Montaigne

INTRODUCTION The great questions about happiness are concerned with its definition and its attainability. In what does happiness consist? Is it the same for all men, or do different men seek different things in the name of happiness? Can happiness be achieved on earth, or only hereafter? And if the pursuit of happiness is not a futile quest, by what means or steps should it be undertaken? On all these questions, the great books set forth the fundamental inquiries and speculations, as well as the

Shakespeare’s Sonnets William Shakespeare The Sonnet Form A sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem, traditionally written in iambic pentameter—that is, in lines ten syllables long, with accents falling on every second syllable, as in: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” The sonnet form first became popular during the Italian Renaissance, when the poet Petrarch published a sequence of love sonnets addressed to an idealized woman named Laura. Taking firm hold among Italian poets, the sonnet

The Elizabethan Age is the time period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. It was an age considered to be the height of the English Renaissance, and saw the full flowering of English literature and English poetry. In Elizabethan theater, William Shakespeare, among others, composed and staged plays in a variety of settings that broke away from England's past style of plays. It was an age of expansion and exploration

Summer Reading Notes Jane Eyre Background of author Name: Charlotte Bronte Birth/Death: April 21, 1816 to March 31,1855 Facts that connect: Mr. Brocklehurst is based off the Reverend Carus Wilson, the man who ran Cowan Bridge. Bronte lost two of her sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, to tuberculosis at Cowan Bridge. Bronte 's brother, Patrick, became addicted to drugs and alcohol before he died. Similarities: She, along with her three sisters, was sent to the Clergy Daughters ' School at Cowan Bridge