Hi folks,
The point of today's lesson and your homework is to look at an aspect of Dickens' language and style in Great Expectations. Even though it isn't a Gothic novel like Dracula or Frankenstein, Dickens weaves Gothic motifs and references throughout the book. Pip's mind is full of ghosts, death and guilt, even as a child. He imagines goblins outside his window, phantoms on the marshes, the hands of the dead people rising up out of the earth. He also first sees Magwitch rise up from among the gravestones in the churchyard. The marshes themselves are an obscure and sublime scene - huge, empty, but shrouded in mist and mystery.
There's a very good chance that you'll find elements of the Gothic in your exam extract, and this will give you opportunities to discuss the wider motif of the gothic in the book. If you can then interpret the significance of the Gothic, you'll be hitting the top bands on the mark scheme. You can talk about Pip's obsessive and excessive love for Estella, and the idea of the uncanny and the revenant. Even Dickens' use of repetition has a gothic feel and purpose - the sections that describe Miss Havisham are hypnotically repetitive and help create the sensation of echoing words and images that recur throughout the book.
Your homework is to add to your notes about the Gothic in Great Expectations. I'd like you to read this article first.
Still unsure about what the Gothic is? Try watching this video. If you want to go into even more depth, check out this lecture by Gothic academic David Punter, here.
You can find the video from today's lesson here.
If you want to revise the Gothic vocabulary and concepts you learnt in year 9, you can find them here. This one on gothic key words is definitely worth revising.
Still stuck? Can't find that gothic quote? Try using the Great Expectations Hyper-Concordance to search the text for gothic motifs. E.g. try searching for 'phantom', 'spectre', 'death', 'creature' etc.
Finally, here is the task slide from the lesson:
Mr M
The point of today's lesson and your homework is to look at an aspect of Dickens' language and style in Great Expectations. Even though it isn't a Gothic novel like Dracula or Frankenstein, Dickens weaves Gothic motifs and references throughout the book. Pip's mind is full of ghosts, death and guilt, even as a child. He imagines goblins outside his window, phantoms on the marshes, the hands of the dead people rising up out of the earth. He also first sees Magwitch rise up from among the gravestones in the churchyard. The marshes themselves are an obscure and sublime scene - huge, empty, but shrouded in mist and mystery.
There's a very good chance that you'll find elements of the Gothic in your exam extract, and this will give you opportunities to discuss the wider motif of the gothic in the book. If you can then interpret the significance of the Gothic, you'll be hitting the top bands on the mark scheme. You can talk about Pip's obsessive and excessive love for Estella, and the idea of the uncanny and the revenant. Even Dickens' use of repetition has a gothic feel and purpose - the sections that describe Miss Havisham are hypnotically repetitive and help create the sensation of echoing words and images that recur throughout the book.
Your homework is to add to your notes about the Gothic in Great Expectations. I'd like you to read this article first.
Still unsure about what the Gothic is? Try watching this video. If you want to go into even more depth, check out this lecture by Gothic academic David Punter, here.
You can find the video from today's lesson here.
If you want to revise the Gothic vocabulary and concepts you learnt in year 9, you can find them here. This one on gothic key words is definitely worth revising.
Still stuck? Can't find that gothic quote? Try using the Great Expectations Hyper-Concordance to search the text for gothic motifs. E.g. try searching for 'phantom', 'spectre', 'death', 'creature' etc.
Finally, here is the task slide from the lesson:
Mr M
