Scarica The Victorian Age: A Time of Social Reform and Literary Masterpieces e più Tesine di Maturità in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! LETTERATURA INGLESE 5 LICEO The Victorian Age (1837-1901) History -1834 -> New Poor Law -> bad condition for workers amassed in workhouses -In 1837, Queen Victoria I came to the throne during a difficult political and economic period -Reform Bill (1832) -> Helped middle classes, but not the working classes -2nd Reform Bill (1867) -> After People’s Charter in 1838 (working class movement) Town workers the right to vote, but still excluded miners and agricultural workers -3rd Reform Bill (1884) -> Suffrage extended to all male workers, LABOUR PARTY -1846 -> free trade -1851 -> Great Exhibition -> develop of RAILWAYS, SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, ELETRICITY, TELEGRAFH Social Reforms -Mines Act (1862) -> forbade works of female and children in mines -Emancipation of religious sects (1871) -> Catholics can work government jobs -Trade Union Act (1875) -> Legalized activities of the union of workers -2 political sides + 1 1. Conservatives: From Old Tories 2. Liberals: From the Whigs 3. LABOUR PARTY: Founded in 1900, marks the political importance of working classes Victorian towns -The life in Victorian towns was very difficult, the air was really polluted. The people were more exposed to the risk of getting the cholera. At the same time, the working classes were living in very bad conditions and amassed in workhouses. Crime. The British Empire -The relation between the British Empire and Ireland had always been difficult -1845: Potato Blight -Movement for Irish independence -> twice rejected -1854-1856: Crimean War -> conflict between Turkey and Russia, Britain and France sided with Turkey and win -At the death in 1901 of Victoria, the Empire consolidated the territories in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Indian sub-continent, Some African territories and the Caribbean -1876: Queen Elisabeth became Empress of India -1899-1902: Boer War -> Control on the provinces of Orange and Transvaal -1949: The modern Commonwealth of Nations: Created after the dismalting of the British Empire The Victorian Compromise - “prudishness” about sexual and sensible matters -The Victorian establishment refused the existence of a materialistic philosophy of life through respectability -> strictness of Victorian morals and behaviour -PROSTITUTION The Early Victorian Novel -Novel became the leading genre, commonly read aloud by well-to-do-families -Public readings were also common among the lower classes -> the novelist avoided topics that could cause embarrassment - Literature for children became very important in this era and served to educate them - Serial publications in magazines and newspapers were how most novelists of the time published their work -> CHARLES DICKENS -In the Victorian age, the main themes focused on social issues (Poor conditions, factory system), Romantic love (Wuthering Heights), mild realism Emily Bronte (1818-1848) “Wuthering Heights” -1847: “Wuthering Heights” -> her only published novel -> developed in her own background, in a small village in Haworth, in desolated Yorkshire Moors -The family grow up with the reading of the composition aloud -Main themes: Passion and feeling, breaks of social convention, strong power of imagination (Byron, Shelley), ROMANTIC LOVE -It describes the life long passion between Heathcliff and Catherine Linton -COMPLEX WORK -> exaltation of feeling and mystical union with nature - “dark” Romantic hero: Heathcliff -> dominated by his self-destructive passion -Romantic heroine: Catherine -> bends to social conventions -2 Homes: 1. Home of UNRESTRAINED PASSION AND INSTINCT 2. Home of SOCIAL CONVENTION -Use of flashbacks, time shifts, 2 narrators -> shifting points of view -poetic prose style Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) “The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” -1886: “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” -> short novel, tales of horror and mystery -The novel deals with ETHICAL problems by the great progress of science -Conflict between man’s good and evil natures -> strikes at the core of Victorian Compromise -New awareness of the human mind; pschyoanalisis -Combination of realism and symbolism
