This document contains detailed analysis, context and in-depth tragic convention exploration for the Drama section of the Edexcel A-Level English Literature course. Further support is given to students with the inclusion of quotation banks and critical theory providing students with the foundations...
● Mary’s parents William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft are both considered radicals
● Mary Shelley’s mother died 10 days after her birth and Mary blamed herself for the death of
her mother
● Radical thinkers had been influenced by the French revolution where a repressed and
brutalised lower class had overthrown the king and the aristocracy in the name of fairer
treatment
● Mary and Percy first met in a graveyard. Percy was prevented from seeing Mary due to her
father and attempted suicide twice before the both fled and journeyed across Europe.
● On Mary’s journey across Europe she travelled close to the castle Frankenstein in Germany.
● Mary gave birth prematurely and her first daughter died a few days after birth. Her second
child William died as a result of cholera.
● Lord Byron was a friend of Percy’s and he invited Mary, Percy and Shelley’s sister Claire to
stay at his Villa on Lake Geneva.
● While at Lake Geneva Mary’s half sister committed suicide and 2 months after her sister
drowned herself in a lake.
● Mary gave birth to her daughter who died soon after due to an illness.
● Mary and Percy left for Italy where she gave birth to Percy who was her only surviving child.
● Percy drowned in the Gulf of Spezia and Mary returned to England. She wrapped Percy’s
heart in pages of his last poem and carried it with her until the day she died.
, ● The enlightenment was a movement in the 18 th century that rejected the idea that the
church and king should have control over peoples lives.
● The main principles were liberty, a belief in human progress and improving human
happiness and democracy with an emphasis on scientific and rational thought.
● Enlightenment philosopher John Locke thought of the human mind as a “blank slate” at birth
not created by God but a construct of our society.
● Romanticism was focused on emotion, individualism and experience celebrating nature.
● Violence arising from the French revolution caused Romantics to separate themselves from
society and immerse themselves in nature reflecting on the awe of nature.
● In 19th century Gothic fiction attention moved to the horrors that lurk in our own personality.
The horrors of a second self acts as a figure of repression.
● The Enlightenment taught people to dismantle the belief system with mankind possessing
his own selfhood displacing God and having no boundaries.
● Gothic writers love the breakdown of boundaries and limits and in the exploration of what is
forbidden
● A Romantic sublime landscape is awe inspiring and overwhelming in grandeur and observing
it feel uplifted and healed.
● A Gothic sublime landscape leads to a sickening sense of decline and decay: a terrifying awe.
● The 18th century sublime always implied the threat of lost control.
● Myth Of Prometheus
● Feeling sorry for mans naked and weak state Prometheus stole fire from Mount Olympus to
give to humans helping to form civilisations. As a result of his crimes Zeus gave Prometheus
an eternal punishment of having his livers eaten out by eagles and making it regrow every
night
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