22nd September 2010 - Chaucer Contexts

Middle Ages had a completely different regime. The church was the greatest power of all. Many may ask why?

The Renaissance era lacked scientific knowledge, rational way of thinking. As, people could not explain things by using science, other methods were used to satisfy the desire to know which include religion. Therefore, religion became the most dominant institution of all as it did 'have knowledge' of everything and what is the most important could promise the holy enlightenment. If you only followed the rules...

Naturally, as all the regimes that our humankind has seen this was corrupt as well. Theoretically it was the most suitable idea for the individuals in these times, on the other hand practically it became well known as a 'greed machine'.

Let's look at all the different roles in the church!

GOD

POPE

ARCHBISHOPS

DEANS

BISHOPS

PRIESTS/ VICARS

PARDONERS

GENERAL PUBLIC/BELIEVERS

From this it can be seen that the church had a major system set up. However, as there were many roles within the church some of the individuals were really far distances away from their more powerful legitimate authority. Sadly, this caused general public being abused. Let's focus on pardoners. What is a pardoner? Pardoner was a part of a catholic church with a role to forgive people's sins. Despite all of this, it turned more into a business! Pardoners abused their powers, usurped the power of priests, gained a reputation for being greedy as they collected money from people for cleansing their souls from all the sins! Many got titles of being liars. For instance, if we explore pages 13-14 in Chaucer's 'The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale' many of the negative characteristics can be seen. Pardoner was described to have 'Swiche glaringe eyen' which presents greediness. Also, Chaucer suggests that they do not carry any relics, instead its 'pigges bones'!. Please read pages 13 - 14 and think about the language used about pardoners and get all the quotes about pardoner on one sheet of paper.

Consider certain ideas:

• What was Chaucer's motivation?
• Why did he write this text in this manner?
• Did he want to inform people?

Lesson Four

In this lesson we were introduced to the idea presented by Freud, a Jewish Austrian neurologist. Freud said, “In general we are reminded that the word heimlich is not unambiguous, but belongs to two sets of ideas, which, without being contradictory, are yet very different: on the one hand it means what is familiar and agreeable, and on the other, unheimlich that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light.”

In this, Heimlich comes from a German word meaning, ‘homes like’, where as un-Heimlich means ‘un-homelike’. Freud thus means that something does not have to be externally alien or unknown but, on the contrary, can be something familiar present in the wrong place at the wrong time. This object being familiar yet strange creates an uncomfortable feeling and adds to the gothic aspect as it treads on the line between fiction and reality itself. An example given in class was of the presence of a bus full of people in an empty street at night. It is not that the bus is an unfamiliar object; it merely is the presence of that bus full of people at night. This is something that is familiar but at the wrong time. Another example of the uncanny is in the picture above.

After being introduced to the idea of the uncanny given by Freud, we then read an article, this tells us the following:

· The uncanny is a sense of life always going on elsewhere, and appears very different from our lives. In the gothic, this sense of life going on elsewhere takes its shape in the form of exotic locations like castles. In chapter three, it is the life of the ghost that’s life merges into the life of Mr Lockwood’s, Provided that he did not just dream the whole incident.

· The celebrities in these stories are uncanny as their lives are something that we can never understand as they are very different form what we are accustomed to. They are displayed to be larger than life and so hey are familiar as humans but unfamiliar as they are leading a completely different lifestyle.

· The Victorian gothic takes the angel of the house idea and promotes in a bad light as it undermine the concept of Victorian homes. This is done through the show of the bourgeois domestic settings. In which the characters include confined and threatened women, the ambivalent figure of a dynamic anti-hero. The weak and ineffectual hero. This represents the drama that creates the sadomasochistic relations between men and women. This is contrary to the ideas of the home being a place of refuge and peace.

We then completed reading chapter three of Wuthering heights, in which Mr Lockwood meets the ghost. This presence of the ghost is an uncanny. It mixes the life of the ghost into the life of Mr. Lockwood, temporarily. After reading chapter three we wrote an answer for the question; how can we relate to Freud’s idea of the uncanny to chapter 3?Refer to Punter and Freud in your answer.

Sources

http://graduate.engl.virginia.edu/enec981/Group/chris.uncanny.html

http://courses.washington.edu/freudlit/Uncanny.Notes.html

Home work

· Finish Chapter summaries up to 5

· Comment on blog post

Ch3:

1. What does Catherine Earnshaw’s diary add to the narrative?

2.How does the portrayal of Hindley and Frances’ relationship contrast with that between Heathcliff and Cathy?

3.How is the extent of Heathcliff’s anguish (sorrow) revealed when he hears of Lockwood’s “dream”?

4.How is suspense built up in this chapter?

Ch4:

1.How is Heathcliff described in this chapter? Examine the language in detail.

2.How do we as readers respond to Heathcliff at this point in the novel given what we already know about him?

Madiha

Lesson 3- Lockwood.

In this lesson we discussed the narrator Lockwood. We discussed how Lockwood portrays himself, and what the reader and the other characters think of him. We did this by attempting to draw Lockwood, then annotating around the drawing with quotes to back up our thoughts with evidence.

We followed this up by reading an article comparing limited and unreliable narrators in Lockwood and Nick Carraway of The Great Gatsby. Within this article we learned the following;

Limited/unreliable Narrators

Wuthering Heights has a fairly unorthodox narrative structure. Although there are only two obvious narrators, Lockwood and Nelly Dean, a variety of other narratives appear throughout the novel. The whole action is presented in the form of eyewitness narrations by people who have played some part in the narration they describe. Lockwood’s narrative is the outer framework of the story. He is the recipient of Nelly’s story and she in turn is the recipient of other narratives. Nelly and Lockwood are fundamentally different personalities and, therefore, each contribute to the reader’s understanding of events and characters differently. This framed narration makes the reader doubt whether Lockwood's narrative is accurate and trustworthy, as there are so many contributors to the narrative and the story has been filtered through layers in which the narrative has perhaps become distorted. We can also doubt the accuracy of Lockwood's account due to him being the outsider and displaced from his normal surroundings and therefore is likely to be affected by this. Lockwood also has a wild judge of character as at first he believes himself and Heathcliff to be similar and both 'misanthropists', although later he retracts this statement and says he is 'sociable' compared to Heathcliff. This perhaps exacerbates our questioning of Lockwood as he lacks the ability to not only judge characters but also himself. It could therefore be argued that Lockwood's unsteady narrative could arouse the Gothic element of terror, as the reader has a psychological fear of what is to happen within the text as they remain in the unknown.

Observing The Hero

It is ironic that Lockwood has escaped from what they perceive as the threat and dangers of love, and then finds himself in the company of a fierce and passionate man in Heatchliff, who will go to extreme lengths to fight for his love. From the first meeting between Lockwood and Heatchliff we can decipher that Lockwood is in awe of Heathcliff and struck by the mystery of a 'dark skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners gentleman'.

Poor Men, Rich Women

As the subject of Lockwood's narration, we learn a lot about Heatchliff. We find out the details of Heathcliff's poor upbringing on the streets of Liverpool, so when he falls in love with the beautiful and rich Catherine we begin to wonder why Heatchliff has fallen for a woman socially out of his reach, and does not have the social advantage of other young men, such as Edgar Linton.

Use the following links to read more information about Bronte's choice of narrative and critical interpretation:

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/wuthering/narrator.html

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/wuthering/critics.html

Lesson 2 - Wuthering Heights; Discussing Chapter 1

In this lesson we focused on chapter 1 of Wuthering Heights and looked at the narrative method in detail.

At the beginning of the lesson we were shown 4 sentences from various books/films and asked to spot the odd one out, most people came up with the fourth sentence as the odd one out and the reason for this being that it lacked detail compared to the others.

While sentences 1 - 3 listed times and dates and further details line 4 was very vague, we continued to look closer into the quotes and identify their form and context (report, diary etc.)

This brought us to the narrative method used by Emily Bronte in Wuthering heights, we identified it as a retrospective narrative viewpoint in the form of a diary - the time marker '1801' in the first line of chapter 1 reveals this key narrative feature.

Next we went on to discuss Mr Lockwood as a character and share our views on him from what he had said and done in chapter 1.

Some ideas about him were that he was a shy man, socially withdrawn and a bit pathetic.

During chapter 1 when he begins to recall the past these ideas are seen to take form, he says he spent the summer with a 'real goddess' but he 'never told my love vocally' and instead 'shrunk icily' into himself 'like a snail' - this image of a snail hiding away suits Mr Lockwood's socially withdrawn and shy personality perfectly.

The activity we did next consisted of two people going on to a different table and having a conversation where one person was telling the other everything they did the night before while another person sat near them and listened in to the conversation.

The person who listened in to the conversation then had to recall and write down everything that was said to have happened on to a piece of paper, this paper was then given to someone else who read it then this person told the person next to them what the paper said.

This person then told the person next to them and this person was asked to speak out loud and tell the class what they were told - the information told to the class was quite different compared to what was said in the initial conversation.

This task was used to demonstrate how unreliable information can be given from recall and each of the people who were told the information in class were representative of the characters in Wuthering Heights.

As well as the story being from a retrospective narrative viewpoint, it is also coming from various sources and has been "filtered" through a few people which creates a fairly unreliable narrative.

This adds to the presence of the Gothic element of uncertainty within the story, you can't be sure if what's being said is the truth, or if it's being over exaggerated or played down.

After this we looked at this we followed the theme of Gothic elements within chapter 1 of Wuthering Heights.

The first and most apparent one is the setting, Wuthering Heights itself is described as having windows being 'defended with large jutting stones' and 'grotesque carving lavished over the front' which strikes quite a fearsome image - it sounds like it's more of a castle than just a house following the theme of the Gothic's use of oppressive and over the top environments.

The theme of horror came up next with Mr Lockwood being attacked by the dogs in the family sitting room, this gives the reader a sign that all is not well and ordinary at Wuthering Heights - again this creates a sense of uncertainty of what further troubles are to come.

Another aspect of the lesson was looking at the narrative of Wuthering Heights in depth, we first identified that the whole story is being told retrospectively by Mr Lockwood who from chapter 4 is getting his information from Nelly.

Reliability can first be questioned here because it has been a long time since the events she's recalling took place, also is what Mr Lockwood is telling the reader exactly what Nelly is saying?

The style of the narrative brings up the question of the roles of men and women in the 1800's, even though the story is completely Nelly's it passes through Mr Lockwood before it reaches the reader - this highlights the idea of women being oppressed by men.

This could be also be related to Emily Bronte being forced to write under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell" because female writers weren't allowed to have their work published then.

A woman's words are ignored and considered of no significance until spoken by a man - this is shown in the narrative because where the story is essentially Nelly's, Mr Lockwood tells the reader the story and the only voice we hear is his.

In relation to this topic looked at a sheet comparing a section of Nelly's and Mr Lockwood's narrative.

Nelly as a narrator is more engaging, she is part of the story - you don't just get the story, you get her thoughts, feelings and opinions about everything that's going on as well as her actions and speech.

Even though both narrators are unreliable (due to the filtering of information and the amount of time that has elapsed since the events occurred) Mr Lockwood as a narrator seems less reliable than Nelly, he is also more reserved and comes across as quite assumptive which results in him making quite a few mistakes in judgement to his misfortune - also he is quite inwardly arrogant, he tends to think it more than express it openly.

To close the lesson we then went on to read chapter 2, in this chapter Mr Lockwood returns to Wuthering Heights uninvited for a second visit.

In this chapter a bit more of his personality is shown and he comes across as quite arrogant and a bit of an angry man.

An example of his arrogance is when he talks about Cathy and Hareton and says that 'she has thrown herself away upon that boor, from sheer ignorance that better individuals existed! A sad pity - I must beware how i cause her to regret her choice.'

This statement just emanates pure arrogance and shows that Mr Lockwood considers himself to be a 'better individual' but as well as looking quite conceited and arrogant he made himself look like a fool as well because he was being assumptive about Hareton and Cathy's relationship without even bothering to ask for information himself.

The homework for this lesson was...

Read the article called 'Lockwood: a suitable guide' on eMagazine then answer the following questions.

x What are the authors key points about Lockwood ?

x What are Lockwood's failing as a character/narrator?

x How does Lockwood present himself? Is this realistic?

Lesson 1 - Impressions of Wuthering Heights

In this lesson the first task we initially did was a listening task, whereby we listened to a song named............ Wuthering Heights by Kate bush. The light hearted melody is composed of lyrics where Catherine squeals of her romantic infatuation towards her lover Heathcliff. We begin to see how the novel is seen as a contemporary romantic and lose trace of its gothic conventions- especially to the current world. This is further evidenced in the contemporary plays where the wild barbaric Heathcliff is played by the fun loving Christian Cliff Richards and film reviews describe it as ‘A passion. An obsession. A love that destroyed everyone it touched’.

The next activity however reminded us of the gothic elements of the novel as we took some time to swiftly analyse Bronte’s poems. Bronte in these poems includes no romantic elements henceforth enabling us to gain a better perception on the gothic elements explored in Wuthering Heights. She employ’s many terrifying concepts within these poems such as “shadows of the dead” which eyes can’t see “surrounding her bed”. She also uses many references to the weather, and creating settings where she is confined by the natural world.

We then completed an activity whereby we had to arrange some quotes taken from various points of the story and we begin to realise that Wuthering heights is very much a novel which is cyclical and events seem to reoccur. The main points which we were able to distinguish were:

A refusal to entrapment- In the story all the men (with the exception of Linton Heathcliff) physically and metaphorically refuse to be confined. For example Heathcliff when trapped in thrushcross grange by Edgar he breaks out, similarly when Mr. Lockwood is trapped outside Wuthering Heights he breaks in. However when little Cathy Linton gets trapped inside the Heights she is unable to make her escape without succumbing to the demands of Heathcliff and Isabella is also yielded to a similar situation. It could be argued that this thus represents patriarchal oppression from the male characters of the book.

Nature- Catherine’s descriptions connect closely with Nature. For example when she describes her love for Heathcliff and describes her love for Edgar. (“I am Heathcliff” quote)

Supernatural- Elements of the super natural because of the ghosts etc.
Oppositions

Rich vs. Poor /The Heights (nature) vs. The Grange (culture)/ Religion vs. Atheism /Life vs. Death /Heathcliff- A man or Monster.

Finally to end the lesson we began to read the first chapter of the novel. It was discussed how Gothic narrative structures are very complicated and how this could be seen to add to a sense of TERROR for the reader. It was mentioned how humans have a “dare to know" desire henceforth a structure such as Wuthering Heights causes terror as the narrative gives us a sense of the unknown. The story has bypassed a variation of different narrators before it gets to the reader fundamentally leaving us unaware with reliability of the passing events. It is “a novel that warns against easy judgements and intentionally so”

Elizabeth Gregory says as someone closely involved in the story, Nelly’s account is inevitably coloured by her own opinions about the characters. Having grown up with Heathcliff, Catherine and Hindley, her residual feelings of fondness and of family duty cause her to be more lenient towards them than their behaviour sometimes deserves.

Similarly, it is natural that she should remain fond of the children she has been instrumental in bringing up: she looked after Hareton for the first years of his life, and frequently refers to Cathy, whom she has acted as a mother towards for all of the child’s life, as her “angel” – although her behaviour often suggests she is anything but! Nelly is just as quick to show her disapproval of those characters she dislikes: Linton Heathcliff merits particular scorn – “the worst-tempered bit of a sickly slip that ever struggled into his teens” (chapter 23). Nelly is unable to tell us of his marriage to Cathy, as she finds herself locked up safely out the way while it is taking place.

So while readers may enjoy Nelly’s lively and gossipy narrative style, they would perhaps be best advised to take it with a pinch of salt.

See the following for more information:
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/wuthering/romantic.html- About Romance in the novel
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/wuthering/love.html- About Love/ostensible love.

Chris A

An example of a good scribe post for a year 12 lesson

In this lesson we completed a student survey and discussed our reasons for chosing English as as an A level course as well as our favourite books. These ranged from books studied at school (such as Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Wilde's A Picture of Dorian Gray) to books chosen and read independently. We were also introduced to our teacher's expectations in English and the make up of the course for AS. The first unit is called Dramatic Genres: Tragedy and entails the study of a Shakespearean tragedy - Othello (click on link for a synopsis of the play and other information) and a modern tragedy.

Following this we discussed/brainstormed the concept of tragedy in general terms, coming up with assosiations of sadness, melancholy, death, revenge, depression etc. This informed a discussion of what we might consider 'tragic' and whether things such as the BP oil spill could be deemed 'tragic'. With a general understanding of some ideas of what tragedy might mean we looked at several poems which could be considered to espouse a 'tragic' view of the world or an event. We discussed Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold and the sound of an ebbing sadness Arnold percieves in a world ''where neither joy, nor love, nor light... nor peace' are possible. Key to this discussion was the meeting of WHAT the poem said to us and HOW the poet had shaped his meaning. Here is an animation of Arnold reading his poem.



This led to an analysis of three futher poems which groups will need to get to know well for homework in preparation for teaching them to the class next lesson (Thursday). Futher Homework was to research a definition of tragedy and bring it to the next lesson.

Mr S