1. How is the Romantic notion of the Sublime reflected in the ideological, conceptual and linguistic construction of the texts under consideration in this Romanticism reader? Discuss one or two examples...
2. Go online and see if you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816...
3. How many fictional accounts (film and other narrative media) can you find about that? Provide some useful links, including Youtube clips (hint: for a start try Ken Russel Gothic on Youtube).
4. Discuss the links between the Villa Diodati "brat-pack" and the birth of Gothic as a modern genre with reference to specific texts by the authors who gathered there and subsequent texts (e.g. The Vampire >> Dracula, etc).
3. How many fictional accounts (film and other narrative media) can you find about that? Provide some useful links, including Youtube clips (hint: for a start try Ken Russel Gothic on Youtube).
4. Discuss the links between the Villa Diodati "brat-pack" and the birth of Gothic as a modern genre with reference to specific texts by the authors who gathered there and subsequent texts (e.g. The Vampire >> Dracula, etc).
2. Go online and see if you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816...
ReplyDeleteThe Villa Didodati is a manor in Coligny close to Lake Geneva in Swizterland and is famous for being the summer residence of a highly distinguished group; Lord Bryon, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, John Polidori and others. The fateful summer in 1816 produces what will be a well known as a famous literature in today’s world. This was the basis of where classical horror stories Frankenstein and The Vampyre were established.
In 1816, Lord Byron rented the Villa from 10 June to 1 November. The scandal of his separation from his wife, rumours of an affair with his half-sister, and ever-increasing debt, had forced him to leave England, never to return, in April of that year. Byron arrived at Lake Geneva in May where he met and befriended the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley who was travelling with his future wife Mary Godwin (now better known as Mary Shelley). Byron settled at the Villa Diodati with his personal physician, John William Polidori and Shelley rented a smaller house called "Maison Chapuis" on the waterfront nearby. The group was also joined by Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with whom Byron had had an affair in London.
The weather was unseasonably cold and stormy, and Mary Shelley later described the "incessant rain" of that "wet, ungenial summer". When the rain kept them indoors at the Villa Diodati over three days in June, the five turned to reading fantastical stories, including Fantasmagoriana, and then devising their own tales. Mary Shelley produced what would become Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, and Polidori was inspired by a fragmentary story of Byron's, Fragment of a Novel, to produce The Vampyre, the progenitor of the romantic vampire genre
Reference:
Providentia. (2010). Who Inspired Frankenstein?. Retrieved 10 June from http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2010/12/inspiring-frankenstein.html
Wikipedia. (n.d). Villa Diodati. Retrieved May 10, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Diodati#Summer_of_1816
It is also important to think about the landscape of that time, environmentally and socially. It’s interesting to know that they reason the weather was so unseasonable stormy was because of a volcano eruption in Indonesia the year before. Mount Tamboro sent volcanic ash clouds into the upper atmosphere which led to increased rainfall and lower temperature. That summer in 1816 then became the perfect backdrop of bleak and stormy weather for the poets to stay inside and create Gothic literary pieces. It is also important to note that both Lord Byron and Percy Shelley were running away from their lives back in England, which both had a scandalous reputation. This is one of the main reasons they decide to settle in Geneva for the summer in the same villa that John Milton, the author of Paradise Lost, had lived hundreds of years beforehand. When the “brat-pack” were creating their own ghost stories it was Mary Shelley, then Mary Goodwin, who could not think of a story. It took days before she had a nightmare where the idea of Frankenstein originated and thus creating the classic story we know today.
DeleteReference:
Buzwell, G. (2017). Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and the Villa Diodati. The British Library. Retrieved 15 May 2017, from http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/mary-shelley-frankenstein-and-the-villa-diodati
Hay, Daisy & Hoare, Philip [National Theatre Discover]. (2015, June 23). Mary Shelley: A Biography [Video file] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4p96vqI3zA
It is quiet fascinating to think that bad weather and the year which was none for having no summer turned out to be the year such pieces of literature were born (Zaleski, 2016). The birth of the idea of Frankenstein happened after a conversation between Byron and Shelley about scientific experiments and the possibility of reanimating corpses which later gave her sleepless nights. It lead to her having horrific visions at night of doctors conducting experiments on corpses and later turned her horrific visions into one of the most-read novel in American high schools (Zaleski, 2016).
DeleteReference:
Zaleski, E. (2016, March 9). The Summer Storm That Inspired Frankenstein and Dracula. Retrieved May 30, 2017, from Daily Beast: http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-summer-storm-that-inspired-frankenstein-and-dracula
3. How many fictional accounts (film and other narrative media) can you find about that? Provide some useful links, including Youtube clips (hint: for a start try Ken Russell Gothic on Youtube).
ReplyDeleteHaunted Summer (1988) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG-rJuyfvxM
Gothic (1986) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haS7s4MI0mI
Villa Diodati: A Chamber Opera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDzWlCHj7Cs
There are only a handful of films that depict what happened in the summer of 1816 in the Villa Diodati. The prominent ones being Gothic directed by Ken Russell and Haunted Summer directed by Ivan Passer. Both films were released in the 1980’s only two years apart. During this time there was a revival in Romanticism called New Romanticism, which peaked in the early 80’s in England. However this movement had more to do with fashion and style, but still carried the same weight as a counterculture in that time. There is also a new movie coming out this year depicting Mary Shelley’s romance with soon to be husband Percy Shelley during that fateful summer in Villa Diodati. Other than film there is an opera, Villa Diodati: A Chamber Opera, that depicts what happened in the villa from the perspective of a modern American couple thrown into the past.
Reference:
Wikipedia. (2017). Wikipediaorg. Retrieved 15 May, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Romanticism
[Night of the Trailers]. (2014, March 23). Gothic (1986) Trailer [Video file] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haS7s4MI0mI
[CannonFilms]. (2011, February 14). Haunted Summer trailer (Cannon Films) [Video file] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG-rJuyfvxM
Spektor, Mary J. [Mira J. Spektor]. (2016, January 21). VILLA DIODATI, a chamber opera by Mira J. Spektor [Video file] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDzWlCHj7Cs
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ReplyDeleteThe Villa Diodati was made famous by the four writers who occupied it in March 1817 – Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Polidori and Lord Byron. A number of factors came into play that set the tone of their sojourn. There was abominable weather which confined the group to the indoors. There was potentially a free consumption of drugs and alcohol by a number of the party. Sexual scandal had trailed two of the attendees – Lord Byron and Percy Shelley. The men of the group had been part-taking with what was known as the ‘Grand Tour of Europe’, which entailed the fashionable visiting of parts of historic and classical-fettered Western Europe i.e. Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, Austria. They had also had access to other writer’s texts such as the likes of Goethe and Nietzsche, which in part may have influenced some of the group’s contributions.
ReplyDeleteBased on a written challenge these four writers had agreed to come up with texts, which would ultimately lead to creation of Gothic literature or early modern horror. A fetish was later developed for the ‘darker side of the sublime’ which relied on the overwhelming of senses or scaring the individual out of their tree. However, more eloquently put, the creation of the sublime was the ability to create wonder and entrancement as opposed to mildly entertain or humour the reader or viewer. This also signified that a philosophical change was taking place that confronted the ‘then’ notions of class and gender.
The result of this challenge was the creation of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein or Modern Prometheus”, John Polidori’s “Vampyre”, Lord Byron’s “Manfred: a dramatic poem”, and Percy Shelly’s “Ozymandias” and “Ode to the west wind”.
Perrottet, T. (2011, 29 May). Lake Geneva as Shelley and Byron knew it, New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/travel/lake-geneva-as-byron-and-shelley-knew-it.html?pagewanted=all
Eruption of Mount Tabora in Indonesia in 1816 contributed to the “year without summer” in the Northern Hemisphere.
Colletta, L. (2015). Legacy of the grand tour: New essays on travel, literature and culture. (L. Colletta Ed.). London, UK: Fairleigh Dickinson Press.
Shelley, M. (1985; 1818). Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus. London, UK: Penguin at 173.
Pateman, T. (2004, 1991). ‘The Sublime’ in Key concepts: A guide to aesthetics, criticism and the arts in education. London, UK: Falmer Press, pp. 169-171.
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Polidori, J.W. (2002, 1819). The vampire: A Tale. London, UK: Sherwood, Neely and Jones. [Project Gutenberg – Ebook #6087].
More, P.E. ed. (1905; 1817). The poetical works of Byron. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hutchinson, T. (1947). The complete poetic works of Shelley. London, UK: Thomas Hutchinson.