Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ballad “Christabel” includes various dreams, visions, and trance states. Focusing on specific examples in the text, consider the significance of these dreams and trance states. How do they shape your interpretation(s) of the ballad? Feel free to draw from the “Age of Romanticism” reading to shape your response. 2. Close Read one stanza of either Felicia Hemans’s “The Image in Lava” or “The Effigies!’ For an interpretive focus, consider how the poem comments on how women and men are remembered in history. 3. Select two of the stories or poems from the section on the Gothic. Using specific examples from these texts (and clearly identifying the author, title, and page number you’re referencing), address some of the features these texts have in common, and reflect on how these features help you understand “the Gothic” mode and its significance in the Romantic Era. Make sure to quote at least 2-3 passages from your chosen texts. 4. In what ways do you see Mary Shelley drawing from John Milton’s Paradise Lost for her own characters in Frankenstein? How do the allusions to Paradise Lost shape your understanding of Shelley’s characters and add to the meaning of Frankenstein as a whole? 5. What are some feelings (anxieties, emotions, fears, etc.) that Lionel Verney in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man shares with the Creature in Frankenstein? What is the effect of these commonalities; i.e., how do you interpret the significance of these feelings across both texts? Quote and respond to at least one passage from each text in your answer.
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