Home rule video again

You first need to become really at ease with the timeline, the main characters, the main issues. This documentary about Parnell is useful. As with most TV documentaries, it is rather partisan, but many important issues, organizations and people are presented.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vosAeo3eyE

M1 LEA Understanding Brexit 1

We have ten classes: the tenth one is an exam, and there will also be a compulsory marked homework. We will be going through a series of subjects - probably around one every three weeks or so.

The powerpoint I am using in class will later be available here on thi sblog (when I have finished it).

Here is the short video we saw in class:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLrzMzD_yvw 

And here is an extract from an interview with the leader of the Labour Party this week
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-G2ELIIl9I

Historiographie: séminaire WW1

Vous pouvez lire ce compte-rendu de livre, en français. "In Defence of History".

http://quaderna.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/CR-Evans-MULLEN.pdf

Voici   une collection de chansons de la Première Guerre, avec une présentation que j'ai écrite  pour des lycéens:
http://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/civilisation/domaine-britannique/les-tubes-de-la-grande-guerre-en-angleterre-br-partie-1-

This is a lecture by one of the best military historians. Here he talks about only one day: the day of the assassination which was the spark which set off the terrible war.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6snYQFcyiyg&t=355s

Historiography of the First World War first week

If you need to listen again to the class (for example before the exam), or you have a friend who was absent, here is a very similar lecture on the same subject:
Part one

http://www.jcmullen.fr/1117ww11a.MP3

Part two

http://www.jcmullen.fr/1117ww11b.MP3

As I mentioned, there is  no class next week. I will be posting here in a few days some links to videos and articles. Over the course of the semester I will post quite a number of links. You do not need to visit all of them, but do visit some.

Evaluation of this course is by final exam in January. You will be given a general essay title (I remember one year it was "How cultural is cultural history?") . The subject will be general enough for you to sow what you have learned, your own reflections etc. If you want a very good mark, talk  (among other things) about some video, book etc which I do not know already.

Just for fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3KBuQHHKx0

Thème Agrégation / M2

If you are looking for the passages to translate, you need to go to the blog message from August 19, 2018.

There is no thème class next week (it was not possible to find a space on the Tuesday). This means that the progamme has changed a little: you have longer to send me your translation of Djian, and each of the other passages will be one week later than planned.

Send your translations to john.mullen AT univ-rouen.fr  . If you only have time to do a rough translation, do not send it to me that week, only send translations you are happy with. You may, if you wish, send only the first half of the passage.

I will post on the blog in a day or two my suggested translation of the first passage. It will stay online for a couple of weeks only.

There is special information for those students who are enrolled for the "agrégation interne". Occasionally you will miss my thème class, as other classes had to be scheduled at the same time. IN this case, you may still send me your translation, or you can just work from the suggested translation I put up. Next Wednesday, you would have missed my translation class, as you have another class.

Seminar M1 LES introduction à l’historiographie, la première guerre mondiale (Mutualisé MEEF 1)

 mercredi, 15h à 17h A208

Thème agrégation et M2

Demain, 9h, salle A202

M2 anglais LLCE, M1 anglais LLCE, préparation agrégation

Pour l'instant, on ne m'a pas informé des salles pour mes cours d'après demain. Cette information devrait se trouver au 5ème étage sur les panneaux d'affichage dès qu'elle sera disponible.

Les enjeux de la traduction

There is a whole list of words which are difficult to translate from French to English, because the translation depends on the context (and English is not translated French). One of these is that fine word "enjeux". This useful table from Linguee shows some of the ways it is translated in particular contexts (and shows you the usefulness of Linguee, especially for political or economic words).

Thème agrégation/M2 starting Wednesday

I'll explain all this in class of course, but written info is good.
In week two (26th January and the following days) I have been invited to Osnabrück in Germany to talk about "Uses of British Popular Song during the First World War". And they are paying for travel, meals etc, so obviously this is an offer I can't refuse! I had intended to try to replace this class on the day before, the Tuesday, but the agrégation students have classes all day. So there is no "thème" class in week two. For the agrégation people, this class will be made up some time in the New Year. For the M2 people, note that you must be with us for the first six classes (that is to say, including the class on 7th November). M2 students who wish to may continue to come to classes after the 7th November, but are not obliged to do so. The passages we translate generally rotate on a three-year programme, so even if you are thinking of preparing the agrégation next year, you won't be being asked to work twice on the same material. See you all on Wednesday.

What to do when the dictionary isn't giving enough information

All students, but in particular those preparing the CAPES and the AGREGATION need to know how to use this site. It simply gives you a large number of example of real British texts using any given word or expression.
here it is :   https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/

Try with:

newly
reunion
security lock
safety lock

etc

Jeremy Corbyn

I wrote a review of Alex Nunn's excellent book about the leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. You can find the review here :

Thème agrégation/M2 0918

I have started commenting the translations I have received and am sending them back to their authors. I have used a system of "points faute". Don't worry if you have quite a number of these (For the moment everyone has more than 50). Last year, even people who got their agrégation began the year with quite a lot.

Otherwise I was delighted to find that an absolutely essential and practical book about the use of tense and aspect in English is now available free on the internet. Download it and read it carefully:

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00732793/document

Advanced translation exercise. From LEA M1 exam (retakes)

Here is the passage you were asked to translate in the exam, with my suggested translation. look at it carefully. Actually Le Monde makes a couple of factual mistakes, but that needn't affect your translation.

Le Brexit ébranle vingt années de paix en Irlande (LE MONDE | 10.04.2018)

Sans le Brexit, la commémoration du vingtième anniversaire de l’accord de Belfast qui a mis fin à trois décennies de guerre civile en Irlande du Nord serait probablement passée inaperçue. Après tout, l’accord de paix signé le 10 avril 1998, jour du Vendredi saint, porte bien son nom puisque la violence a quasi disparu dans cette province britannique où plus de 3 600 personnes ont trouvé la mort entre 1969 et 1998, au point que le taux de criminalité y est aujourd’hui plus faible qu’au Royaume-Uni.

Négocié sous les auspices des dirigeants britannique et américain d’alors, Tony Blair et Bill Clinton, l’accord dit du Vendredi saint a instauré le partage du pouvoir régional à Belfast entre les protestants, dont la plupart veulent rester dans le Royaume-Uni (unionistes), et les catholiques, qui s’identifient à la République d’Irlande (républicains).

Approuvé par référendum au nord comme au sud, il est le fruit d’un savant compromis : Dublin a renoncé à revendiquer l’Irlande du Nord tandis que Londres a accepté qu’un vote populaire puisse dans l’avenir mener à la réunification et donc à la perte de sa province. L’IRA et les groupes paramilitaires protestants ont été démantelés des deux côtés.

Mais la première conséquence concrète de l’accord de 1998, la suppression de la frontière militarisée qui balafrait l’île, est aujourd’hui menacée par le Brexit. Le choix de Theresa May de sortir du marché unique européen et de l’union douanière implique le rétablissement de contrôles douaniers à la frontière entre les deux Irlandes devenue frontière extérieure de l’UE.

Suggested translation

Brexit is shaking up twenty years of peace in Ireland (Le Monde 10 April 2018)

Without Brexit, noone might have noticed the commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the Belfast Agreement, which ended three decades of civil war in Northern Ireland. After all, the peace agreement signed on the 10th April, 1998, on Good Friday, deserves its name since violence has practically disappeared in the British province where more than 3600 people had met their deaths between 1969 and 1998. So much so that even the crime rate is today lower than in the rest of the United Kingdom.

Negotiated under the supervision of the US and UK leaders of thetime – Bill Clinton and Tony Blair – the agreement knownas the Good Friday Agreement set up a regional power-sharing system in Belfast between the Protestants, most of whom want to remain in the United Kingdom (unionists) and the Catholics, who identify with the Republic of Ireland (republicans).

Approved by a referendum both in the North and the South, the agreement is a clever compromise : Dublin gave up its claim on Northern Ireland while London agreed that a popular vote might in the future lead to reunification and thus to the loss of its province. The IRA and the Protestant paramilitary groups were dismantled on both sides.

But the first concrete result of the 1998 agreement, the abolition of the militarized border which scarred the island, is today under threat from Brexit. Theresa May’s choice of leaving the European common market and the customs union implies the setting up of custom barriers again on the border between the two Irelands, now an exterior limit of the European union.