Loreto Day School, Elliot Road celebrates English Literature, organises 'Literaria'

Loreto day school, Elliot Road on Wednesday, October 18, organised an inter-school literary meet named ‘Literaria’ at the school premises. Students from eight schools including the hosts, performed several acts ranging from elocution to enacting several iconic characters of English Literature.

It was the first event of such a large scale to be held in the school premises post covid-19 pandemic. Based entirely on English Literature, the event started with a poetry recitation contest named ‘Eloquent Echoes’ and was followed by ‘Resonant Words’ and ‘A Character’s Odyssey’.

While in ‘Resonate Words’ diverse characters from different novels converged, in Character’s Odyssey, the iconic characters of 16^th century literature met their contemporary counterparts.

“Somewhere, children are losing the love for literature. They are restricted with their textbook or pressure of exams and they haven’t learnt to love literature.We wanted to create an event for the young minds (Classes 9-12) who are disconnected from the imaginative space due to pressure of exam where they will have to do some amount of research on the subject to participate at the event,” said Jessica Gomes Surana, the Principal of the school.

She also said that it was a bit challenging especially for the two events for classes 10, 11 and 12 as these events were not very simple since all the other had their own calendar along with exams.

“However, when we shared the idea with them, the were all eager to come on board. They too felt that it is good time for all of them to come together and shares their ideas on English Literature,” Gomes added.

Apart from the hosts, schools like St Xaviers Collegiate School, St. James School, Modern High School for girls, Loreto Day school, Dharmatalla, Loreto Day School, Bowbazar, Loreto Convent, Entally took part in the event.

English teachers from the participating schools were the ones who guided and mentored the students for this festival, which was judged by the likes of Kaveri Dutt, Jimmy Tangree and Champa Majumder.

In the Eloquent Echoes, Modern High School for Girls secured the 1^st position while Loreto Day School, Elliot Road was placed in the second position. On the other hand Loreto Day School, Bowbazar and St James’ School Bowbazar were jointly placed in the third position.

In Resonant Words: Speeches across centuries, Calcutta Girls' High School was adjudged the first position, while Loreto Day School, Elliot Road was placed second while Loreto Day School, Dharamtala came third.

In the third event, A character’s Odyssey: Staging of famous personas, Calcutta Girls High School was placed in the first position while Loreto Convent, Entally and Loreto Day School, Elliot Road was placed in second and third positions respectively.

Loreto Day School, Elliot Road was adjudged the overall winners of Literaria. However, being the hosts, the school handed over the trophy to Calcutta Girls' High School, the first runners up of the literature festival.