Appunti e Seminario Letteratura letteratura inglese 1, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

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SEMINARIO LETTERATURA ROMANTICISM (1780-1830s)  Romantic poetry: - First generation poets: Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth - Second generation poets: Byron, Shelly, Keats  The Romantic novel: Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley THE ROMANTIC IMAGINATION  Events that influenced this literary period: The American Revolution (1765- 1783), The French Revolution (1789), The Industrial Revolution.  A new sensitivity and renewed standards > a spirit of renovation in contrast with the conservative ideals of the past.  Emotions, imagination, fantasy, prevail over the cult of realism and empirical reason of the Enlightenment.  Focus of literary attention shifts > from urban civilization to contact with nature  Literature is no more regarded as a metropolitan activity based on social life and relations but a solitary occupation, in contact with nature (Best setting to show emotions, focus on the individual instead of a group) FOCUS ON  Not the man of the city BUT the humble peasant, simple and noble by nature (the individual over society)  Childhood  Nature (storm, wind, raging, sea…)  Personal feelings, emotional sphere (emotions over reason)  Interest in the past > the Middle Ages and ancient literatures THE GANCE OF THE ROMANTIC POET ON:  The world of ordinary people  The world of the supernatural (dreams, nightmares, folly, use of drugs -in order to have an extreme emotional background)  The exotic (distance in place and time > unknown places and civilizations) WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)  Preromantic poet > represents the link between the Age of Sensibility (Age of enlightenment) and Romanticism  Active both in poetry and visual arts (lots of paintings)  A rebel and a visionary > keen on the occult (mystical ideas, esoteric doctrines, sublime)  “The Imagination is not a state, it is the human existence itself” –  Freedom form political chains and religious and social institution (that represent restrict to people’s freedom)  Exuberance and Excess ETERNAL UNITY OF CONTRAST  Good and Evil, Purity and Corruption are never separated but exist in eternal opposition and complementarity  The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93) – “without contraries there can be no progress” REBEL AND VISIONARY  Knowledge can only come though imagination  “If the doors of (knowledge never end)  The poet is a prophet that is put in contact with divinity thought the use of imagination  Imagination =perception that goes beyond sensorial experience  The task of the poet is to find truth under the veil of hypocrisy INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE  Song of innocence and Song of Experience  The child sees the world as intact in the primal unity with the divine (grows up and loose his innocence, he becomes aware of the existence of the evil)  Corruption of innocence by immoral laws of society  The child becomes aware of the presence of evil which has to be accepted as a necessary counterpart of good. THE SICK ROSE – From Song of Experience O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. O Rosa sei malata. L'invisibile verme, che vola nella notte nell'ululante tempesta: Ha trovato il tuo letto di gioia cremisi: E il suo amore cupo e segreto Distrugge la tua vita. - The Rose represents the Beauty of nature and the purity still intact, but the rose is sick because of the evil, the education, civilization (the worm). - The joy is in contrast with distraction and crimson with dark. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)  He introduced Romanticism in England (with Coleridge) BYRON’S POEMS  Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage; Manfred; Beppo: A Venetian story; Don Juan  Exotic or historical settings  Black and white opposites  Nature is always present with passion = fury and rebelliousness of natural elements  Delicate beauty of calm lakes or sunsets (Melancholic element) JOHN KEATS  Contemplation of beauty  Transience of life  Beauty is perceived though the senses  Daily experience of sorrow, death, decadence > life is transient, like beauty and youth  Art and poetry are permanent ODE ON A GRECIAN URN Greek art means perfection beauty is truth and truth are beauty P.B SHELLEY (1792- 1822)  A rebel with revolutionary and anarchical ideas  He wrote a pamphlet on “The Necessity of Atheism” and was expelled from Oxford  Passion for freedom in every form  Lyrical poetry characterized by remorseless quest  A visionary sceptic who found he could not reconcile heart and head. THE ROMANTIC NOVEL  Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) and the historical novel.  Jane Austen (1775-1817) and the novel of manners  Mary Shelley (1797-1851) and the gothic novel  HISTORICAL NOVEL WALTER SCOTT  Scottish writer. He uses the historical novel to express the need to find a national identity  The reconstruction of the past is mixed up with elements as fiction, romance, strong passion (revenge, remorse)  Use of folklore, superstition and legends  Use of language as dialect to give flavour of popular speech  Love for nature (especcialy wild and isolated places)  An unusual romantic writer: - He never wrote about himself and his feelings and his characters are no projection of himself - He uses in his novel’s supernatural elements, but he constantly suggests that there must be a rational explanation for them  Waverly (1814)  Ivanoe (1819)  THE NOVEL OF MANNERS JANE AUSTEN  Belongs to the last generation of Romantic writers but she is totally antiromantics  She reflects in her novel the English county society she lived in. Her novels deal with ordinary life of middle-class or rural gentry in provincial towns (no industrialized cities, no wild nature setting)  Social pretensions and ambitions, balls, gossips, marriages, hopes and fears > Marriage as a social institution  Sense and Sensibility; Pride and Prejudice; Mansfield Park; Emma; Northanger Abbey  Characters (especially women) confront with the ambiguities and conditions of social context.  GOTHIC FICTION  Revaluation at the end of 18 century of feelings and emotions, fantasy and mystery against the aesthetics of classicism (order, control and rationality)  A reaction against the comfort of political stability, economic progress and the rationalism of the classical age.  Persuaded heroines, dangerous situations, evil villains, ghosts.  Natural settings appreciated for the picturesque and sublime dimension THE AESTHETICS OF THE GOTHIC  Aristoteles > the power of tragedy lies in its evocation of pity and fear and its capacity to purge these emotions (catharsis)  Edmund Burke > the representation of danger and pain can prove provoke a delightful horror. The sublime is the strongest emotion we can feel and is mainly produced by sense of infinity and terror (contemplation of wild nature or medieval architecture, historical ruins…) GOTHIC AUTHORS  Horace Walpole – The Castle of Otranto > precursor of the genre. An exotic Italian castle, supernatural events, love and death, violent emotions and passions.  Ann Radcliffe – The Mysteries of Udolfo (1794) > based on a persuaded heroine representing the typical bourgeois sensibility that at the end predominates over the usurping villain. Definition of good and evil according to the social standards of the time.  Matthew Lewis – The Monk (1796) > influence of macabre German novels inspired by the Sturm und Drang and by Goethe’s Faust Demonic figures and terrifying ghosts.  Mary Shelley – Frankenstein (1818) > a proto-science fiction… VICTORIAN AGE  Related to the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901)  High Victorian Literature (1830-1880)  Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature (1880-1920) A PERIOD OF CHANGE  Industrialization brings economic change. England shifts from a rural economy based on agriculture to an urban economy based on Industrial activities  Huge migration from the countryside to urban/metropolitan places  Economic doctrines support free trade and capitalism - J. Bentham’s Utilitarianism “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” (=creating happiness and well-being for the majority of the population) - Adam Smith’s economic liberalism (Laissez-Faire = free market economy based on self-regulation of the market, private property, few government restrictions) - J.S Mill’s political liberalism (non-intervention of the State to guarantee free trade and exchange) SOCIAL CHANGES  The middle-class of merchants and traders, that had emerged in the 18th century, gets importance and becomes the capitalistic bourgeoisie (substitutes the power of the landed gentry)  Rise of working class related to the world of factories.  Period of progress and optimism = increase of jobs and production, better life-standards, faith in society.  Britain expands its imperial power and acquires a sense of superiority on the international setting.  Great Exhibition (1851) to show up scientific and technological superiority of Britain. THE AGE OF REFORMISM Political reforms: - Reform Bills (1832/1867/1884) to enlarge the right to vote to lower spheres of society (women excluded. Only in 1918) - Movement of Chartism (1840s) to guarantee the rights of the working class - Institution of Trade Unions (1871) Social reforms: - Education Act (1870) compulsory primary education - Factory and Mines Act (1833-1878) to limit and abolish children’s occupation at work and women’s exploitation - Public health acts (1871-75) WOMEN IN VICTORIAN AGE  The aesthetic movement (art for art sake’s) deriving from European Decadentism that had developed in France in last decades of the 19th century.  Life as a work of art, it must be lived intensely, in the same of beauty, beyond the limits of morality. The artist must be the creator of beauty.  “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all”  Hedonism = enjoyment of senses refined with intellect - The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) (excess of beauty, to be always young and beautiful, sort of warning) STEVENSON  The adventure romance and attractiveness of evil. The divided self. Mankind is “not truly one, but two” - Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) KIPLING  The write man’s burden and British imperialism in India (exoticism) - The Jungle Book (1894) - Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) Both Stevenson and Kipling are afraid of losing what western civilization has achieved. VICTORIAN POETS  Romantic poets have overshadowed what came later in poetry. This is also because the novel had a greater impact than poetry in the Victorian Age.  Sense of belatedness (risk of imitating the expressive and thematic models of the romantics) But need to go beyond and produce poetry that was related to the different socio-cultural context.  Heroic, sentimental, nostalgic tone.  Pictorial poetry > Use of visual images to represent emotions  Contrast between private self and public role  Major Victorian Poets: - Gerard Manley Hopkins - Algernon Charles Swinburne - Matthew Arnold - Robert Browning - Alfred Lord Tennyson MODERNISM (1910-1940) Cultural movement related to art and culture in between the first world war.  House of Windsor reign George V > liberal age; rejection of Victorian moralist values; from Victorian splendid isolation to political alliances with other European countries  Born out of a general sentiment of rejection of tradition requiring renovation and modernity > Ezra Pound’s famous injunction “Make it new!” (tittle of his 1934 collection of essays)  Two phrases of English Modernism: - Pre-war phase culminating in the movement of Vorticism - Post-war phase characterized by the need to reconstruct on the ruins of the war BEFORE WORLD WAR I  Pars destruens > exhilaration, desire to renovate, to destroy deny old conventions of the Victorian past.  Artistic Movement of Vorticism > Iconoclastic movement meant to destroy the stativity of the past (like Futurism movement in Italy)  Art combines the geometrical fragmentation of Cubism with Futurist style imagery: bright colours, cubist letters, diagonal disposition, concentric circles  A manifesto of the movement attacking Victorian values was published in BLAST Review of the Great English Vortex (first issues in 1914)  Poetry > movement of Imagines started by Ezra Pound = poetry is to be represented through concrete images and fragments. From the lyrical “I” of Romanticism to things, objects. Against moral or didactic aims in poetry. AFTER WORLD WAR I  Pars costruens > reconstruction on the ruins left by the war; recovery of lost order, of the forms and structures of the tradition, bur always in a climate of experimentation.  Tradition in not totally rejected (as in Futurism), but it doesn’t have to be local, closed: the modernist poet has to confront himself with a whole European cultural heritage (T.S Eliot talks about “the mind of Europe”)  It is the phase of the production of two of the most important modernist works: J. Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) COSMOPOLITAN AND METROPOLITAN  Modernist authors are COSMOPOLITAN, of different cultural origins, not strictly English but settled in London: American (H. James, T.S. Eliot, E. Pound), Irish (Yeats, Joyce), Polish (Conrad, German (Ford Madox Ford)  Refusal of closure and fixity (like Victorian Age) and desire to open up to and dialogue with an international European culture. E. Pound says: “Provincialism is the enemy”  The centre of modernist culture and is METROPOLITAN London with the birth of new artistic groups, cultural movements, exhibitions, events, circulation of ideas…  But it also expresses a sense of urban cultural dislocation. FRAGMENTATION AND CHAOS  Loss of the faith in progress that was central in the Victorian Age  Open society with lots of cultural impulses that give a sense of dispersion and fragmentary reality.  Rise of theories that enhance this sense of loss > Einstein’s relativity theories (everything is relative, nothing is objective) and Freud’s psychoanalysis (the unconscious predominates over outern reality)  Reality becomes more complex, evanescent. It cannot be contained in a narrative sequence. Only fragments, impressions, images can be transmitted (in contrast with the stark realism of Victorian Age) LITERATURE  A new narrative language is needed and new narrative techniques > Stream of Consciousness, Interior Monologues, Flashbacks, Multiple points of view.  Literature like painting (expressionism, futurism) > life cannot be depicted in a realistic and linear way but in an abstract and fragmentary way, though images.  Novel as a supreme form of art whose aesthetic value is critically revisited.  Refusal of the realist-documentary approach of the Victorian novel and its ethical-pedagogical intent. BLOOMSBURY GROUP  Artists, critics, writers, philosophers who gathered in London between 1905-1930s to discuss aesthetic and philosophical questions regarding art and life in a climate of freedom and agnosticism.  Influenced by the ideas of the Cambridge philosopher George Edward Moore (Principia Ethica, 1903), who saw in beauty and personal relationships important values that could bring to social progress.  Against the hypocrisy and conventions of good society even though they belonged to upper classes. JAMES JOYCE (1882-1941)  The most inventive and experimental modernist writer  The focus of attention shifts from the relationship character-society to the mind of the individual character  Use of Stream of Consciousness (free association of ideas, flow of thoughts and impressions of a character, often incoherent and unpunctuated), interior monologue (inner speech going on in the mind of the character)  No omniscient narrator to explain what he knows about the story and characters  Multiple points of view as evidence of the relativity of knowledge  Dubliners (1914)- Place of paralysis and oppression; Ulysses (1922)- no real plot it’s a single day; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1933); Finnegan’s Wake (1939) STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS Free association of ideas  The tittle, “In a station of a metro”, forms an integral part of the poem’s meaning and massage. The modern urban setting is given by the tittle as counterpart to the more rural image of the “wet, black bough” > the urban and the rural are juxtaposed.  Use of Images > there are no similes (the faces aren’t described as like the petals on the bough), nor metaphors (e.g. the faces are petals): instead, punctuation is used to bring the two images together with as few words as possible.  Pound uses punctuation and typography to convey the immediacy of the analogy. (If you’re in the Metro or Underground and think that the faces of people look like petals, this is instant, and not something that conventional poetic language can reflect with complete accuracy.) T.S ELIOT (1888-1965)  Born in Missouri studies at Harvard, in Paris (Sorbonne), in Germany and Oxford. In London he meets E. Pound and comes in contact with poets and artists of Imagism and Vortex and 1927 he became a British citizen and converted to the Anglican Church.  Nobel prize for literature in 1948  Various literary influences > French symbolism, metaphysical poetry (J. Donne), Jacobite drama, Dante.  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915) > use of dramatic monologue to transmit a sense of frustration and disillusion; Byronic hero trapped in a psychological hell, unable to react.  The Waste Land (1922) > “the justification of the movement, of our modern experiment” (E. Pound). A poem on the crisis of western culture and on the barrenness of the post-war world  Murder in the Cathedral (1945) > poetic drama conceived after his religious conversion and influenced by Greek tragedy and a medieval morality play.  Four Quartets (1945) > religious poetry, meditation and transcendence. THE WASTE LAND  Long poem in 5 section dealing with the fragmentation of western culture and desolation represented by the loss of natural fertility.  In the waste land of the modern world spiritual aridity and loss of faith have deprived life of any meaning. The inhabitants of this world are affected by death in life (spiritually dead) > breakdown of the war  The meaninglessness of life is given by a disjointed structure; the 5 parts are district and separate episodes with no logical sequence, brought together by internal and recurrent symbolic references  Use of different languages (Greek, Latin, German, French…) and different cultural references (Dante, Shakespeare, Homer…)  The poem is dedicated to Ezra Pound who is defined as “il miglior fabbro”. Pound has revisited the first version of the poem (much longer). Also a quote from Dante’s Purgatorio (Canto XXVI) referred to the troubadour Arnaut Daniel (12TH century lyrical poet) as the best smith of his mother tongue. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers.  Desolation of a dead `world on which spring can have no effect. April = spring should bring resurrection.  Physical and emotional devastation of post-war landscape.  Water should be a symbol of life, but life cannot prevail over death.  Spring is not joy and winter is stillness and dullness. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939)  His poetry has two directions: - The untouched ideal world of the rural Irish tradition (Celtic folklore, legends) related to his early life in Dublin. - Influence of Decadentism and Symbolism in London with modernist experimentation.  Direct and incisive languages and apocalyptic images > The Second Coming (1919) THE SECOND COMING (1919) Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?  Apocalyptic vision of the world that is going to collapse into anarchy because humanity as lost its innocence (World War I)  Pessimistic poem with Biblical and Mystical tones that give the idea of disintegration of the word.  Tittle > The Second Coming of Christ after his death and the beginning of a new historical cycle after Christian civilization. But The second coming is that of an anti-Christ that has come to destroy W.H AUDEN (1907-1973)  A versatile and polyandric poet, represents a group of left-wing, socialist- Marxist writers of the 1930s confronting with a sense of shame for not taking in the War.  Isherwood “We young writers of the middle ‘20s are all suffering more or less subconsciously from a feeling of shame that we hadn’t been old enough to take part in the European war.  Siding with the left and revolutionary ideas gave these writers the feeling of purging their inherited guilt by following the mission of changing society.  Modernist experimentation (symbolic landscapes, mythical characters, use of alliteration, allegories, parody) and social ideological commitment (denunciation of social hills)  Rebellion against the evils of capitalist society, hypocrisy and establishment (also for his homosexuality that was repressed by English society) > Migrated to U.S.A. in 1934 and became an American citizen. STOP ALL THE CLOCKS 'Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone' Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out everyone; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good. SAMUEL BECKETT (1906-1989) DRAMA OF COMMITMENT OR SOCIAL PROTEST JOHN OSBORNE (1929-1994)  He has the historical merit of having showed how English stage could became a place where the tensions and discounted KITCHEN-SINK DRAMA ARNOLD WESKER (1932-2016)  Domestic realism and plays with political intent  Focus on working and lower middle-class, exploring the frustration and fears of a social class that had never been realistically presented on the stage before.  … HAROLF PINTER (1930-2008) POSTMODERNISM  Nothing new can be written or produced HARLOD BLOOM  “The anxiety of Influence”. Modern poetry is characterized by the anxiety of creating and original work considering that the poetic influence of previous works is inevitable. GERARD GENETTE  He used the metaphor of the Palimpsest to explain intertextuality = in the past a manuscript page on which text THE POST-MODERN NOVEL  Every literary work is influenced by other works of the past, but it also in continuous dialogue with other contemporary texts > Vertical and horizontal influence.  Anew text is seen as a mosaic of innumerable quotations from other texts. A text is an intersection of fragments of other writings.  The literary text … FEATURES OF THE POSTMODERN NOVEL  INTERTEXUALITY: reference to another literary work or the inclusion of a previous text on a new one. It can take place on different levels, more or less explicit.  METAFICTION: reflections on and analysis of the process of writing. FORMS OF THE POSTMODERN NOVEL  PASTICHE:  PARODY:  NEO-GOTHIC: interest for gothic novels’ elements that are re-introduced with a new …  FANTASY: creation of new myths to recover the idea of epic and substitute religion that has lost its power.  DYSTOPIA: reflections about the future with particular emphasis on a disastrous political and social landscape. MORAL REFLECTION AND ETHICAL DIMENSIONS WILLIAM GOLDING (1911-1993) - Lord of the Files (1954)  A moral fable on the conflicts between civilization/society and human impulses.  The story of a group of boys shipwrecked on a Pacific island who revent to instinctive behaviour and have to fight to survive. They gradually turn into a primitive tribe, prey evil to ferocious instincts. They kill each other and worship...  .. IRIS MURDOCH (1919-1999)  Inspired by 19th century English realism, but often makes use the parody, surrealism and the grotesque.  Interested in philosophical/moral themes drawing on existentialism.. COMMITED WRITING DORIS LESSING (1919-2013)  Nobel prize 2007. She was born in Iran and grew up in Zimbabwe  …  … WRITERS FROM OUTSIDE KAZUO ISHIGURO (1954-)  Born in Japan, he came to England at the age of 8. - The Remains of the Day > set in highly formal world of the country side residence of an English lord in the inter-war years. The story is told in flashbacks through the eyes of Mr Stevens… POSTMODERN POETRY  Experimentation with all genres  Disillusionment towards the written word  Pessimistic view of literature. Poetry is not a salvific instrument that can improve society. PHILIP LARKIN (1922-1985)  He was a member of the Movement > a group of British  ..  .. THIS BE THE VERSE They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself. LITERATURES IN ENGLISH  In the last 30/40 years the Nobel prie for literature has gone to English- language writers who are not English: Australian Patrick White (1973), Nigerian Wole Soyinka (1986), South Africa…  …  … A VARIED ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD  In the case of Canada, Australia and New Zealand (ex-settler colonies) where the land was taken from indigenous populations and occupied by English colonizers, authors are writing in their own language, which is also the national language of the country.  In the case of India and Nigeria (ex-settled colonies)  .. DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE OF COLONIZATION  Common to all of them was the fact of being subjects of the Empire, but the nature of their subjection was different: being a white New Zealander was a different colonial experience from being a black Nigerian.  Different are also the modes of definition of identity > in India, Africa or the Caribbean… SIMILARITIES  In spite of these differences there are parallel thematic connecting these literatures: - Theme of exile - Colonial inheritance - Shaping of a new identity - The relationship with historical past - Digging down into colonial history and recovery of elements from the past  So literature written in English by writers of the former British Empire can be considered as a body in itself.. AFRICA  African writers in English come from different countries and ethnic group with diverse languages, traditions and cultures. English is used as a lingua franca to communicate also within the same nation.  Diglossia > use of words and phrases from native languages in works written in English, often untranslated.  Legacy of the oral tradition >  Role of the writer as a guide, a critical consciousness who denounces and gives advice.  Writers with a strong political commitment, often paid with exile or prison. AUSTRALIA  Australia identity is shaped > - On the origins of British settlement through the transportation of convicts Different forms to represent blackness Karim grow up with the education of real life. London represents the real life. Karim fall in love with a woman older than him. Pyke invited them at dinner with his wife. The director offered to Karim his wife as a sexual object as far as he organised an orgy. Pyke is a perverted man, so he represents a delusion for Karim. = SENSE OF COLLAPS Eleonor’s ex-boyfriend committed suicide pag201 With Anwar death Karim realize that he is missing something in his identity, a part of his routes (His Indian side, an Indian route) Karim travelled to New York, he met Charlie who moved there. Karim discovered a new Charlie who is different from the myth Charlie that he admired. He come back in London. He obtain a new job in Tv. (soap opera which talked about black migrant in London) So Karim find a compromise. TV= More famous, more money KEY WORDS IN THE NOVEL Ambivalence In-betweenness Hybridity Sense of belonging Roots Consider Karim, but also the other main character’s relation to these issues HAROON AND ANWAR as First – generation migrants  Represent the immigrant’s first tendency to assimilate the values and behaviours of the host country in order to fulfil the expectations of the white people.  As they are not accepted and denied inclusion, they exasperate aspects of their homeland’s culture (Anwaar > Muslim religion and patriarchy; Haroon > Oriental philosophy and spirituality)  Otherness is accepted only if the Other can be patronized STEROTYPES APPROPRIATED IN A SUBVERSIVE WAY  Both Karim (Mowgli/ Jungle book) and Haroon (Buddha) appropriate the orientalist stereotypes of British colonialism to be saved to the English public in exchange for money or acceptance.  Subversive use of stereotypes = Not to renounce/deny their identity But to Appropriate it.  Graham Huggan (Critics): “Minorities are encouraged, in some cases obliged, to stage their racial/ethnic identities in keeping with white stereotypical perceptions of an exotic cultural other”  They exploit the oriental colonial conception of the east by adopting a FALSE identity. These performances can be seen as parodies of white expectations. LONDON  Karim sees London as the possibility to overcome racial stereotypes but in London as well he is labelled as “ethnic, he can’t escape stereotypes and prejudices imposed on him  With Shedwell and Pyke, Karim is a victim of another form of racism = cultural racism, looking for authenticity in the EXOTIC  London as the place of failed expectation, the unreal city where identities are constructed: a STAGE where people perform their lives. END OF THE NOVEL  After 4 years Karim, manages to locate himself in relation to “here” and “there”, centre and periphery, suburbs and city. His process of identity formation implies fusing his two sides (Indian and British) into a single hybrid identity.  Karim’s progress from a routed character (restless, always moving around) to a rooted one (taking roots in London, in his family, in his double identity)  Karim represent a new way to be British that implies the refusal of preconceived ideas of identity and the acceptance of complexity and change in the construction of identity.  With this novel Kureishi fills a gap in English literature in 1990 because he does not write from the outside of a migrant’s perspective, but from the inside of a Londoner “born and bred, almost”  Karim is become a man and has learnt to accept hypocrisy and compromise as part of life.  He is now sitting “in the centre” of the city > he has managed to abandon his peripheral position and has been able to gain a central position in his life instead of a peripherical one.  He has learnt to restructure his idealistic image of London, that is reduced in terms of power and allure (“an old city at the bottom of a tiny island”) > the greatness of the Empire has become tiny and isolated. BRICK LANE Monica Ali was born in Pakistan to a Pakistani father and a British mother. She moved to England at the age of 3. She studied philosophy, politics and economics. She wrote Brick lane in 2003 (first novel). The novel is set in England in the quarter Brick lane (marginal place that tents to be central by the point of view of the novel but it still marginal) an area populated mostly by Bangladeshi people but there are lots of references about her origins as HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 1947 Independence of India (Partition between India and Pakistan = Bengal as well was divided: the predominantly Hindu region of west Bengal was made part of India, while the mostly Muslim region of East Bengal became part of Pakistan. Not only different religions but also different languages were spoken. The Partition gave rise to decades of unrest, with East Pakistan suffering continual prejudice and genocide at the hands of West Pakistani forces. In 1971, East Pakistan, having fought a short and bloody war, declared its independence, becoming the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, with Dhaka as the capital city. This novel was published in 2003 and it became a film in 2007. Brick lane’s people dislike how Monica Ali described their quarter and Bangladesh people who lived there in because Monica isn’t Bangladeshi but British so she can’t speak and talk about this community. STRUCTURE OF THE NOVEL Nazneen is sent to London at the age of 18, betrothed by an older man. The story follows the development of Nazneen and is told from her perspective. It begins with Nazneen birth but is focused on her migration to London to reach her older husband. Her sister writes letters chronicling her unstable and hard life in Bangladesh. The story end when Nazneen is 34 and her husband wants the family goes back to Bangladesh but she decides to stay with her daughters. SHE BECAME A WOMEN BECAUSE SHE DECIDES FOR HERSELF MAIN THEMES Experience of MIGRANCY and process of adaptation to a new life and world in different generations. (Second generation: identity based more on British culture, while the First tries to maintain the traditions) MIGRATION and ASSIMILATION > preservation of the culture of the homeland and attempt to fit into the foreign culture of the host land (displacement) Female experience > double colonization (ethnic/cultural and patriarchal authority) of women. The woman not as an individual but as a wife and a mother. (Men have an authority over their wives and children, because they have to guarantee the economic stability to their family, both the British and Bangladeshi ones) RACISM and DESCRIMINATION > different reactions Appropriation of SPACE in the process of belonging. (Space where people can move, can find their life) ANALYSIS Start of the novel: Birth is Death. The girl is weak (stillborn child), her parents won’t help her. (For them the Fate will take care of her) Life in London (a part of it called Brick lane) = life of a prisoner (at first) Claustrophobia (given by furniture, she dreamed at night to be close in the wardrobe – sense of oppression-) > Being a woman (she is a victim of a gender role) Hasina finds another man they got married but then they spilt up because this man can’t stand Hasina’s past as a prostitute so her finds another refuge this time not with a man but into a rich family where she is happy, she made some friends but then she had to leave again. Themes that are recurrent in Hasina’s life: VIOLENCE – EXPLOITETION – SHAME Nazneen doesn’t complain her life because she compares her life to the one of her sister Hasina. This comparison make Nazneen react in her own life. Chanu wanted from his two daughters to transmit his Bangladeshi culture, trying to teach them poems in order to learn by heart (The golden Bengal) to recuperate the roots he had lost in London, the only way to compensate his fail = experience “the mythic Bangladeshi”. Nazneen discovered something that she doesn’t know about the death mother. Her reaction is intense in terms of growing up. Detachment > fundamental in order to create an autonomous identity. Reconsideration the way of seeing her mother’s figure (As a Saint to a monster). Amma due by suicide > against every religion or fate prospective. INTER-GENERALIZATIONAL RELATIONSHIP  Shahana and Bibi are second- generation black British > They were born in London and educated in British culture and know very little about their parents’ home country  Migrant parents in contrast with their westernized children > Chanu needs to bring them back to the home country to re-establish a position of power.  The father figure as the dismissed authority of a tradition that does not exist. TWO EXTREME REACTIONS: REFUSAL AND ASSIMILATION  Relationship with daughters > different with mother (Nazneen becomes more settled life) and father (Chanu drifts into disillusionment and reacts with going home syndrome -to regain his power)  Chanu needs to regain his Bangladeshi identity > sense of alienation, the immigrant’s tragedy  Mrs Azad > extreme way of expressing identity in terms of refusal of origins  For none of them integration is implied (refusal of the west on the one hand, blind assimilation on the other NAZNEEN’S PARABLE OF INDIPENDECE  Part 1. (Destruens) – Nazneen destroys her passivity and submissiveness  Part.2 (Costruens) – Nazneen gets an active role in her life: - She finds a job (seamstress = she sews, repairs other people’s clothes) - Has a lover (Karim = the counterpart of her husband who is reaching the bottom of his decline > gaining territory vs losing territory) KARIM  Young. Handsome and British-boom  Karim represents to Nazneen what Chanu is not: a hybrid identity that had found his place in London. Without refusing his origins, without being a victim  Use of language = Karim stammers when he speaks Bengali, but he expresses himself confidently in English.  He is not a mimic man (someone who has passively assimilated English culture)  Nazneen feels that with Karim she can expand her knowledge of the world beyond her domestic space and find her place. HOW KARIM SEES NAZNEEN  Karim finds Nazneen attractive because she is untainted, unwesternised, pure.  Authenticity in terms of culture and gender > she represents the stability of homeland and a respective femininity (both aspects strengthen his sense of self)  Karim is using her, like a Chanu, for his self-confidence and for the assertion of his ethnic identity. FINAL PART OF NAZNEEN’S PARABLE OF PROGRASSION  The first part is characterized by what she can achieve. The second one by what she is able to refuse. - She refuses to give more money to Mrs Islam (economic independence) - She leaves Karim (sentimental independence) - She refuses to follow her husband back to Bangladesh (gender independence) ECONIMIC AND SENTIMENTAL INDIPENDECE  Chanu has embroiled the family in debt to the local money lender (usurer Mrs Islam) > Nazneen refuses to pay anything more.  Nazneen tells Karim she won’t marry him > She realizes she had never really known him and had constructed him piece by piece.  She realizes she has the strength and capacity to set herself free counting on herself only. NAZNEEN’S DECISION TO REMAIN IN ENGLAND  Chanu and Nazneen go in opposite directions  Chanu surrenders all his dream and returns to Bangladesh > his idealization of Bangladesh corresponds to his growing disenchantments with the British.  Nazneen takes distance from Bangladesh. Her memories of the past begin to fade, and she remembers the dark side of her Bangladeshi life.  Her decision to remain in England is not due to the attractiveness of English life, but to her rejection of Bangladesh for the horrors it represents to her. NAZNEEN AS THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY  Appropriation of the domestic space: - The flat > she clears out the old furniture, paints the walls, brings flowers. - Domestic life > speak English with her daughters, watches English tv programs, eats English food.  Appropriation of the place: Trip to London: - She walks around London with certainty and topographic knowledge. - She trespasses the barrier of the police (defies authority) END OF THE NOVEL  Her own business > “Fusion Fashions” hybridity and integration = Bangladeshi identity/ British context/ traditional female identity/ liberation from patriarchal authority  Ice-skating > the emblem of freedom from any repression of gender or ethnic roles. (she will skate with Sari)  London as the place where everything is possible. THE EMBASSY OF CAMBODIA Zadie Smith (1975-) THE AUTHOR  Second-generation black British writer, born in Brent (north-west London) to English father and Jamaican mother.  Published her first successful novel White Teeth while she was still at King’s college  Wrote novels, short fiction and literary criticism. She was awarded important literary prizes (Granta’s best novelist, Whitbread first novel award, Orange prize)  She sees the label “black British” as reductive and divisive