A Tale of Two Cities

1
A Tale of Two Cities

• Book the First The Period

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• Chapter One of A Tale of Two Cities lays the
  framework of the setting for the novel. Dont be
  discouraged by the first chapter!

3
Book the First The Period

• Use of Parallelism in the first paragraph
• (Best of timesworst of times). Relates to the
  contradictions of life in the year of 1775.
• Season of Light (Age of Enlightenment)season
  of Darkness (representing the superstition of
  the age as well as in Dickens contemporary
  society).

4
Book the First The Period

• Ruling powers in France and England in 1775.
• King with a large jaw, queen with a plain face
  (George III and Charlotte Sophia of England.
  Ruling between 1760-1820).
• King with a large jaw, queen with a fair face
  (Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of France
  1774-1793)

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Book the First The Period

• Dickenss jabs at superstition in HIS era
• Mrs. Southcott (1750-1814). Writer of
  prophecies and predictions. Believed that she was
  pregnant with the second savior.
• Prophetic Private in the Life Guards. Also
  made predictions Predicted that London would be
  destroyed in 1750 (1750 the year of Mrs.
  Southcotts birth).

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Book the First The Period

• Cock-lane ghost
• Urban legend. Ghost of a murdered woman
  believed to have haunted Cock Lane.
• Congress of British Subjects in America. First
  meeting of the Continental Congress takes place
  in Philadelphia on October 26, 1776.

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Book the First The Period

• France she entertained herself as sentencing a
  youth to have his hands cut off because he had
  not kneeled to a procession of monks
• Refers to the execution of a French Soldier
  (Chevalier De Barre) during the year 1776.
  Introducing the base corruption of politics and
  clergy in France at the time.
• Rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there
  were growing trees already marked by the Woodman
  to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a
  certain movable framework with a sack and a knife
  in it, terrible in history.
• Alludes to the invention of the guillotine.