Corso di geografia turistica

WRITING

1. Refer to activity 3 p.129. Try to imagine what type of foreign tourists could be interested in this kind of tourism. Write a short description of the characterisitcs an American or British tourist should have to be included in a campaign advertising rural tourism in Italy.
2. Refer to activity 4 p. 135. Translate the brochure in English to attract also foreign tourists.

CONVERSATION

Work in small groups. Imagine your school is organizing a garden inspired by Michelle Obama’s example. Read the article about her project and downolad the garden map at environment.about.com/od/greenlivingdesign/a/obama_garden.htm then discuss what your school garden could be like, imagining all the practical details that would be necessary to create it.

GEOGRAPHY AND LITERATURE

Pilgrims started visiting Canterbury, the last stop of the Via Francigena, many centuries ago. At the end of the XIV century the phenomenon was a source of inspiration for the first masterpiece of English literature, “Canterbury tales” by Chaucer. In his collection of tales, the author describes 29 pilgrims, representing the different social classes that made up the English society of the time, as they are travelling together towards Canterbury. The author has an ironic style and often underlines the characteristics that make the pilgrims look much less spiritual than one would expect, but also much more human. Read the following extract, describing a prioress, then fill in the commentary below.

There also was a Nun, a Prioress. […]
As for her sympathies and tender feelings
she was so charitably solicitous
she used to weep if she but saw a mouse
caught in a trap if it were dead or bleeding.
And she had little dogs she would be feeding
with roasted flesh, or milk, or fine white bread
and bitterly she wept if one were dead […]
She wore a coral trinket on her arm,
a set of beads, the gaudies tricked in green,
whence hung a golden brooch of brightest sheen
on which there first was graven a crowned A,
and lower Amor vincit omnia.

Nun a member of a religious community of women
Prioress the head of a house of nuns
solicitous showing interest towards other people
weep (s. past: wept) cry
to feed to give food
flesh meat
trinket ornament, jewel of little value
set of beads rosary
gaudies the biggest beads in a rosary (one every ten)
tricked coloured
whence from which
brooch an ornament fastened with a pin
sheen the shiny surface
graven engraved, written
crowned A the letter “A” with a crown on top

The Prioress should be a spiritual lady, whose life is based on charity and poverty. In Chaucer’s description her tender feelings and tears are not for people, as we would expect, but for ……………… , in particular …………. and ………………
She feeds her dogs with ………………………………., very expensive food which a prioress should not have bought, or should have given to poor people instead.
The prioress also looks rather vain: she wears a ……………….., a ………………….. which is not a plain wooden rosary but has ………….. gaudies, and most of all a ………………. made of …………….. and with the inscription ………………………., which suggests that this might be the gift of a lover.