Book the First: The Period A Tale of Two Cities Book the First: The Period

** Chapter One of A Tale of Two Cities lays the framework of the setting for the novel. Don’t be discouraged by the first chapter!**

Book the First: The Period Use of Parallelism in the first paragraph (Best of times…worst of times). Relates to the contradictions of life in the year of 1775. “Season of Light” (Age of Enlightenment)—“season of Darkness” (representing the superstition of the age as well as in Dickens’ contemporary society).

Book the First: The Period Ruling powers in France and England in 1775. “King with a large jaw, queen with a plain face” (George III and Charlotte Sophia of England. Ruling between 1760-1820). “King with a large jaw, queen with a fair face” (Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of France 1774-1793)

Book the First: The Period Dickens’s jabs at superstition in HIS era: “Mrs. Southcott” (1750-1814). Writer of prophecies and predictions. Believed that she was pregnant with the “second savior.” “Prophetic Private in the Life Guards.” Also made predictions: Predicted that London would be destroyed in 1750 (1750 the year of Mrs. Southcott’s birth).

Book the First: The Period “Cock-lane ghost” Urban legend. Ghost of a murdered woman believed to have haunted “Cock Lane.” “Congress of British Subjects in America.” First meeting of the Continental Congress takes place in Philadelphia on October 26, 1776.

Book the First: The Period France… she entertained herself … as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off… because he had not kneeled… to a procession of monks…” Refers to the execution of a French Soldier (Chevalier De Barre) during the year 1776. Introducing the base corruption of politics and clergy in France at the time. “Rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees… already marked by the Woodman to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history.” Alludes to the invention of the guillotine.