Get hold of a video copy of the film Chocolat.  It is available at both Dillon's East and Dillon's West in Manhattan in video for $.39 a day [!].  Blockbuster in Manhattan also rents it for $3.00 for 3 days.  And there is one copy at the Manhattan Public Library that rents for $1.00 for 3 days.  (With the commercial places, it's a good idea to call in advance to make sure the video is on hand before you spend the time to make a special trip.  The library, however, doesn't do searches for patrons over the phone.) If you run into a logjam and have no luck at any of these places, see me to arrange to borrow my own copy from me.)  You can also find it in DVD format.

Preparation

Review carefully the concept of concupiscence, and in particular its role in the Augustinian picture of the effects of the fall on human nature.  (This is the conception shared in broad outline by Luther and Calvin.  Recall, for example, the excerpts we read from Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, on original sin and divine will.  For a contrast between the extent to which Augustine and Aquinas regarded postlapsarian man as affected by concupiscence, recall our glossary article on Justification in traditional Christianity.)

Study William Blake's poem's "The Garden of Love" and "London".  

How does "The Garden of Love" convey the idea that the fall of man occurs not with the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, but with the falling of human beings under the influence of clergy-dominated religion that falsely teaches them that the innocence with which they are born -- and their natural animal appetites, including sexual desire -- are something to feel guilty about, and that the road to the re-achievement of innocence ("justification") is through suspicion of the body, and the submission of the natural appetites to ascetic discipline? 

What attitude would you figure Blake would take towards the use made of the concept of concupiscence in the thinking of (say) Augustine (or Calvin)?

How does the poem suggests that the salvation needed by his contemporaries  is salvation from (rather than through) Christianity?

How does "London" suggest that human liberation will come only when people are able to throw off belief systems, inculcated by church and state, that keep them obedient to their exploiters (or at least under the political control of personalities whose main appetite in life is the exercise of power over their fellows)?

What ideas of Voltaire (in, say, "Freedom of Thought" and "Dogmas") does Blake evidently share? 

The topic

Write an essay (of about a single-spaced page, in 12-point font with standard 1-inch margins) on how the film Chocolat is can be seen as a critique of the effect of traditional teachings of concupiscence on the quality of human life, and how "salvation" from this death-in-life is to be found through the gradual freeing of impulse.

You might be on the lookout for how the film treats the chocolaterie as a kind of alternative church, with its alternative sacraments (particularly "communion" -- a rich concept to play with).

You may find it useful to work in an allusion or two (no more) to one or more of Blake's poems.

  Review the general instructions on Extra-Credit Assignments.

  Go to the Home Page of the course.

  Suggestions, comments and questions are welcome.  Please send them to lyman@ksu.edu .

      Contents copyright © 2001 by Lyman A. Baker. 

Permission is granted for non-commercial educational use; all other rights reserved.

      This page last updated 09 December 2001 .