Weeks 7 to 9: The Romantics
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).
Q2. Go online and see if you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816...
ReplyDeleteIn May 1816, Percy and Mary Shelley travelled to Geneva with their son and Mary's step-sister Claire Clairmont, who happened to be a former lover of Lord Byron. 10 days after their arrival, Lord Byron arrived with his doctor, Dr. Polidori. Shortly after, Byron, Polidori and Percy Shelley rented villas; Byron and Polidori's villa being the birthplace of both Frankenstein and The Vampyre, Villa Diodati.
According to Greg Buzwell (n.d), "Polidori’s medical knowledge... together with the thunder storms outside and the candlelight within, all took root in Mary’s imagination and found their way into her novel" - Frankenstein. Byron had suggested to the others the challenge of writing the scariest ghost stories and thus, the gothic genre was born. This sparked conversations between the writers and "philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others the nature of the principle of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered communicated" (Buzwell, n.d.). Apparently, the sexual tension between the members of the party and Percy Shelley's mental vision of a woman with eyes on her breasts, inspired Polidori with the idea of "fantasy" and hypnotism to create 'The Vampyre'. This would later influence Bram Stoker’s novel 'Dracula', and the popular vampire genre we know today.
'Frankenstein' and 'The Vampyre' are very influential to this day and have been portrayed many times in literature and on the screen. Frankenstein, a story that was said to be first of it's kind can still be seen in pop culture; in films such as 'The Bride of Frankenstein' and 'Van Helsing' - which includes both Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein and his monster.
References
Buzwell, G. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and the Villa Diodati. The British Library. Retrieved 2 May 2017, from https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/mary-shelley-frankenstein-and-the-villa-diodati
Everything you have wrote was great, apart from the part" sexual tension between the members of party and Percy Shelly's mental vision of woman with eyes on her breasts inspired Prolidori with eh idea of 'fantasy' and hypnotism to create 'The vampyre'". I do not think this is the main reason that inspired Prolidori to create 'The vampyer', because according to Tim J. Kelly, "Polidori was inspired by a fragmentary story of Byron's, Fragment of a Novel (1816), also known as 'A Fragment' and 'The Burial: A Fragment', and in 'two or three idle mornings' produced 'The Vampyre'"(1988).
DeleteReferences:
Kelly, Tim J., and John William Polidori. "The Vampyre: A 'Penny-Dreadful' Stage Thriller in Two Acts. New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1988.
If you go to the website that I used as a reference you will see that the writer says that Polidori had written to his publisher and described the sexual tensions in the villa between the guests and Percy Shelley's vision of breasts. He "made use of this ‘fit of fantasy’, as Byron later described it in a letter to his publisher John Murray, in his story The Vampyre." It may or may not have been the initial inspiration to create his story, but I feel that because the vampire genre fits under fantasy as a sub-genre, that this is an important influence that created 'The Vampyre' along with Byron's novel.
DeleteQ2.
ReplyDeleteIn the summer of 1816, there were a group of people gathered in the Hotel d’Angleterre (A large stone building facing the Alps on the north side of Lake Geneva). The five people in the group was the 23 years old poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, 18 years old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Mary eloped with Shelley two years ago and they married, this is the second elopement of Shelly, after Suicide of his abandoned wife Harriet, and they have a four-month-old son William), and Mary’s step-sister Clare Clairmont who had a child of Lord Byron but born prematurely and died, finally, there also was a 28 years old poet Lord Byron with his personal doctor John Polidori. But Lord Byron did not know Polidori was also a spy: Byron’s publisher, John Murrary.
After the scandal from mad English folk in the management of the Hotel d’Angleterre, Byron found Villa Diodati and they lived in. In the house, five of them were attracted by a book, Fantasmagoriana (Tales of the Dead, 1813). Then, Byron offered to write a ghost story by each of them. According to Kevin Jackson, Mary Shelly wrote it about 15 years later, “it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stories translated from the German into French, fell into our hands” (2016). Mary had the inspiration to write when the two poets talked about vampires, ghosts, the principle of life and whether galvanism can reanimate dead tissues. She wrote Frankenstein (the Modern Prometheus) on the night of her insomnia. Polidori wrote The Vampyre after he argued with Byron and got the inspiration from Byron. The first publication of The Vampyre was in The New Monthly Magazine in April 1819. The signature author was Byron for maybe attraction to the readers, Polidori said this was his creation, even the sketchy plot was Byron’s. Byron later on created Fragment of A Novel, it was the same story of an adventure of a young man and an older man (Augustus Darvell), but he did not finish it.
The tragedy happened in 8 years, “within eight years, all the men who had taken part in the competition were dead: Polidori most likely of suicide; Shelley by drowning, after his yacht Ariel sank in a storm off the northwest coast of Italy; and Byron of illness contracted during his adventures in the cause of Greek freedom” (Kevin Jackson, 2016). Only Mary Shelly was alive until 1851 – “the year of the Great Exhibition, a celebration of the wonderful, rather than the satanic potential of science and technology” (Kevin Jackson, 2016).
Reference:
Kevin J. The haunted summer of 1816. Prospect. Retrieved 14 May 2017, from https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/sumer-1816-frankenstein-shelley-byron-villa-diodati
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 Summer of 1816 became known as ‘The year without a summer’. Indonesia 1815 saw the eruption of Mount Tamboro, waves of volcanic ash flooded into the atmosphere. The effects of this disaster extended into 1816 causing starvation from crop failures due to weather conditions and darkness (Buzwell, n.d).
This lead to the fateful summer at Villa Diodati which imprisoned the minds of Lord Byron, Mary Godwin (Later known as Mary Shelly), Percy Shelly, Claire Clermont, and John Polidori. This left many speculating on the events that unfolded, tales of drugs, sex and debauchery, such as the movie Gothic (1986). Mary Shelly describes the stay as “a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house.” (Jackson, 2016).
It was in those wet, dark days that the assembly of writers found and read some volumes of German horror stories. Robinson (2009) suggests that it was one of these ferociously thunderous evenings that lead Lord Byron to proposition the group of writers to write a ghostly horror tale of their own.
It was during that gloomy almost supernatural stay at Villa Diodati, after the writers accepted Lord Byron’s proposition, that a couple of the most well-known horrors of the 19th century and today were born. These literary texts were surprisingly derived from the two novices of the group John Polidori and Mary Shelly.
John Polidori, Lord Byrons physician, an occupation he loathed but had been pushed into by his father and had been said to resent lord Byron and his arrogance. Polidori later committed suicide after drinking a beaker of cyanide. That fateful summer, however, Polidori wrote ‘The Vampyre’. ‘The Vampyre’ tale is said to be a reflection of the relationship between Lord Byron and Polidori himself. A tale of friendship, oaths, marriage, uncertainty and vampires. (The Public Domain Review, 2014).
Mary Shelly, an English writer who was only 18 years old at the time wrote ‘Frankenstein'. Mary Shelly had an unfortunate life. Mary married Percy Shelly, after the suicide of his first wife, and had the unfortunate experience of many miscarriages. Later, Shelly finally had children only to have them perish along with Percy a number of years later through unrelated tragedies, except for her son Percy Florence who managed to survive into adulthood (Biography.com Editors, 2017).
Mary Shelly, suffering from writer’s block and insomnia, listened to Lord Byron and Percy discuss Dr Dawin and Luigi Galvani’s theories leading her to contemplate galvanism and the effect on a corpse (Shelly, 2009). Later grappling with the idea of sleep, Mary Shelly awoke from a nightmare which was the beginning of her creation, ‘Frankenstein’ (Mellor, 1989). Frankenstein was particularly inventive as there was no other story of its kind, starring shelly as an intuitive and imaginative writer. This was particularly rare as women of her era wrote mostly of love and social status, thus breaking free from the stereotypical chains of female authors and their conventional story lines. Frankenstein tells the tale of a creation of a monster through electricity and what unfolds when the monster awakens. Mellor (1989) writes of the feminist viewpoint Mary shelly expressed in Frankenstein “about what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman”.
Later, these horrors aren’t seen only on paper but also on screen with many renditions of these classical tales that were written in the summer of 1816 by an exceptionally talented group of authors.
*references on following post
*References:
DeleteBiography.com Editors. (April 28, 2017). Mary Shelley Biography.com. Retrieved May 17, 2017 from http://www.biography.com/people/mary-shelley-9481497
Buzwell, G. (n.d.). Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and the villa Diodati. Retrieved on May 14, 2017 from https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/mary-shelley-frankenstein-and-the-villa-diodati
Clark, A., Devereux, R., & Russell, K. (1986) Gothic [Motion picture]. United Kingdom: Virgin Vision
Jackson, K. (2016). The haunted summer of 1816. Retrieved on May 16, 2017 from https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/sumer-1816-frankenstein-shelley-byron-villa-diodati
Mellor, A., K. (1989) Mary shelly: Her life, her fiction, her monsters. Great Britain: Routledge
Robinson, C., E. (2009). Byron and Mary shelly and Frankenstein. Nottingham, United Kingdom: The Byron Centre for the Study of Literature and Social Change.
Shelly, M., W. (May 2009). Introduction. Retrieved on May 17, 2017 from https://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro
The Public Domain Review. (2014). The Poet, the Physician and the Birth of the Modern Vampire. Retrieved May 17, 2017 from https://publicdomainreview.org/2014/10/16/the-poet-the-physician-and-the-birth-of-the-modern-vampire/
Q. Go online and see if you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816…
ReplyDeleteA. During the summer of 1816, also known as 'the year without summer' due to the gloomy and damp weather caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in April of 1815, Mary Shelley (know as Mary Godwin at the time) travelled with her future husband Percy Shelley, their four month old son William and Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairmont to Geneva, Switzerland. The journey across the French border into Switzerland was described by Mary and recounted by Buzwell (n.d.) "Never was a scene more awfully desolate. The trees in these regions are incredibly large, and stand in scattered clumps over the white wilderness; the vast expanse of snow was chequered only by these gigantic pines, and the poles that marked our road: no river or rock-encircled lawn relieved the eye, by adding the picturesque to the sublime”. The bleak and lonely landscape clearly haunted Mary as she would later recount and similar landscape in her novel Frankenstein.
Ten days after their arrival came the arrival of Lord Byron with his physician Dr. John Polidori, who according to Jackson (2016) “had also fled London in February. expecting at any moment to be arrested by bailiffs” due to his ever increasing debt. Byron and Percy Shelley met for the first time the following day and within a short space of time both parties abandoned the Hotel d’Angleterre and took leases on two nearby properties. The Shelley party took a small chalet called Montalègre and Byron and Polidori took the infamous Villa Diodati, a large house once occupied by the poet John Milton.
Because of the weather had turned gloomy and wet, the group were denied the possibility of outdoor activities and instead spent their time discussing literary projects as the thunder and lightning lit up the night. Shelley (1831) recalled such conversations in the Preface of Frankenstein: "Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener. During one of these, various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others the nature of the principle of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered communicated”. Such discussions, coupled with the gloomy weather and candlelit nights took root in Mary’s imagination and soon found their way into her novel.
During their stay, Byron suggested the idea of writing ghost stories, with inspiration taken from a collection of German horror stories translated into French. As their late night discussions continued, Mary had a nightmare as a result of a conversation that gave her the central idea of Frankenstein. She described this nightmare in the 1831 preface of the book stating that she “saw the pale student of the unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion” (Shelley, 1831) and with that, the idea of Frankenstein was born.
References:
Buzwell, G. (n.d.). Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and the Villa Diodati. Retrieved from https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/mary-shelley-frankenstein-and-the-villa-diodati
Jackson, K. (2016). The haunted summer of 1816. Retrieved from https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/sumer-1816-frankenstein-shelley-byron-villa-diodati
Shelley, M. W. (1831). Frankenstein. London, England: Colburn & Bentley.
Question 2: Go online and see if you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816…
ReplyDeleteGeneva, Switzerland is seen as the birthplace of two genius literature works. The summer of 1816, sets the period in time where four writers are brought together by the dreadful, stormy weather caused by the volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora, Indonesia.
According to Kevin Jackson, a group of four English travellers were said to have checked into the Hotel d’Angleterre located on the north side of Lake Geneva. The members of this group consisted of a poet; Percy Shelley, his mistress; Mary Godwin (soon to be Mary Shelley), their son; William, and Mary’s step-sister Clare Clairemont. (2016). It is at this hotel these travellers met Lord Byron, another poet who Clare had an affair with in the past and Bryon’s physician John Polidori. Shelley and Byron having much in common in terms of their written works become close. Leaving the hotel, the English travellers move across the lake to the Maison Chappius property and Byron moved into a larger property a few yards away, the Villa Diodati. The weather took a turn for the worse confining the Shelley entourage into the Villa Diodati. Mary Shelley described her experience: “it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house.” (Shelley, 1831). They had spent their days reading German and French translated ghost stories which inspired the idea for the four of them [Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, John Polidori] to each write their own ghost story.
Mary being an insomniac found her starting point one night writing: “It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld my man completed and with an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected instruments of life about me, and endeavoured to infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.” The “dreary night” being inspired by the weather that confined her and her companions inside. Mary found pleasure in watching the thunderous storm outside her windows which shows in her story as she compares Frankenstein to ‘the magnificent energy and swiftness of a tempest.’ (Clubbe, 1991). This starting point was of course the beginning of the popular tale ‘Frankenstein’ which consisted of gothic and horror themes/genre. Polidori took inspiration from Byron and started his story, ‘The Vampyre’ which is considered as the originator of the romantic vampire genre and went on to inspire the idea of ‘Dracula’. (Jackson, 2016). In the stories Mary Shelley and John Polidori wrote are dark, dreary and horror themes, relating to the horrible storm that surrounded them. It can be seen as ironic that the two novice writers [Mary Shelley and John Polidori] were the ones to produce stories that have influenced many throughout the years.
Two of the most influential horror/gothic stories are credited to a group brought together and a competition formed between friends in the fateful summer of 1816.
References:
Clubbe, J. (1991). The Tempest-toss'd Summer of 1816: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Retrieved from http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/clubbe.html
Jackson, K. (2016). The haunted summer of 1816. Retrieved from https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/sumer-1816-frankenstein-shelley-byron-villa-diodati
Shelly, M., W. (May 2009). Introduction. Retrieved from https://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro