Brain Dump

- Much Ado About Nothing(Shakespeare)

Set in the 1500's, it features a few main characters. Claudio, Hero, Beatrice, Benedick, Leonato, and Don Jon are the main characters in the play. The play is a tragicomedy which is a story that has all the potential to be a tragedy, but instead of ending with death it ends with marriage or something else a little more lighthearted. Some issues that are addressed in the play are Courtly Romance and some class issues. In order for this play to work, the audience has to go along with what the play wants you to believe. If you were seeing it, you would have to assume that, even though the disguise is terrible, the audience has to go along with it. There are a lot of instances in the play where two characters' personalities would be completley similair to and they would attract to each other. (Beatrice-Benedick, Hero-Claudio)

- Comedy

The comedy that we dealt with has to do with Buffoonery, puns, quibbling, stereotypes, role reversal, and the other characteristics of comedy. To be funny, you have to appeal to the intellectual side of someones mind while using these characteristics of comedy, also you have to appear harmless or it will not able to be funny. Also, your joke has to go along with the joke-receiver's current surroundings .

-19th Century British Lit Unit(Dorian Gray, The Time Machine,, Frankenstein)

During the Nineteenth Century in England, we saw the rise of the scientific mind and a great increase in scientific interest and an almost decline in religious interests. The individual was more important during this period. Instead of trying to fabricate a story out of fictional elements, stories were written in a way that readers could relate sort of, but were obviously not historically accurate. In these novels, the character usually separates himself and tries to achieve peace through something. The novels challenge faith and religion and sort of represents them as the protagonist somewhat. Also, nature plays a very important role in the books as a calming agent. What i mean is that whenever someone needs guidance or healing, they seek nature for help.

-Romanticism

A movement that happened in the late 18th early 19th century in England. It was mostly represented in artistic/intellectual ideas. It emphasizes emotion, appreciation of nature, challenging social convention, and also imagination. Some Romantic ideals are isolationism, life and death, emotion over reason, fantasy, individuality, and psychology. There was a lot of industrial growth that causes urbanization. Really it was an industrial revolution and that caused all of these ideas. Also, education was a very hard thing to come by if you were not rich, white, and a boy. Magazines became popular. Also, some famous authors were Lord Byron, Wordsworth, Blake, and Coleridge.

-Victorianism

This period was in reaction to Romanticism and lasted during the Reign of Queen Victoria. Traditional values were more important during this time along with strong gender roles and spiritualism. The middle class rose, and so the class system was affected. The writer's approaches to the morality issues of the time differed, but ultimately that is wear the writing ends up. Darwin's theory of evolution was released during this time and it caused a major conflict centered around the questioning of religion.

- Modernism

Like most movements, it is a reaction to the movement before it; in this case, it is Victorianism.  It occurred between WWI and WWII. Really what it is all about is being freed from the chains of everyday life and the tradition and structure of the English society at that time. Yeats was a famous Modernist writer.The use of imagery was very important in modern writing. Some characteristics of Modernism are open form, free verse, discontinuous narrative and others.  It was very present in the art of the time.

-Postmodernism

No way, it was a reaction to modernism and also to World War II. There was a lot of separation between high and low culture for the same society. There was also a lot of use of irony, "black humor", intertextuality, and hyper-realism.

- Heart of Darkness

Written by Joseph Conrad, a frame narrative that tells the story of a man who travels through an ivory company into the Congo on a quest for ivory. It shows the way that people viewed each other, or specifically how the Europeans viewed the Congolese natives. It also incorporates an idea of Alienation because one of the main characters, Marlow sort of seems separate in mind from everybody else on the voyage.  The story tells how colonialism affected the natives and also how workers were treated by Belgians. Also religion comes up periodically throughout this book as a sort of reasoning for certain actions. Darkness is a big source of symbolism throughout the book as well.

- Waiting for Godot

- Another tragicomedy, written by Samuel Beckett in a language that was not his first language. The play contains only two characters, Vladimir and Estragon. They are two people that are supposed to symbolize how life sucks and they are just talking and ultimately they are waiting for a man named Godot. Godot never shows up and we don't really know what the true identity of Godot really is. This play is able to be interpreted a huge variety of ways because of the way it is written. This play relates to existentialism in that it shows that life doesn't really have a point and we should just suck it up and have fun.


For the exam we need to be able to relate all the texts to their time periods and be able to identify certain characteristics of different time periods and use those to tell how the books relate to their time periods. Also, be able to talk about how each time period came from the one before and led to the next one with historical events and ideals. Also, answer the whole question on the exam. Make sure you hit all the parts of the questions.