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.

Bloody Chamber again

Hmmmmm......
I finished it a while ago really but I was on holiday so can't remember that far back.

Well. I remember liking all the wolf stories. They all seem to be linked in the way that the werewolves in them have all come from the same roots in legends and have the same rules etc. It seems like she's taken an interest in werewolves because she's explored them thoroughly in the last three stories.

God don't make me write more on this I really can't remember.

me on "The Bloody Chamber"

I'll admit I didn't do what Mr. F said to about posting something before i started reading it but I wasn't in a typing mood and then before I knew it I'd read three quarters of it...

Anyway, this book is strange to say the least.
So far I have read up to the end of The Lady of the House of Love (and there are definately things in that one which make me think a lot of the Twilight saga was based on it) and I'm enjoying it.
My favourite so far has been The Bloody Chamber and really I think this is the one with the most gothic elements in it as you get a feel from the beginning that something is already very wrong. Without attempting to spoil the end, I'd say that I think the conclusion to the story is quite controversial within the genre in that the hero is in fact a heroine in the end. The setting, use of foreshadowing and use of a virgin as the female victim make it all very typically gothic.

I wouldn't label all the stories in it as gothic, for example Puss in Boots is quite a mellow, fun story that just happens to end in death.

There are themes in the stories that don't immediately come to mind when you think of fairytales, as these are. Incest, intraspecies sex, necrophilia and other weird stuff like that.

My least favourite was The Snow Child because I think it's supposed to be Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or something and I just can't see it. Also IT'S REALLY ODD. Please read it now so you can be disturbed with me.

That's enough for now.