EducaRed - Fundación Telefónica
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The 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature was won by the South African novelist J. M. Coetzee. This is wonderful news. Coetzee, 63, is unquestionably among the greatest living writers in English. The Nobel has often been misapplied. It evaded Tolstoy, Chekhov, Joyce, Kafka and Nabokov. It was won, on the other hand, by Bjorns tjerne Bjornson, José Echegaray, Rudolf Eucken and others now wholly forgotten. In many cases, the judges seem to have been influenced by political, rather than literary, factors. But in choosing Coetzee, the judges have got it right and ignored the fact that Coetzee has many things to say that do not sit comfortably with liberal political assumptions. His books deal with difficult, painful matters -betrayal, the abuse of power, the nature of evil, our cruel treatment of animals- and ultimately they express deep scepticism over whether or not any of us are capable of true empathy with others. Coetzee presents these unwelcome truths with a rigour and purity that cannot be ignored. Coetzee was born in Cape Town in 1940 and trained as a computer scientist, coming to London in the Sixties to work for IBM, a period recollected in a superb autobiographical novel. He then became a professor of literature in the United States, initially using his computing skills for verbal analysis of writers, before returning to Cape Town in the early Seventies, where he has continued to teach and publish literary criticism. His first fiction, Dusklands, was published in 1974, followed by In The Heart Of The Country and Waiting For Barbarians, which swiftly won him international recognition.
Complete the following sentences. Use the appropriate form of the words in brackets when given. a) Coetzee, who was born in South Africa in 1940, won the Nobel Prize last year. Ayuda: Estamos ante una oración de relativo explicativa (non-defining relative clause). La oración de relativo, que va entre comas, es un dato añadido, una explicación. El antecedente es Coetzee, una persona, por lo tanto el pronombre relativo que debemos utilizar es who (that nunca se pone en las oraciones de relativo explicativas). Al final de la oración, encontramos una expresión de tiempo incompleta ___ year. Teniendo en cuenta que el verbo principal está en pasado simple (won) y que este examen pertenece a la convocatoria de 2004 y Coetzee fue galardonado con el Nobel en el 2003 (según leemos en el texto), la expresión de tiempo que se ajusta es last year. b) Before winning (win) the Nobel Prize, Coetzee received (receive) international recognition. Ayuda: Después de una preposición (before), el verbo debe estar en gerundio (winning). La oración subordinada Before winning the Nobel Prize (= Antes de ganar el premio Nobel), nos indica que la referencia temporal es pasado. El pasado simple es el tiempo que utilizamos: received. También es posible utilizar el Pasado Perfecto: had received. c) James Joyce, whose works are still universally known, was not chosen (not choose) for the Nobel Prize during his lifetime. Ayuda: De nuevo nos encontramos con una oración de relativo explicativa. Whose como pronombre relativo indica posesión, y junto a la palabra que le sigue (whose works) actúa como sujeto de la oración de relativo. En la segunda oración debemos utilizar la pasiva (be + participio) ya que carece de agente (persona que realiza la acción). Tenemos que utilizar el pasado ya que se está hablando de un evento que ocurrió en el pasado. d) The German Rudolf Eucken, a Nobel Prize winner, wrote about ethics and religion. But his works are almost forgotten today. Ayuda: write about es una combinación frecuente de verbo y preposición que significa escribir acerca de algo. También es posible write on, con el mismo significado. En la segunda oración, el adjetivo posesivo his hace referencia al escritor Rudolf Eucken.
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