5 groupe B

 A few words before the reading assignment : 

a vocab list will help with some of the most difficult words, and a few of the themes found in pages 93-98.

Likewise, there are two reproductions of engravings from Italian artist Piranesi, who was highly influential on Poe and other Romantics. One of these engravings it entitled The Gothic Arch. Thomas de Quincey (who wrote Confessions of an English Opium-Eater) told of his trip to Rome with English poet S. Coleridge, and of their fascination for the intricate, impossible imaginary prisons of Piranesi, their dystopian and kafkaesque nature. 


After that, we considered E. A. Poe's influence today. We watched Vincent from Tim Burton. Here are our observations :

GOTHIC TROPES

  • a bleak, dark atmosphere
  • mental illness, loneliness
  • a young beautiful wife dying an untimely death
  • visions and nightmares
  • intrusive thoughts (the perverse)
  • evil double
  • being possessed by a house

The poem rhymes, and is narrated by horror movie actor Vincent Price. The Raven is quoted in the end.

In Edward Scissorhands, Tim Burton tried to tranpose a Gothic hero into the everyday world of today. Here are some relevant points:

GOTHIC WORLD                            NORMAL WORLD

Monochrome                                                            Colourful

Lost age, old science                                               Modernity

Lonely                                                                        Lively

Disorder and chaos                                                Order and symmetry

Darkness                                                                        Light

Artistic                                                                        Superficial  


Commentaires

Enregistrer un commentaire

Posts les plus consultés de ce blog

The Fall of the House of Usher 1

 Poetry and Poe Poems in French and English are different in a few ways. English poems don't always rhyme. They can, though. But they have a rhythm to them : for the moon never beams without bringing me dreams u     u       /      u   u      /       u     u     /       u     u      / Stanza 1 a description of a woman. It introduces Annabel Lee. Stanza 2 It's about the love between Annabel Lee and the Narrator. Stanza 3 She was taken away from him. Seraphs took her. Stanza 4 Annabel Lee is killed and buried ( enterrée ) Stanza 5 Their love is the strongest ever. Their love can transcend death. Stanza 6 He lies next to her tomb.   Some syllables are stressed / , and others are unstressed u. You have to pronounce stressed sy...
Lire la suite

The Fall of the House of Usher 3 GR B

  The first paragraph of The Fall of the House of Usher Reading this introduction, we got a feel for its poetic nature, and its sadness, its gloom. Then we wondered about the number of characters in this passage. We found two of them : the narrator, and the house itself. Indeed (en effet) , the house is " melancholy ," just like a human being ; and just like a human being, it's got " vacant, eye-like windows ." This last motif is a figure of speech called personification, or catechresis . The catechresis of the house in the opening of The Fall of the House of Usher has become extremely famous, and has inspired generations of writers and movie directors. For instance, the house in The Amityville Horror has windows that look exactly like eyes. Just like in Poe's story, these eyes are empty, and feel evil.    le narrateur arrive à cheval dans les environs de la maison, qui sont sordides. Il décrit la maison, et ses sentiments alors qu'il la contemple pour...
Lire la suite

The Fall of the House of Usher 2

Image
Annabel Lee, Romanticism and Pathetic Fallacy ...About the poem entitled  Annabel Lee . Here are some points we evoked: - it's a  melancholy  poem, yet it's a beautiful proof of love, and Poe writes positive things about his love. There might be a biographical side to it (his wife Virginia died from tuberculosis a few years before).     - It sounds like a song, there's  rhythm to it . - The first stanza is perfect, then the poem becomes dramatic and the stanzas change. So here are a few of the binaries from the poem:   - Sea / Wind / Nature (=emotions of the poet) VS the kingdom (everyday life) - Transcendantal love VS untimely death  - The Ideal (Eidolon, Plato), Fiction VS Reality    For the Romantic poet, there's but two ways to transcend reality and death, and to briefly have access to the ideal world of Ideas : Art, and Religion. We also took a look at a painting called  The Wanderer Above The Sea Of Clouds  by Austrian p...
Lire la suite