Appunti del quinto anno di inglese (liceo linguistico). Libro Only Connect New Direction, Sintesi del corso di Inglese

Scarica Appunti del quinto anno di inglese (liceo linguistico). Libro Only Connect New Direction e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! 1 The War Poets During the First World war thousands of young men volunteered for military service, a lot of them regarded the conflict as an adventure undertaken for noble ends. Only after the slaughter on the Somme in 1916 they replaced the sense of pride and exhilaration with doubt and disillusionment. For the soldiers, life in the trenches was hell because of the rain, the mud , the decaying bodies. Almost from the beginning the soldiers began to improvised verses, because they were rough and obscene, they didn’t reach the ears of the literature people living comfortably at home. However, among the people sent to die, many were well educated, versed in the Classics and English literature. The aim of the War Poets is to awaken the conscience of the readers to the horrors of the war. Theirs poetry can be considered modern poetry because, due to their conditions, they are forced to find new modes of expression. Different attitudes to war: 1. Rupert Brooke: Patriotic enthusiasm 2. Siegried Sassoon: turned anger into the main theme of his poetry 3. Wilfred Owen:his poetry is a sort of elegy for the young soldier he had come to love and admire 4. Rosenberg: had a more detached unsentimental view (like Hemingway) 2 Rupert Brooke He represents the ideal of the war He was born in 1877 in a well-to-do family and he attended King's College in Cambridge, he was a good student and athete, popular for his handsome looks. He knew many important politician l, literary and social figures. He saw little combat during the war since he contracted blood- poisoning and died in April 1915. His idea of war was clean and cleansing, he thought that even death could be considered as a reward. He did not live the war The publication oh his 'war sonnets' coincided with his death and made him very popular, turning him into the symbol of the 'young romantic hero' who inspired patriotism in the early months of the Great War. The Soldier Comprehension • First stanza →the poet tells the reader that if one day he should die in a foreign country, his dead body will make it a better place because a piece of England'll be buried with him. England→ personificated→like a mother that gave life, education and good values →it's loved by the poet for its landscapes full of flowers, rivers, roads where human can be connected with nature • Second stanza→ dying during war is a way to show gratitude to your mother country (England) for all the joy and happiness that she gave to him. →The poet's soul'll be purified by his death and his spirit will be given back to England 5 Analysis • Words such as bent, beggars, sacks, hags, cursed→language of poverty and deprivation • Narratore is poet himself Figure of speech • Comparison -Alliteration k • Hyperbole -Alliteration b • Metaphor -Alliteration s • Simile -Alliteration f • Climax -Alliteration w • Onomatopeia 6 The age of anxiety In the last two decades of 19th century the system of Victorian values had already come to an end. The First World War left the country in a disillusioned and cynical mood. The 1920s proved comfortable only for the privileged classes. Some soldiers celebrated their return home, others were haunted by a sense of guilt for the horrors of trench. An increasing feeling of rootless and frustration grew, due to the slow dissolution of the Empire into Commonwealth, led to the Imperial hegemony and the white superiority. Nothing seemed to be right or certain: science, philosophy, religion Freud In his essay The interpretation of a dream discovered that man's action can be motivated by irrational forces of which he might know nothing → it can deeply distort man's behavior. The 'Oedipus complex' focused the attention on the importance of early developments and childhood. Einstein With the Theory of relativity he discarded the concepts of time and space → the word view lost it solidity Nietzche 'God was dead' → more and more people became aware that there were alternatives to Christianity and some intellectuals turned to esoteric beliefs Modernism → history of art → Paris but also in America Main features: • distortion of shapes • breaking down of limitations in space and time • awareness that our perception of reality is necessarily uncertain • importance given to the sound of words (Joyce) • a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetic in favor of minimalist designs • a rejection of the distinction between 'high' and 'low' or popular culture. The modern novel The novelist rejected omniscient narrator and experimented with new methods The main focus was on the internal world of the character The new ideas about time and space ( Freud, Einstein ) influenced the novelists. Example: The entire story of a character could be written in a day time (James Joyce, Ulysses). Epiphany: it is a sudden revelation that appears thanks to a casual event. 7 Robert Stevenson Edinburgh 1850 Because of his poor health he spent his childhood in bed, feeling different. He travelled to England, Germany, France and Italy in search of a friendly climate. He went to engineering university, but he gave up and graduated in law. He married Fanny Osbourne. His health got worse so they moved to Australia and Tahiti → Tusitalia. He died of brain hemorrhage in 1894. The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde 1886 Case → police → psychological Names Jekyll → je/kill Mr Hyde → Hyde and Seek Themes • Gothic • Double nature • Duality of the man's nature • Good and evil Setting It is settled in a city that could be Edinburgh or London (West end/east end). The house → the front door (the one Dr Jekyll uses) is beautiful → the other one (used by Hyde) is ugly and mysterious. There's no natural lighting, only the lights in Jekyll's house or the lamps in the street. Darkness and fog (when Hyde tramples the child and during the murder of Carew.) The suicide happens during night. 10 James Joyce Dublin-1882 Comparison with Virginia Woolf Woolf → we don't understand who is talking but we understand what they are saying Joyce → we understand who is talking but we don't understand what they are saying Relationship with Dublin Love/Hate → center of the paralysis → origin of Irish people Nora Barnacle His wife, they first went out on 16 June 1904 → Bloomsday They move to Trieste where Joyce becomes friend with Svevo and they have two children. He was almost blind → sound of his works, he thought that his works should have been read out loud Style - Medias res - Free direct speech - Epiphany - Steam of consciousness Dubliners Consists in fifteen shorts stories Eveline Eveline Hill, una ragazza di diciannove anni, guarda fuori dalla sua finestra. Osservando ciò che accade all'esterno, vede un musicista suonare un organetto e questo suono le ricorda una canzone sentita prima della morte della madre. La ragazza inizia quindi a ricordare la sua infanzia: pensa al padre, che l’ha maltrattata spesso ma che è anche stato buono con lei in diverse occasioni, ricorda la madre e il fratello scomparso Ernest e si Childhood 3 stories Adolescence 4 stories Evelin Mature Life 4 stories Public Life 3 stories The Dead 11 sente frustrata dal suo umile lavoro di commessa in un grande magazzino, in cui la sua principale la prende in giro e la mette in cattiva luce, motivi per cui, quando se ne andrà, il suo lavoro non le mancherà affatto. Ha deciso infatti di partire con il suo fidanzato, un marinaio di nome Frank, per Buenos Aires. Prima di partire tiene in mano due lettere, una per Harry, il fratello ancora vivo, e l'altra per il padre, e si lascia prendere dai dubbi, non essendo più certa di voler abbandonare il nido familiare per andare a Buenos Aires. Il ricordo della vita monotona e triste della madre la spinge a partire; una volta arrivata con Frank al porto, mentre la loro nave è sul punto di partire, Eveline viene nuovamente colta dall'indecisione e, alla fine, pensando alla promessa fatta alla madre sul letto di morte di tenere unita la famiglia, rimane immobile e non segue il fidanzato, con una maschera d'indifferenza sul volto. Frank, che ormai si trova sulla nave, le grida senza successo di seguirlo e finisce per partire senza di lei. The Dead She was fast asleep Gabriel e la moglie partecipano al ballo annuale di natale delle signorine Morkan. La serata è dominata dai canti e dal ballo finché a poco a poco gli ospiti tornano a casa. Raggiunta la camera d'albergo, Gretta, la moglie, gli confessa il motivo della sua tristezza. Una canzone, durante la festa, le aveva ricordato di un ragazzo conosciuto a Galway, Micheal Furey, malato e così innamorato di lei da sfidare la sua stessa malattia, stando sotto la pioggia per incontrarla, proprio prima che lei partisse. Qua avviene una seconda epifania, Gabriel si accorge infatti che sua moglie è innamorata di un uomo che neanche è vivo. La sua anima si sente infatti già morire, mentre la neve scende stancamente su Dublino, ricoprendo i vivi e i morti, tra i quali, ormai, sembra esserci ben poca differenza. Characters 1. Gabriel → if Joyce didn’t leave Dublin he would have been like him → specular character. Biblical name → Prince of Fire and Angel of Death 2. Gretta → Gabriel’s wife 12 Ulysses Set on 16th June 1904 → the day of Joyce and Nora's first date, in Dublin One day= 10 years of Ulysses’ travel Characters Leopold Bloom → Ulysses (he is considered an anti-hero) → Mix between intellect and flesh Molly Bloom → Penelope → Pure flesh and sensual Stephen Dedalus → Telemacus (he is only searching for a father) → Pure intellect Parallelism with Odyssey Every chapter has a parallelism: 1. Brothel → Circe's episode (every men turns into a pig) 2. Funeral → Ulysses descending in the Ade Divided in 3 parts and 18 episodes 1. Telemachiad (1-3) → Stephen 2. Odyssey (4-15) → Leopold 3. Nostos (16-18) → Molly Style → steam of consciousness language → puns, images, contrasts, paradoxes, catchphrases I said yes I will sermon In this monologue we can understand how superficial Molly is by the descriptions she does → she only pays attention to the aesthetic of things and never about feelings and emotions. We also understand that she married Leopold only for convenience, he doesn't love him and she would cheat on him with every men. Also, the repetitions of 'Yes' have a double meaning 1. About proposing and marriage 2. About sex 15 George Orwell Eric Blair was born in India in 1903. George →common english name Orwell →name of a river He was taken in England where he attended public school but he wasn't as rich as the other kids in the school, so he's considered an outcast He travelled a lot and he tried to experienced poverty, for example when he was in Paris he worked as a dishwasher. He moved to Barcelona where he joined the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) He died of tuberculosis in 1950. Language Realistic and factual language. Animal Farm Historical background 1930 → Stalinism and totalitarism Plot Group of oppressed animals capable of speech that, inspired by an old boar, set up a revolution. The leader is Napoleon. They write Seven Commandments based on equality, but he pigs always gain more power and they want the other animals to be subdued so they slowly change the commandments. Charachters Old Major → Marx and Lenin Farmer Jones → Czar Nicolas II Snowball → Trotsky Napoleon → Stalin 16 Boxer → Stacanov (men who really work hard even if he doesn't know what he is working for) Dogs → Stalin 'bodyguard' Squelar → Propaganda Benjamin → Will of educated people/ skeptical Sheeps → Population who believed in the propaganda Commandments Before After Language it's important for knowing how to control the masses both in Animal Farm than 1984. Whatever goes upon two legs is a enemy. Once the pigs start walking on two legs, two legs become better then four. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings is a friend The pigs end up thinking any animal who walks on four legs or has wings is inferior No animal shall wear clothes The pigs all end up wearing clothes. No animal shall sleep in a bed. No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets" No animal shall drink alcohol. "No animal shall drink alcohol to excess" No animal shall kill any other animal No animal shall kill any other animal without cause" All animals are equal. All animals are equal but some are more equal than others" 17 1984 Settled in Oceania, an oppressed world, ruled by the Big Brother, a character who observe you and listen to you at every moment. Newspeak → language with a limited number of worlds → the less you say, the less you think. Thought Police → free thought, sex, passion, love are forbidden Winston Smith, the protagonist, keep a diary. He works at the Ministry of Truth, a place where the workers change the reality (example of the chocolate). One day he meets Julia, a beautiful woman, and they begin having an affair. O' Brien, part of the inner party, gives Winston an apartment to stay with Julia. But then O' Brien betrayed Winston and Julia, he was a spy. Winston gets tortured with his worst fear: rats. He is now free, but he doesn't love Julia anymore, he has learned to love Big Brother. Characters Winston Smith → Winston → by Winston Churchill Smith → most common name in England. Goldstein → he is Big Brother enemy (two minutes of hate) inspired by Lenin 20 1. Waiting 2. Time 3. Solidarity 4. Hope 5. Memory 6. Life as suffering 7. Paralysis (Go-dot) 8. Fertility (no women) Who is Mr Godot? 1. Religious interpretation Godot→God He isn't a merciful God. By the description of the boy Godot is an old men with a long white beard, such as the punishment God. 2. Clownish interpretation God + ot →diminutive endings in some french names like Charlot or Pierrot Gags in the play The hats the tramps are wearing in the play. 3. Theatrical interpretation Godot can also be interpreted as Go+Dot (go and stop) → a pun that directors use for their actors 21 VLADIMIR: Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? (Estragon, having struggled with his boots in vain, is dozing off again. Vladimir looks at him.) He'll know nothing. He'll tell me about the blows he received and I'll give him a carrot. (Pause.) Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. (He listens.) But habit is a great deadener. (He looks again at Estragon.) At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. (Pause.) I can't go on! (Pause.) What have I said? 22 Francis Scott Fitzgerald 1896-Minnesota He talks about the Roaring Twenties and the sense of void and emptiness in the cult of money and materialism. In 1921 he married Zelda Sayre, they settled in New York, in which they led a glamorous life: alcohol, amusement, drugs... The Great Gatsby James Gatz comes from a Mid-Western family. He changes his name into Jay Gatsby. Before the war he falls in love with Daisy, a beautiful butt superficial young girl, who promised him he would waited for him after the war, but she doesn't and she get married to Tom Buchanan a very wealthy man, who has an affair with another woman, Myrtle, that comes from a lower social class. Gatsby is a self-made men who made his fortune as a bootlegger and through illegal activities. He has a magnificent mansion in Long Island, in the opposite side of the bay to Daisy's house : he gives fabulous wild parties, in the hope he will see Daisy one day. Nick Carraway, a young stockbroker from the Midwest, is Gatsby's neighbor and Daisy's cousin. Thanks to him, Jay meets Daisy and they have an affair. One day, when they are all together in New York, Daisy and Tom have a fight, and Daisy and Gatsby go home together while Daisy is driving , during the drive Daisy hit Myrtle and kills her. Everyone thinks Gatsby killed Myrtle and he wants to defend Daisy. Gatsby get shot in his garden by Myrtle's husband. Only Nick shows up at his funeral, but he is one of the only one. His funeral where the opposite to his parties, because nobody came. The Decay of the American dream The Great Gatsby contains many illuminations and criticism od American life in the 'Jazz Age'. One important theme is the difference from West to East. 25 • Daisy's daughter →reality of T and D relationship 'best thing a girl can be- a beautiful little fool' • Colours 1. White→Daisy, girlhood, innocence 2. Yellow→Gatsby's car, cowardice of T&D 3. Silver/gold→ G's shirt and tie as he tries to impress D with his money • Plants Daisy's voice sounds elegant and sensual, sounds like money Midwest • family values • morality • all the midwest characters become corrupt in the east • Nick return to the Midwest G. sometimes uses old British terms to sound more preppy→ old sport Daisy Myrtle white/gold small, shrub fragile grows low to the ground springtime earthy innocence common 26 Arthur Miller New York - 1915 Death of a Salesman late Characters Willy Loman • Head of the family, 63 years old, Brooklyn • He is a traveling salesman. He travels to New England each week. It's a long drive and he is having trouble keeping his mind on the road. • He has 2 grown sons. • He is the man of contradictions. He always says something and then says the opposite, he has many inner conflicts. • He goes flashbacks of events happened 15 or more years earlier. • Psychological play → takes place in Willy's mind or memory. Linda Loman • Willy's wife, 60 y/old → homemaker, traditional wife →her whole has been taking care of her sons and husband. • She seems to be a quiet person who may not know what's going on. However, she is silently watching everything and knows what is going on, especially about her husband's flaws. Happy (Harold) Loman • 32 y/o, younger brother, businessman in a low position • He knows he has a bad character →He dates and sleeps with many woman and then drops them. • He longs for the love and approval of his parents but he doesn’t achieve because he has lived in the shadow of his brother →no one notices him His name is ironic because he's not happy or satisfied of his life and he doesn't even know how to change. Biff Loman • Older son, 34 y/o → The family has great hopes he would be a success → he gets all the attentions 27 • He was a great athlete in high school and they thought he would be a star, he bounces from job to job. Charlie • He lives next to Willy, business man and lends money to Bill and gives him good advice, he doesn’t blame him for his faults, he is a good and honest friend. • He has a son: Bernard, a successful lawyer Ben Loman • Willy's older brother, dies a few weeks before the play begins, and Willy always think about him. • Ben represents the successful businessman in Willy's mind, he made his fortune in diamonds • Once Ben asked Willy to join his business but Willy refuses.This choice will hunt him for the rest of his life Willy's Father • he disappeared when Willy was a baby, they have no idea if their father lived or died • According to Ben, their father sold flutes from town to town → this may be the reason why willy wants to sell things Flashbacks • Much of the play takes place in Willy's mind or memory because he is struggling with issues from his past • When we are in the past the characters (except for Willy) are younger, trees surround their house and the boys often play football and talk about high school. The play is a tragedy. 30 Ian McEwan 1948 He wrote a play for television The imitation Game 1981 Atonement 2001 Atonement Divided in 3 parts. Characters Part one Briony is writing a play 1. She sees Robbie and Cee in a fountain and she thinks that they have a relationship 2. Robbie wants to apologize for his behavior with Cee but he gives Briony the wrong letter (bad sex-joke that Briony misunderstand) 3. Briony sees Cee and Robbie having sex in the library and she thinks he is raping her even if it was all consensual. Due to all of these misunderstanding Briony thinks Robbie is a sexual-maniac. So, when Lola gets raped (by Paul) she is sure he was Robbie, who gets arrested for sexual assault. Briony young girl, very creative, misunderstand everything Cecilia older sister, she has an affair with Robbie Robbie maid's son Lola Cee and Briony's cousin The twins Lola's brothers Paul chocolate magnate, he is older than Lola, but she is interested in Lola (in a strange and inappropriate way) 31 Part two Robbie, after jail, goes to WW2. (If he didn't get arrested he probably would't have gone to war because he was studying medicine). Cecilia becomes a nurse and they talk by letters. Part three Briony joins as a nurse. Robbie comes back from WW2. Briony assists to Lola and Paul's wedding and she understands that it was Paul that has raped Lola. She asks for forgiveness and she’s searching a way to atone. After we find out that actually Robbie never came back from WW2, he died while he was coming back. Cecilia dies too, during a flooding in a subway. Part four (’90) Now Briony is old and she is a writer. We see an interview where she talks about her last and least book → Atonement She uses Atonement as an apologize, she wants to rewrite the history as it really was. Theme 1. Kids 2. Misunderstanding and jumping to conclusions 3. Love 4. Atonement 5. War and death 7. Writing/Books/the power of writers Point of view First person and Third Person Omniscient (scenes that are seen twice due to different Pov’s, Briony's one and the real one) 32 Kazuo Ishiguro Nagasaki- 1954 2017→Nobel for literature In the sixties he moved to UK 2005 →Never Let Me Go Never Let Me Go • Written during a fast-moving period of development in the biological and medical sciences. • In the 1990s, scientists in the western world began to work on cloning—the first “clone” ever created was a sheep named Dolly. • These developments precipitated a great deal of discussion regarding humankind’s morality Never Let Me Go, a dystopian science fiction novel, introduces a sinister cloning experiment to artificially produce organs for transplant operations where the clones are human beings, but their lives exist solely to create and 'caretake' organs for “real” humans. Ishiguro allows these biological and ethical ideas to play out in the background, while a very human story of love, loss, and maturation occurs in the foreground. Maturation and Growing up Kathy H., the narrator and protagonist, details her education at  Hailsham and “the Cottages”, and then her career as a “carer” who looks after the “donors” in her charge. The novel is characterized by Kathy H.’s disappointments, anxieties, and moments of happiness as she gets older, and becomes closer with her two friends Tommy and Ruth. As young people at “school” there, Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth are mostly free to make art, speak to one another. 35 Theme of Colonialism 1. Conrad: he is against European colonialism 2. Kipling: he supports colonialism Conrad 1857 - Poland His family was forced to exile in Russia and soon both his parents died. The experience of being colonized came early. 1890 Conrad received a commission that brought him to Africa Homo Duplex → he had never clear and stable positions. Double nationality, double careers, theme of the double. He didn't believe that novelist should try to amuse his reader or to teach him a lesson, his aim was to explore the meaning of the human situation. His style is oblique → is stories deal with tough situations and mysterious places/people. Conrad found chronological sequence inadequate. Technique → first-person narration → invisible narrator → journals and letters Theme of the travel: 1. Geographical travel 2. Physiological travel Light 1. Sun 2. Progress The French ship: it represents the war between civilizations useless and no-sense. 36 Opposition between black and white/ light and darkness. At the beginning the light represents the calm while the darkness the evil. After, the terms switch and the black starts to have a good connotation, while the white a bad one (violence, exploitation, hypocrisy..) Imagery and Symbolism The main pattern of imagery in the novel is the contrast between white (good, civilized, dominated by progress and reason ) and black (evil, uncivilized, dominated by primitiveness) The psychological interpretation Heart of Darkness can be interpreted as a psychological investigation, the novel plotting a night journey into the self , into the dark region of the Freudian subconscious. In Freudian terms, Kurtz has gone beyond the id (the dark, inaccessible part od the personality, with no ethical or moral values), free from the superego (the moral percepts of the mind, the controlling agent od the satisfaction of needs) The wilderness has ‘whispered' to him (Kurtz) things about himself which he did not know. By sacrificing the ideals of order, discipline and duty (Marlow's work), entrusted to the super ego, Kurtz has gained knowledge to the id but has been destroyed by it ( in much the same way Stevenson Jekyll managed to separate the two sides of his personality, but he was destroyed by Hyde ) On the contrary, Marlow's ego and super ego (discipline, efficiency, duty) are very active. The psychological approach is an obvious key to the interaction between Marlow and Kurtz. 37 The novel deals with the behavior of men in an isolation which makes the common values of normal everyday social living meaningless, and investigates what kind of moral strength is necessary so as not to succumb to wilderness. Civilization is only a conventional set of rules, and the white men, when isolated from his organized social structure, when thrown upon his inner spiritual and moral resources, if not sustained by an ''idea'' or ''inborn strenght'', is damned by his greed and hypocrisy into inaction, amorality and inhumanity. What salvation is there from the wilderness? In the opening scene, Marlow is balancing its fascination for the wild, for the primitive with the ''devotion to effiency''. Very he is talking about the idea of work, in terms very much like the Victorian ideal of duty. Even if Marlow is able to stop one step before his complete fall (unlike Kurtz), he feels that nobody has the right to judge Kurtz, a man who tried to face his own darkness, without succeeding. Marlow seems to admire Kurtz, despite the horror that he felt and provoked Theme of the double 1. European Kurtz → the idea the fiancee has She can't understand because she hasn't been there. Marlow tells her a lie because he want to protect her and Kurtz 2. African Kurtz → the idea that Marlow has Narrator There are two narrators: 1. An anonymous passenger on a pleasure ship, who listens to Marlow’s story, 2. Marlow himself, a middle-aged ship’s captain. 40 He always believed in the necessity of a 'law' and in the necessity to respect it. It doesn't matter the law since it can be the simple law of the jungle to which an animals obey of the law of a country but it's always the frame within which the men must live. Due to the importance of this law he taught that democracy was not a right form of government because any specially trained people (monarch) were capable of performing such a task and not representatives elected by ill-informed electors. Kipling success his also due to the fact that public after the static vision of the aesthetic movement, wanted action, and this is what he gave. Sometimes the protagonist of his book are children, as in the Jungle Book. The interpretation of is an allegory of imperialism where Mowgli stands for the colonial ruler and the animals for the natives : Mowgli knows them and call them brothers but he is not one of them. 41 Charles Dickens Portsmouth 1812 Unhappy childhood His father went to jail with his whole family, he was the only one who was ‘free’ → he worked in a factory at the age of 12. → His childhood inspired most part of his works. He became a journalist, he adopted the name of ‘Boz’. Most important novels David Copperfield Oliver Twist Hard Times These novels are set against the background of social issues, highlighting the social conditions of the poor and the working class. His novels 1. His novels are inspired by the Bible (we can see it in Hard Times), by fairy-tales, fables and nursery rhymes. 2. He published his novels monthly or weekly → this means that he could easily change the history depending on what the audience liked and disliked. Unfortunately this means also that his novels may sound difficult, artificial and episodic. 3. London is fundamental in his works, it is considered as a character. The description are extremely realistic. Characters He created caricatures → exaggerated and ridiculed. The female characters were usual weak and negative, due to the relationship he had with his mother. 42 Hard Times Setting The novel is set in an imaginary and industrial city, Coketown. This city reminds us of the industrial London. Plot Thomas Gradgrind, an educator who believes in facts and statistics, has founded a school in which his theories are thought. He grow his children up (Louisa and Tom) in the same way, repressing their imagination and feelings. Louisa get married (at the behest of her father) to Josiah Bounderby, a rich banker way older than her. She is okay with this married because Josiah provided Tom a job in his bank. Tom, who is lazy and selfish, robs the employers, so the whole family is obliged to leave the country A critique of materialism Hard times focuses on the difference between the rich and the poor/ factory owners and workers. This novel uses his characters and stories to denounce the gap between the rich and the poor and to criticize the materialism. In Hard Times we can see how England was turning human being into machines. 45 'Then he has no business to do it,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'Tell him he mustn't. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?' 'He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.' Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand. 'We don't want to know anything about that, here. You mustn't tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don't he?' 'If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.' 'You mustn't tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horse-breaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?' 'Oh yes, sir.' 'Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horse- breaker. Give me your definition of a horse.' (Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.) 'Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!' said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. 'Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.' The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely white-washed room, irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and girls sat on the face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies, divided up the centre by a narrow interval; and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But, whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by 46 bringing them into immediate contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white. 'Bitzer,' said Thomas Gradgrind. 'Your definition of a horse.' 'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty- four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.' Thus (and much more) Bitzer. 'Now girl number twenty,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'You know what a horse is.' She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antennae of busy insects, put his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and sat down again. The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other people's too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little Public- office, ready to fight all England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a genius for coming up to the scratch, wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly customer. He would go in and damage any subject whatever with his right, follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore his opponent to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out of common sense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. And he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great public-office Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon earth. 47 'Very well,' said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his arms. 'That's a horse. Now, let me ask you girls and boys, Would you paper a room with representations of horses?' After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, 'Yes, sir!' Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman's face that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, 'No, sir!' - as the custom is, in these examinations. 'Of course, No. Why wouldn't you?' A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing, ventured the answer, because he wouldn't paper a room at all, but would paint it. 'You must paper it,' said the gentleman, rather warmly. 'You must paper it,' said Thomas Gradgrind, 'whether you like it or not. Don't tell us you wouldn't paper it. What do you mean, boy?' 'I'll explain to you, then,' said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, 'why you wouldn't paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality - in fact? Do you?' 'Yes, sir!' from one half. 'No, sir!' from the other. 'Of course no,' said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. 'Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don't see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don't have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact.' Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approbation. 'This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,' said the gentleman. 'Now, I'll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?' There being a general conviction by this time that 'No, sir!' was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus 50 Chapter V - The Keynote / Coketown Coketown, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our tune. It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam- engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. Savage/Elephant → urban jungle He uses many repetitions to give the idea of monotony. Coketown can be related to any other industrial city. 51 Oscar Wilde Dublin - 1854 He became a disciple of Walter Pater, the theorist of Aestheticism in England → Art for Art Sake. He became a celebrity for his wit and his dress as a dandy. He married Constance Lloyd and had 2 children. In 1981 he met the young and beautiful Lord Alfred Douglas, whose nickname was Bosie. Bosie’s father forced a public trial and Wilde was convicted of homosexuality practices and sentenced to two-years of hard labour. → here he writes De Profundis. The picture of Dorian Gray Narrative Techniques 3rd person narrator The character reveals about themselves through what they say or what other people say about them Allegorical Meaning Beautiful people are moral people and vice versa. → everyone has to be punished for his crimes. Art survives people, it is eternal. The structure Prologue + 1. Dorian’s Rise - only one month - chapter II-X 2. Period in which Dorian is a sort of model for young citizen - 18 years - one chapter XI 3. Dorian’s Fall- few weeks - XII-XX 52 Names Dorian Gray 1. It sounds like the colour grey and it reminds us the fact that Dorian feels in the middle between black (Henry) and white (Sybil). 2. Of Doria → it reminds us of the classical beauty Sybil Vane 1. Where prophets predicted the future in the Ancient Greek 2. Vane → in this case she talks in vain. Lord Henry There are some elements that suggest he is the Devil. 1. Old Henry is the way in which the Devil is called in the Folk Tales 2. His smile and his sense of pleasure are ‘subtle’ that is the same adjective used to describe the Serpent in the Genesis. 3. Pointed brown beard which is the same as Mephistopheles 4. The voice is charming 5. His garden is similar to Eve’s one in Paradise Lost Novel → unconventional Final → ordinary Love Dorian and Sybil love each other (somehow) Basil → loves → Dorian → loves → Lord Henry Wilde vs Dickens Dickens → superficial optimist Wilde → more skeptical (like we can see in Aunt Agatha’s Party Chapter) Plot Dorian Gray viene ritratto dall'amico pittore Basil Hallward grazie a quest’ultimo conosce lord Henry Wotton, ne rimane 55 → Coloro che scorgono bei significati nelle cose belle sono le persone colte. Per loro c’è speranza.
 Essi sono gli eletti: per loro le cose belle significano solo bellezza.
 Per gli uomini sensibili c’è speranza, la quale viene riattivata dall’arte per quanto essa possa essere fine a sé stessa.
 Nonostante il mondo sia un posto corrotto dal vizio e dal potere, la sensibilità degli uomini definiti da Wild colti, non è stata intaccata. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. → Non esistono libri morali o immorali. I libri sono scritti bene o scritti male. Questo è tutto.
 La morale per l’artista non esiste, poiché è la materia dell’arte stessa. 
 A causa della forma l’artista potrebbe essere mal interpretato e quindi il senso della sua opera (creazione) sarebbe vano. The nineteenth-century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.The nineteenth-century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. → L’avversione del diciannovesimo secolo per il realismo è la rabbia di Calibano che vede il proprio volto riflesso nello specchio.
 L’avversione del diciannovesimo secolo per il romanticismo è la rabbia di Calibano che non vede il proprio volto riflesso nello specchio.
 Personaggio shakespeariano, Calibano non sopporta la vista della propria immagine riflessa nello specchio. Preferisce rimanere nell’ignoranza della propria condizione. Preferisce non vedere come l’ha ridotto Prospero, il suo padrone, che con i suoi raggiri e le sue fasulle promesse non otterrà mai la libertà.
 Con questa metafora critica le condizioni del popolo Inglese, che come Calibano rifiutano di vedere quel che sono realmente, vivendo in una pallida illusione immersa di piacer mondani. The moral life of man forms part of the subject matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. 56 → La vita morale dell’uomo è parte della materia dell’artista, ma la moralità dell’arte consiste nell’uso perfetto di un mezzo imperfetto.
 La morale dell’uomo è materia dell’artista, poiché l’uomo attraverso i suoi desideri, le sue fantasie e le sue perversioni sfugge appena può da essa. L’importante è mostrare agli altri la falsa immagine creata per la morale accettata e sostenuta da tutti.
 L’artista non si può comportare in questo modo nei confronti dell’arte, perché l’arte lo rende libero di esercitare e di manifestare ogni cosa e per questo la può usare a suo piacimento libero dal condizionamento della società.
 
 No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be be proved. → L’artista non desidera dimostrare nulla. 
 Persino le cose vere possono essere dimostrate.
 L’artista non fa critiche morali o etiche mostra attraverso la semplicità della sua arte quello che sente. La bellezza dell’arte altro non è che il vestito del mistero, apparentemente semplice ma profonda nella sua essenza. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. → Nessun artista ha intenti morali.
 In un artista un intento morale è un imperdonabile manierismo stilistico.
 La morale è un regola che l’uomo impone a sé stesso senza capirne il vero motivo e significato, a differenza dell’etica che è un limite cosciente che l’uomo impone a sé stesso per lasciare spazio al prossimo suo.
 La morale e la sua critica, riscuote sempre consenso, poiché è essa è la regola accettata dalla maggioranza degli individui, per essere accettati dagli altri l’uomo non divine consapevole e quindi nemmeno libero di esprimersi. Il modo di comportarsi accettato da tutti è un blocco espressivo per l’artista e per l’uomo. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. → Nessun artista è mai morboso. L’artista può esprimere qualsiasi cosa. 
 L’artista è osservatore dell’uomo e della vita, e nella sua arte imprima la sua libertà e il suo essere.
 La morbosità è un limite nella quale l’arte stessa muore. Essere morbosi 57 significa essere troppo dentro e quindi vincolati, attaccati a qualcosa, e la creazione derivante dalla libertà dell’istinto non si manifesterebbe nell’opera d’arte.
 
 Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. → Il pensiero e il linguaggio sono per un artista strumenti di un’arte.
 Ideazione-pensiero, creazione-linguaggio. L’arte si forma attraverso l’intelletto che è la peculiarità più elevata dell’uomo e ne da creazione nel mondo materiale attraverso il linguaggio: pittura, musica, scrittura. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. → Il vizio e la virtù sono per un artista materiali di un’arte. 
 L’uomo vive nella dualità costante per conoscersi. Il bene e il male spesso nella vita reale vengono manifestati proprio attraverso il vizio e le virtù. Mentre nel vizio perde tutta la sua luce, facendosi trasportare come una foglia dal vento d’autunno; nelle virtù dimostra il suo slancio verso l’infinito spostando tutti i suoi limiti, compiendo azioni di valore inestimabile per sé stesso e per l’umanità. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. → Dal punto di vista formale il modello di tutte le arti è l’arte del musicista.
 Dal punto di vista del sentimento il modello è l’arte dell’attore. 
 La forma della musica comunica con l’ascoltatore attraverso le vibrazioni che essa emana, colpendo il corpo e facendolo risuonare come un diapason.
 L’attore invece colpisce lo spettatore attraverso l’immedesimazione dello stesso nella parte che sta recitando. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. → Ogni arte è insieme superficie e simbolo.
 Coloro che scendono sotto la superficie lo fanno a loro rischio. 
 Attraverso il simbolo utilizzato in ogni arte l’uomo diviene introspettivo, questa introspezione lo fa scendere nelle sue virtù e nelle sue oscurità, naturalmente a suo rischio e pericolo.