Frankenstein: greatest horror ever?

Some great AO3 to agree/disagree with... especially at the start and the end of the article.


http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/54478-why-frankenstein-is-the-greatest-horror-novel.html

Better quality interviews with Benedbatch Cumberdickt and Johnny Lee Miller

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYdv8ZQbblI&feature=related


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKqun_8SU0Q&NR=1


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcPkexezYlE&feature=related
Try to find  and use quotes you can engage with directly.


Eg. Cumberbatch talks about how playing both roles allowed him to 'own the whole play'. Has the Victor's god-complex filtered down to him?

Literary devices in Frankenstein (AO2)

For top AO2 marks you must get technical. Sometimes this is simple - referring to anaphora and adjectives and triples and the basics of English.


Other terms might need revising, so here:


https://quizlet.com/11287974/frankenstein-literary-terms-flash-cards/


Also:


Remember those rhetorical devices used by Churchill? You used them to write a speech to the Proles. The monster also uses a lot of them, for example:


"I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend." = antithesis.


So one useful piece of revision would be to look at the monster's speeches, and label them with those rhetorical terms.


But sir, how do I use technical terms in an essay? asked one A2 student yesterday.


Well, what you DON'T do is this:


"I was benevolent and good; mistery made me a fiend." This is an example of antithesis.


What you DO do is this:


The antithetical statement "I was benevolent and good; mistery made me a fiend" highlights Shelley's Godwinian belief that even good people could be reduced to crime given the wrong circumstances.


In short, use the term briefly to make a more important point; don't draw attention to the term, just drop it into your analysis.

Poetic techniques: revision 1

Key terms you should know by heart, and recognise easily:
http://www.shmoop.com/poetry/how-to-read-poem/poetry-glossary.html


More complex terms geared towards Shakespeare and renaissance drama:
http://shakespeare-w.com/english/shakespeare/terms.html

Actively responding to AO3 quotes

1.  AGREE with and BUILD upon the argument made by adding your own quotations in support of the argument

 This argument is clearly supported / demonstrated / shown to be true in the text when Victor says:'...'


2.  ARGUE AGAINST the argument put forward by offering an alternative argument of your own



 This argument is contradicted, however, by...

 This argument breaks down, however, when one considers that...

3. Accept some aspects of the argument, but MODIFY or COMPLICATE it in some way


 While the notion that...seems acceptable, the idea that...is complicated by the fact that...

 While it seems reasonable to argue that...there are clear grounds to argue against the notion
 that...because...

Doubling in Danny Boyle's production - key AO3 for Frankenstein

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2011/jan/17/a-monster-role-frankenstein-danny-boyle

Freud, Jekyll and Hyde

This story (Jekyll and Hyde) represents a concept in Victorian culture, that of the inner conflict of humanity's sense of good and evil. In particular the novella has been interpreted as an examination of the duality of human nature (that good and evil exists in all), and that the failure to accept this tension (to accept the evil or shadow side) results in the evil being projected onto others. Paradoxically in this argument, evil is actually committed in an effort to extinguish the perceived evil that has been projected onto the innocent victims. In Freudian Theory the thoughts and desires banished to the unconscious mind motivate the behaviour of the conscious mind. If someone banishes all evil to the unconscious mind in an attempt to be wholly and completely good, it can result in the development of a Mr Hyde-type aspect to that person's character This failure to accept the tension of duality is related to Christian theology, where Satan's fall from Heaven is due to his refusal to accept that he is a ?created being (that he has a dual nature) and is not God.This is why in Christianity, pride (to consider oneself as without sin or without evil) is the greatest sin, as it is the precursor to evil itself; it also explains the Christian ?concept of evil hiding in the light. The novella has also been noted as "one of the best guidebooks of the ?Victorian era " because of its piercing description of the fundamental dichotomy of the 19th century "outward respectability and inward lust," as this period had a tendency for social hypocrisy. - Wikipedia on Freud, and Jekyll and Hyde

Joyce Oates, 'Frankenstein's Fallen Angel', 1984

Some lovely little quotes in here.


http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/oates.html

Brilliant ideas paraphrased from your essays

The presence of the friar on stage at the start of the play illustrates the hegemonic rule of the  Catholic church at the time. The fact that this presence is upgraded to a morally corrupt Cardinal by the end might suggest that this presence is growing more intrusive, not less - while simultaneously losing its moral authority.  (Good one Charlotte.)

What to revise for Frankenstein

You will have a choice of two questions in the exam.


One will be on a theme (creation, knowledge, gender etc), the other will be on a technique (narrative, setting, doubling). You should be prepared to answer both, and also prepared to cover all for AOs.


So, here's a list of what to revise:


AO1: Argument and style.
- Practise past questions
- Brainstorm responses that use the socratic structure OR the 'define, accept, reject, project' approach.


AO2: Close analysis of language, structure and form
- Learn quotes for each theme AND technique.
- Colour coded flash cards, drawings, poems made from the quotes will all help
- Make sure you can get technical on some of those quotes: rhetorical devices (like Churchill's), semantic fields, alliteration, anaphora, etc.


AO3: Different readings
- Learn one critical quote per theme. Keep them short if you can, it's easier.
- Remember how different people have interpreted it - eg, Branagh versus Boyle. You could draw up a list of the differences between their portrayals of Victor and the monster, and similarities.
- Become a pro at Freudian and feminist readings
- Consider how you would improve on other people's views.


AO4: Be experts on context:
- Mary Shelley and her parents
- Romanticism and its conventions
- Gothic horror and its conventions
- Other books, paintings and ideas of the age.

Gothic doubles

- A genius student from somewhere sums up the duality and differences between Victor and his monster: http://jakedoesrevision.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/a2-english-literature-gothic-doubles-in.html




- Both Victor and the monster describe themselves as 'miserable, and as a 'wretch'. If you can find any other echoes in the language they use, please post them to the comments section on this site.

Dominic Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller give you juicy AO3 points

Interview 1

Interview 2

Interview 3

Interview 4

Interview 5

Interview 6

Interview 7

Interview 8

Interview 9

Sleep improves performance: proof

When I say get some sleep, I mean it.




http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/32276547


Yes, you can quote me on this when you justify sleeping twelve hours to your parents.


No, you can't quote me on this if you've just been up all night partying and/or are late for school.

Sex and the Church - bbc iplayer

You need to watch these three episodes by May 5th. Answer the questions below as you watch.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05ql6hf/sex-and-the-church-1-from-pleasure-to-sin

What did Jesus have to say about sexuality?

Name three abominations alongside homosexuality.

Describe in two or three sentences how Plato and Aristotle contributed to the mistrust of 'the flesh'.

Explain what Plato’s cave has to do with earthly desires.

Who made chastity popular? 

What twist did Augustine add to the existing misogyny?

How did penitentials come about?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05r6dkq/sex-and-the-church-2-sexual-revolution

Outstanding extracts from your essays...

An entire paragraph that hangs on the analysis of one word - 'we' - and darts back and forth between the two texts, and contextual knowledge. (Could be more technical, if I'm being picky!)
Both Marvell and Ford depict the afterlife as the home of true justice. This is affirmed in Tis Pity by Richardetto's assertion that "we must obey, but heaven will judge them for't another day", as this suggests that heaven is where true justice is given. However, perhaps this is also an attempt to break the fourth wall, as 'we' suggests an elements of unity, which he may have intended to extend to include the audience of his 1633 play. This is plausible due to the fact that there was immense political unrest at the time, as Charles I's attempt to reign as an absolute monarch meant that there was also a lack of justice in reality. Therefore is it is possible to that Ford was encouraging his audience to resist revolt and perhaps even fear during this time of political chaos, by bearing in mind the notion that true justice will be served by God in Heaven. This concept of a just afterlife is also echoed in Marvell's poem The Nymph Complaining' where the speaker affirms that 'Heaven's King keeps register of everything', suggesting that justice does indeed lie in heaven, like Ford, but more specifically with Christ - a fitting interpretation because like Ford, Marvell was raised as a Christian. This concept of justice in the afterlife is further reflected in Tis Pity by the notion that hell is where 'there is the murderer for ever stabbed, yet can never die' (according to the Friar). Therefore, whilst one may perceive this to be a clear allusion to the hell illustrated in the Divine Comedy in Inferno, another may take this to mean that Ford is trying to suggest that the afterlife is a place of equality, as each will endure the sin which they did to thers, presenting life after death to be the ultimate purveyor of justice.




Excellent AO4 understanding when writing about the relationship between sin and knowledge:


"When the Friar cries '"O ignorance in knowledge!" he is (unwittingly perhaps) referring to the old-fashioned use of the word 'know' to mean 'have sex with'. The idea of knowledge as sinful in itself is also explored in reactions to the Bible. Eve and Adam fall because they gain knowledge of good and evil, they are no longer innocents. The controversy of phyiscaly knowledge was at the time very topical, as a new school of philosophy, empiricsm, was forged. John Locke's focus on evidence and physical knowledge was scorned by the Neoplatonic tradition, which preferred theoretical notions of truth and beauty. Milton's descriptions of Eve (from the serpent's mouth) as "Mother of Science" was undoubtedly a dig at Renaissance, empiricist ideas. Marvell and Ford both question the role of knowledge in creating sin. It is Giovanni's flawed reasoning, his "faith not in the power of God, but in the power of reason" which leads him to death, in Schmidt's words. Likewise Marvell's soul solemnly reminds us that "none thither mounts [to heaven] by the degree of knowledge, but humility." There is recognition that knowledge must always in some way be sinful to a Christian God."


Lovely combo of argument, detail, critical reading and context (AO1, AO2, AO3, AO4):

Overall, as the statement suggests, the consequences of sin and temptation for the characters and speakers of the texts are negative ones. We see this presented in the speaker of 'The Mower's Song's cascade into pessimism, madness, and talk of death. The dactylic start to the third stanza, "unthankful", acts as a stark contrast to the previous two stanzas, which begin with the typical iamb. This expresses the speaker's sudden explosive anger and bitter attitude towards his rejected acts of temptation and desire. The speaker continues in this developed pessimistic tone as he informs the grass that it will mourn his death by becoming a 'heraldry' for his 'tomb'. Here Marvell perhaps demonstrates a fall into madness as a result of sinful lust, which has also caused him to lose everything and consider death. Consequently, the speaker's lust has satisfied his basic sexual appetite temporarily, but this ends in chaos and possible death. Similarly, as Donald K Anderson Jr writes, "Giovanni tears out Annabella's heart and brings it to Soranazo's feast, [a] spectacular action, [which] is foreshadowed thoughout the play." We see this manifested in various ways, namely through the use of blood as a motif from as early as Act II, where Annabella's illness is thought to be aresult of "a fullness of her blood", to the symbolic writing in her blood, again echoing Dr Faustus. However, the ultimate sacrifice is her death, which results in a bloodbath.

Homework - April 20th

Due Friday:

Read Volume III Chapter II. Underline and annotate key quotes to do with:

Nature
Gothic Horror
Subconscious

Due Monday:

Pick a theme, and create a revision poster for the rest of the class on that theme.
The poster should: 1) reflect the duality within that theme and 2) contain 10 learnable quotes from the whole book.

Themes:

Nature
Knowledge
Sin
Reliability
Creation
Family
Appearance

Victor's sin

Victor Frankenstein is guilty of sinning against nature in his refusal to accept human limitations and the prosing powers outside human control.
Victor Frankenstein place himself above the rest of humanity, beyond humane morals and the laws of nature. He creates his own man, from the bits and pieces of the dead. This act in its self is one
of extreme hubris, to think one man might be master over life and death. Victor goes even further;
it is not good enough that his creation be of normal proportions; he must be of
giant proportions. Victor is attempting to prove his power over the forces of
nature, to the point, one might say, of putting nature to shame, in his attempt
to create something greater and more beautiful than nature could ever have. His
actions are motivated not by a desire to learn, but an insatiable lust for
power over the forces beyond man’s control. The end product of Victor’s hubris
is the creation of a hideous and unnatural man. As Victor says of this monster,
he was terrible to look upon. In the hideous and misproportioned form of Victor’s
monster, we see the manifestation of his own inflated hubris. The punishment for Victor’s
sin, like that in the inferno, is one of ironic cruelty. Victor sought to have
power over nature through his creation, and as his punishment is made a slave
to the cruel actions of his own monster. Victor’s punishment is the exact opposite
of what he sought, a complete, and for him, horrible reversal of fortunes. The monster
ultimately seeks revenge against his creator, Victor, for abandoning him in a
world which rejects him completely. The monster thus sets about killing all of
Victor’s loved ones, one by one, and in so doing ever tightening his hold over
Victor’s life. The murder of his brother William, and the family servant Justine,
by the monster, drives Victor to near madness, placing him in ever greater
control of his monster. Victor becomes so bound by the actions of the monster
that he attempts the creation of a female counterpart to appease him. As the
monster states after Victor refuses to make him his female companion, “You are
my creator, but I am your master;—obey!” (Shelly, 146). Finally, with the
murder of his childhood love and short lived wife Justine, we see Victor
completely pass in to the power of the monster, following him through unbearable
sufferings to the edge of the north pole. By his hubris, Victor made for
himself his own living hell, enslaved by his own creation and forced to watch
on as his loved ones were murdered. Such poetic cruelty would probably be appreciated
by Dante and is summed up best by Victor himself: “Like the archangel who
aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell” (Shelly, 180). Victors
sin of believe himself master of the powers of nature in the novel Frankenstein,
carries with it the same weight as believing one’s self master over the will of
god in the Inferno. Such a sin can only lead to a punishment worse than death,
as Victor came to know all too well.

God-Satan-Adam theme in Frankenstein

Thoughtful article on God, Satan, Adam vs Victor and the Monster


Thoughtful, but far from perfect.

Duality in Gothic Fiction: We are all divided

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/27/gothic-fiction-divided-selves

What the examiner said

F663 Poetry and Drama pre-1800

General Comments:

The paper generated a wide range of responses, ranging from the pre-rehearsed and formulaic to the intellectually inspiring.

The best answers were fluent, interesting and well-informed, wrestling closely with the question.

Weaker answers fell into familiar traps – treating the question in a descriptive or narrative way, for example, or regurgitating practice essays rather than answering the question as set, or offering simplified or generalised interpretations of characters and contexts.

Critical views (AO3) were often used well – we have moved away from the ‘critic as cake

decoration’ approach to a much more flexible, cogent treatment of critics where they are often used to enrich and drive forward an argument. Feminist criticism was again much in evidence this year and was used to good effect when it enhanced a sense of the complexity of a text, but less so when it was used to endorse simplified responses not fully based on evidence. Critics such as Coppelia Kahn, Harold Bloom, Emma Smith and Jonathan Dollimore were well used to add intellectual vigour to their candidates’ essays. Some candidates displayed an impressive ability to orchestrate a range of critical perspectives to produce an alert and sensitive reading of the text.

There is still some evidence that AO weightings are not fully assimilated, so that contexts (AO4) can be cited too insistently in Section A or neglected in Section B. Context can be something of a blunt instrument; very broad or generalised assertions about contexts are often the hallmark of weaker candidates who may claim variously that Ford lived in a society of misogynists, Prospero was a sadistic coloniser, or that the age of Chaucer should not have been so patriarchal. Under the pressure of timed exam conditions, it is understandable that candidates sometimes revert to such shorthand assertions, but more successful candidates do tend to have at their fingertips a more nuanced sense of context and a greater sense of the significance of specific details.

This said, the great strength of the exam is that it is not prescriptive and allows candidates to express their intellectual personalities and inclinations, so that differently-minded but equally able candidates will approach the same question in markedly individual ways, one pursuing a more historicist angle, another based around difference performance histories of a play, a third weaving together critical views to build an argument. All can be equally successful. What matters above all is for detail to be deployed effectively in the service of an effective argument and for the candidate to do justice to the complexity of the texts studied.

Where do insights (A01) come from?

According to the latest neuroscience research, insights - moments of original thought and brilliance (which you will need in your exam) - come from three things:


1) Being stuck.


2) Making connections between previously unconnected ideas


3) Seeing contradictions.




This is happy news. Let's break it down:


1) Being stuck makes you insightful. Hooray! Then why aren't you insightful all the time, you ask? Because the key is to embrace being stuck - to accept it as part of the process, rather than use it to feel frustrated or panicked. Enjoy being stuck, and intensify your efforts to work something out. Because when you do, it will be insightful.


2) Making connections between previously unconnected ideas. This is where mindmaps come in handy. It's in the fusion of two old ideas that a new one is born. This is excellent news for Marvell and Ford students: such different texts provide huge opportunity for original connections.


3) Seeing contradictions. Look for where the similarities end. Or where the black turns to white; where the surface meaning is inverted. Where the author fails. Where the two authors differ. Embrace the contradictions!


Basically, don't expect or even desire it all to be straightforward and neat and obvious: because that would mean you would all be writing the same things. This subject wants you to be insightful - and luckily, scientists have just shown us how.

Summing up Satan (and other links to Paradise Lost)

Thanks for your brilliant work on Satan, everyone. Hopefully you'll be able to touch on the various incarnations of sin in your exam.

I thought it would be useful to remind us about the Satan that Shelley knew best: the one in Paradise Lost. Below is the SparkNotes summary of that Satan's character; you could easily find links between him, Victor and the monster and make notes of them.


I've included the other characters in Paradise Lost, too.

Satan

Some readers consider Satan to be the hero, or protagonist, of the story, because he struggles to overcome his own doubts and weaknesses and accomplishes his goal of corrupting humankind. This goal, however, is evil, and Adam and Eve are the moral heroes at the end of the story, as they help to begin humankind’s slow process of redemption and salvation. Satan is far from being the story’s object of admiration, as most heroes are. Nor does it make sense for readers to celebrate or emulate him, as they might with a true hero. Yet there are many compelling qualities to his character that make him intriguing to readers.

One source of Satan’s fascination for us is that he is an extremely complex and subtle character. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, for Milton to make perfect, infallible characters such as God the Father, God the Son, and the angels as interesting to read about as the flawed characters, such as Satan, Adam, and Eve. Satan, moreover, strikes a grand and majestic figure, apparently unafraid of being damned eternally, and uncowed by such terrifying figures as Chaos or Death. Many readers have argued that Milton deliberately makes Satan seem heroic and appealing early in the poem to draw us into sympathizing with him against our will, so that we may see how seductive evil is and learn to be more vigilant in resisting its appeal.
Milton devotes much of the poem’s early books to developing Satan’s character. Satan’s greatest fault is his pride. He casts himself as an innocent victim, overlooked for an important promotion. But his ability to think so selfishly in Heaven, where all angels are equal and loved and happy, is surprising. His confidence in thinking that he could ever overthrow God displays tremendous vanity and pride. When Satan shares his pain and alienation as he reaches Earth in Book IV, we may feel somewhat sympathetic to him or even identify with him. But Satan continues to devote himself to evil. Every speech he gives is fraudulent and every story he tells is a lie. He works diligently to trick his fellow devils in Hell by having Beelzebub present Satan’s own plan of action.
Satan’s character—or our perception of his character—changes significantly from Book I to his final appearance in Book X. In Book I he is a strong, imposing figure with great abilities as a leader and public statesmen, whereas by the poem’s end he slinks back to Hell in serpent form. Satan’s gradual degradation is dramatized by the sequence of different shapes he assumes. He begins the poem as a just-fallen angel of enormous stature, looks like a comet or meteor as he leaves Hell, then disguises himself as a more humble cherub, then as a cormorant, a toad, and finally a snake. His ability to reason and argue also deteriorates. In Book I, he persuades the devils to agree to his plan. In Book IV, however, he reasons to himself that the Hell he feels inside of him is reason to do more evil. When he returns to Earth again, he believes that Earth is more beautiful than Heaven, and that he may be able to live on Earth after all. Satan, removed from Heaven long enough to forget its unparalleled grandeur, is completely demented, coming to believe in his own lies. He is a picture of incessant intellectual activity without the ability to think morally. Once a powerful angel, he has become blinded to God’s grace, forever unable to reconcile his past with his eternal punishment.

Adam

Adam is a strong, intelligent, and rational character possessed of a remarkable relationship with God. In fact, before the fall, he is as perfect as a human being can be. He has an enormous capacity for reason, and can understand the most sophisticated ideas instantly. He can converse with Raphael as a near-equal, and understand Raphael’s stories readily. But after the fall, his conversation with Michael during his visions is significantly one-sided. Also, his self-doubt and anger after the fall demonstrate his new ability to indulge in rash and irrational attitudes. As a result of the fall, he loses his pure reason and intellect.
Adam’s greatest weakness is his love for Eve. He falls in love with her immediately upon seeing her, and confides to Raphael that his attraction to her is almost overwhelming. Though Raphael warns him to keep his affections in check, Adam is powerless to prevent his love from overwhelming his reason. After Eve eats from the Tree of Knowledge, he quickly does the same, realizing that if she is doomed, he must follow her into doom as well if he wants to avoid losing her. Eve has become his companion for life, and he is unwilling to part with her even if that means disobeying God.

Adam’s curiosity and hunger for knowledge is another weakness. The questions he asks of Raphael about creation and the universe may suggest a growing temptation to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. But like his physical attraction to Eve, Adam is able to partly avoid this temptation. It is only through Eve that his temptations become unavoidable.

Eve

Created to be Adam’s mate, Eve is inferior to Adam, but only slightly. She surpasses Adam only in her beauty. She falls in love with her own image when she sees her reflection in a body of water. Ironically, her greatest asset produces her most serious weakness, vanity. After Satan compliments her on her beauty and godliness, he easily persuades her to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.
Aside from her beauty, Eve’s intelligence and spiritual purity are constantly tested. She is not unintelligent, but she is not ambitious to learn, content to be guided by Adam as God intended. As a result, she does not become more intelligent or learned as the story progresses, though she does attain the beginning of wisdom by the end of the poem. Her lack of learning is partly due to her absence for most of Raphael’s discussions with Adam in Books V, VI, and VII, and she also does not see the visions Michael shows Adam in Books XI and XII. Her absence from these important exchanges shows that she feels it is not her place to seek knowledge independently; she wants to hear Raphael’s stories through Adam later. The one instance in which she deviates from her passive role, telling Adam to trust her on her own and then seizing the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, is disastrous.
Eve’s strengths are her capacity for love, emotion, and forebearance. She persuades Adam to stay with her after the fall, and Adam in turn dissuades her from committing suicide, as they begin to work together as a powerful unit. Eve complements Adam’s strengths and corrects his weaknesses. Thus, Milton does not denigrate all women through his depiction of Eve. Rather he explores the role of women in his society and the positive and important role he felt they could offer in the divine union of marriage.

God

An omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent character who knows everything before it happens. Attempting to present such an unimaginable character accurately, Milton appropriates several of God’s biblical speeches into his speeches in Paradise Lost. God loves his creation and strongly defends humankind’s free will. He presents his love through his Son, who performs his will justly and mercifully.
God, in Paradise Lost, is less a developed character than a personification of abstract ideas. He is unknowable to humankind and to some extent lacks emotion and depth. He has no weaknesses, embodies pure reason, and is always just. He explains why certain events happen, like Satan’s decision to corrupt Adam and Eve, tells his angels what will happen next, and gives his reasoning behind his actions in theological terms. God allows evil to occur, but he will make good out of evil. His plan to save humankind by offering his Son shows his unwavering control over Satan.

The Son

For Milton, the Son is the manifestation of God in action. While God the Father stays in the realm of Heaven, the Son performs the difficult tasks of banishing Satan and his rebel angels, creating the universe and humankind, and punishing Satan, Adam and Eve with justice and mercy. The Son physically connects God the Father with his creation. Together they form a complete and perfect God.
The Son personifies love and compassion. After the fall, he pities Adam and Eve and gives them clothing to help diminish their shame. His decision to volunteer to die for humankind shows his dedication and selflessness. The final vision that Adam sees in Book XII is of the Son’s (or Jesus’) sacrifice on the cross—through this vision, the Son is able to calm Adam’s worries for humankind and give Adam and Eve restored hope as they venture out of Paradise.

How Etonians are told to write essays...

... wait a minute.... is this basically Socratic reasoning? It can't be!


http://englishtutorhome2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/how-to-write-exam-essays-some-of-best.html

Excellent links on the Gothic genre and its links to Frankenstein

http://englishtutorhome2.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Frankenstein

Frankenstein: A Feminist Critique of Science (1987)

It's Anne K Mellor again! Pretty interesting reading....

http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/mellor1.html

Dr Faustus: links to your texts?

What connections can you see with Marlowe's Faustus and the characters in your A-Level text?

Sin, Redemption, and Damnation

Insofar as Doctor Faustus is a Christian play, it deals with the themes at the heart of Christianity’s understanding of the world. First, there is the idea of sin, which Christianity defines as acts contrary to the will of God. In making a pact with Lucifer, Faustus commits what is in a sense the ultimate sin: not only does he disobey God, but he consciously and even eagerly renounces obedience to him, choosing instead to swear allegiance to the devil. In a Christian framework, however, even the worst deed can be forgiven through the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, God’s son, who, according to Christian belief, died on the cross for humankind’s sins. Thus, however terrible Faustus’s pact with Lucifer may be, the possibility of redemption is always open to him. All that he needs to do, theoretically, is ask God for forgiveness. The play offers countless moments in which Faustus considers doing just that, urged on by the good angel on his shoulder or by the old man in scene 12—both of whom can be seen either as emissaries of God, personifications of Faustus’s conscience, or both.

Each time, Faustus decides to remain loyal to hell rather than seek heaven. In the Christian framework, this turning away from God condemns him to spend an eternity in hell. Only at the end of his life does Faustus desire to repent, and, in the final scene, he cries out to Christ to redeem him. But it is too late for him to repent. In creating this moment in which Faustus is still alive but incapable of being redeemed, Marlowe steps outside the Christian worldview in order to maximize the dramatic power of the final scene. Having inhabited a Christian world for the entire play, Faustus spends his final moments in a slightly different universe, where redemption is no longer possible and where certain sins cannot be forgiven.

The Conflict Between Medieval and Renaissance Values

Scholar R.M. Dawkins famously remarked that Doctor Faustus tells “the story of a Renaissance man who had to pay the medieval price for being one.” While slightly simplistic, this quotation does get at the heart of one of the play’s central themes: the clash between the medieval world and the world of the emerging Renaissance. The medieval world placed God at the center of existence and shunted aside man and the natural world. The Renaissance was a movement that began in Italy in the fifteenth century and soon spread throughout Europe, carrying with it a new emphasis on the individual, on classical learning, and on scientific inquiry into the nature of the world. In the medieval academy, theology was the queen of the sciences. In the Renaissance, though, secular matters took center stage.
Faustus, despite being a magician rather than a scientist (a blurred distinction in the sixteenth century), explicitly rejects the medieval model. In his opening speech in scene 1, he goes through every field of scholarship, beginning with logic and proceeding through medicine, law, and theology, quoting an ancient authority for each: Aristotle on logic, Galen on medicine, the Byzantine emperor Justinian on law, and the Bible on religion. In the medieval model, tradition and authority, not individual inquiry, were key. But in this soliloquy, Faustus considers and rejects this medieval way of thinking. He resolves, in full Renaissance spirit, to accept no limits, traditions, or authorities in his quest for knowledge, wealth, and power.


The play’s attitude toward the clash between medieval and Renaissance values is ambiguous. Marlowe seems hostile toward the ambitions of Faustus, and, as Dawkins notes, he keeps his tragic hero squarely in the medieval world, where eternal damnation is the price of human pride. Yet Marlowe himself was no pious traditionalist, and it is tempting to see in Faustus—as many readers have—a hero of the new modern world, a world free of God, religion, and the limits that these imposed on humanity. Faustus may pay a medieval price, this reading suggests, but his successors will go further than he and suffer less, as we have in modern times. On the other hand, the disappointment and mediocrity that follow Faustus’s pact with the devil, as he descends from grand ambitions to petty conjuring tricks, might suggest a contrasting interpretation. Marlowe may be suggesting that the new, modern spirit, though ambitious and glittering, will lead only to a Faustian dead end.

Power as a Corrupting Influence

Early in the play, before he agrees to the pact with Lucifer, Faustus is full of ideas for how to use the power that he seeks. He imagines piling up great wealth, but he also aspires to plumb the mysteries of the universe and to remake the map of Europe. Though they may not be entirely admirable, these plans are ambitious and inspire awe, if not sympathy. They lend a grandeur to Faustus’s schemes and make his quest for personal power seem almost heroic, a sense that is reinforced by the eloquence of his early soliloquies.

Once Faustus actually gains the practically limitless power that he so desires, however, his horizons seem to narrow. Everything is possible to him, but his ambition is somehow sapped. Instead of the grand designs that he contemplates early on, he contents himself with performing conjuring tricks for kings and noblemen and takes a strange delight in using his magic to play practical jokes on simple folks. It is not that power has corrupted Faustus by making him evil: indeed, Faustus’s behavior after he sells his soul hardly rises to the level of true wickedness. Rather, gaining absolute power corrupts Faustus by making him mediocre and by transforming his boundless ambition into a meaningless delight in petty celebrity.


In the Christian framework of the play, one can argue that true greatness can be achieved only with God’s blessing. By cutting himself off from the creator of the universe, Faustus is condemned to mediocrity. He has gained the whole world, but he does not know what to do with it.

The Divided Nature of Man

Faustus is constantly undecided about whether he should repent and return to God or continue to follow his pact with Lucifer. His internal struggle goes on throughout the play, as part of him of wants to do good and serve God, but part of him (the dominant part, it seems) lusts after the power that Mephastophilis promises. The good angel and the evil angel, both of whom appear at Faustus’s shoulder in order to urge him in different directions, symbolize this struggle. While these angels may be intended as an actual pair of supernatural beings, they clearly represent Faustus’s divided will, which compels Faustus to commit to Mephastophilis but also to question this commitment continually.