Recollections of my childhood”

Louisa May Alcott,

May, 1888

Bronson Alcott called it "Hillside" before Hawthorne changed its name to The Wayside. Here Louisa May Alcott and her sisters lived many of the childhood adventures recalled in her 1868 classic, “ Little Women”

Bronson and Abby Alcott instilled ideals that Louisa would champion throughout her life, in her writings and in her actions. In 1847, with hardly enough money to feed themselves, the Alcotts sheltered a fugitive slave at Hillside. "His stay with us has given image and a name to the dire entity of slavery, and was an impressive lesson so my children, " Bronson recorded.

Bronson remained the primary teacher of his children: encouraging self expression, a love of Nature, helping others, tempering independence with self control and finding one's own niche in life. Many of these ideas were put into practice at "Plumfield" in 1871 in Louisa's “ Little Men”.

Her father's Concord friends and neighbors, fellow writers and reformers Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ellery Channing also filled Louisa's childhood with rich and varied experiences and inspired many characters that appeared later in her written works.

While many of her novels and stories possess a warm, human quality that for over a century has won her millions of admirers throughout the world, her writing at Hillside was of a different sort.

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