Explore the themes of beauty, morality, and decay in Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' through a theatrical adaptation.
Extract
[...] What feelings does Sybil Vane experience for Dorian? (Invite students to provide the answers) - Explain the reasons that led Dorian to become violently angry. Conceptualisation and systematisation : Objective : Formalize the major ideas developed in the excerpt through the analysis of linguistic, lexical, and grammatical elements - Study the use of the conditional mood and the imperfect tense in the character of Sybil in order to show her aspiration and consternation - Identify and study the vocabulary related to beauty, including the ephemeral beauty and superficiality of the character of Dorian Gray. [...]
[...] FLE Teaching - Realization of a didactic session around the 'Portrait of Dorian Gray' Proposal of a didactic sequence : 1. Level targeted: B2 Justification: This excerpt from the play adapted from Oscar Wilde's novel, entitled "The Portrait of Dorian Gray", is quite rich lexically. Its semantic complexity and stylistic subtleties also mean that it is aimed at an independent level of French language, as the learner must be able to understand a complex text, namely a play. The two characteristics of the B2 public according to the CEFR descriptors are: - Ability to understand a complex text, here a literary text - Ability to produce a fluid text based on the support 2. [...]
[...] Study the figures of speech in the excerpt: identify the metaphors, the figures of exaggeration, the hyperboles, the ironies. Production: Objective: encourage learners to argue Written Production : Imagine a letter that Dorian Gray writes to Sybil after their breakup. You will write this letter. You are Dorian Gray and the recipient of the letter is Sybil Vane. Evaluation Proposal : Formative Evaluation : The teacher evaluates students based on their participation in class activities, here the debate and role-playing. Therefore, the evaluation focuses on debate and role-playing activities. [...]
[...] Linguistic components of the document : Vocabulary: - Use of stylistic figures (metaphors, hyperboles) - Usage of the 'aesthetism' language" Grammar : - Use of sentence types (declarative, interrogative, emphatic) Pragmatic component: Act of speech of the character Dorian Gray : self-deception marked by a kind of denial of the reality of his moral decline, his cruelty towards the character of Sibyl who is hopelessly in love with him. Acts of speech of Sybil Vane : They show their love for Dorian. They also express their affliction, their distress after Dorian breaks with her. Their acts of speech also express their thirsty desire to please him, to apologize through implorations, sighs, tears. However, Dorian rejects her because of the mediocrity of her theatrical exploit. So the acts of speech of the character Sybil Vane boil down to an intense exhortation to love. [...]
[...] - The teacher first invites the learners to perform an expressive reading of the document, respecting all intonations, capturing the tone and emotions. This sub-step may seem complex for learners who have never read a theatrical text. In this case, in order to facilitate this expressive reading, ask the learners to analyze the text beforehand in order to grasp which emotions to interpret. To do this, it is essential to identify the genre (is it a tragedy or a comedy?) and the situation. [...]
