Rewards

Chocolate reward to the first person commenting on this post who can tell me what 'prolepsis' is and give me an example from Birdsong.

Amiens Water Gardens

The first section of the novel which I found particularly apposite to the course we're studying is the day that Stephen visits the water gardens with the Azaire family and M and Mme Berard. The descriptions of vegetable decay, and the high water table of this area foreshadow (obviously even more so as we are a retrospective audience) the mud and decomposing flesh encountered by the men in the trenches in the main sections of the novel.
'formed by the backwaters of the Somme'
'He was repelled by the water gardens'
'Heavy flies hung over the water'
'stagnation of living tissue which could not be saved from decay'
'the rotting of matter into the turned and dug earth with its humid, clinging soil'

Stephen seems to be preoccupied with death and decomposition:
'Berard's tongue would decompose into the specks of friable soil'
'Little Gregoire and Lisette would be the mud of the banks in which the rats burrowed'

Key terms
Foreshadowing
Prolepsis
Dramatic irony?

Starting Birdsong

I started this book this time last year, having recently read the Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker and The First Casualty, both of which I really enjoyed. So I thought I would really like reading it....... but I am going to take the professional risk of confessing that I didn't enjoy Birdsong! I was kind of surprised, as two people whose judgement I respect utterly - Miss Elson and my best mate from school Jo - assured me I'd love it (admittedly Miss Elson with the proviso that I'd have to get through the first 100 or so pages of love story before it got really good).
But I didn't like it. There are several reasons for this:

• The first section (100 or so pages Miss Elson was talking about) remind me of D H Lawrence. I don't like his writing either. For some reason I find it cloying.
• And once I did get into the trenches with Steven, I simply found it too harrowing.
• Since having my own children I have become unbearably sentimental about children and child-parent relationships. (I could cry about 'Catrin' by Gillian Clarke. Honestly.) So I was very upset about Jack's son. Read it and you'll see what I mean. And didn't really want to go on, knowing that there was probably lots more heart break to follow.
  
• It's a very long novel - almost dauntingly.
• So far there's no film version, (though here's a link to the making of it: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/birdsong-an-epic-in-the-making-1640030.html ) not that I wanted to skive out of reading it, but I like comparing novels and films so this might've spurred me onto enjoying it a bit more.

Anyway, I've started this blog both as a demo-blog for my lovely sixth-formers, and also to (hopefully) record my re-reading and greater appreciation of this much-acclaimed novel. Here goes......