APPUNTI CORSO LETTERATURA INGLESE DE RINALDIS UNISALENTO, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica APPUNTI CORSO LETTERATURA INGLESE DE RINALDIS UNISALENTO e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! WHAT IS A NOVEL? The novel is the genre of the rising bourgeoisie of the 18th century. The novel is addressed to the middle class and in fact there are elements and characters of the middle class, because they were interested in the realization of the self and in the material world, in what is concrete and specific. The novel was described by Mazzoni as a book of life, a book that comes near us, near the reader and another book of life is for example the Bible, so the novel is so important and so influencing as the Bible. The importance of the novel was only recognized in the 19th century and not at the times of Defoe. THE NARRATOR FIRST PERSON NARRATOR→ The reader authenticates less automatically the story world. THIRD PERSON NARRATOR→ The reader authenticates the story world easily. In this third narrator we can have less intervention of the narrator in the sense that we have a character who speaks directly with his or her own voice. EXTRADIEGETIC NARRATOR→ (first level narrator). He narrates a story from the outside the fictional universe of a particular text. This narrator communicates the primary narrative to an audience removed from the story world. INTRADIEGETIC NARRATOR→ (second level narrator). This is a second narrator within the narrated history. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ROMANCE AND NOVEL One of the most important things when the novel appears is the difference between the novel and the previous romance. We have different explanations, from different authors and playwrights (for example Clara Reeve, Congreve in his Preface). For Clara Reeve the romance speaks about Kings, Queens and heroes and about supernatural, strange events, more wonder and heroic, then the novel, on the other hand, speaks about real events and although they seem very unusual or comic they are real because they realize in a world that is a real world, a world that we know and that the readers know so it is more simple to be entertained in a world that is the world that we know. It is more specific in time and place and it’s like a picture of real life. People were more concerned with which was more concrete and realistic. For Congreve the romance speaks about people of upper classes and the themes are love and courage, while the novel is more familiar, it comes near the reader. The romance creates wonder while the novel creates delight. POETICS OF SPACE: THE HOUSE, THE CASTLE We must say that the house and the castle in the Castle of Otranto are connected because the house of Horace Walpole was the inspiration for the creation of the Castle of Otranto. In fact, the house of Walpole was an ancient house which was reconstructed in gothic style. We must thank not only Walpole but also Richard Bentley, his architect. Both Walpole and Bentley were interested in the EFFECT that the house would have given and thanks to Walpole the style of the gothic became an aristocratic style, it was reconsidered. Thanks to the travellers of that time we have the description of the house and we know that it opened with a large staircase and with a corridor full of saints statues. A very important text is surely “La Poétique de l’Espace” of Gaston Bachelard, in which he says that there is a connection between the house and the reverie because the house is linked to the feelings, to the irrational and houses are also like self-portraits. He also says that the house is like a corpus that gives the idea of stability and security. House can be seen in two different ways: as a vertical being (so the idea of the vertical order, from the top to the bottom) but also as a concerned being. The castle, on the other hand, is a place of instability and oppression, a place that cannot communicate with the external world, with society. In the past it was the centre of life, like the abbey, in fact it was located in the centre of the city but then it was moved to rural places, to deserted places because its function was not valid anymore. So in the castle we can also find different dichotomies: up/down, but also light/darkness, life/death, chaos/order, closed/open, verticality. UP/DOWN= In the superior floors all seems to be in order, then the subterraneans show the real nature of the castle, its oppression and its corruption. LIFE/DEATH= The centripetal force of the persecutor, who goes towards death and the centrifugal force of the heroin who goes towards life. CHAOS/ORDER= All seems in order but all is a chaos and the order is eventually recovered by the heroin. VERTICALITY= All the castles are built in a staged way, in fact there are different floors and the more down you go the more oppression there is. THE GOTHIC NOVEL: THE STRUCTURE The first example of a gothic novel is the Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole published in 1764. He created this new genre, which was very appreciated. The structure of the Gothic novel is always the same, although there are some exceptions. There is always a heroine and a villain, from whom she tries to escape and during her flight she lives through a lot of misadventures, concerning supernatural events. There is also a sort of chavalerique heroe, who helps the heroine to survive. Then the novel ends with the canonical happy ending, although the author knows it is improbable. Another important characteristic is that of the found manuscript, which is an element that is always present in gothic novels and which is used to combine the supernatural and fable with reality. This is an element that is also used by Walpole and in fact he says that the Castle of Otranto was a manuscript written in Naples in the XIV century, which goes back to the time of the crusades. The Gothic, in general, reflects the collective consciousness of English society in the 18th century: the sense of guilty deriving from the desire for the bourgeoise individual to exert control over nature and reality, the desire to subvert the established order. COLANGELO Il verso è un segmento dotato di conformazione ritmica che fa percepire al lettore due caratteristiche: l’unità interna, cioè il fatto che il verso inizi e finisca, e poi la misurabilità che continua nei versi successivi. La parola verso viene dal latino versus e può avere 3 significati differenti. La prima ipotesi è che venga dal verbo “vertere” che vuol dire “girare, tornare indietro” inteso come il verso che finisce e ne comincia un altro. La seconda ipotesi è che venga dal verbo “verrere”, che vuol dire “arare, tracciare un solco nel terreno” quindi come una similitudine tra il terreno che viene solcato e lo scrittore che scrive e la terza ipotesi, che è quella meno accreditata, è che venga sì dal verbo “vertere” ma inteso come il verso che ogni volta cambia anche il ritmo. Se, invece, passiamo al greco vedremo che la parola verso si traduce come “stichos”, che indica una parte di una serie ordinata. Perciò, per le lingue classiche in generale, il verso è un qualcosa che ritorna sempre sullo stesso principio e anche una parte più piccola di una serie più grande. Il ritmo è qualcosa che viene ripetuto in modo regolare, ciò che esiste già. Il ritmo è caratterizzato dalla prosodia, che è ciò che permette di disciplinare l’uso delle vocali. The mixture of tragedy and comedy in evident because there is the alternation of tragic scenes and comic scenes and it was a prerogative of Shakespeare that used it in relation with the characters that were presented. Shakespeare mixes the genre because this is what happens in real life, in nature. Then the scene of the animate portrait is also present in the story “A Winter’s Tale” of Shakespeare. So we know that Conrad was killed from a giant helmet that is the representation of his punishment. It is also the punishment of the original sin against the natural order. When Conrad dies Manfred tells Isabella that he wants to divorce from Ippolita and that he wants to marry her, Isabella. She is shocked by the proposal because this is an inceste and he is violating the moral codes, so thanks to the fortuite event of the animate portrait she is able to escape and she moves herself to the subterranean to reach the cathedral. She is in trap, in danger. In the subterranean she meets Theodore, who helps her to escape through a trap-door. So we can see 3 different levels: superior floor, the subterranean and the trap-door. Isabella embodies the persecuted heroin, the woman who is a victim, the virtuous lady of a romance, the princess of a fairy tale. So we find ourselves in a world that is going from an order( the wedding with Conrad) to a disorder (the inceste) All manners, all orders are collapsing. It is establishing a society where there are other values. All her flight is made up of a status of fear and anxiety, caos. There are a lot of different things that remind the gothic. VOCABULARY: horror, tremendous phenomenon, misfortune, grief, bleeding, the subterranean. Also the landscape: “​Manfred rose to pursue her; when the moon, which was now up, and gleamed in at the opposite casement, presented to his sight the plumes of the fatal helmet, which rose to the height of the windows, waving backwards and forwards in a tempestuous manner, and accompanied with a hollow and rustling sound”​. Emotions of fear, anxiety, exaggeration, excitement, suspense. Objects: helmet, the animated portrait, ghosts. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH He shared the idea of the French Revolution( 1st phase), but then it produced a deep disillusionment and he refuges himself in nature.(2nd phase) The 1830 were the most important years. Coleridge and he wanted to inaugurate a new type of poetry with the production of the Lyrical Ballads. In the preface of the Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth explains the elements of novelty that are present in the work: -feelings in a greater sensibility -incidents and situations from common life (no heroic, no romance) -language really used by men -imagination -ordinary things in an unusual way -low and rustic life -passions incorporated with the form of nature (more in contact with nature) LANGUAGE Wordsworth thinks that there are poets who must use arbitrary and capricious habits of expression. He is critical about another type of poetry, the artificial poetry, they use artificial ways of expression. He prefers concrete poetry, he uses a little the poetic diction (metrical, rules of metre) because wants to bring his language near to the language of men. There is a division between Romanticism and the previous tradition. His purpose is to produce pleasure in the man. Poetry is a mixture of: Emotions and Rationality/Thoughts. Poetry is spontaneous but also very though. It produces a state of excitement->pleasure There’s a fashion of a lot of poets who produce novels only to create this emotion of excitement and Wordsworth rejects it. He rejects artificiality, mechanicity, the personification of abstract ideas only to embellish. He excludes himself from the father tradition. For him poetry can be well adapted to prose because both languages have an affinity between metrical and prose composition. Good prose can be a good writing. Who is the poet? The poet is a man speaking to men, a normal man but with a capacity to be more affected by absent things as they were present and with more sensibility. (imagination, not a description of the object but the description is made also in absence of the object). Excitement is an irregular state of mind (feelings are spontaneous). The poet acts on the excitement with something regular (the regularity of the rhythm). It’s like the metre eliminates the reality of the language. Rhyme can counterbalance. There’s a poetic pleasure in the perception of similitude in dissimilitude. (find fonic similarities in different things, the words, the concepts change but we can always find a link as the rhyme, the metre) THE SOLITARY REAPER 1805 Jambus metre (unstressed-stressed) There are rhymes. 1st stanza (moment of the vision) In the first stanza there is the revelation of the poet about a memory, a state of tranquility. The scene is in a field and the author directs to the reader. The reaper is a metaphor of death. Death is inserted in nature in the autumn and winter. She’s alone, solitary. (lass=scottish for “girl”) There aren’t difficult words. In the 7th verse he’s addressing to the audience. He wants to invite us to hear this sound and he uses rhyme and rhythm to render the repetition of this sound. This rhythmic effect allows us to understand the poet's feelings. The rhythm suggests the vision of the reaper’s song. The syntax is simple as the words used by Wordsworth in order to create this relationship between man and feelings. The rhythm is the typical one of the Ballads. It’s a song that tells a story. The girl of the ballad is a specific character, not general. 2nd stanza The singing of the solvay girl is associated with the song of a nightingale. So thanks to the imagination we move from England to the Arabian desert. This 2nd stanza is based on mental association and spatial dislocation. We aren’t in the field anymore. 3rd stanza There’s the rebirth with spring and summer. Song= poetry in general, it’s like the poet asks himself the content of the poem. There is a temporal dislocation: past-present-future. The poet envies the relaxation of the girl although she’s working. 4th stanza In the final stanza the poet talks about a past event that he lived. There’s a reconstruction of an emotion, memory, tranquility (use of the past tenses, while in the 1st stanza the tenses were present). no ending= idea of circularity (life/death) ● uso dello spazio ● uso del tempo important things to remember ● similitude in dissimilitude In general= it starts from a vision, then we have a succession of past-present-future and then the last stanza tells the story after the vision, when the poet is in tranquility. THE PRELUDE The prelude is a sort of confessional writing (like “le confessioni di Sant’Agostino”), where the poet talks about his life, but it’s not an autobiography because it also talks about moral themes. It is concerned with the development of the self and the development of Wordsworth as a poet. The Prelude is dedicated to Coleridge. VERSES 1-54 He talks about the breeze that is like a messenger, a friend. Then it talks about the city, that is like a prison because it was not for him. Then on the other hand he describes nature, the place where he is free, the place that was for him, he felt like a free slave. Then he talks about the poet’s inspiration that is like a breeze and the mystic relationship with nature. VERSES 48-78 (2ND PART) He remembers his childhood, the moments of holidays and he always insists on the fact that nature is peaceful and calm. He promotes the Lake Districts with a lot of activities people can do there and in the descriptions he is so poetic that it’s like he takes a photo of the lake. He puts in evidence a precise place of his life and also the realization of his self. The present self that speaks about the past self. On the second part of the verses the reflection is on a more abstract level. He puts in evidence: ● fusion self and nature ● figurative language ● activities in nature VERSES 145-202 In this part there are a lot of details. In the first part he focuses on the place where this cottage is. Before it was a simple place, a hut. Nature is a physical place but also a mental place. Relationship with nature and its element. Physical and emotions. Dialog with nature. VERSES 452-489 There is a description of various activities. Problematic idea of haunting in nature and subsequently doubts on the relationship with nature. Moments of isolation. Ambivalent relationship with nature, as there is something strange about nature. ACTIVITIES: ​to beat, play on the smooth platform, shouting, skating, hunting. WORDSWORTH AND THE LAKE DISTRICTS Wordsworth lived in the Lake Districts with his sister and with Coleridge. The place was very beautiful for him and it was a place that gave him peace and calm and so he 4th stanza:​ it is presented a strange experience: they lose the ability to speak, to breath and the mariner makes a sacrifice by biting his arm and sucking all the blood and with this act he can speak again. 7th stanza:​ the ship creates significant patterns with the light of the sun. (shadows) 8th stanza:​ “dungeon-grate”= the structures of the ship create a sort of dungeon and this image is not related to the natural landscape but recalls the experience lived, a social dimension. It is related to a social dimension because when we are not able to act we are prisoners. The listener is also enslaved by the Mariner as he can’t choose, he must hear. They have been deprived of their freedom, they are slaves of their own freedom because they can’t speak. 10th stanza:​ there’s a woman on the ship: the DEATH. It is presented like a woman to make it more familiar. 11th stanza:​ conventional images (1-2 verses), unconventional image (3 verse): LEPROSY​= idea of death, of something that can be spread. In other poems Coleridge expresses the idea that it was negative to conquer populations, he said they were spreading illness and not civilization (critical vision of imperialism). The rime of the ancient mariner is a metaphor of different conditions and it’s not related to political elements. This work is a narrative journey of the spirit, of the inner self. Travel can evoke the idea of infections and diseeas and can be linked to slave trade (conquer voyage). Infection of the disease of the Empire→ the Mariner is like a sailor brd in the West Indies. External images of the infection show moral guilt. 12th stanza:​ death and life-in-death are casting dice. (supernatural elements) 14th stanza:​ his blood, his previous sacrifice, is like the cup of the saint Graal, the blood of Christ, the sacrifice. 16th stanza:​ it starts the stanza where the mariners die. “cursed me withe his eye”--> superstition, another sinister element connected with the supernatural. 17th stanza: ​“four times fifty living men”= he uses the mathematical language (his maths teacher). 18th stanza:​ “crossbow”= this idea is inserted in a supernatural atmosphere. Men are described in an everyday reality, in a familiar way. The ancient mariner is the only one who is alive, he remains alone because he has cast dice with the life-in-death and she has won his life, but at the same time he is condemned and he expiates his sin by telling his story. Firstly there is the situation of a wedding, full of people but then the mariner remains alone. He experiences the drama of the Romantics poets who are cut off from the society. Coleridge will live this drying up of his creative vein as a life-in-death, as a spiritual agony. FOURTH PART The guest interrupts because he thinks that the mariner is dead alive. 3rd stanza:​ he is alone with the sea, the romantic sufferance, the pain. the loneliness. 4th stanza: ​there are 2 groups= on one hand the dead mariners, on the other the animals of the sea. The mariner is part of the strange world, he is separated from the beautiful. 5th stanza:​ it will be a change to this situation. He perceives something negative around him. 6th stanza:​ the mariner is deprived of everything. He is supplying as he is alone, his soul is associated with agony, pain, suffering. He expresses all the topics of Romanticism. 7th-8th stanza:​ with the light of the moon the landscape changes, is calmer. There is a positive image because the light of the moon lightinings the landscape and he can see the fishes. 10th stanza:​ he’s admiring the beauty around. He makes an instinctual act, emotional, non linguistic act: he blesses the creatures. Love is the act of redemption, the empathy he didn’t have when he killed the albatross. 11th stanza: ​it seems that he is free from his sin, his pain because the albatross fell off his neck. FIFTH PART 11th stanza:​ the mariners are like zombies and they are deprived of their souls, of their lives. “lifeless tools”= reference to the historical time (industrial revolution) in which men are used like tools, they’re automatons. Tools for the slave trades. 12th stanza:​ “the body of my brother’s son”= just a lifeless body. Familiarity, intimacy. They’re deprived of the language (sign of existence), immobility. 13th stanza: ​interruption of the narration, the guest doubts of who he is. There were not the mariners who were born again but they were the blessed who were moving the ropes. 24th stanza:​ he speaks about the crime. 26th stanza: ​the Mariner will always repeat the story as a penitence. SIXTH PART There are two voices of two spirits. 2nd stanza:​ “still as a slave..”, image of the slavery. 7th stanza:​ there is again the imagine of the dungeon (slavery trade). 8th stanza: ​“i could not draw my eyes from theirs, not turn them up to pray”= he is also a little bit enslaved, unable to move away from this trauma, from this condemn. 9th stanza: ​“ocean green”= the normal color of the ocean. Some voyagers will quote the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner in their works. At the end the mariner is rescued by a pilot. He feels he is safe, he feels saved and asks to be forgiven, because he is now aware of the sin he committed. SEVENTH PART 16th stanza:​ “that agony returns”= with the fact that he told the story to the guest his agony was passed but then it returned. 17th stanza: ​parallelism with Pentecoste. He must spread his story, his pain, his sufferings. The supernatural for Coleridge is inside, inner thoughts. ● DRAMMA VISSUTO DAL MARINAIO ● SENSO DI ESILIO (FASE DELL’ESPERIENZA ROMANTICA), LA SUA POSIZIONE DEL MONDO ● ENSLAVEMENT (SOTTOTESTO STORICO E POLITICO) 21st stanza: ​the community is restored. From community to isolation to community again. 22nd- 23rd stanza:​ the man shouldn’t break the bond between God and the creature of Nature. Coleridge felt the lack of poetical inspiration. CONCLUSIONS It’s a tale about a crime. It’s a tale that happens in the real world. At the core of human existence there is arbitrary. At the end we have the idea that we must return to the social order which was destroyed by the internalization of the gothic. (before the gothic was external now is internal= the supernatural elements were given by the events, now are given by the interior). There is a desire of redemption. The story is poetry, poetry is like redemption, an act of word. Rapporto con il divino da riprendere, era stato violato. It can also describe the story of the original sin. Uso catartico del testo. L’assenza della parola e del soprannaturale è costituito dai suoni che si trasformano in parole. (ripetizione, ritmo) This story has a meaning and a lesson: everyone must respect nature and God’s creations in order to not be punished and suffer like the mariner who becomes the symbol of the sinnerman, aware but punished. For Coleridge the supernatural is psychological, the expression of the self, of the inner thoughts. In this work we go from a situation of crowd and happiness into a situation of loneliness and anguish that also hits him (Coleridge), who had a crisis due to the loss of inspiration. The other aspect of moral teaching is related to the breaking of the bond among the men, who are like similares creatures made by God. The wedding guest is a sadder and wiser man because, on one side, he is sad for the unjustified, arbitrary action that provoked the death of the Albatross (irrational forces of man), but now he is aware of the mariner mistake and will respect the nature and God more than before, even though he will never get the full redemption. The mariner, in this gothic context, may represent the poet, his ego who rebels against the society and the authority as he doesn’t accept the moral codes. But finally, there’s the necessity to go back to the order, without renouncing the irrationality. The text, that has a critical structure, derives from the pain, the anguish for Coleridge. The world has the power to present the trauma and to lead the mariner to the partial redemption. So, the mariner can represent the Romantic poet, who is tormented, agitated too and who wanders like a damnate man looking for unknown places, in which far from the conventions of the society, that can gaze his inner soul, his feelings and emotions. In fact, the mariner moves from a “rational place” into an unnatural place, where supernatural things happen. THE VICTORIAN AGE The Victorian age took the name from its Queen Victoria who reigned from 1837 to 1901. We can see that Coleridge and Wordsworth had radical positions(Coleridge=near to the ideals of French Revolution and then conservatism, Wordsworth near to the ideals of the French Revolution). The Victorians were anti-romantic but they inherited the work of imagination of the Romantics. Coleridge was confused, unable to feel interest in the human things (good and bad). Victorianism doesn’t feel interest for passions, of the internal world but is a literature that feels interest for the world around and not for the invented things. Wordsworth went from conservative positions because he was the Poet Laureate, so his poems had more of a didactic purpose to positions of support to the ideals of the French Revolution. Victorians were split in different positions: we can talk about religion but also about atheism, or about conformism and individualism. The Victorian age is an age of reforms. They are concerned with the idea that literature should be didactic but also entertaining (escapism, escape in an imaginary a man who committed suicide because he committed a fraud, because of shame (John Sadleir). Who were the criminals? Professional criminals (rotten apple of the system) or opportunistic thieves (poor people, they didn’t want to become the best thieves but the majority were opportunistic thieves of clothes, furniture, cups). WORKHOUSES There was the idea that people who didn’t work were seen as potential criminals. There was high pressure on workers. The city was a problem because it was overcrowded, the pollution, the chaos, it was a new experience. People were obliged to steal to improve their condition. People who committed crimes were: bad-dressed, very slim, associated to a certain areas of the towns (slums). Police= need to control with a uniform, metropolitan police in 1829, the problem was the corruption of police. (Bobbies) Prison= another chance of salvation For Dickens, the problem was the destiny of children: lack of education, ecc... Crime is also interesting in terms of gender: women were less criminal than men. Women had a role in the private sphere, in the houses. Women were confined to psychiatric treatments rather than prison (because of madness and hysteria). Women were also prostitutes (foor need, necessity, love of luxury). Dickens was also interested in women (not only childhood and there was a cottage “Urania Cottage”, where he helped prostitutes to have a better life+financial support). Nancy is not a prostitute, who lives in the luxus. Dickens doesn’t understand why he can’t talk about the degrading part of the society with moral intents as they talked about the good part of the society. For the first time 2 things: childhood and criminal life. Never a child as a principal character. For Wordsworth, childhood is the purity, the innocence. He, before Dickens, gave importance to childhood. Wordsworth= nature/ Dickens= city Dickens was aware he was going into subgenres and defended the use of these subgenres because what was describing was real! Oliver is presented as the pole of goodness, innocence so this means that other characters will be identified as good or bad. I CHAPTER The first chapter opens with the birth of Oliver in the workhouse. Oliver will represent all the good. All that is good has to survive through a variety of difficulties. Oliver is the pole of goodness. Good and villains are very much recognizable. With his birth he represents already the triumph of goodness above evil. His birth is compared to another birth. Oliver’s described as a pale boy. Pale is a keyword that represents the idea of weakness. We have the description of the young woman and we know about her life: she is a poor woman, abandoned by Oliver’s father. When Oliver was naked, the clothes weren't revealing his social class. Clothes were very important in the novel. Elements that are inserted in a system, not natural but cultural. Then he was made recognizable in the way he was dressed. Dickens would be influenced by a text of Curlyle ( “Sartor Resartus”). Curlyle is critical about those who see clothes as a property. In philosophy we have always seen that man was a clothed animal but naturally he is naked. Clothes are the means with which we can develop our personalities. For those times it was given an important role to clothes, full of different meanings. In the Renaissance there were laws that imposed that a certain social class should dress in certain ways. The dress brings with it cultural values. Dickens uses all that is bodily to describe the weirdness, the incongruity of the system and the dresses are fundamental for the characterization of the characters. In the 1 chapter we have reported information when the surgeon asks and the woman replies saying oly that Oliver’s mother was abandoned in the streets by Oliver’s father. So we have not so much information about her life. FILM It’s an explicit reference between the film and the novel. It’s a tribute. Representing the opening of the novel→ we have the young woman walking during a storm and she’s trying to reach the workhouse, similar to the concentration camp of Auschwitz. The scene is quite long and it’s a prequel→ we have just images and music, just visions (something that shows the importance of the typical medium of the cinema. It’s a tribute to the mute cinema). There's a voiceover. We have a sinister atmosphere thanks to the storm. It’s shown the sense of suffering and death suggested by shadows, fallen leaves, in order to create PATHOS. We have the focus of a locket (this is not present in the novel). That object can be helpful to rebuild her past and to know more about her origins. The film was also trying to capture feelings and emotions and this had been typical in a literature which sentimentality had a good position. The Romantics were critical about the literature that implied tears, in which there was an excess of emotions. In the XVIII century sentimentality was associated with morality, to show reactions, it was linked to virtue. Dickens was aware of this. So, on the one hand, we have the tradition of sentimentality in which feelings are linked to the moral sphere. Dickens intensifies this idea in Oliver Twist to produce an emotional impact on the audience. At that time of Dickens there was the idea that emotions were linked to excess,emotions were devalued and critics underline that today we go back to defend emotions. MELODRAMA= drama, play accompanied by music. It is crucial in Oliver twist. Was very popular in the XIX century and it was considered a too easy genre (banalizzaizone della storia). We have the simplification of the plot, it was considered a degraded genre by the theatre. But the idea of melodrama was successful in the Victiorian period. So O.T. represents 2 important genres: the sentimental genre and the melodramatic genre. Melodrama was helping to give order to the disorder created by industrialization of the time (the world dominated by capitalism and more difficulties). Melodrama is also the simple division of the characters between good and evil. CHAPTER V (DEATH/IDENTITY-->LACK OF IDENTITY) We have Oliver in the undertaker’s shop. There are images in which Oliver being offered another place, makes his first entry into public life. We have Oliver without any people around, he is alone in this new world and around many objects related to the idea of DEATH. We have the description of child’s emotions that suggest the idea of terror, ghosts, we have an external atmosphere and then we have a focus on Oliver’s inside: he was alone in a strange place→ a sentence that suggests a Victorian version (of the condition of the Ancient Mariner). What’s interesting here is that Oliver is alive, but the idea of death is projected not only in the child’s soul, but also in the description of this shop→ death is inside and outside Oliver (suffering born from the idea of not having a proper identity). We will find the description of the houses (this area of town) that are very big but too old. The idea is Oliver-death-coffins-death inside. The houses are symbolic of a condition of insecurity, degradation. They are defined as “falling houses” and this represents the COLLAPSE OF THE SOCIETY from the moral point of view. Dickens uses and describes inanimate images to render this idea of the fall of men from Paradise→ the idea of sin that takes away from Heaven. Death is always present, especially with hanging. “The boy will be hung”. The text is disseminating with ideas of confinement/suffocation and death. SUFFOCATION= lack of air: physical and material (when he is confined in small places) In this chapter we have the story of Oliver (an individual) but the whole society is collapsing (INDIVIDUAL/COLLECTIVE). LONDON (HOW IS IT PRESENTED?) Islington= north of the city (London). You can have an idea of the moments and of the streets thanks to the descriptions of the streets. Even if we are in a metropolis, in an open space, it gives the idea that even London is like a prison, the sense of suffocation. There’s the description of a kind of a net where you can lose yourself. He speaks about marginalized people: drunken people, people who seem dangerous. CHAPTER 21 London is characterized by variety while industrial metropolises are characterized by uniformity, while London is characterized by a mass, by a lot of various things. He uses the plural to give the idea of the number of things that are present. Dickens describes the noises of the market, the number of activities and people that are present. Dickens is trying to reproduce the quantity (with the use of the list), the mass with the PLURAL NOUNS. The city is a place of experience, full of stimuli. Dickens’ novel wants to stress the importance of identity, so we have a mass but they are all connected, they are recognized. Also the novel forces the recognition of mass (Mr Brownlow, Rosie Mayle). CHAPTER 8 Fagin is the villain, representing evil. Dickens was criticized from a woman for having created a bad stereotype of Fagin, of the jew. Following the medieval tradition we have the use of the jew to embody evil. So this character was connected to this medieval tradition. In 1867 Dickens eliminated the passages where the descriptions of the jew were too bad. Jews were described with red hair. There’s a repetition of the laugh (ridiculize the Jew). CHAPTER 43 SOCIETY Oliver enters a society and Fagin expresses the law. Everybody is the number one and everybody must take care of everyone. There’s a bond between these people, they have to defend, to be a single identity. CHAPTER 19 WHEN FAGIN GOES TO SICKES The balck mist shows the incapacity to see but also the fumes of the factories. Association of the jew to animals, to beasts (like serpents that are the representation of evil), dehumanized and the function is to present the evil. The Jew was also represented in this way in the first films. J.Stuart Blackton 1909 features: nails like claws, to provoke disgust Frank Loyd 1922 features: rodent/rat-like, sharp, rotten, vampiric teeth. (Juliette Jones explains the protests in Berlin when the film came out) L’INSEGUIMENTO DI OLIVER A LONDRA The film emphasizes the dangerous world and also in London the situation is not different, there’s no way of escaping. People oot of law, so they must escape because there’s the probability of being discovered, the fear of being spied on and betrayed. Entra in gioco Monks. Nel film non abbiamo una ripresa diretta del personaggio. Dai suoi vestiti sembra un uomo rispettabile, di classe più alta ma in realtà è in combutta con Fagin. In questo caso la cattiveria e la negatività sono riferiti anche ad una classe più alta perché Lean voleva eliminare il personaggio di Monks ma se lo avesse eliminato si sarebbe visto che la criminalità e la cattiveria facevano parte solo delle classi più basse, invece Lean vuole far capire che la cattiveria fa parte anche delle classi più alte, anche dei gentiluomini. Anche Mr e Mrs Bumble sono corrotti w complici del piano di Monks. MR BROWNLOW’S HOUSE AT THE END Oliver nwo lives in a beautiful place. The place of the countryside is eliminated in the film. The opposition between the hell of the city of London and peace is represented by Mr Bwonlow’s house. Oliver seems a completely different boy. The frame of the perfect geometry of Mr Brownlow’s house in the film is compared to the labyrinth of London. GEORGE ELIOT George Eliot’s real name was Mary Ann Evans (Maryann first). The name George was the name of the man who lived with her (George Louis), a man who was married and separated so very unconventional and problematic for that time. She was challenging with some conventions of the time such as religious faith, she refused to go to the church ecc. She is considered one of the greatest Victorian novelists.With George Eliot we enter a dimension where the novel is the representation of the life of the people, of reality which was the main purpose (REALISM). For G.E. there’s a correlation between the material facts that happen and the psychological response in which people take them. G.E. novels represent victorian tradition (modernists went against the victorian codes). She was an educated woman, concerned with feminism. MIDDLEMARCH→ Study of provincial life. The first novels of Eliot are about her experience of childhood and the bounds of family. Then, after 1861, novels were interested in the psychological part. REALISM+PSYCHOLOGY+SOCIAL CONTEXT There’s a contradiction between the representation of an universe in which morality was important and her own life which was challenging current codes of behaviour. SILAS MARNER 1861 The protagonist is a weaver, moving from one place (Lantenyard, North of England→ industrial world) to another (Raveloe, South of England→ organic, natural life). This causes a fracture in himself, a fracture between past and present. The plot is dynamic because it shows various adjustments. The hero is a working-class man (simple people and real life), so not a novel with an upper class character as it was used. It was concerned with ordinary life. She declared the influence of Wordsworth (especially of the Prelude). Critics say that there is a character of Wordsworth in the structure of the novel (the representation of real life and simple people). INTRODUCTION: EPIGRAPH “A child, more than all other gifts that earth can offer to a declining man, brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts”-Wordsworth. A child is a gift that brings hope of regeneration. “Declining man” because Silas goes from a positive life of integration to an insignificant life of isolation during which he is a declined man with no purpose in his life. For Wordsworth the nature was the one who gave its own gift to man because nature was the one to give physical sensations. Nature for the Romantics was seen in the way in which man could be in contact with feelings, moral values and in a sphere that was removed from the chaos of industrialization. CHAPTER 1 It is set in a previous period (before G.E. period) in which the world was not so industrialized. At the beginning of the chapter we are entering a strange, different world. We have the focus on these marginalized people (alien-looking me, pallid, undersized, pale, disinherited race). They carried bags and the people of the village thought that this thread was associated with the Devil, with the evil world of superstition. Unfamiliar men were looked suspiciously (people of whom they didn’t know the father or mother). Eliot is defamiliarizing the way in which the facts are presented. ​THE NOVEL POSES THE PROBLEM OF INTEGRATION OF A MAN IN A SOCIETY, IN A COMMUNITY. Then we have the contrast between the sound of Silas’ loom and the sounds of the machines. The protagonist is described as a man with large brown eyes, that the people fought they saw more, pale face to show the lack of vitality and death and he is also shortsided, he don’t see very well and it’s linked to the moral lack, not able to see what is the best way of living, to have strange ideas and behaviour. He can cure people with erbs, associated with the devil. We have the idea of a closed society, confined in a world where there are only primary needs and hard work. The regeneration of Silas starts in Raveloe. The text is built on a strategy in which there is a general introduction and then more specific. Raveloe is not an industrial place. There’s a little aristocracy that can live with ease and relaxed rhythms. “It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe”--> the time is not linear. The idea of the breaks, the gap is transferred also in the use of the time that is not linear. “Rainbow”--> the pub in Raveloe. 5 CONCEPTS OF MARNER: -waver -miser (2n phase of his life) -*cataleptic fits→ perdita di coscienza→ a gap (he was like a dead man. He suffers from cataleptic attacks in which he loses the senses and the he wakes up again) -foster father -short-sided *It can happen things he doesn’t realize but they can change the life of Silas. The gaps fill with mystery and this gap must be filled with something. Who will give the meanings? These are metaphysical questions linked to epistemological questions→ what interpretation we can give of the events? There’s only an interpretation or there are multiple interpretations? The studies of Darwin of 1859 influenced Eliot and we must say that the description of Marner comes from an autobiographical experience of Eliot.There are different ways of understanding reality, personal interpretation. When he says “good-night” we have the first direct speech after a cataleptic fit. We have the first metamorphosis of Silas when he becomes a solitary man​ while before he was a man of good reputation. In a good life he receives a severe blow when his friend William Dane betrays him. They were members of a calvinist sect and the Dean was sick so Silas and William substituted him. Silas is accused of a robbery of money of the church and the money was found in his house but he was betrayed by William during a cataleptic fit. Silas judges himself innocent so they cast the dice to discover if Marner is guilty. So there’s a reference to the Bible where the survey was used to discover the responsible. So what happens is related to mere chance ( evolution of man darwin). Silas is condemned by chance. There’s the illusion of a good God, the faith of Silas is shocked and it’s a way for Eliot to explain the shock, the changes in the 19th century. CHAPTER 2 So in the life of Silas there are a lot of fractures. is a life that has not an easy development but fractures, interruptions of the normal life, nothing is like before. Even the landscape suggests the fracture. Silas is falling in a private world in which the only value that counts is money. He is locked in his private world, he’s shut up in solitary imprisonment. The accumulation of money becomes a reality. In a universe without sense and imagination money becomes central and also an obsession. In a world in which you are accused and betrayed injustily he builts a bubble in which he closes himself and in this universe money is expanding and is the only source of relationship. This is a TRAUMA. So money is treated like family, affection, relationship while the men abandon him the money never abandons him. There’s a reference to the victorian society in which money is central, there’s an inversion of the values and the money substitutes the religious values. With money there’s also a physical relationship and he had a sort of rite with money for distrust. While his money was rising his life was narrowing and there’ s this opposition and the narrator uses the dimension to explain the condition of Marner. His life was without any purpose and he was associated with a crooked tube because as they don't’ have a meaning alone the same was for Silas who is dehumanized, like an object. His life is without a purpose as the world after the theories of Darwin. CHAPTER 3 The most important people in Raveloe were Godfrey and Dunsey Cass, who are full of negative characteristics. The relationship between the brothers is dysfunctional, problematic ( Dunsey is blackmailing Godfrey). GGOdfrey’s ties are complicated (with Nancy and father). The ties are transforming Godfrey into an evil man, in a sort of Doppelganger, a tie with the evil element. The integrity can be affected by internal events. She doesn’t deal with external events but with psychology. Silas uses an affective language with money, the love is transferred from society to money. The relationship with money is described in long paragraphs. The money is like blonde curls of a baby and when he will see Eppie he will think “ my money is back”. CHAPTER 4 Dunstan steals the money from the hole in the floor in Silas’ cottage. CHAPTER 5 Silas goes to the Rainbow to make his loss public→ he starts speaking again (language→ mean to establish relationship) CHAPTER 6