lalalesson

I can't remember last lesson though I'm sure it was great.
SO I'm skipping it out and doing today instead.

That tangent thing happened again today; it's interesting I suppose but it means I forget what the lesson was about.

Today we looked at how Faustus is presented to the audience in the first scene. Many of the quotes I picked out were his own words being an example of one of his traits. For example "Coulds't thou make men to live eternally...Then this profession were to be esteemed", shows his ambition. Here he is disregarding medicine as a career because it doesn't give him enough potential for greatness ie. you can't raise the dead.

We also thought about the two characters introduced at the end of the first scene: Valdes and Cornelius. It seems that they regard themselves as inferior to Faustus in skill and knowledge. They say nothing about their own potential in magic, only his. They do not reappear after this introduction so it seems they are just devices created to teach Faustus magic. I don't know what I think about this. Marlowe could have done this in a different way, but perhaps he did it to show how Faustus betrayed people.

Very good.

Faust chorus and religious argument

Two interesting parts to this lesson.
First was looking at the chorus prologue of Dr. Faustus. It sets the play up to the audience to give them a vague idea of what they are about to see. It mentions Carthagens and Mars which give connotations of war and violence, suggesting the play will contain conflict. It also mentions Necromancy which shows the audience they will witness magic and evil. It gives us an impression of what Faustus himself will be like too. For example the mention of waxen wings refers to Icarus who flew to close to the sun and fell to his death, this suggests pride in him.

The other part to the lesson was the discussion on religion...too many tangents to analyse it all really. The general theme was Christianity's view on good and evil, spirits etc.
Well we never came to a conclusion so I can't comment on the actual beliefs.

Drac

I haven't finished this because quite honestly I'm bored of it.
It moves too slowly for me. Way too slowly.

However the gothic themes are very prominent here. The settings like castles, abbies, mental asylum etc. are very haunting with a lot of relation to religion which is interesting.
The protagonist, the count, is very typically gothic. Intelligent, physically strinking, non-human, powerful, foreign etc.
Female victim is also very typical: beautiful, young, naive, virgin. I have a feeling Mina will also become a victim too, but she isn't as typical as Lucy, more clever and experienced.