Seven Gothic Tales - Activity
Today (Monday) we are going to chat about the Gothic Tales. Please participate in the discussion for credit.
The Seven Tales are:
The Deluge at Norderney
The Roads Round Pisa
The Supper at Elsinore
The Poet
The Dreamers
The Monkey
The Old Chevalier
Karen Blixen wrote the Seven Gothic Tales under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen, perhaps so that the publisher would take her work seriously. Isak in Hebrew means "one who laughs" and it seems that Blixen did indeed get the last laugh on her public. Published in Denmark in 1935, the book was a best seller and she rocketed to fame. Some critics indicate that there is a bit of "one who laughs" in her stories. There are ironic and humor, even in the tragic stories. Dinesen, like her characters, is hiding behind her storytelling.
We can consider why an author decides to hide in historical or early settings. In a world so very realistic, writers sometimes suggest that fiction attempts to present the truth in mythic, fantastical packages. The Seven Tales are meant to be taken together, please realize that. Although you were to only read one due to time constraints, the book works as a united whole, similar to Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine or Martian Chronicles, or James Joyce's Dubliners.
The book begins with a flood: an allusion to the Bible story, where four upper class vacationers are marooned. They spend the night telling tales that reveal their true selves through stories that offer more mood and tone than action. Dinesen's description is the focus here, not the action or plot of these stories. The first story suggests the importance of story telling: which is what the collection seems to be mainly about. Like the characters in the story who discover who they really are through the telling of a tale (similar to Chaucer), Dinesen seems to suggest that we, too, as readers discover who we are as well through storytelling.
As "Deluge" deals with identity amidst tragic circumstances (waiting to be overwhelmed by a flood), so, too, does "The Dreamers" deal with identity. The other stories, "The Roads Round Pisa" with its ironic double-switching ends with the Prince shooting his gun up toward heaven, as if dueling with fate, and "The Supper at Elsinore" involves the common trappings of the Gothic story with castles, ghosts (the literary equivalent of an unfinished or unfulfilled past), demons ("The Monkey"), knights, maidens, unrequited love, threatened chastity, and, of course, as in "The Poet" each story deals with fate.
The Seven Tales are:
The Deluge at Norderney
The Roads Round Pisa
The Supper at Elsinore
The Poet
The Dreamers
The Monkey
The Old Chevalier
Karen Blixen wrote the Seven Gothic Tales under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen, perhaps so that the publisher would take her work seriously. Isak in Hebrew means "one who laughs" and it seems that Blixen did indeed get the last laugh on her public. Published in Denmark in 1935, the book was a best seller and she rocketed to fame. Some critics indicate that there is a bit of "one who laughs" in her stories. There are ironic and humor, even in the tragic stories. Dinesen, like her characters, is hiding behind her storytelling.
We can consider why an author decides to hide in historical or early settings. In a world so very realistic, writers sometimes suggest that fiction attempts to present the truth in mythic, fantastical packages. The Seven Tales are meant to be taken together, please realize that. Although you were to only read one due to time constraints, the book works as a united whole, similar to Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine or Martian Chronicles, or James Joyce's Dubliners.
The book begins with a flood: an allusion to the Bible story, where four upper class vacationers are marooned. They spend the night telling tales that reveal their true selves through stories that offer more mood and tone than action. Dinesen's description is the focus here, not the action or plot of these stories. The first story suggests the importance of story telling: which is what the collection seems to be mainly about. Like the characters in the story who discover who they really are through the telling of a tale (similar to Chaucer), Dinesen seems to suggest that we, too, as readers discover who we are as well through storytelling.
As "Deluge" deals with identity amidst tragic circumstances (waiting to be overwhelmed by a flood), so, too, does "The Dreamers" deal with identity. The other stories, "The Roads Round Pisa" with its ironic double-switching ends with the Prince shooting his gun up toward heaven, as if dueling with fate, and "The Supper at Elsinore" involves the common trappings of the Gothic story with castles, ghosts (the literary equivalent of an unfinished or unfulfilled past), demons ("The Monkey"), knights, maidens, unrequited love, threatened chastity, and, of course, as in "The Poet" each story deals with fate.
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