Mac Flecknoe

   Mac Flecknoe is the one of the most important example of satirical poem . It was written by John Dryden in Restoration period . This mock-heroic satire was written to criticize Shadwell who is an ineffective poet . Dryden says in this poem , Shadwell is the king of the dullness and he resembles him to Mac Flecknoe who is another untalented poet. In this poem , what surprised me is the writing type of Dryden , He symbolizes Shadwell as "Sh.." . ‘Sh…’ can stand for Shadwell but Shadwell could not prove this , at the same time , this abbreviation 'Sh..' can stand for 'shit'.

   Consequently , this type of poem really affects and especially 'Mac Flecknoe is one of the most brilliant work . Mocking of Shadwell is quite impressive.

White Wedding Dress

 This week we talked about 'Victorian Age' and I learned strange information about both Queen Victoria and this period.

  Firstly I want to mention that ; for the first time ''white wedding dress'' was put on by Queen Victoria . Normally in this term brides in kingdom put on grey dress in their wedding ceremony. She put on 'white ' wedding grown as a symbol of virginity and innocence ,  because in Victorian Age virginity and purity had a great importance . Because of the importance of virginity in this period , 'white' wedding gown accepted easily and being permanent.

  When we look at the Ottoman Empire,  brides in Ottoman put on red wedding dress . However at first 'white wedding gown'  was put on by Naime Sultan who was the daughter of Abdulhamid II . She saw the white wedding dress at the wedding ceremony in Europe . Naime Sultan really liked it , and she put on white wedding dress in her own wedding ceremony .

 To sum up ; the reason of feeling herself as a queen when a girl puts on white wedding grown is that was put on at first by a real queen. 

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

This week we talked about '' The Rime of the Ancient Mariner '' written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This work was written in Romanticism period.

   In this work , firstly a man stopped a boy who was going to the wedding ceremony and started to tell him a story . It was a real story about his life on the other hand it was his own experience . One day the Mariner and some sailors went into the ship in a sunny and lovely day. However the stream turned the ship southward, so the ship came to the frozen icy land in the South Pole . Because of  ice and fog in everywhere , the ship could not go anywhere in the ocean . In this time sailors saw Albatross which is a see bird and some people believe this bird brings good luck to the sailor at the same time some people say that it can be eaten by the sailors.  The Mariner killed Albatross, at first the sailors was afraid of this because ; if this bird brings good luck to the sailors, it can bring bad luck when it is killed . However , when the Albatross died , fog lifted ; therefore the sailors believed this bird brought actually bad luck to them. Then this time, the stream brought them in silent where in the sea but there was no wind and the Sun was as warm as in desert , so there was no water to drink in a huge sea. So the sailors blamed the Mariner as a punishment they hung the death body of the Albatross to the neck of the Mariner. They were too thirsty to speak . Because of this , when they saw a ship which came to the them , but the could not shout, so  they bit their arm to soak the their mouth and they shout to the help. But this was a ghostly ship . They could not stand that and they decided to play a game ''Death and the nightmare life-in-death '' they started to play . However except the Mariner all of the two hundred sailors died ,and the Mariner lived in this ship with the two hundred death sailors during a week or ten days. But he could not die. Finally one day he realized the fish and other sea animal and hearty thanks to the God for this beauty and this moment he was forgiven and this death sailors returned to life supernaturally and wind was blowing and the Mariner evaded . Consequence of this, the Mariner was responsible to tell this story to every one.

   To sum up, this story has some characteristics of romanticism period such as supernatural elements, natural events, strong emotional descriptions like desperate and pain of man .