milestone 3 final paper
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Jan 9, 2024
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Uploaded by CorporalRain12625
Jason Huntsinger
4-1 Final Project Milestone Three
LIT-319
March 28, 2021
In the 20
th
and 21
st
century, the supernatural is easily dismissed as cheap magic or parlor
tricks. When you look at the mediums of these different periods you can still look at and find
pieces that can either look supernatural or has a storyline as such. One of the first modern
examples would be the movie “The Craft”
(Fleming). It is a story about a group of four teenage
women that are witches and when they are not all together, their witchcraft is not effective and
makes them all outcasts. However, when they are together, they possess a power unparallel to
modern man. One of the main characters sees what they are doing and separates herself from the
coven, and the other three witches come after her. Their witchcraft ends up being their undoing
as when the three go after the one and arguably the strongest, one dies and the other two can no
longer use their magic. This is similar to how the rest of Romeo and Juliet play out after
Mercutio dies. One difference is when performing an invocation ceremony, one of them takes the
spirit Manon. After the ceremony, the fourth witch leaves and that is the cataclysmic event that
changes all of their lives. Similar to Mercutio.
Another contemporary medium that uses this
same supernatural event that causes the undoing of the story or characters is the tale of the
vampire.
Most significantly is the book The Vampire Lestat (Rice). Lestat is a tragic character who
is blessed with immortal life but longs for his humanity. While some vampires in the Anne Rice
world embrace and love being a vampire, Lestat is haunted by it. At the core of his hatred of
being a vampire is a two-part hatred. One, he was never given a choice to become a vampire, and
two, a vampire is always alone. He yearns for company and yet, every time he finds a
companion, they leave him or betray him. That, he feels is his ultimate curse, being alone and
living forever. How these compares are his curse being supernatural and causing all of the
negative outcomes in his life from then on. He loses his first progeny, Louis, after he betrays
Lestat and his progeny tries to kill Lestat. It is just a downward spiral from the first bite.
A second film that is in part inspired by the play Romeo and Juliet is the movie “West
Side Story”
(Robbins, and Wise). While this movie does not share the same theme of the
supernatural element, it still shares an almost identical theme as Romeo and Juliet. The Romeo in
this tale is a character named Tony, and Juliet is the titular Maria. Besides the differing names,
the other big difference is the rivals. Instead of the rivals being two different households the
Capulets and Montagues, they are two rival gangs, the Sharks and the Jets. The other main
difference is that only one of the star-crossed lovers dies, Tony. Both gangs do reconcile after the
death of Tony similar to how Romeo and Juliet ends. There is no supernatural element in this
movie, but it echoes the entire plot almost completely.
For the Elizabethan context and the sources, I will be using, first is a story about the first
know witch trial of Margery Jourdemayne and several other conspirators. They were all tried as
witches, which did include a man, for plotting to assassinate the King, Henry VI. They predicted
his death would happen based on an astrological sign and that was deemed witchcraft (Ralley).
Another play that uses the same supernatural element that I will use in the same context is the
play by Ludovico Ariosto titled
Il negromante
(Ariosto). I am using this play as it shows great
context to what people in that time believed. This play was so controversial that it was not played
in Rome at all. Because the play is hard to find I will be using the excerpt called “A Non-
Performance of ‘
Il negromante’”
(Portner). It talks about why the play was not allowed in Rome
as well as the plot. The third reference I will be using is Shakespeare himself. After this play he
really delved into the world of the supernatural with plays like Hamlet as well as Macbeth.
Macbeth starts off with the scene of the three witches and they tell Macbeth and his friend,
Banquo their royal fates
(Shakespeare). With Hamlet, the simple fact that he talks to his dead
father who appears to him as a ghost shows the supernatural flair that Shakespeare had in his
later works
(Shakespeare).
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Works Cited
Ariosto, Lodovico.
[Il Negromante. Comedia.
. Vinegia, 1551.
Fleming, Andrew.
The Craft
. Columbia Pictures, 1996.
Portner. “A Non-Performance of Il Negromante.”
Italica
, vol. 59, no. 4, Dec. 1982, pp. 316–
329.
EBSCOhost
, doi:10.2307/478910.
Ralley, Robert. “Stars, Demons and the Body in Fifteenth-Century England.”
Studies in History and
Philosophy of Biol & Biomed Sci
, vol. 41, no. 2, Jan. 2010, pp. 109–116.
EBSCOhost
,
doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2010.04.006.
Rice, Anne.
The Vampire Lestat
. Knopf, 1985.
Robbins, Jerome, and Robert Wise.
West Side Story
. Mirisch Pictures Seven Arts Productions, 1961.
Shakespeare, William.
Shakespeare's Tragedy Of Hamlet
. 1603.
Shakespeare, William.
The Tragedy Of Macbeth
. 1606.