Y13 TEXTS AND GENRES LITB3 - THE GOTHIC

Thank you for all your comments, especially Juliet from Hampshire, and as so many of you want me to carry on with this blog then I am prepared to do so.  I would be more than happy to respond to any personal requests for information on specific texts, so if you cannot find what you need in the archive then just contact me and I will do my utmost to help.

 In the meantime, here are some useful links for those of you working on Shelley's Frankenstein, keeping in mind:  AO4: Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the contexts in which literary texts are written and received.  This discovery channel documentary should be useful:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QsDyItTSBY

 There is also a useful  site for you to download details of how to respond to the question: How does Shelley attempt to engage the reader in the first five chapters of the novel.  You could try this first and check out other documents which have been placed on the site concerning  topics within the AQA LITB curriculum, but it can prove user unfriendly:http://www.docstoc.com/docs/98468055/frank-essay-one-a2

Use this one instead to get the essay structure suggestions:                              http://minus.com/m1OJou9hz

                                                                                                             

A further link that gives food for thought on the 10 meanings of Frankenstein:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12711091
  

 

Once on this site then click on the link for  "Readers' new meanings for Frankenstein."

The images above are all from the National Theatre production of Frankenstein last year, involving Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller; follow the links for Nick Dear's thoughts on both the novel and on his theatre adaptation: 

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/64323/frankenstein/adapting-chapter-5.html

The novel:

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/64860/frankenstein/nick-dear-on-frankenstein.html 

And on adapting Chapter 5:
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/64323/frankenstein/adapting-chapter-5.html
 

An absolutely essential resource for both AS and A2 AQA LITB is Peter Ackroyd's brilliant series on the Romantics; you can find in the archive to this blog a more specific episode on Coleridge and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but here it is for those of you haven't mastered the search through my archive yet:

For more information on Mary Shelley and on the Romantic movement, then watch the whole series starting with the first one here: 

Y13 TEXTS AND GENRES LITB3 - THE GOTHIC - 'DR FAUSTUS'

To help with the AO3 here are some useful quotations for 'other interpretations':

 'This excellent Faustus is damned by accident or by predestination; he is brow-beaten by the devil and forbidden to repent when he has really repented.  The terror of the conclusion is thereby heightened; we see an essentially good man, because in a moment of infatuation he had signed away his soul, driven against his will to despair and damnation.'                                                                                                                         (George Santayana, 1910)

 'The limitless desire, the unbridled passion for the infinite, a certain reckless, high confidence in the will and spirit of man are all there [in Faustus's mind].  This rare power of abstracting the nature of man, of revealing only the universal and the general, yet so revealing that it comes home to the heart of every individual man, reaches its height at the end of the play . . .[Dcotor Faustus] perhaps the most notable Satanic play in literature'.             

                                                                                       (Una Ellis-Fermor, 1927)

Marlowe, the moment the exhaustion of the imagination fit deprives him of the power of raving, becomes childish in thought, vulgar and wooden in humour, and stupid in his attempts at invention . . .itching to frighten other people with the superstitious terrors and cruelties in which he does not himself believe.                        (George Bernard Shaw, 1896)

 'I cannot find, in Marlowe's play, any proofs of the atheism or impiety attributed to him, unless the belief in witchcraft and the Devil can be regarded as such; and at the time he wrote, not to have believed in both, would have been construed into the rankest atheism and irreligion.'                                                                                       (William Hazlitt, 1820)

  'In Faustus Marlowe went farther: he broke up the line, to gain in intensity, in the last soliloquy; and he developed a new and important conversational tone in the dialogues of Faustus with the devil.'                                                       (T. S. Eliot, 1919) 

  '[Marlowe is] the father and founder of English dramatic poetry. [Marlowe's characters are] day-dreams of their maker's deep desires projected from the men around him, and rendered credible by sheer imaginative insight into the dark mysteries of nature.  

                                                                                           (J. A. Symonds, 1884)

Faustus moves repeatedly through a circular pattern from thinking of the joys of heaven, through despairing of ever possessing them, to embracing magical dominion as a blasphemous substitute.'                                                                      

                                                                                          (C. L. Barber,   1964)

'There is a case for seeing this devalued section of the play [the middle scenes] as an extraordinary phantasmagoria, grotesquely satirical, sometimes sinister, sometimes absurd, an illusionistic impression of tweny-four wasted years as bold in what it attempts theatrically as the scenes on the heath in King Lear.'                                                              

                                                                                     ( Malcolm Kelsall,  1981)

 'Doctor Faustus is neither a morality play not an unambivalent celebration of radical humanism; it is a tragedy which dramatises a conflict between two irreconcilable systems of values, each of which, we may feel, has at least partial validity and a genuine claim to our allegiance.  While Marlowe may have sympathised with Faustus's rejection of traditional authorities and the strict limits which they impose upon human aspirations, he was nontheless aware that Promethean self assertion could degenerate into debasing forms  of self-aggrandisement.'                                                                                                                                                                                                          (John S.  Mebane,  1989)

 'The play is about the struggle between the two sides of Doctor Faustus, the controlled intellectual side giving way in what may be seen as a mid-life crisis to th indulgent sensual.   When the latter is in the ascendant, he betrays his ideals of pursuing knowledge.  His manner is jocose and exuberant, his antics ludicrous. . . and he is driven by ambition.  He pursues riches and pleasure, as if acting out day-dreams, but the demands he makes are seen by Mephistopheles as 'frivolour', what he achieves is trivial.   He over-reaches himself, his ambition for rich rewards and power driving him into wild, dangerous and ultimately tragic actions.'                                                                                           
                                                                             (Derek Russell Davis,  1997)

LITB3 - THE GOTHIC

Thank you for all the messages and comments in response to which find some useful links for the imminent exam:

For Angela Carter there is an interesting recording of a conversation with Helen Jolley:

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=024M-C0095X0397XX-0100V0.xml

There is also an interesting selection of articles on Angela Carter at the following link of a Guardian page:  

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/angelacarter

On the following there is a series of rather apt quotations, including this one which could be used for a selection of the short stories, but particularly for 'The Bloody Chamber': 

http://quotebunny.com/quotes/13729/angela-carter/mythic-schema-relations-men

“In the mythic schema of all relations between men and women, man proposes, and woman is disposed of.” 

 I have been asked to give notes about the A2 paper in a similar way to those that I published on the AS; well I am happy to do so, but the A2 is a lot less complicated than the AS in regard to the AOs.  All the Assessment Objectives are equally weighted on every essay that you need to do, so all 4 need to be included in all that you write. Also,  you only need three texts as whatever you choose to write about for the A question can also be used in the B question.

There is an excellent site which goes into even more detail about the exam and gives several incredibly useful resources that I would urge you to look at; (Guinea Pig Lover in particular) the link takes you to page 9, but do check out the rest to hopefully answer any more queries that you may have:  

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1640238&page=9

LITB1 - ASPECTS OF NARRATIVE - 'THE GREAT GATSBY'

For some eleventh hour revision that is guaranteed to help then follow the link to this excellent podcast: http://soundcloud.com/fishymedia/literature-podcast-an-as-level

LITB3 - THE GOTHIC

For your revision, whatever Gothic texts you are studying, it would be a good idea to listen to the following broadcast:    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0054792  It certainly covers most of the AOs.

LITB1 - ASPECTS OF NARRATIVE - 'THE GREAT GATSBY'

To continue with what is needed for AO3 - Explore connections . . .informed by interpretations of other readers. Then here are a few more quotations that you might find useful

'Great is irony.  Gatsby is a rich nobody'  -  Dexter

'Gatsby's dream is the American Dream'  -  Pelzer

'It is a dream corrupted by money and betrayed by carelessness'  -  Pelzer.

'Buchanans representing and embodying . . .self-pleasure and hypocritical materialism'  -  Tanner.

'Hypothesising, Speculating, Imagining' (Nick's narration)  -  Tanner 

'The reality is that such dreams are inevitably elusive'  -  Tredell. 

'Daisy play(s) certain roles ...as a way of coping with the pressure of the outside world'  - Resneck

'Sense doom in Gatsby because Fitzgerald sensed doom in himself'  -  Styron. 

Fitzgerald deemed the 1920s the 'greatest, gaudiest spree in history'.

 If you are thinking of writing on 'The Great Gatsby' for the Section A question, then for the part 1 of that question you will be marked on AO2 - Structure, Form and Language (check out an earlier blog for more details).

Structure: Fitzgerald uses Nick as a framing device to bring the novel together.  The first pages introduce him and the last chapter is concerned with what happened to him after Gatsby was killed.  It is Nick who chooses what to include in his book and tells us what he remembers of what the other people involved told him as events unfolded.

Jordan Baker tells what information she has about Gatsby and Daisy's former relationship, apparently in her own words.   Fitzgerald, in parenthesis, says that she was 'sitting up very straight on a straight chair' which conveys the impression that her words will be factual and truthful, not gilded by her imagination.  This technique makes Jordan Baker seem a believable witness but not Daisy, we are unclear what she thinks and feels.  Fitzgerald wrote in a letter that:  'The worst fault in [TGG] I think is a BIG FAULT: I gave no account (and had no feeling about or knowledge of) the emotional relations between Gatsby and Daisy from the time of their reunion to the catastrophe.'

However, when Gatsby gives his version of events, Nick takes over and puts all that is said in his own words.  Gatsby's language is child-like, revealing his lack of education and immaturity.  Anne Crow argues that if Fitzgerald had allowed Gatsby to be the narrator, his style would have made for a very dull and commonplace novel, rendering the title wildly inappropriate.

Also look at how Fitzgerald condenses information, the story covers only 4 months, but seems over a much longer period because of Fitzgerald's narratorial technique of having Nick informed of past events by the other characters who were involved.  It is a non-linear narrative structure and by looking at the 60 Second re-cap video clips: http://www.60secondrecap.com/library/great-gatsby/   

 then you will see how Fitzgerald uses the seasons and the weather to structure the novel.

LITB1 - ASPECTS OF NARRATIVE - 'THE GREAT GATSBY'

Following on from the examination requirements, I would like to look in more detail at how the AOs need to be used in reference to The Great Gatsby.  

AO4 - Demonstrate understanding of the significance and influence of the conetxts in which literary texts are written and received.

You need to be aware of what effect the Great War (in which both Gatsby and Nick served) had on the American economy and the American psyche, not least through a sense of libertion, particularly for veterans.  People turned against politics preferring hedonism; and of course women, who had been required to work during the war, had no wish to lose the social and economic freedom that they had achieved and were enjoying during the boom. Remember TGG was set only four years after the war had ended.  Be clear about the symbolism intrinsically involved in the East and West of America.  It might also be worth remembering the two dominant literary influences on Fitzgerald, which were John Keats and the writer of  Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad.
Attitudes of men towards women were quite different at this time and of course the issue of race in the 1920s is seen in the anti-semitism prevalent in the portrayal of Wolfsheim, in Nick's attitude to his Finnish housekeeper (it was felt that immigrants were taking jobs away from American citizens and Fitzgerald reflects the fear of those who were not white Anglo Saxon Protestants) and of course to Black Americans. So look at the contextual references, actions and speech of the era.
    
AO3 -  'Explore connections . . .informed by interpretations of other readers'  This means looking at other commentators and their views as well as writing what you think.  And if you think that Nick is an unreliable narrator then you have ample opportunity to look at different interpretations of the events: for example was it certain that it was Wilson who killed Gatsby, could Wolfsheim have been involved, he certainly had all his people working at the house, and the chauffeur 'one of Wolfsheim's proteges' heard the shots but did nothing.  Did Nick romanticise Gatsby instead of understanding that he was deeeply involved in a criminal underworld at war?

Critics that you could refer to include H. L. Mencken, who called the novel a  'glorified anecdote' , 'a simple story'  and that 'only Gatsby himself genuinely lives and breathes'.  Whilst Gertrude Stein praised Fitzgerald for 'creating the contemporary world' suggesting that he was doing far more then merely reflecting the era but rather responsible for actually constructing it; he certainly created the term 'Jazz Age'. William Troy considered that Nick Carraway was 'the ordinary but quite sensible narrator' and that Gatsby 'becomes ... a symbol of America itself, dedicated to "the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty".' He believed that Fitzgerald had created a sympathetic narrator in the tradition of Joseph Conrad, establishing 'some of the most priceless values in fiction,- economy, suspense, intensity. 

 Arthur Mizener in: F Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Critical Essays, Twentieth Century Views, Spectrum, (1963), focuses on the novel as a 'tragic pastoral'  seeing the East as sophisticated but corrupt, whilst the West represented idealised homely, honest virtues.   R. W. Stallman a commentator in the 1950s,  argued that Fitzgerald showed that  the division between the corrupt urban East and the morally virtuous  rural West was the product of Nick Carraway's imagination.








 





 Judith Fetterley in her book - The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction.  Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1978 -  read more by following this link:   http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=84332635
claims that the novel is the classic male drama of poor boy achieving wealth and challenging the rich boy, with the narrative being concerned with this struggle for power and supremacy, with the ultimate prize being ownership of the girl.  It is interesting that when the poor boy loses everything: his fortune, the girl and even his life, it is not the rich boy Tom who is punished but Daisy, because she failed Gatsby.  At the end we see Nick shake hands with Tom, but he seeks no reconciliation with Daisy - according to Fetterley, she is perceived as the one who must shoulder all  the blame.  What do you think?