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课件网) Developing ideas — reading Unit 2 Lessons in life Learning objectives 1. To get to know the characters, settings, plot and development in the adaptation from the Blue Bird; 2. To learn how to portrait characters and use figures of speech. Read the introduction to The Blue Bird and answer the questions. The Blue Bird is a 1908 play by Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 -1949), winnerof the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. Maeterlinck wrote many plays, but The Blue Bird was the most popular and has been widely translated and adapted all over the world. Pre-reading Performed in 1921 in Shanghai by Chinese students, it was the first foreign play staged in China. The Blue Bird tells the tale of brother and sister, Tyltyl and Mytyl, as they are sent by a fairy to search for the Blue Bird of Happiness. The children’s adventure takes them through many magical places before they at last find the Blue Bird in a most unexpected place. Do you know the symbolic meaning of the Blue Bird in Chinese and Western cultures Share your understanding of the meaning with the class. In Western culture the Blue Bird symbolises happiness and it brings good luck and health to people, while in Chinese culture the Blue Bird symbolises the messenger. 2. Where do you think the children find the Blue Bird The children find the Blue Bird in a most unexpected place: perhaps at their home or neighbourhood. ACT IV SCENE II Characters Tyltyl, (Mytyl,) a troop of Happinesses, the Happiness Now read the passage and complete the notes with information from the play. Fast reading ACT IV SCENE II Setting Tyltyl and Mytyl have been searching for the Blue Bird in the Land of Memory, the Palace of Night and the Forest. Now they have arrived at the Palace of Happiness. A troop of Happinesses rush into the hall and speak to them. ACT IV SCENE II Plot The children come to the Palace of Happiness and are welcomed by a troop of Happinesses. The children do not recognise them, but the Happinesses tell them that they are the only things the children know and they are all around them. Tyltyl wonders whether there are Happinesses in his home, and at this moment, all the Happinesses burst out laughing. The chief of the Happinesses tells him that his home is filled with Happinesses. The chief introduces himself to Tyltyl as the Happiness of Being Well, and then introduces him to other Happinesses: of Pure Air, of Loving One’s Parents, of the Blue Sky and of the Forest. Tyltyl just wants to ask the Happinesses one thing: the whereabouts of the Blue Bird. ACT VI SCENE II Characters Tyltyl, (Mytyl,) Mummy Tyl, the neighbour Berlingot, the little girl ACT VI SCENE II Setting Unable to find the Blue Bird anywhere, the children return home. While they are trying to tell their parents about their adventures, their neighbour comes in. She is asking for Tyltyl’s bird for her sick little girl. ACT VI SCENE II Plot The children retu ... ...
