Appunti letteratura inglese 2, The Victorian Age, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Appunti letteratura inglese 2, The Victorian Age e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! Victorian Age 1837 – 1901 Early Victorian Robert Browning 1812 - 1889 Was born into a rich family at Camberwell, near London. He was most educated at home and was a voracious reader, though not systematic; this was probably the reason why he chose for his poetry out-of-the-way subjects taken from the remotest corners of history. With his love of exotic and the picturesque he was a typical upper-class Victorian, sharing the value of his age though intelligently critical of them. He met his wife Elizabeth Barrett in 1845. She was already famous as a poet. The circumstances were Romantic: she was a semi-invalid, 6 years old than he was, and dominated by tyrannical father. The eloped (fuggire insieme) to Italy in 1846 and lived there for the next 15 years. Elizabeth died in Florence in 1861. Browning had taken great risks taking an invalid far away from home. Browning returned to England to live in London with Pen, the son he had had by Elizabeth. He then started what is called the third phase of its career. He took upon himself the role of great poet and became a public figure, known for his conversation and wit. From its first works, it was clear that Browning’s poetry was highly original. In his poems the story is told by some actor in it, not by the poet himself. This actor is a single character faced with an ethical problem; the language is colloquial and the rhythm as abrupt as those of real live speech. Browning is the acknowledged master of the dramatic monologue, though strictly speaking he didn’t invent it. The characteristics of his dramatic monologue: • It is recited by a first-person speaker • This speaker isn’t the poet but a historical figure • It is set in a precise historical and geographical background • There is a listener, who is essential to the dramatic or theatrical quality • It centres on a crucial point or problem in the speaker’s life • The tone and language are consistent with the speaker • Language is made to appear colloquial and spontaneous • Irregular or unusual syntax, punctuation and rhythm These features emerge from his best dramatic monologues: My last Duchess, (pentameters iambic, rhyming couplets), first published as "Italy" in 1842 in the “Dramatic Lyrics” collection and then with the current title in 1845, in the “Dramatic Romances and Lyrics collection”. Set in Ferrara in the Ducal Palace. The speaking voice of the poem is the Duke of Ferrara who is negotiating his marriage to the niece of the Count of Tyrol. On the staircase the Duke points out to 1 the Count’s envoy a portrait of his previous wife, who was probably murdered on his orders. He gives his consideration of her character. The rhetoric of the poem is masterly (sopraffino). Ironically, everything the Duke says reveals his own character and emphasises what a difficult husband he will be. The picture preserves an ideal image of the Duchness: her portrait has the same importance to the Duke now as the living person hd in life, except that now she is under his complete control. The dramatic monologue is really a study of personality. It establishes three distinct poles of reference in a work: the reader, the speaker or persona and the poet himself. We hear the character speaking without his or her being aware of our presence, and his or her ton tells us to some extent what Browning thinks about the person. Browning’s characters speak. The characters digress, jump from one idea to another, and change their line of argument, and this often gives Browning’s poetry the fell of prose. Browning’s characters speak their minds, revealing their personalities and in this sense Browning has had a great influence on modern literature. His use of point of view anticipates its manipulation in the modern novel. Careful reconstructions of the way the human mind works and formulates motives for often unjustifiable actions or views is an essential feature of 20th century prose. Browning’s central perception is that people are driven by ideals which, through force of circumstances or human weakness, are compromised and spoiled. He then shows how they try to hide the knowledge of their personal failure not only from other people, but also from “themselves”. This poem is loosely based on historical events involving Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, who lived in the 16th century. The Duke is the speaker of the poem, and tells us he is entertaining an emissary who has come to negotiate the Duke’s marriage (he has recently been widowed) to the daughter of another powerful family. As he shows the visitor through his palace, he stops before a portrait of the late Duchess, apparently a young and lovely girl. The Duke begins reminiscing about the portrait sessions, then about the Duchess herself. His musings give way to a diatribe on her disgraceful behavior: he claims she flirted with everyone and did not appreciate his “gift of a nine-hundred-years- old name.” As his monologue continues, the reader realizes with ever-more chilling certainty that the Duke in fact caused the Duchess’s early demise: when her behavior escalated, “[he] gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together.” Having made this disclosure, the Duke returns to the business at hand: arranging for another marriage, with another young girl. As the Duke and the emissary walk leave the painting behind, the Duke points out other notable artworks in his collection. 2 Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806 – 1861 Was born near Durham to a wealthy merchant family that had made its fortunes in the Jamaica slave trade as well as sugar plantations. For a girl of her time she was unusually well educated, learning Greek and Latin. She was an early writer: her first volume of poetry was published when she was thirteen. Her tyrannical father kept her confined at Hope End, the imposing Moorish-style castle where the family lived. The official excuse for Elizabeth’s seclusion was her infirmity, she was a semi-invalid, which however, she soon overcame when she finally left home. By the age of 39 she was a well-known poetess. Robert Browning soon declared his love for her. Their relation was mainly epistolary for a year and a half, after which they secretly married in 1846 and eloped to Italy. The following year she published Sonnets from the Portuguese, a collection of 44 sonnets inspired by her love for Browning. In telling the story of her love in a series of sonnets she was clearly joining a centuries-old tradition, but she was also doing something totally unprecedented: hers is the first canzoniere written in English by a woman and from a woman’s point of view. The novelty is apparent: it isn’t the man who tries to win the woman’s love, but the woman who wants to qualify the man’s declared love. He must not love her for her physical attractions or for her gentleness or for any other reason, since these may all alter with time or circumstances. What she suggest, is her way asking for eternal love and stating the non-rational quality of love. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways How Do I Love Thee? is sonnet number 43 taken from The Sonnets From the Portuguese, a book first published in 1850. Elizabeth Barrett Browning chose this title to give the impression that she had translated the work from the Portuguese and would therefore avoid any controversy. It was dedicated to her husband, poet Robert Browning. But the work did cause a stir. For starters, the inspiration behind the work was Elizabeth's love for the man who had, for all intents and purposes, rescued her from a quietly desperate, reclusive lifestyle she led in London, following the accidental death of her closest brother. Dominated by her possessive father, Elizabeth spent most of her time alone in an upstairs room. She was a frail, sick woman who needed opium and laudanum in an effort to cure her pain. 5 Her only consolation was poetry and at this she was very successful. When Robert Browning read her work he was so impressed he wrote asking to meet her. The two eventually fell in love and decided to secretly elope to Italy in 1846, despite the father's resistance and anger. He ended up disinheriting his daughter. Elizabeth and Robert exchanged hundreds of love-letters over the two years from 1845-46. In them you get a clear idea of just how much they adored one another. Take this excerpt from Elizabeth in 1846, near the time of their elopement: 'For I have none in the world who will hold me to make me live in it, except only you - I have come back for you alone...at your voice...and because you have use for me! I have come back to live a little for you. I love you - I bless God for you - you are too good for me, always I knew. ' Elizabeth was close to 40 years of age when she broke free from the control of her father. You can imagine her pent up strength of feeling and sense of relief. She went on to give birth to a son and was happily married for sixteen years, until her death in 1861. How Do I Love Thee? is her most well known sonnet. It has a female narrator which was highly unusual for the time. Lines 1-4 This sonnet helped kick-start many more on the theme of modern (Victorian) love, from a woman's perspective. Note the emphasis is on the repetition and reinforcement of the speaker's love for someone; there is no mention of a specific name or gender, giving the sonnet a universal appeal. The first line is unusual because it is a question asked in an almost conversational manner - the poet has challenged herself to compile reasons for her love, to define her intense feelings, the ways in which her love can be expressed. There then follows a repetitive variation on a theme of love. To me this conjures up an image of a woman counting on her fingers, then compiling a list, which would be a very modern, 21st century thing for a female to do. This poem comes from another era however, a time when most women were expected to stay at home looking after all things domestic, not writing poems about love. The second,third and fourth lines suggest that her love is all encompassing, stretching to the limits, even when she feels that her existence - Being - and God's divine help - Grace - might end, it's the love she has for her husband Robert that will sustain. Note the contrast between the attempt to measure her love with rational language - depth, breadth, height - and the use of the words Soul, Being and Grace, which imply something intangible and spiritual. Her love goes beyond natural life and man-made theology. These are weighty concepts - the reader is made aware that this is no ordinary love early on in the sonnet. The clause, lines 2-4, contains enjambment, a continuation of theme from one line to the next. Is she suggesting that the simple notion of love for a person can soon flow into something quite profound, yet out of reach of everyday language and speech? Lines 5-8 The speaker, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning continues with her passionate need to differentiate the many ways her love for her husband manifests. In line five she clearly tells the reader that, be it day or night, her love fills those quiet moments, those daily silences that occur between two people living together. 6 Her love is unconditional and therefore free; it is a force for good, consciously given because it feels like the right thing to do. She doesn't want any thanks for this freely given love; it is a humble kind of love, untainted by the ego. Lines 9-14 The sestet starts at line nine. The speaker now looks to the past and compares her new found passions with those of the old grieves. Elizabeth Barrett Browning had plenty of negativity in her adult life - she was mostly ill and lived like a recluse, seeing only old family friends and family. Her father in particular oppressed her and wouldn't allow her to marry. There were no romantic relationships in her life by all accounts. She must have been driven to the point of willing herself dead. Little wonder that when Robert Browning came along she was given a new lease of life. In contrast her childhood had been a happy one and it's this she refers to in the second half of line ten. A child's faith is pure and innocent and sees fresh opportunity in everything. Turning to religious feelings in line eleven, the speaker refers to a lost love she once had for the saints - perhaps those of the Christian church, of conventional religion. Or could she be looking back at the saintly people in her life, those she held in great regard and loved? She suggests that this love has now returned and will be given to her husband. In fact so stirred up is she with these innermost feelings she goes on to say in line twelve, with just a dash to separate - this returned love is her very breath. Not only that, but the good and the bad times she's had, is having, will have - this is what the love she has is like. It is all enveloping. And, in the final line, if God grants it, she'll carry on loving her husband even more after she dies. So her love will go on and on, beyond the grave, gaining strength, transcendent. How Do I Love Thee? Let me count the ways (Sonnet 43) How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. 7 yearns constantly for new experiences that will broaden his horizons; he wishes “to follow knowledge like a sinking star” and forever grow in wisdom and in learning. Ulysses now speaks to an unidentified audience concerning his son Telemachus, who will act as his successor while the great hero resumes his travels: he says, “This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I leave the scepter and the isle.” He speaks highly but also patronizingly of his son’s capabilities as a ruler, praising his prudence, dedication, and devotion to the gods. Telemachus will do his work of governing the island while Ulysses will do his work of traveling the seas: “He works his work, I mine.” In the final stanza, Ulysses addresses the mariners with whom he has worked, traveled, and weathered life’s storms over many years. He declares that although he and they are old, they still have the potential to do something noble and honorable before “the long day wanes.” He encourages them to make use of their old age because “ ’tis not too late to seek a newer world.” He declares that his goal is to sail onward “beyond the sunset” until his death. Perhaps, he suggests, they may even reach the “Happy Isles,” or the paradise of perpetual summer described in Greek mythology where great heroes like the warrior Achilles were believed to have been taken after their deaths. Although Ulysses and his mariners are not as strong as they were in youth, they are “strong in will” and are sustained by their resolve to push onward relentlessly: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” This poem is written as a dramatic monologue: the entire poem is spoken by a single character, whose identity is revealed by his own words. The lines are in blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter, which serves to impart a fluid and natural quality to Ulysses’s speech. Ulysses It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honour'd of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades 10 For ever and forever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This is my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. 11 Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Christina Rossetti 1830 – 1894 Owing to precarious health she led a very retired life and though she started to write at an early age, her first published work, Goblin market and others poems, only came out in 1862. Her inspiration was mainly religious. She dedicated herself to a life of good works and meditation, twice refusing to marry because of religious scruples. Christina’s poems are full of passion and rich sensuousness. They identify the dualism of nature and spirit. The dominant themes of her compositions are death and love, often seen in visions and half-awake reveries, as in Songs, where she sees herself dead but asks her lover not to be sad and not to perform the usual funeral rites. She does not even ask him to remember her for ever, another conventional request: he may remember or forget her, as he wishes. The poetess is not being cynical here; she says the same about herself in the last two lines of the song: once dead, she may remember her life on earth or she may forget. Though this is a song about Christina’s supposed death, yet tone is as light and musical ad if it were a love song. The poetess would like to become part of nature and be forgotten like all living creatures. Death here isn’t seen as a violent act but as a twilight where pain ends and forgetfulness comes in. The tone of the poem is slightly sad but not desperate: it is an invitation to quiet sadness rather than deep grief. The whole situation is one of a half-dreaming half-realistic state, as if between life and death. When I am dead, my dearest is divided into two verses, each with eight lines, each of which could be further broken down into two quatrains, rhyming off an ABCB pattern. There is a clear rhythm and beat to this work, and it is structured so as to flow in the most natural way for the reader. The content of the poem follows an unnamed narrator speaking to another individual identified only as “my dearest,” a strong word choice that instills deeply-felt emotion into the first line of the poem. The verse uses alliteration heavily to create pleasant sounds; the “dead” and “dearest” in the first line and the “sing,” “sad,” and “songs” in the second lie, for instance, give off a simple and calm atmosphere to the work. 12