Exploring the Gothic for A2

 I hope you enjoyed this classic poem, and the macabre illustrations!  This is clearly an influence for Shelley as she quotes it on a number of occasions in Frankenstein.  I think there are a number of thematic links that can be drawn between the texts, and this is what I’d like you to focus on here.

Add a comment on this post (not on your own blog), answering the following questions which ask you to compare this text to Frankenstein.   Due by the lesson on Friday 28th March.

1. What links can you make between the settings in both texts?
2. What links can you make between the Ancient Mariner and any one of the three main narrators in Frankenstein?
3. What similarities would you say the texts have in terms of Gothic ‘features’?
4. If you are posting after others have posted, have a go at responding to their points – what do you agree or disagree with?  Or if you are one of the first to post, ask questions of the people yet to post… Or do both! 

Extension: come back later and see what the others have put – go crazy and post a second message!

Task deadline:  Monday 17th March at 2.05 PM (end of lunch)

Read the attached Adobe document (Acrobat reader is free to download online if you don’t already have it on your computer – or print this out at school).  It is about child language acquisition, which is not something you have to know the details of in this course.  However, it provides an interesting ‘way in’ to considering the monster’s development as narrated in chapters 11 to 16.

language-acquisition.pdf

So what I’d like you to do is read the attached file and then respond to this post by posting a comment (post it here, not on your own blog), answering the following questions:

• In what ways does the monster’s development correspond to what we now know about child language acquisition? (remember these ideas were not around in Shelley’s time)
• In what ways is his development highly unrealistic in terms of what we know?
• What do you think Shelley is trying to say about the monster, Victor and society as a whole by highlighting the monster’s development in such detail?