The Castle of Otranto

Dali's The Castle of Otranto

We can find many inexplicable or improbable events in The Castle of Otranto, as well as a supernatural atmosphere that contrasts with the realism of other novels, so The Castle of Otranto is full of information and details that make it “true” or, at least, a bit more trustable. Reality was somehow linked to information and details. I find this very interesting, as Swift did the samewhen he wrote Gulliver’s Travels -maybe in a different way though- , and actually I talked about it in another post.

As people did not think that reading false or “unreal” stories was worthy, many writers had to claim the story true, and Walpole did it by giving many details and by saying that the book was originally a manuscript. I think that one important device is the original title:  The Castle of Otranto, A Story. Translated by William Marshal, Gent. From the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto. It tells us not only about the original novel, but also about the writer and his profession. If readers take the narrator as a real person, they would probably believe the story itself to be true.

By making the story “real”, Walpole attracted many readers that, otherwise, would not be interested in reading that kind of stories since, as I said before, many people thought that “fake” stories were not good stories, and that reading them was unworthy.

Realism was somehow linked to density of detail and to actions that could possibly happen, so many writers of the period used this technique in order to make their stories read.

Early novels

In the Restoration period the main form of literature was drama, but at the beginning of the XVIIIth century a new form of literature started to rise: the novel. Early novels dealt with different subjects, and although literature was intended to please and instruct, the main aim of the literature of the beginning of the XVIIIth was to please. The characters that appear in the early novels are type or flat characters, characters that are familiar to everyone and that are engaged in different situations which are created, as I said before, to please.

I think that one of the most important things that novel changed was the point of view. In comedies, the characters are somehow responsible of their opinions; we can find many different ways of thinking that are attached to a character. In the novel, the point of view of the narrator is imposed and, although the characters “speak for themselves,” the reader is conditioned by the way the narrator tells the story. This made difficult for the readers of the period to differentiate between the writer and the narrator itself. Luckily, now we know what fiction is, and this is an important thing if we want to read a fiction story, although we are still conditioned by the writer: if we don not like him/her, probably we will not read his/her book.

Gulliver's Travels, a real story.

One of the things I find very interesting is the way in which Swift makes the reader to be a participant in the story by making it “real”. There is a mix of fantasy and reality, and during the whole novel, we feel that the story that Gulliver is telling us actually happened, as he is all the time addressing to the reader and talking about things that could happen anywhere. 

The first fact is that Swift signed the book as Lemuel Gulliver and wrote it in first person. This made difficult not to believe these stories and, moreover, not to think that Swift and Gulliver are actually the same person. The portraits of the nations, the accuracy and the use of real places are the devices that Swift uses in order to make the reader believe his story, his travels.

I have to say that this is one of my favourite books but, actually, I don’t know if I would like the story to be true: I do not like most of the creatures depicted on the travels! And, of course, I would not like to find myself mirrored in a Yahoo!

Pedro Navaja

These days I’ve been listening to a song called Pedro Navaja. Maybe the tittle is not familiar to you, but I’m sure that if I say “La vida te da sorpresas, sorpresas te da la vida…” you would recognize it immediately!

Apparently, it is not related to Gay’s play The Beggar’s Opera, but I thought that, somehow, it was. Although the story has apparently nothing to do with the Beggar’s Opera, the main two characters of the song are a thief (Pedro Navaja) and a prostitute, and the story is told with a kind of “humourous” tone.

I am quite curious, so I searched some information and found that actually Pedro Navaja is based on a song called Mackie Messer, which means Mack The Knife and written by Bertolt Bretch for The Threepenny Opera. Actually, The Threepenny Opera is an adaptation of Gay’s opera, in which the plot is nearly the same, maybe a bit more rude and cruel, but the songs are completely renewed. “Pedro Navaja” is then an adaptation of the adaptation of the songs that appear in Beggar's Opera.

 

I hope you enjoy the song; I can’t get it off my mind!

 

WEBS CONSULTED:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Navaja

http://www.maestravida.com/pedronavaja.html 

http://hendidur.blogspot.com.es/2007/05/lotte-lenya-mack-knife-mackie-navaja.html

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

http://www.csj.ualberta.ca/imaginations/?p=2967

http://solojazz.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/pedro-navaja-mack-the-knife-mckie-messier-y-el-tenebroso-capitan-macheath/

Mocking the fashionable world

One of the aspects I like about The Rape of the Lock is the way Pope mocks high society and fashionable world by, apparently, describing its grandeur and contrasting small and great things. As we all know, The Rape of the Lock is considered as one of the best mock epic poems in English literature. The characters are seen as the heroes, surrounded by their subjects and weapons, and we could read the poem as a war between Belinda and the Lord.  

Normally, a heroic poem deals with important subjects, but the subject in The Rape of the Lock -the robbery of a lock of hair- does not seem important at all and is apparently ridiculous. The form is heroic, but the subject is not. Pope deals with this “ridiculous” theme as a very significant matter and uses high style of language to tell us about the incident. The relation between the insignificant event and the high style of the language can be seen as a comparison on how people give importance to the appearances rather than to real virtue.

As I said before, Pope mocks high society by describing its grandeur. However, by doing this, he also makes us aware of the beauties and charms of this world.

I would like to quote a couplet I like and I think it sums up what I am writing here:

“Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,

Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide”