What feelings to you have after viewing this painting?
What do you predict might be a major theme or topic in the story?
Romantic Era
• 1800-1840 • Reaction to the Industrial Revolution and Age
of Enlightenment/Reason• Revolt against aristocratic ideals • Valued aesthetic ideals• Strong presence of nature in literature and art
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Characteristics of Romantics
• Emphasis on intuition and emotion – rejected rational and intellectual (didactic – for sermons); emotions for art
• Emphasized strange an bizarre – common has no place in art
• Choose subject not encountered in everyday life
• Not always interested in creating viable/ believable characters
Questions that the Romantics asked through art…
• What can people learn from nature?
• Is emotion stronger than reason?
• When is the ordinary extraordinary?
• How does war change our values?
Gothic Literature
Inspired by Gothic architecture, with flying buttresses and tall windows, architecture represented the desire to become (physically and spiritually) closer to God.
Gothic Literature• Distinguishing
elements:– Setting in castle, family
home, vault or crypt– Vendetta or vengeance
perpetrated against protagonist by the antagonist
– Supernatural beings
Gothic Literature
– An unrequited love– Ancient prophecy
foretelling the doom of the protagonist
– An exotic locale, often in a country other than that of the story’s origin
– An atmosphere or suspense or terror
Mary Shelley
• Mother died shortly after she was born in 1797
• Mother wrote A Vindication for the Rights of Women (1972) which advocated that women receive equal education as men
• Momma was a Feminist
Mary and Percy
• Percy Bysshe Shelley was a well known Gothic writer.
• He was also married.• Fell madly in love one
summer when their families were together.
When?
In the summer of 1816, 19 year old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Shelley, visited the Lord Byron at his villa beside Lake Geneva in Switzerland.
The Motivation
Stormy weather frequently forced them indoors, where they and Byron's other guests sometimes read from a volume of ghost stories. One evening, Byron challenged his guests to each write one themselves. Mary's story, inspired by a dream, became Frankenstein.
The Baby and The Dream
Mary had miscarried her first baby.
Mary dreamed that her daughter was brought back to life through vigorous rubbing and being held near a warm fire.
This inspired her to write Frankenstein.
The Structure of the Story
• The novel is constructed of three concentric layers, one within the other:– outermost--Robert Walton's letters to his sister; – middle--Frankenstein's story as he tells it to Walton; – innermost--Monster's description to Frankenstein of the
development of his mind at the deLaceys'.
Mood
MOOD is the overall feelings or emotions that are created IN THE READER.
The “power of the pen” can move mountains.
Authors “move” their readers’ moods through their choice of words and level of detail.
MOOD EXAMPLE
During the holidays, my mother's house glittered with decorations and hummed with preparations. We ate cookies and drank cider while we helped her wrap bright packages and trim the tree. We felt warm and excited, listening to Christmas carols and even singing along sometimes. We would tease each other about our terrible voices and then sing even louder.
Mood: Content, happy. How do we know? Words like "warm, excited, glittered” are used by the author.
MOOD EXAMPLE
After New Year's the time came to put all the decorations away and settle in for the long, cold winter. The house seemed to sigh as we boxed up its finery. The tree was dry and brittle, and now waited forlornly by the side of the road to be picked up.
Mood: Dreary, depressed. How do we know? "cold, sigh, brittle, forlornly"
MOOD
Again, identifying the mood of a piece of writing will depend on the number of descriptive words you know to answer the question: How did this paragraph, this passage, this story make the character or make you feel?
MOODBrain Muscle Work-out, Volume II!
• Cheerful• Relieved• Gloomy• Bleak• Uncertain• Bittersweet• Relaxed • Lazy• Hopeless• Tense
• Furious• Disappointed• Dreamy, foggy• Content• Satisfied• Angry• Motivated• Inspired• Confident• Eerie
Mood: “A Gift in His Shoes”Donovan and Larry were early for baseball
practice. They decided to run up and down the bleachers to exercise before the rest of the team arrived.
Larry was first to the top. He whispered to Donovan, “Look over there.” He pointed to a man sleeping on the highest, narrow bench of the bleachers. His pants and shirt were faded, worn, and too large for his thin frame. One big toe stuck out of a huge hole in his sock. His scraped-up shoes sat a few feet away.
Donovan whispered, “We should help him out. Let’s hide something good in his shoes. Then, when he wakes up, he will have a nice surprise.”
Mood: “A Gift in His Shoes”
How would you describe the mood of this passage?
a. Angryb. Detachedc. Sympathetic
Evidence?
Anticipation Guide
• Read the statement. • Take 10 seconds to decide if you agree or
disagree with it.• In your mind, have a defense for your reason.
AGREEDISAGREE