Frankenstein:Mary Shelley (1797-1851)

Mary Shelley's biography

Born August 30, 1797, in London, England, Mary Shelley came from a rich literary heritage. She was the daughter of William Godwin, a political theorist, novelist, and publisher who introduced her to eminent intellectuals and encouraged her youthful efforts as a writer; and of Mary Wollstonecraft, a writer and early feminist thinker, who died of puerperal fever 10 days after her daughter's birth.

In her childhood, Mary Shelley educated herself amongst her father's intellectual circle, which included critic William Hazlitt, essayist Charles Lamb and poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Another prominent intellectual in Godwin's circle was poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary met Percy Shelley in 1812, when she was fifteen. Shelley was married at the time, but the two spent the summer of 1814 traveling together. A baby girl was born prematurely to the couple in February, 1815, and died twelve days later. In her journal of March 19, 1815, Mary recorded the following dream, a possible inspiration for Frankenstein: "Dream that my little baby came to life again - that it had only been cold & that we rubbed it before the fire & it lived." A son, William, was born to the couple in January, 1816.

More info: Mary Shelley's biography

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley made an anonymous but powerful debut into the world of literature when Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus was published in March, 1818. She was only nineteen when she began writing her story. She and her husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, were visiting poet Lord Byron at Lake Geneva in Switzerland when Byron challenged each of his guests to write a ghost story. Settled around Byron's fireplace in June 1816, the intimate group of intellectuals had their imaginations and the stormy weather as the stimulus and inspiration for ghoulish visions. A few nights later Mary Shelley imagined the "hideous phantasm of man" who became the confused yet deeply sensitive creature in Frankenstein. She once said, "My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings." While many stage, television, and film adaptations of Frankenstein have simplified the complexity of the intellectual and emotional responses of Victor Frankenstein and his creature to their world, the novel still endures. Its lasting power can be seen in the range of reactions explored by various literary critics and over ninety dramatizations.

ACTIVITY

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The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde | Biography

Oscar Wilde is one of the most iconic figures from late Victorian society. Enjoying a meteoric rise to the top of society, his wit, humour and intelligence shine through his plays and writings. For his sexuality he suffered the indignity and shame of imprisonment. For a long time his name was synonymous with scandal and intrigue. However with changing social attitudes he is remembered with great affection for his biting social criticism, wit and linguistic skills.

“To get back my youth I would do anything  in the world, except take exercise, get up early or be respectable.”
- Oscar Wilde

As Stephen Fry wrote of Oscar Wilde.

“What of Wilde the man? He stood for Art. He stood for nothing less all his life.. He is still enormously underestimated as an artist and a thinker.. Wilde was a great writer and a great man.”

More about him: Short Biography

The happy Prince

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The Industrial Revolution

Introduction

The era known as the Industrial Revolution was a period in which fundamental changes occurred in agriculture, textile and metal manufacture, transportation, economic policies and the social structure in England. This period is appropriately labeled “revolution,” for it thoroughly destroyed the old manner of doing things; yet the term is simultaneously inappropriate, for it connotes abrupt change. The changes that occurred during this period (1760-1850), in fact, occurred gradually. The year 1760 is generally accepted as the “eve” of the Industrial Revolution. In reality, this eve began more than two centuries before this date. The late 18th century and the early l9th century brought to fruition the ideas and discoveries of those who had long passed on, such as, Galileo, Bacon, Descartes and others.


More info about it: The Industrial Revolution


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THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION TOPICS

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Oscar Wilde's biography

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death.

Wilde's parents were successful Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university Wilde read Greats; he proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. He also profoundly explored Roman Catholicism, to which he would later convert on his deathbed. After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States of America and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art", and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde had become one of the most well-known personalities of his day.

At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a licence. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London.

At the height of his fame and success, whilst his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberrythe father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, for libel. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest, tried for gross indecencywith other men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years'hard labour. In prison he wrote De Profundis (written in 1897 & published in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six.

She walks in Beauty: personal interpretation

The main theme of the poem is the description of a lady. The author mentions several aspects that he considers  beautiful in her. Also he highlights the beauty of the lady making comparisons among her qualities and the ambiguity of the nature: light and dark, and good and evil. He has a vision of her not always positive and innocent. It can be a constrast between the fantasy of the heart and the reality of the mind.

She walks in Beauty, Lord Byron (1788–1824)

"She Walks in Beauty" is a poem written in 1814 by Lord Byron. One of Lord Byron’s most famous, it is a narrative poem that describes a woman of much beauty and elegance. The poem appears to be told from the view point of third person omniscient. There are no hints as to the identity of the narrator, but it is believed that the narrator may be Byron himself.

The following questions will help you to get interested in this Lord Byron's work.

1.- WHAT DO I KNOW ABOUT LORD BYRON?

2.- WHAT DO I KNOW ABOUT THE POEM "SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY"?

3.- DO I LIKE POETRY, WHY?

4.- WHAT ARE MY STREGHTS FOR WRITING POETRY?

5.- WHAT ARE MY WEAKNESSES FOR WRITING POETRY?

6.- IF I WOULD HAVE THE CHANCE FOR WRITE A POEM, WHAT WOULD I WRITE?

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that 's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light	5
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;	10
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,	15
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

HANGMAN GAME

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LITERARY ANALYSIS: BEOWULF

	Title: Beowulf
	Author’s biography: Unknown
STYLE	Apart from the poetic qualities of the alliterative verse in whichBeowulf is written the epic has a grand, majestic style that seems to lift you up as you read it.
Theme	The theme of the epic Beowulf is loyalty. This is true because loyalty was one of the most important qualities a man could possess in Beowulf's time. Beowulf’s loyalty and honor saved Hrothgar’s country and his people. Beowulf stands apart from other men because of his extraordinary loyalty to his king.
Setting	Beowulf was first told in Anglo-Saxon England sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries, but it's not about that time and place. It's actually set several hundred years earlier, in the 5th or 6th century. And it doesn't take place in England.
Characters	Beowulf -King Hrothgar-  Grendel -  Grendel’s mother - The dragon -  (principals
Plot
*Conflict	A Geatish warrior, Beowulf, throws his armor and weapons aside and fights the demon Grendel in a wrestling match to the death.
*Climax	Back home in Geatland, Beowulf must defend his people against a marauding dragon. Just when you think Beowulf is going to live happily ever after, he has to face his greatest challenge yet: a fifty-foot-long firebreather. If anything screams "climactic battle scene," it's the arrival of a dragon.
*Resolution	Beowulf is mortally wounded, but manages to kill the dragon and win its hoard of treasure
Figurative Language
*Metaphor	In the line "The head of Grendel, with heavy toil; / Four of the  stoutest, with all their strength, / Could hardly carry on swaying spear  / Grendel's head to the gold-decked hall."
Imagery	The imagery in Beowulf consists mostly of alliteration and metaphor. Many apparent hyperboles describing the feats of Beowulf are not true hyperboles, since what appear to be exaggerations–such as a passage saying Beowulf swam from Sweden to Finland or a passage saying Beowulf had the strength of thirty–were intended to be taken literally.
Mood	Because it is a long narrative poem, the mood shifts throughout the work, depending on the action or purpose of each scene.  It is certainly a mood of terror and suspense when Grendal attacks...
Point of view	The narrator recounts the story in the third person, from a generally objective standpoint detailing the action that occurs. The narrator does, however, have access to every character’s depths. We see into the minds of most of the characters (even Grendel) at one point or another, and the narrative also moves forward and backward in time with considerable freedom.