Thinking Matters 2017

The Extended Essay was introduced for all boys in the Upper School in 2010, and now forms a key part of the Dulwich Diploma. Each pupil, with the aid of a subject expert from the teaching staff, selects a research area and, over the summer holiday at the end of Year 12, writes an undergraduate-style essay of about 2,000 words. Over the years boys have produced outstanding work: some abstracts from subjects across the range are reproduced here.

about society and politics, particularly the First World War, are absent from his novels and stories. However, the modernist overtones in Kafka become clearer once we examine two elements of his storytelling. First, the historical context of his writing, particularly with an emphasis on social history. Second, the position of young Jewish intellectuals like Kafka who were struggling with identity and religion in a political climate that was increasingly anti-Semitic. This reading allows us to interpret the modernist undertones of stories like Josephine the Singer and In the Penal Colony , both featuring the sense of loyalty to a meaningless tradition. Moreover, Kafka was willing to embrace and build upon his recent literary heritage, particularly the ideas of Sigmund Freud, which pervade The Metamorphosis . Yet what is perhaps most modernist about Kafka is his vision of relentless despair that seems so appropriate to the essence of the movement; an attempt to express the bleakness of life in Europe. Hugh Pimblett ‘An investigation into a better means of keeping private pilots informed about the amount of fuel remaining in flight’. All light aircraft have the potential to have problems with the supply of fuel to the engine, creating danger for those on board and those on the ground. Such fuel

Cameron Forbes ‘An exploration of receptions and interpretations of Ovid’s retelling of the Pygmalion myth ( Metamorphoses X )’. The tale of Pygmalion told in Metamorphoses Book X by Ovid has without doubt inspired a huge number of interpretations and retellings, notably seen among the works of Middle-English poet John Gower, William Shakespeare and 19th-century writer Mary Shelley. But what was it about their personal views or those of the society around them which affected their receptions and interpretations of the timeless tale? In this essay I aim to answer that question by scrutinising the differences between the narratives of the retellings and that of Ovid, while interrogating the socio-historic contexts and personal beliefs of the different writers. Christoph Marshall ‘To what extent can the works of Kafka be associated with the modernist movement in literature?’ The body of work Franz Kafka left behind resists easy categorisation. Though he was a contemporary of more archetypal modernists such as TS Eliot, broader ideas

62

Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker