Third Post: Rebel Literary Works.

First of all I want to explain the title of this post. As all of you know, The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera written by John Gay that satirizes Italian opera. So in my third post I'm going to talk about other literary works that emerged to satirize a specific literary genre or sub-genre, so in a way, they are rebel pieces.

The first work I'm going to deal with is The Rape of the Lock. As we have studied, this mock-epic narrative poem was written by Alexander Pope in order to parody the serious, elevated style of the classical epic poem–such as The Iliad or The Odyssey.

The second literary work is Gulliver's Travels, a novel written by Jonathan Swift. Although this novel has been treated as a children's story, it is in fact both a satire on human nature and a parody of the travellers' tales literary sub-genre.

The third work I'm going to deal with is The Tragedy of Tragedies or The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great, which is a play written by Henry Fielding that satirizes the absurdities of bad, and even good, English tragedies, like for example Hamlet.

The last literary work is a Spanish one. Don Quixote is a novel written by Miguel de Cervantes that emerged to satirize the popular sub-genre of that time, the chivalric romance, a style of heroic prose and verse narrative work.

To conclude, I hope you enjoy this post and also I would like you to find it very useful and interesting. At least, I have learned a lot about "rebel" literary works.

Second post: The Rape of the Lock Vs. The Divine Comedy

Dear readers, I have decided to compare the two epic works that appear in the title of this post, my second post, and I hope you enjoy it. I know that all of you have read  The Rape of the Lock, our second reading, but perhaps you don't know very much about The Divine Comedy. This is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and 1321. 

As you can easily infer, both of them are epic poems, so they share the typical characteristics of this kind of literary work; but the way these characteristics are presented is a little bit different.

The first feature is the invocation of the muse. In The Rape of the Lock the muse invoked is Pope's friend, John Caryll; while in The Divine Comedy, Dante invokes his love, Beatrice. 

The second feature is the division of the poems into cantos. The English poem contains only five cantos, very few if we compare them with the thirty- four cantos in which the Italian poem is divided.

The third feature is the account of a voyage. In Pope's work, the voyage is presented through the river Thames and in Dante's work it is presented in a more spiritual way: Dante starts his journey in Hell, then he goes to Purgatory and finally he ascends into Heaven.

The fourth feature is the participation of deities or spirits in the action. In The Rape of the Lock spirits like sylphs, gnomes and nymphs intervene in it, while in The Divine Comedy creatures like for example the harpies and the furies are the one who participate.

The fifth and final feature I'm going to deal with is the mentioning of mythological personages. In Pope's work appears Thalestris and in the italian work appears personages like Cerberus, Ulysses, Achilles, etc.

I would like to finish up by saying that both of them are considered masterpieces so, as you have studied The Rape of the Lock, I encourage you to read Dante's work, one of my favourite books.

First post: Imoinda's strength.

Dear readers, as you can see in the title, my first post is about Imoinda's strength. As you know, last week we took part in a discussion about our first reading, Oroonoko, and one of the topics we dealt with was the weakness of women. Some people thought that Imoinda is a weak woman because she is always obeying Oroonoko's orders and, in a way, she is always behind him, she does not think for herself. In my opinion, this is not true, and I would even say that she is stronger than Oroonoko. Now, I give you my reasons.

Firstly, she is doubly enslaved. Once, she is enslaved by her king, Oroonoko's grandfather, who falls in love with her and for this reason, he wants to marry her. And in this situation, Imoinda shows her strength by keeping her virginity until Oroonoko arrives at the Otan, although she knows that if the king catches them, they will probably die.

Secondly, she is the person who tries to kill the governor by shooting a poisoned arrow when the slave revolt takes place. Although she hurts him in the shoulder, she does not kill him because an Indian woman sucks the poison. This in an heroic act because even not Oroonoko dares to do it.

And finally, she is a strong woman because she is the only one who remains with Oroonoko till the end of her life and the only one who never betrays him. She shows her strength again when she agrees to be killed by her husband for not being a slave anymore.

To conclude,  I say that with these three reasons I think I have proved that Imoinda is not a weak woman but the opposite.

Reason for this name.

I have chosen the name of 'Ana-Imoinda' for a simple reason. I think that all of you know which is the reason for 'Ana', but I tell you just in case: obviously, it is my name! So, I will focus on the name of 'Imoinda'. Imoinda is a character of Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, the short story I think all of you have already read, haven't you?
Well, it is an exotic name that has attracted my atention and for this reason I have thought that it would be interesting if I put it as my blog's name.
See you soon!