1. Key vocabulary: Polyphonic Transgression Uncanny
Big question: How do the structures of Beloved and Dracula contribute to the sense of the Supernatural?
Tasks: To assemble a visual of the structure of both novels which includes use of motifs, Gothic tropes, themes and context
Key vocabulary:
Polyphonic
Transgression
Uncanny

2. What do the following mean? Polyphonic Transgression Uncanny/Heimlich
In what way are these words relevant to Beloved and Dracula?
What do the following mean? Polyphonic Transgression Uncanny/Heimlich
Polyphonic: multiple voices
Transgression: crossing boundaries, uncertainty, shifting identity
Uncanny: has to do with a sense of strangeness, mystery or eeriness. It concerns a sense of unfamiliarity which appears at the very heart of the familiar (or vice versa). It’s a disturbance of the familiar
Heimlich: literally means “homely” or familiar but it can also mean concealed, hidden from sight, secret

3. Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick summarises the features of Gothic writing as follows:
Setting: Often in a Catholic European country. Includes an oppressive ruin or castle in a wild country
Story features: a heroine of sensitivity; her impetuous lover; a tyrannical older man (“with a piercing gaze”) who is intent on imprisonment, rape and murder
There is a great interest in: religious institutions, sleeplike or trancelike states, subterranean spaces and live burial; doubles; the damaging effect of guilt and the discovery of family ties;
Hints of incest
The form: discontinuous and involuted
There are likely to be unnatural echoes or silences
Emphasis placed on the difficulties of communication
Are there any of these in Beloved? Dracula?
Remember these “tropes” can always be “subverted”

4. 19th century belief: Art should have a moral purpose
Rise of “realism” in the 19th century (Ibsen, Flaubert). Moving away from stories about nobility/gods towards those about “real” people
In real life, good doesn’t always prosper. The kind of ending where evil is always defeated runs counter to our sense of reality
One way to deal with this is for a text to function on more than one level
Illusion of real world is offered by providing convincing details of setting and character while suggesting, by means of fantasy, a significant moral dimension. This could be called a “realist aesthetic”
The return of the Gothic in the 19th century is part of a renewed interest in the irrational (dream, fantasy, multiplication of the self). For instance: Frankenstein; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Portrait of Dorian Grey

5. We can reduce “mythical” stories to two sentences, for instance:
A. Frankenstein makes a living creature out of bits of corpses
B. The creature turns against him and runs amok
You try it for Dracula and Beloved . . .
A. Dracula, a monster, sets out to create more vampires
B. After initial success, his attempts are eventually defeated and he is exterminated
A. The ghost of a baby murdered by her mother returns to haunt her
B. The ghost is defeated and in the process her sister is freed

6. What do Frankenstein; Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; The Portrait of Dorian Grey, Dracula and Beloved have in common?
Monsters
Creation
Transgressing the boundaries between life and death

7. Narrative structure
Omniscient narrator is an authoritative, guiding voice
What happens when you take it away?
Gaps, puzzles (voices not heard; newspaper articles, ships’ logs)
Anxieties, uncertainties, distrust
First person narrator gives immediacy and increases the sense of horror
Polyphonic text/multiple narrators creates confusion and distrust

8. Quilts and slavery
We need to remember before we move on. Only by remembering the past can there be liberation from its burden.
Memory is by its very nature fractured and unclear

9. Time to work now!!! Beloved: Blu, Michelle, Tobe, Maya
1. Recreate Beloved as a linear, chronological narrative
2. Create a structure “map”
Dracula: Lachlan, Megan, Ghenwa
1. Create a structure map

10. Beloved: Part 1 Section 1
Heading: (see following slide)
Themes
Motifs used
What happens
POV
How is their voice conveyed?
Effect
Past
The taking of the milk
Present
Gothic tropes
Key moments, page numbers and quotes
Context

11. Dracula: Pt 1
Themes
Motifs used
What happens
Narrator/Form
How is their voice conveyed?
Effect
Gothic tropes
Key moments, page numbers and quotes
Context

12. Headings for Beloved Chaos Rememorying Exorcising the past
Loss of Self
Unburying the past
Looking to the future
Reclamation of Self
Atonement
Understanding
Order
resroration