Brideshead Revisited: Concerns, Context, Characters, Form and Settings

This is a BASIC mindmap of Evelyn Waugh's 'Brideshead Revisited" with KEY characters, settings, context and concerns. Use this to remind you of a few quotes and pastoral links of the novel. I will probably do a few revision sheets in specific detail for other aspects. Bubbles in RED are ones of great importance. 

My errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar and neatness do not reflect my status as a human being!

Have fun.

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  • Created by: MJ
  • Created on: 29-05-13 17:30
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  • Brideshead Revisited
    • Characters
      • Julia
        • Sebastian's sister and Charles' love interest later in the novel
        • Her voice was Sebastian's and his way of speaking
        • double illusion of familiarity and strangeness
        • flat-chested,  leggy, she seemed all limbs and neck, bodiless, spidery
        • Rex Mottram  - Julia's husband, a Canadian and eventual MP
          • He wanted a woman, he wanted the best on the market and he wanted her at his own price
        • she shut her mind out from her religion
          • Femme fatale
            • Pastoral concerns
              • Innocence
                • Sebastian
                  • Narcissus with one pustule - Anthony  Blanche
                  • blue wad rustling palms of his mind
                  • He did not fail in love, but he lost his joy of it
                  • "its a rather pleasant change when all your life you've had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself. Only it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me
                • "The fortnight at Venice passed quickly and sweetly, perhaps a little too sweetly"
                • "a cloudless day in June" "ditches creamy with meadowsweet"
              • Corruption
                • Narcissus with one pustule - Anthony  Blanche
                • He wanted a woman, he wanted the best on the market and he wanted her at his own price
              • The idyll
                • "a city of aquatint"
                • "a sequestered place, enclosed ad embraced in a single winding valley"
              • Memento mori
                • The Death's Head seemed destined for me
            • she really was a femme fatale wasnt she? she killed at a touch
              • Sebastian
                • blue wad rustling palms of his mind
                • He did not fail in love, but he lost his joy of it
                • "its a rather pleasant change when all your life you've had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself. Only it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me
      • Charles
        • I became a part of the world he sought to escape
        • Lady Marchmain
          • grim invasion
            • she really was a femme fatale wasnt she? she killed at a touch
          • Settings
            • Brideshead Estate
              • "a new and glimmering landscape"
              • "a sequestered place, enclosed ad embraced in a single winding valley"
              • (about the door to the chapel) "another door led direct to the house"
                • Sebastian on the chapel "a monument of art noveau" .. "papa's wedding present to mama"
              • "wrought iron gates"
              • "a cloudless day in June" "ditches creamy with meadowsweet"
            • Oxford
              • "a city of aquatint"
              • Charles' room - "a human skull"... "resting in a bowl of roses" (post meeting Sebastian)
                • Memento mori
                  • The Death's Head seemed destined for me
            • Venice
              • "I was drowning in honey"
              • "The fortnight at Venice passed quickly and sweetly, perhaps a little too sweetly"
            • London
              • "The worst place" - Lady Marchmain
              • "You'll be robbed, poisoned, infected and robbed" - Stranger on Ma Mayfield's
                • "dark doorway"
            • Morocco
              • " a new and strange country to me"
              • "vast open fields"
            • Central America/Mexico
              • gutted palaces and cloisters embowered in weed delerict churches
              • cities where no road led
          • Context : First published in 1945, but most of the book's retrospective narrative occurs during the 1920s.
            • 1940s: World War II meant a lot of homes in England were being destroyed by bombs. Families had their food rationed.
              • This meant the extravagance of the landed gentry was feared to be lost in the war.
                • In hindsight, this was not the case. The aristocracy survived - hence Evelyn Waugh's confession of the novel being a "pangyric preached over an empty coffin"
                  • One could say that after  World War I; life was worth celebrating..hence the amount of partying and  indulgence in the novel
                    • In any case, the amount of lush vocabulary in the novel takes War time readers away from the desolation of their daily lives
                      • In hindsight, this was not the case. The aristocracy survived - hence Evelyn Waugh's confession of the novel being a "pangyric preached over an empty coffin"
                        • One could say that after  World War I; life was worth celebrating..hence the amount of partying and  indulgence in the novel
                          • In any case, the amount of lush vocabulary in the novel takes War time readers away from the desolation of their daily lives
                          • Untitled
                    • Untitled
              • 1920s
                • Authors's note: I am not I: thou art not he or she they are not they. E.W
                  • A bit paranoid? There's multiple links between Waugh's life and Ryder's - An overt homosexual phase, an Oxford life and a religious epiphany
            • Form: fictional memoir
            • Pastoral concerns
              • Innocence
                • Corruption
                  • The idyll
                  • Purpose
                    • The operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters

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