Myths and heroes - Bac Anglais LV1

Myths and heroes

This year we have learn four notion, myths and heroes,  the idea of progress, spaces and exchanges and finally places and form of power.

Today im gonna talk about the notion who specack about myths and heroes, in first i would like to give a definition of that notion. Biefly, a myth can be defined as a story about gods or heroes, it can be a popular belief or a tradition or a false notion. Then, a hero is a person admired for is achievments, noble qualities and great courage.

To speack about this notion, we have chosen to speck of the gothic litterature and fiction.

A gothic fiction is a genre of litterature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the english author horace walpole, with his 1764 novel « the castle of otranto ».

There are several gothic history, like vampire story or ghost story like twilight or The mysterious room.

So, today we ask how have romantic ideas and scientific experiments given birth to gothic literature and movies ?

In first, im gonna talk about the characteristics of gothic fiction, than about famous characters of gothic fiction and finally about what makes a great scary story.

The characteristics of a gothic fiction :

The gothic litterature combine horror and romance. The ingredients of a gothic story are multiple, in first there is a helpless victim who is faced with a cruel torturer,  then the story can take place in a castle with underground passages and catacombs, in a gothic story we can find an oppressive atmosphere created by shadows or flickering candles and frequently the scene take place in extreme landscapes, like high mountains, thick forests or icy wastelands.

We can give the example of the story of the myrterious room, this story recounts the aventure of a man in an hotel. This man take a room in the hotel. When he took the room the woman at the front of the desk say to the man to not look inside the next room to his under any  circunstances. But the man tried to open the door but it was closed so he look throught the keyhole and saw a woman who was totally white. The second time he was watching he saw a distinct, unmoving, red color. Later the woman at the front of the desk tells him that husband killed his wife in this room and this woman had red eyes and she was white all over.

Famous characters of gothic fiction :

We have leanr some characters of gothic fiction like dracula, dracula was created in 1897 by bram stacker's. The character of dracula was born from three sources of inspiration. Irish tates, european folkhlore and a nightmare about a living dead man eating human beings. Dracula is a vampire who lives in a castle in transylvania.

We have learn in class other books and movie fron gothic litterature like the story of frankenstein, henry frankestein was a scientist who wanted to created life from body parts.

But instead of giving an healthy braid to its creation he has given a brain murder.

The second story we have study is the doctor jekyll's confession, this doctor was convinced that all men were truly two, good and evil. He was determined to separate the two so he created a potion who can do this. But he tested the potion on him but the bad part took over ad commit murders.

This stories are terrifing but had all different characters and forms of narration.

What make a great scary story :

To my mind, a good scary movie start with a banal family or person life and during the movie all the elements come weird and terrifed. For me more history more advance it degrades to become really scary. The things i find most frightening is the spirits and ghosts and particulary the little girl. The most terryfing movie i have ever seen is probably esther, its the story of an orphan girl adopted by a sweet familly and this little named esther kill every body, its just a really terryfing history.

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