Calling Ellbell, or other knowledgeable bookies

[kickassangel]

I'm preparing a unit for 6th formers about gothic lit, and want to look at the relgious influences, e.g. the duality of human nature and how we strive for good, but are seduced by the bad. Do you know any good resources? i want to focus on the lit & linguistic devices of the genre, and also look at how the genre has developed over time, with how this relates to real life influences (including religious teaching). Any suggetsions to help me put together a book list, or do a little more research, gratefully accepted.

there must be someone who knows about gothic lit?

You could start \link{http://vos.ucsb.edu\here} and follow the religion and literature links. What other things will they be reading for this part of the course?

they read dracula next year, and have to produce two original pieces of writing based on a theme, so we do gothic. they can't write a complete short story or a poem, but ANYTHING else which demonstrates theri literary prowess is OK.

Thanks for the link - i spent 2 hours on this the other night & just kept getting wikipedia thrown my way!

Good luck with it.

Hello KAA

Sorry I didn't see this. A lot going on in RL at the moment, so trying to stay away from MN a bit. I'm not really the best person to help you out here... my knowledge is pretty much restricted to medieval stuff. I did find the following books, which might be interesting/useful:

A Companion to the Gothic, ed. by David Punter

The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, ed. by Jerrold Hogle

On the religious background, have you considered looking at St Augustine's Confessions? Augustine is eminently readable, and the Confessions are not even very long. Augustine, before his conversion to orthodox Catholicism, was a Manichaean. Manichaeism focuses on duality and the divisions between good/bad, light/darkness, etc., which might be relevant.

I think that it would also be really interesting to look at depictions of Satan in literature (Dante, Milton, etc.). But then... I'm slightly (just slightly ) obsessed.

(sorry kaa! mini-hijack )

kaa, sounds very interesting - you might find \link{http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415092191/qid=1148767599/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-2869145-0633452#product-details\this} is a good place to start...
hth

FIT... am going to CAT you. Bis bald (just showin' off... my German is non-existent really!)

Sorry, KAA... Just thought that there's an interesting book by Alison Morgan called Dante and the Medieval Other World. It talks about medieval accounts or 'visions' of the afterlife, and IIRC (haven't looked at it for a while) at the end has a series of potted summaries of the various different accounts of Hell (and Purgatory and Heaven, but mainly Hell) that she refers to. All the comparisons with Dante are probaly too much detail for you, but the little summaries might be interesting. Could imagine photocopying the more interesting ones and letting your students look at them as inspiration before maybe thinking about their own ideas of Hell.

I don't know if you want to involve art at all, but there is a lot of stuff out there (no refs ATM, but will see what I can find if you're interested) on artistic representations of and/or illustrations of Dante(and others... but, like I said, I have a limited field of vision!). These extend into the C19th and are therefore relevant to your theme too, perhaps. (Most famous 'dark' story from Dante's Inferno to be represented - frequently - in art is probably that of Ugolino, who may or may not have eaten his own children.

\link{http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=www.studiolo.org/MMA-Ugolino/DA000826-1530-03_m.jpg&imgrefurl=www.studiolo.org/MMA-Ugolino/Ugolino.htm&h=640&w=538&sz=30&tbnid=IaD4UKosuWTJuM:&tbnh=135&tbnw=113&hl=en&start=2&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dugolino%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN\This is Carpeaux's Ugolino}

\link{http://user.chollian.net/~rodin87/images/ugolino.jpg\Rodin}

\link{http://www.capurromrc.it/dore/70ugolino.jpg\This is Dore}

\link{http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=www.dalionline.com/hell23sm.jpg&imgrefurl=www.dalionline.com/hell.html&h=125&w=90&sz=2&tbnid=6Fefv7thPRPymM:&tbnh=84&tbnw=60&hl=en&start=382&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dugolino%26start%3D380%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN\Dali}

\link{http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=www.dante-inferno.net/ImagesLibr/jps%27s%2520of%2520etch./Cant.33.JPG&imgrefurl=www.dante-inferno.net/Pages/CantoPages/CANTO.33.html&h=533&w=426&sz=38&tbnid=NEtoO5Ih_b8wzM:&tbnh=129&tbnw=103&hl=en&start=14&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dugolino%2Bdante%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN\ and another}

\link{http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/textpopup/inf3301.html\And the story is here.}

many, many thanks. yes, i want to focus on the duality aspect, how it shows the struggle of the human spirit between right & wrong (also think it fits with 2 short written pieces for coursework). i shall have to spend time on this over half term - the screening at school is ridiculous ( i often can't get on here).

was trying to organise trip to Tate Britain, but management wouldn't let me! thought it would give a v good overview of the links between lit/art & rl, paticularly as they do free lecture tours (which management didn't believe me about!)

thanks for all the ideas, i shall be doing some reading in the next week.

Good luck with it, KAA.

I'm pretty sure motherinferior is very well informed on this - nearly did a PhD on something very similar.