Weeks 7-9: Romatic Revival

1. How is the Romantic notion of the Sublime reflected in the texts under consideration in this Romanticism reader? Discuss one or two examples from Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.

2. How do Blake and Rousseau's ideas align and differ (themes to consider are slavery, religion and education)?

3. See what you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816...

4. How many fictional accounts (film and other narrative media) can you find about that? Provide some useful links, including Youtube clips (hint: for a start try Ken Russel Gothic on Youtube).

5. Discuss the links between the Villa Diodati "brat-pack" and the birth of Gothic as a modern genre with reference to specific texts by the authors who gathered there and subsequent texts (e.g. The Vampire >> Dracula, etc).

7. How does Frankenstein a) reference the Bible, b) foreshadow the Death of God and c) juggle genres as well as narrative points of view in its storytelling? 

Comments

  1. UnknownMay 19, 2018 at 9:34 PM

    4. I was able to find 7 fictional accounts that included films and books. Majority of those listed I was able to find trailers to go along with them while for some there were not any trailers to be found. Below are some of the fictional accounts that I was able to find:

    Gothic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haS7s4MI0mI
    The haunted summer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQwwVThTuZM
    Rowing with the wind - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92U3orszabY
    The bride of Frankenstein - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYD3-pIF9jQ
    The summer of 1816 - (couldn't find a trailer)
    Frankenstein Unbound - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrNfBd_uYbk
    The Vampyre - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6087/6087-h/6087-h.htm (book/novel)

    Blog with a list of the movies/novels stated above: https://mjpcuervo.com/2016/08/30/summer-1816-on-film/

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownMay 20, 2018 at 5:25 AM

    3. From what I was able to find about what really happened at the Villa Dodati the summer of 1816 is that for starters the events occurred that summer and led up to that one rainy night were bizarre. A group of travellers, exhausted from travelling, checked into a hotel and in that group was Percy Shelley, his wife Mary, their son William and Mary's step sister Claire. Lord Byron fled London as he was wanted by police so he too ended up at the hotel as the others. Its said that Claire was the one who arranged that Shelley and Byron meet and so it did. Hotel managament grew alarmed of the potential scandal that would come out from this newfound friendship so the travellers had to find a new place, the Villa Dodati and another property. One night weather was really bad so it forced the group to be cooped up in the Villa. With not much to do, Byron suggested that they each write a ghost story, who could come up with the best I guess. The idea came from German to French translated ghost stories that they found and the group all agreed. Some struggled while others triumphed. According to Ken Russell's Gothic - I'm guessing the group went crazy trying to come up with a story. I think the idea drove them crazy, literally. It got to a point where someone killed them self. It was from these weird events that the greatest horror stories came about; Frankenstein and the Vampyre.

    Links:

    - https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/sumer-1816-frankenstein-shelley-byron-villa-diodati
    - https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/mary-shelley-frankenstein-and-the-villa-diodati

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownMay 30, 2018 at 10:09 PM

    3. See what you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816...

    As I could find that in 1816, a group of travelers from British checked into the Hotel d’Angleterre, the hotel was builit on the north side of Lake Geneva. The members in this group are Percy Shelley, a young poet; Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the mistress of Shelley and their baby age son William, Mary’s step sister Clare Clairmont also in this group. One day during the travel, a older poet Lord Byron came and meet Shelley in the lakeside, they found they have common idea and sense, established a good relationship after the dinner. However, at the same time the manager of Hotel d’Angleterre can not stand the potential for scandal from these mad English folk, Byron and Shelley’s group decide to choose another place to stay. Byron suggests two places around, one is the Villa Diodati, the other is a small chalet. Finally, they stay in the Villa because of the extreme bad weather. Mary Shelley wrote of their stay: “it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stories translated from the German into French, fell into our hands.” . Therefore, Byron came up an idea that they will each write a ghost story.

    So that “Frankenstein” and “The Vampyre”, these two original of horror genre pieces was created in the Villa Diodati, as the successful model of modern horror, Gothic genre.

    Reference

    Jackson, K. (2016). The haunted summer of 1816. Retrieved May 17, 2016 from https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/sumer-1816-frankenstein-shelley-byron-villa-diodati

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