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.
ReplyDelete3. 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)
In the summer of 1816 at the Villa Diodati, Lord Byron issued a dare to himself, Percy Shelly, Mary Shelly, Claire Clermont and John Polidori (Byron’s doctor) to write a ghost story. At the time the weather wasn’t actually summer but rather unpleasant with lots of rain and storms. According to Jackson (2016) from the Prospect Magazine UK, Percy Shelly tried to draw inspiration from his childhood but soon gave up and Lord Byron wrote a short incomplete vampire tale. Mary was struggling at first to come up with a story but then an idea came to her during a horrible dream. Buzwell (1914) suggests that it was a casual plan to pass the time while the atmosphere was of delicious fear. It resulted in two iconic tales that changed the face of Gothic fiction; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and John Polidori’s The Vampyre, which later influenced Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
The film, “Gothic” by Ken Russell is a fictional account about what happened in Villa Diodati in 1816. Please see link below for the trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haS7s4MI0mI
and the novel, “Fantasmagoriana” or “Tales of the Dead” edited by AJ Day.
Reference
Bargain Travel Europe (n.d.) Lord Byron & Villa Diotati: Switzerland’s Gothic Summer of 1816 on Lake Geneva. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from http://www.bargaintraveleurope.com/08/Switzerland_Villa_Diodoti_Geneva.htm
Buzwell, G. (1914). Mary Shelley, Frankenstien and the Villa Diotati. Retrieved April 23, 2017, 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 April 23, 2017, from https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/sumer-1816-frankenstein-shelley-byron-villa-diodati
Night Of The Trailers. (2014, March 23). Gothic (1986) Trailer. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haS7s4MI0mI
Also found - Haunted Summer (1988) by Ivan Passer
DeleteA pretty good answer. The great volcano explosion must have created an eerie atmosphere...
Delete2. Go online and see if you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816...
ReplyDeleteDuring the summer of 1816, Percy Shelly, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, John Polidori and Lord Byron all joined each other at the Villa Diodati after supposedly being encouraged out of the Hotel d'Angleterre as the staff "had grown alarmed by the potential for scandal from these mad English folk". (2016)
Byron then debated upon reconvening at a different location. He had chosen two potential places, one of which being the Villa Diodati. However, due to unexpected weather, the group chose to all stay at the Villa. Mary Shelley later on recount being “confined… for days to the house.” Due to bad weather.
At the Villa, they then found themselves having several volumes of ghost stories translated from German to French, to which Byron suggested that they “each write a ghost story.”
While the other writers in the Villa seemed to be able to start writing about their stories quite easily, Mary recalls that she “found herself stumped.” And then, on a night of insomnia, she read out the first passage to her friends:
“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….”
After their stay, the relationship between the writers turned bitter, such as Polidori having some “arguments with both poets, which almost came to a duel, he went off in a sulk and, taking his inspiration from Byron’s effort, started work on a short novel, The Vampyre.” This later on was taken as inspiration by Bram Stoker, who went on to write Dracula.
References:
Jackson, K. (2016) The haunted summer of 1816 https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/sumer-1816-frankenstein-shelley-byron-villa-diodati
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ReplyDelete2. Go online and see if you can find out anything about what really happened at the Villa Diodati that fateful summer in 1816 AND How many fictional accounts can you find about that?
ReplyDeleteThe summer of 1816 is one of the most (in)famous gathering of writers in English literary history.
Lord Byron rented a summer lake house called “Villa Diodati” in the summer of 1816. Clair Clairmont invites Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley to Switzerland to meet Lord Byron and his friend John Polidori. Unfortunately, upon their arrival at the villa, a summer that was meant to sunny and warm turned into periods of freezing rain and tempestuous storms.
The rain forced the group to stay inside and find alternative means to entertain themselves. The five amused themselves by sitting around the log fire and reading stories such as Fantasmagoriana and reciting popular anthology of horror fiction. Lord Byron then issued a dare to the group – each one must try writing a story with a supernatural theme or ghost stories.
With the bleak and gloomy environment, frustrations were on the increase in the Villa. Polidori recalled Percy Shelley evidently affected by the environment and Byron’s reading fled the room screaming. Polidori describes that as he recounted the events that happened that night, he had a sudden mental vision of a woman who had eyes instead of nipples on her breast. Polidori made use of this mental vision in his story “The Vampyr” which contributed to the beginning of the gothic genre.
That late-night talks continued as the Villa Diodati as the weather remained tumultuous. That night, after following one of these conversations, Mary Shelly had a nightmare that created the core idea of “Frankenstein” (another story that contributed to the beginning of the gothic genre). In describing her nightmare, she would say that: "I saw the pale student of 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. Frightful must it be; for SUPREMELY frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.” Mary Shelley’s nightmare was transformed into brilliant and inspirational creativity for the Frankenstein monster and the Frankenstein book.
Note: “The Year without a Summer”, as 1816 became known for, provided the perfect environment to the telling of bleak, morbid and gloomy Gothic tales. The Volcanic eruption of Mount Tambora a year before in Indonesia created a rainy gloom which urged Lord Byron and his circle to compose ghost stories in Gothic mode.
Reference:
Bethune, B. (2013, March 12). How a volcanic eruption made 1816 the year without a summer. Retrieved from http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/what-they-did-that-summer/
LORD BYRON & VILLA DIODATI. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.bargaintraveleurope.com/08/Switzerland_Villa_Diodoti_Geneva.htm
McGasko, J. (2016, April 20). Her 'Midnight Pillow': Mary Shelley and the Creation of Frankenstein. Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/news/mary-shelley-frankenstein-i-frankenstein-movie
Shepherd, L. (2013, September 02). What if Byron and the Shelleys had live tweeted from the Villa Diodati? Retrieved from https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2013/09/what-if-byron-and-the-shelleys-had-live-tweeted-from-the-villa-diodati/
Vitelli, R. (2017, April 16). Who Inspired Frankenstein? Retrieved from http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2017/04/inspiring-frankenstein.html