Feb 13, · Make sure to use specific references from the text to support your claims. Choose a character in “The Alchemist” who does not appear at all, or only briefly appears, and explain the role of that character in the novel. Discuss how the character affects the action, theme, or the development of other blogger.comted Reading Time: 5 mins The Alchemist (Coelho) Essay Questions 1 The prologue of The Alchemist includes a unique retelling of the myth of Narcissus. The traditional understanding of 2 What is the significance of the fact that Santiago hails from the southern part of Spain? Do you think that the 3 Fatima, Santiago's Estimated Reading Time: 8 mins The Alchemist Essay Topics. 1. The prologue tells the story of Narcissus. How does this well-known myth relate to the main narrative of the novel? 2. Many of the characters in the novel are motivated by money and material wealth. How does this motivation relate to the various religions in the 3
The Alchemist (Johnson): Essay Q&A | Novelguide
Jonson was born in the reign of Elizabeth Ialchemist essay questions, the period when England became an important world power, alchemist essay questions. It was the time of global exploration and colonization as well as the Renaissance of English literature and letters. Jonson was contemporary with Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, and Sir Phillip Sidney, the founders of the modern English classics. When he died, his descendents stimulated religious turmoil by changing the national church from Protestant Anglicanism to Catholicism and back again.
Elizabeth was celebrated for her pragmatic religious tolerance with the via mediaor middle way between extreme Protestantism and Catholicism. The references to Rome Catholicism on the one hand, and Geneva or Amsterdam on the other hand where the Puritans and Anabaptists and other radical sects had fled for religious freedom refer to the threats the English throne faced from the extremes.
Both Catholics and Puritans sought to overthrow Elizabeth. After her death inthe Protestant King James of Scotland, ascended the throne. Jonson, who had briefly converted to Catholicism, alchemist essay questions back again and became popular in the Jacobean court for his plays and masques. This was no joke. Jonson alchemist essay questions politically conservative and a Royalist. His attack on the Puritans is thus both comic and serious, as he strives to preserve the enlightened humanist culture that Elizabeth had established.
What alchemist essay questions alchemy? Alchemy was not only an early version of alchemist essay questions science of chemistry, alchemist essay questions, but also the art of attaining perfection. It was an ancient knowledge found in Egypt, China, Greece, Arabia, and in Western medieval and Renaissance Europe.
Gold was thought to be the perfect substance. It promised transformation from a lower state of existence to a higher state, both materially and spiritually. Any substance could be changed into another substance through understanding how to transmute the elements. All substances contain the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water with their different qualities of hot, cold, alchemist essay questions, wet, and dry.
Paracelsus, the great Renaissance alchemist, added sulphur, mercury, and salt as basic constituents for the transmuting chemistry; thus, their constant mention in the play. Subtle expounds the philosophy in Act 2, scene 3. By manipulating the balance of primary elements you could alter the substance. Metals were thought to go through a process in the furnace akin to the changes the spirit goes through in its growth. Something went before 2. This manipulation of the primary levels of matter eventually led to the development of modern chemistry, but in the Renaissance there was still a mystical aura around these ideas, alchemist essay questions, for it was a knowledge passed on only to the initiated and pure alchemist essay questions heart.
For alchemist essay questions rational and thinking man like Jonson, alchemy was the kind of hoax that Subtle and Face could use to their advantage to cheat their customers. The whole play is full of references to transformations, mostly of a comic nature. What was the position of women in Elizabethan and Jacobean England? Doll Common and Dame Pliant are the two women in the play; they are largely in the background and do not make decisions that change the action, alchemist essay questions.
The Alchemist conveys the misogynist attitude common in Renaissance literature. Women were considered naturally deficient in the godlike faculty of reason; therefore, they were treated as ignorant children who had to be ruled. He threatens her with violence alchemist essay questions she will not do as he says.
She does not want to marry someone she thinks is a Spanish count but is bullied into it. Pliant is beautiful, dumb, and rich, a perfect woman in the eyes of the men who treat her as a commodity to be traded behind her back as though it is none of her business who marries her.
She is the butt of crude jokes, especially between Face and Subtle. Face does not mind pimping her to the Spanish count and then having used goods.
Subtle balks at this and decides to sell his alchemist essay questions in Dame Pliant! Women were not educated as men were. In the Protestant tradition, women were taught to read so they could read the Bible, but they did not generally go to school. Doll, on the other hand, has a brain and knows enough to spout some fake theology 4. In the Renaissance, alchemist essay questions, as in classical Greece and Rome, prostitutes could often be high-class call girls, afforded more education than respectable women.
Doll is not aristocratic but can play the part of a lady, enough to fool Mammon. She does what they bid her, and every alchemist essay questions, they draw straws for her. Though good natured and the peacemaker of the group, she is given no real respect or credit for her part. Queen Elizabeth I represents the new tradition for women of the upper class who were sometimes allowed a humanist education.
Elizabeth had studied the classics and wrote poetry. She could hold her own intellectually with the members of court. The literature of the age was addressed to Elizabeth as the intellectual and moral inspiration for the English Renaissance, alchemist essay questions. Jonson honors such a lady patroness in Mary, alchemist essay questions, Lady Wroth, the educated niece of Sir Phillip Sidney, to whom he dedicates the play.
In the s, Jonson was an actor and playwright for some of the same companies for which Shakespeare wrote and acted. Theater was a rough business in Elizabethan England. There were the challenges of the plague, which frequently closed the theaters for health reasons; there were political dangers of writing something that would offend the government Jonson was often imprisoned for sedition ; there were financial challenges of finding the patronage to put on the plays; there was the Puritan animosity against the stage as an immoral influence.
The plays were not rehearsed for long, so the performances were not usually polished. Jonson was forced into collaborating with other playwrights such as John Marston and Thomas Dekker, to make money, but often, the plays were put together slipshod for entertainment purposes and not for the serious purpose Alchemist essay questions felt for drama. It is telling that he did not include any of his collaborative efforts in his Collected Works ofnot considering them worthy.
He was never, like Shakespeare and other writers, attached to one company as the resident writer, and he never earned his whole living from the theater. He sold his scripts to the company who paid the most for them. After the death of Elizabeth inhe earned his living primarily by putting on the aristocratic court entertainments known as masques.
Jonson took his idea of comedy from the classical idea of correcting manners through satiric humor, alchemist essay questions, but made it contemporary with native English themes. He thought of literature as didactic, but he avoided the self-righteousness he hated in the Puritan attitude.
He is known as a master of the comedy of manners, depicting the vices alchemist essay questions society by using specific character types, known as the humours. The humours were based on the medieval idea of depicting character through the balance of hot, dry, moist, or cold fluids and vapors in the body sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholy. Surly is for instance, choleric or ill-tempered; Drugger is phlegmatic, or dull; Lovewit is sanguine or fun-loving; Doll, when she plays the lady who reads too much theology, is melancholy.
In terms of plotting, Jonson disliked the careless and improbable plotting of the popular plays in his time. In the later part of his life, Jonson was an unofficial poet laureate of England, alchemist essay questions. He made his living as court poet, writing and putting on masques, alchemist essay questions, the elaborate pageants popular at the alchemist essay questions. Jonson carved out this niche as leader for himself by taking seriously the publication of his own works.
Shakespeare and other playwrights did not do this. They were popular writers for the stage and did not think of their plays in terms of posterity, alchemist essay questions. The drama of the time was not thought to be serious literature. Jonson, alchemist essay questions, however, was a learned neo-classicist.
He considered himself the most respectable and classic of modern writers and wanted to create a tradition. The publication of the folio of his Collected Works was seen as pretentious by his fellow writers but was important for his reputation and for the way his successors regarded their own production, alchemist essay questions. Jonson felt himself to be in the company of the great classic writers of Greece and Rome. He adhered to the rules Aristotle laid down in The Poetics.
He chided Shakespeare for his sloppy, though admittedly inspired, writing. He wanted English literature to be dignified, professional, and lasting.
He saw his role as satirist as bringing order to public thinking alchemist essay questions exposing corruption. This had been the role of ancient writers like Horace and Juvenal—to advise rulers and governments by reminding them of ideals. He tells alchemist essay questions that his ability to write depends on such families as hers who are the example. He thinks of his plays as ways to further immortalize the standards of public life; therefore, he wants to be more than a popular entertainer.
Jonson was an experimenter, taking classic ideas and forms and transposing them into native forms with a contemporary voice and dialects. He wrote comedy, alchemist essay questions, tragedy, masques, lyric poetry, epistles and epigrams, creating his own canon and the idea of an English canon. He left his noble alchemist essay questions of what literature was and could do to delight alchemist essay questions instruct society.
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The Alchemist Essay Topics. 1. The prologue tells the story of Narcissus. How does this well-known myth relate to the main narrative of the novel? 2. Many of the characters in the novel are motivated by money and material wealth. How does this motivation relate to the various religions in the 3 The Alchemist. How does Santiago’s spiritual journey parallel the alchemist’s practice of transforming metal into gold? What are the weaknesses that Santiago sees in his flock of sheep, and how do they relate to the weaknesses of human beings who fail to pursue their Personal Legends? The Alchemist (Jonson) Essay Questions. Is The Alchemist too cruel to be a comedy? This question asks you to consider The Alchemist generically as a comedy, but to weigh its sense of humor with the cruelty of the play towards its characters (and perhaps, towards its audience). How would you define a Estimated Reading Time: 4 mins
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