Appunti letteratura inglese II - Pennacchia 2021, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Appunti letteratura inglese II - Pennacchia 2021 e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! Theatre, Poetry and Novel: Story-telling and literary genres from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment In the course of three centuries poetry, theatre and novel (considered as macro-genre) alternate themselves as the dominant genre. • Elizabethan age: It was the age in which playhouses were built for the first time and opened to general public. The audience payed an entrance fee: this is effectively the beginning of the entertainment industry. All this happened at the outskirt of the city of London, outside its wall. That’s why theatre is considered to be the first mass medium (the Globe Theatre could contain up to 3000 people). Before this, we only had aristocratic theatres “all’italiana”, just for aristocrats. • Jacobian age: In this age we have the invention of the print (in fact it is also called the Gutenberg age), fundamental for the literary world (literature: has to do with the printed letters). Very important is also poetry: arguably not the main genre, but definitely the most prestigious, especially at court. It was practised by aristocrats as a pastime, as well as the writing of treaties on poetry itself. • Neoclassical age: First half of 18th century, almost at the same time that novel was invented, poetry was practised by Alexander Pope, considered to be the most important poet of the time. Jane Austen is in a liminal space between Romanticism and the Enlightenment age (Sense and Sensibility: noticeable also from the title) The Sixteenth Century One of the most exciting moment in the history of England 1) Beginning of its national identity 2) Beginning of its linguistic identity (not “middle English” but English) 3) Beginning of its economic and political power 4) Beginning of its colonial enterprise (the age of discovery and sea power) Time span 1485-1820  Early Tudor period  1485-1558 Henry VII (Tudor), the last King of England to win a crown on the battlefield, seized power against Richard III (York). [Also told by Shakespeare  propaganda for Tudors, written partially (di parte) by W.S., following the Tudor chronicles making Richard III appear like the “bad guy” against the “good” and “virtuous” Henry VII that brings back peace inside the kingdom, unifying the crown of York and Lancaster]. Henry VII put an end to the bloody and cruel civil war amongst the house of Lancaster and the house of York, by marrying Elizabeth of York and unifying the two Roses. The Tudor Rose in fact, is composed by the white and red rose, each symbol of the two houses.  Elizabethan period  1558 -1603 Elizabeth I, had a very long reign. She never accepted to marry and died childless. For this reason, she was renowned The Virgin Queen (although she was not really a virgin, she had lots of lovers). Sir Walter Riley, one of her favourites, dedicated to the Queen the Virginia, in America. She created a new kind of politic and presented herself as a woman to be adored, either at court (a lot of love poetry was dedicated to her), but at the same time she substituted her own body with that of the Virgin Mary, mother of Christ.  Stuart period  1603-1649 A new dynasty began: the Stuarts. The aristocrats and the parliament were worried that a new succession war would start, so, as soon as the queen fell ill, negotiation started and the choice fell upon James I, already King of Scotland, son of Mary Stuart Queen of Scots* (catholic). He was raised as a protestant and because of that, could be chosen as successor of Elizabeth. The separation of Catholics and Protestant is of big importance, religion was so important that if you were “on the wrong side” of it you were prosecuted and could die. There were Laws against Catholics, and as a catholic you could be sentenced to death for treason. With James a new kind of patriarchal absolutism will be established, in which he’ll present himself as the Father of the Nation (≠ Elizabeth I considered herself the mother of the people and her subjects). The relation between the monarch and its subject shifts with the succession of James to Elizabeth. 1649 is an important year because Charles I was beheaded, Stuart who succeeded James I: there’s a big contrast between the parliament and the crown, a war breaks and a series of civil wars starts. Charles is put under trial by the parliament (for the first time ever a King is put under trial by its parliament for ethical reasons). Also told by Milton’s Book I of Paradise Lost *Mary Stuart Queen of Scots was sentenced to death by Elizabeth I, and beheaded for being a catholic (but also because she was the first in line of succession for the throne and would bring back Catholicism as the main religion). Elizabeth was also excommunicated by the Pope for being protestant, he encouraged the people to kill her and that her death would not be considered a sin, since she wasn’t a catholic. La Rosa di York e la Rosa di Lancaster. Unificate formano la Rosa dei Tudor  Civil Wars  1642-49 [due to the civil wars theatres closed], Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of England (the first moment in English history where we can find a republic instead of a monarchy), establishing the Commonwealth, 1649-1660, until his death in 1659.  Stuart Restoration  1660 After Cromwell’s death, his son tried to succeed him, unsuccessfully. The decision was that that if there was going to be a monarchy kind of lineage in the kingdom, then it would have been more appropriate to have a proper kingly one. So, Charles II, Charles I’s son, was called back from exile by the parliament, to establish the monarchy again. Charles II, sympathized for the Catholics, and when the parliament tried to exclude his catholic brother, James II, from the line of succession, he dissolved the parliament. Here we have the birth of the two English political parties: the Whigs (king’s opponents) and the Tories (king’s supporters). Charles dies childless in 1685, passing the crown to his brother James II. He suspends the “Test Act” (that required all civil and military officials to swear allegiance to Anglicanism), and starts to fill the army with Catholics. After two protestant daughters, has a son in 1688 of catholic religion. RENAISSANCE Historical label Assigned by historians of the XIX century: •Jules Michelet •Jacob Burckardt Re-birth stress over the relation with the past EARLY MODERN AGE New historical label Assigned by new-historicists at the end of the XX century; Stress over the concept of modernity: • new geography (new maps, first atlases were published); • new human anatomy (first seen as holy, untouchable; now need to discover how it worked with the tools of anatomists, new medicine); • new astronomy (Copernicus, Galileo, also very dangerous to openly state ones astronomical beliefs);  New science. It is a European phenomenon that goes from late XIII century to the late XVI century with different local timing and characteristics, but ITALY IS WHERE IT ALL STARTS (considered the throbbing heart of this revolution and the humanist culture) ‣ Petrarch  concept of humanitas  What makes a ‘man’* worth to be named so  STUDIA HUMANITATIS =to study the bonae litterae, to study texts that explored the human behaviour in ethics, aesthetics, religion, literature. *men = women were not contemplated New Pedagogy  a new way of teaching was invented for a rising elite:  Eloquence: the capacity of persuade your fellow human beings through rhetoric, the “technology of persuasion” (invented by the romans);  Philology: the language you use is important and in the case of Petrarch philology meant Latin, Greek, Hebrew and all the languages of the ancients and their texts;  Literature: litera= the written word, words that were given special values;  History: because history is Magistra Vitae, it’s from history that renaissance men learned how to behave when crisis occurred: what can I take from the past to make the now better?  Moral Philosophy: what are the ethics of a true man? It is a moment of deep rethinking of what the word human means Two men richly dressed are posing with a shelf crammed with objects that have particular meaning such as: instruments used for understanding the heavens and measuring of time on the top shelf and instruments for liberal arts like: a lute, a case of flutes, a hymn book a book of arithmetic and a terrestrial globe. This display of objects stands for the owners’ mastery of the QUADRIVIUM: music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. What their profession implied though, was the possession of the TRIVIUM: grammar, logic and rhetoric. This were the Seven Liberal Arts: the arts that a man would be proficient in to be considered an accomplished man. You did not need to be born an aristocrat to be accomplished, but you could refine yourself and find your place in society by studying these arts. This was a huge step forward compared to the stillness of the hierarchy of the Middle Ages, it allowed people to move up (and down) the ladder of society. In the low part of the painting it’s possible to see an anamorphic skull: only he or she who takes a certain position in front of the painting can see it. It is openly hidden, representing death, remainder of the middle ages, but also that its always present and pending. The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1533, National Gallery, London Bonae litterae, litterae humaniores these are the XV century words for ‘humanities’ and ‘humanism’ (XVIII century) ‣ Italian humanism from the end of XIII century to the end of XV century  It was essentially pagan  emphasis on the capacity of man to be the centre of the world (Florence and the Medici’s);  Opposition to the programmes of late medieval scholasticism (Formal logic  Aristotle’s deductive reasoning: major premise, minor premise  conclusion), it’s a linguistic machine that aims at finding the truth. The conclusion should be true if the major premise is as well. This paved a scientific way of approaching reality: watching the facts of nature and try to understand them, and once you get a rule you try to reproduce it in the ‘scientific method’;  ‘Human’ training in literature and rhetoric (informal logic  Plato’s dialogues  various points of view are raised);  Charismatic and influential élite of writers and scholars  Florentine Academy (XV century). Sponsored by Cosimo de Medici and led by Marsilio Ficino (Theologia Platonica)  Neo-Platonism 1. Recovery, restoration and translation of classical texts from Greek and Latin antiquity 2. Focus on writing and speaking in an elegant Ciceronian Latin ‣ Northern European Humanism (XVI century)  Essentially christian  Religious reformation and the search for the true word  translation of the Bible into the Vernacular;  There was a widespread curricular change in school and universities, a ‘didactical revolution’. Grammar schools were invented in order, for middle class children, to be thought Latin. This was useful for them to become, later in life, administrators of a new order that was to be found in England at the time;  Debate on the teaching of Latin to all classes;  Printing press and spread of new-born teaching methods: Roger Ascham, the Schoolmaster (1570), one of the first treaties about teaching. Ascham was the teacher of modern and ancient languages of Princess Elizabeth I in the Tudor court. For the Tudors he was also the Latin Secretary (something like a nowadays foreign affairs minister), for all the documents at the time were redacted in Latin. Centres of Humanism in England: • Oxford: William Grocyn (1446-1519); Thomas Linacre (1460 -1520); All saints college, Corpus Christi College 1516; • Cambridge: Erasmus of Rotterdam, as a visiting professor St John’s College 1511 (Erasmus taught Greek from 1511 to 1513); • London: John Colet (1466- 1519); Blend of religious and educational reformer; St. Paul’s School 1510, First example of grammar school; In Oxford and Cambridge, the only universities in England, the study of Greek was introduced, but in London the first grammar school was founded. William Lyly  New Latin Grammar, 1542, once a new education system is devised and a new kind of school is created you need new textbooks. This textbook was written on request of Henry VIII, that also wanted grammar schools to be built all over the nation. The beginning of the Tudor dynasty: The Tudor dynasty was founded by Henry VII, who was the last king to win his crown on a battlefield, who also had a very weak claim to the throne of England. Richard III, his opponent, had bigger claims. His son Henry VIII came to the throne. He is famous, for his six marriages: the first with Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinando of Aragon and Isabella of Castiglia, with her he had a daughter: Mary, raised catholic. Henry, then wanted to divorce Catherine, but Pope Clemens VII, also influenced by the Spanish side of the family refused. At this point Henry, ignoring the pope, married Anne Boleyn which caused him to be excommunicated by the Holy Roman Church, Catherine lost her title has the queen and Mary became illegitimate. Henry, following the protestant riots in Europe, proclaimed himself Head of the Church of England. Boleyn gives Henry another daughter: Elizabeth, this time raised protestant. Boleyn, just like Catherine, couldn’t seem to give Henry a male heir, all born dead or spontaneously lost. He then, starts to have interest in Jane Seymour, whom he marries, after accusing Anne of witchery and high treason and sentencing her to death. Jane will finally give him a son: Edward VI, also raised protestant. This made Elizabeth also illegitimate. After Henry’s death, his son Edward VI, came to the throne, but he died at 16 (1547-1553). Then Mary ascended the throne and reigned for five years (1553-1558), she attempted to reinstate Catholicism after her father’s schism and was named “Bloody Mary” for her condemnation of protestants. After her, Elizabeth I became Queen from 1558 to 1603, reinstated Protestantism and reissued also the Act of Supremacy first instated by her father and the Act of Uniformity. She also republished the Book of Common Prayer and the Book of Martyrs. • Act of Supremacy: The Act of Supremacy is the name of two different acts passed by the English Parliament, both of which establish the English monarch as the head of the Church of England. The original act passed in 1534 at the request of Henry VIII, while the second act passed during the reign of Elizabeth I. • Act of Uniformity: The Act of Uniformity was an act of the Parliament of England, passed in 1559 to regularise prayer, divine worship and the administration of the sacraments in the English church. It also made the use of the Book of Common Prayer for religious services mandatory. Elizabeth I: a Few Historical Events 7 September 1533  Elizabeth was born in Greenwich Palace 1547  Henry VIII died and his son, Edward VI, acceded to the throne of England (Somerset, Lord Protector); Elizabeth was 14 1553  Edward died and Mary acceded to the throne; Elizabeth was 20 1554  Mary married Philip II of Spain; Elizabeth was 21 1558  Mary died and Elizabeth acceded to the throne. She was 25 and still a maiden (loose hair in the painting above, the coronation portrait) 1559  January 15th: Coronation  Act of Supremacy and Act of Uniformity 1561  Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, returns to Scotland  a magnet for all those who wanted to overthrow Elizabeth, because she was a Catholic [Francis Walsingham became Elizabeth’s spymaster (here secret services were born)] 1570  Elizabeth was excommunicated by Pope Pius V 1586  Babington’s plot to murder Elizabeth. Mary Stuart was involved. 1587  Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots is beheaded for high treason, [Elizabeth sentences to death a peer as what concerns rank, someone who was put there by God] 1588  The Invincible Armada, led by Philip II of Spain tries to invade England but it is destroyed by a storm 1603  Elizabeth died childless and the Crown passed to James VI of Scotland, Mary Stuart’s son, and became James I of England. Another dynasty starts. ‣ Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth because she was a protestant and also instigated Catholics to kill her and justified whomever tried to, for killing a person outside the Holy Roman Church was to kill an enemy of the church and consequently was not to be considered a sin. ‣ The Babington Plot: The Babington Plot was an incident in which Anthony Babington and the Plough Group planned to assassinate Elizabeth I, install Queen Mary of Scots onto the throne, and restore Catholicism to England. Interesting was the fact that the Spymaster Francis Walsingham saw an opportunity to gather conspirators all at once by leading them to believe that they had a chance at actually vanquishing the Queen. ‣ Elizabeth stated that, since god had sent a storm to sink the Invincible Armada and stop their attempt to conquer England, she was the rightful queen. Roger Ascham was Elizabeth’s tutor and this letter is about Elizabeth. He is saying to his friend that this young woman has very peculiar characteristics for her period of time: “Her mind has no womanly weakness; her perseverance is equal to that of a man” it was odd because women were considered inferior to men, with lots of weaknesses especially their mind, and he says that he’s finding difficulty in putting a limit to what good he can say about her, but also, he won’t write anything that he hasn’t witnessed first-hand. Roger Ascham to John Sturm April 4, 1550 << I have no difficulty in finding subject for writing in her praise, but only in setting bounds to what I write. I will write nothing, however, which I have not myself witnessed. She had me for her tutor in Greek and Latin two years […]. It is difficult to say whether the gifts of nature or of fortune are most to be admired in that illustrious lady. The praise that Aristotle gives wholly centres in her – beauty, stature, prudence and industry. She has just passed her sixteenth birthday and shows such dignity and gentleness as are wonderful at her age and in her rank. Her study of true religion and learning is most energetic. Her mind has no womanly weakness, her perseverance is equal to that of a man…>> The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, ed. J.A. Giles, vol. I, pp. 181-93 (translated from Latin) “it is difficult to say whether the gifts of nature or of fortune are most to be admired in that illustrious lady”: Fortune or her being a princess had helped her to have an intellect “not of a woman”. This judgement of her tutor is very important to understand her personality but also what happens when she becomes Queen of England, she will, in fact, use this aspect of her personality in order to build an image for herself that will allow her to rule both “as a woman” and “as a man”. Being a Catholic, Sander’s approach to Elizabeth’s personality is completely different from Ascham’s: Sander is astonished about the fact that Elizabeth is taking Mary Mother of God’s day both in the calendar and the imaginary of her people. September 7th is in fact da name day of the Marys but also Elizabeth’s birthday. The queen is then making for her birthday big celebrations that where celebrations that, prior to the Reformation, where dedicated to the Virgin Mary. So much so that on the calendars (that were starting to spread and being used) they were starting to write the Queen’s birthday in big red letters and the Virgin Mary’s in small black ones. In addition, at the end of the public prayers instead of singing Virgin Mary’s praises, those praises were dedicated to Elizabeth. Here starts a sort of “cult” of Elizabeth as Virgin Queen ICONOGRAPHY: images or symbols associated with a specific subject. Elizabeth’s iconography is mainly and consciously based and built on the concept of HOLY VIRGINITY. Instructions were given to painters in order to achieve this result, and to organize pageants, parades and celebrations in her honour. Classical sources: Astraea, Cynthia/Artemis Religious sources: The Virgin Mary Androgyny of the queen’s iconography: she is both the (mighty) Sun and the (chaste) Moon, Male and Female. Though she may have the weakness of a woman she has got the strength of a king. This is a reference to a speech she delivered in Tilbury, on the eve of the attack of the Spanish Armada (supposedly written by herself, as all of her speeches) where she says: “though I may have the feebleness of a woman, I have the stomach and the heart of a king and a King of England.” Edward Rishton’s expanded edition of Nicholas Sander’s De Origine ac progressu schismatis Anglicani, 1585 (The Rise and Growth of Anglican Schism) <<To show the greater contempt for our Blessed Lady, they keep the birthday of Queen Elizabeth in the most solemn way on the 7th day of September, which is the eve of the feast of the Mother of God, whose nativity they make in their calendar in small black letters, while that of Elizabeth is marked in letters both large and red. And what is hardly credible… the praises of Elizabeth are said to be sung at the end of the public prayers, as the Antiphone of our Lady was sung in former days.>> Social Imaginary: the dimension through which human beings create their ways of representing their collective life. John Knox was a champion of Protestantism and wrote this pamphlet against, specifically, catholic women as monarchs (Mary I of England, Mary of Guise, Mary Stuart). Unfortunately for him, this pamphlet was published in between Mary I death and Elizabeth’s coronation, and since there was no way to clearly understand that it had been published against Mary (but nonetheless against women), Knox’s hand was cut off. The Sonnet 1500-1558 Early Tudor Poetry: Wyatt and Surrey 1558-1600 Elizabethan Poetry: Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare The sonnet is the most important poetical form that we can find in the 16th century. In the first half of the century we have the Early Tudor Poetry (1500-1558), on the second half we have the Elizabethan Poetry (from 1558 to 1600) This text was printed (and published, at the time there was no difference between the two professions) in 1557, by Richard Tottel. This production is composed by a collection of songs and sonnets by different authors, the most important being “the ryght and honourable Lorde Henry Howard, late Earle of Surrey”, for this reason it is also known as Tottel’s Miscellany. During that time aristocrats and noblemen used to write poetry for fun and leisure, but they used to remain private and circulated only in manuscript form, for it was considered vulgar to collect an aristocrat’s poems and having it printed while they were alive, it was common though, having them printed posthumously. The miscellany was produced and printed a year before Elizabeth’s coronation, so it is still considered to be Early Tudor poetry. Tottel’s Miscellany is composed by: ‣ 97 poems by Wyatt; ‣ 40 poems by Surrey; ‣ 40 Poems by Nicholas Grimald ‣ 94 poems by uncertain authors. “That to have well written in verse […] deserves great praise, the work of divers Latines, Italians and others, do prove sufficiently. That our tongue is able in that kind to do as praiseworthy as the rest, the honourable style of the noble earl of Surrey and the weightness of the deepwitted sir Thomas Wyatt the elder’s verse […] do show abundantly.” <<God hath subjected Womankinde to man, by the ordre of his creation, and by the curse he hath pronounced against her […]. Besides these, he hath set before our eyes two other Mirrors and Glasses, in which he will that we should behold the ordre which he hath appointed and established in nature, the one is the natural body of man; the other is the politik or civil body of that common wealth, in which God by his own Word hath appointed an ordre, [Just as that body is] a monster where there was no head eminent above the rest […] no less monstruous is the body of that Common welth where a Woman beareth empire.>> ‣ John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstruous Regiment of Women, 1558 In this preface Tottel is saying that it is important to master one’s own language, just as Italians, Latines and others have already proved. He then says that the English language is also capable of being an elevated language and that poets like the Earl of Surrey and Wyatt are not only proving it, but also making their tongue a literary one, and for this it needs to be praised. In fact, in Europe, English was seen as a second-rate language and not a prestigious one like Italian or Latin. ∞ The sonnet was born in Italy, England received it, and in order to appropriate this literary form, invented a new way of using the language. And translation specifically, played a fundamental role in the process through which it was transformed The term “sonnet” is a Provençal word meaning “small sound” with reference to the music which was used to accompany it. It also has a particular sound that made its fortune. The composition of a sonnet: it is a 14 lines poetical form, divided in four stanzas. 14 lines  4 stanzas • 2 quatrains (4x2)  octave ;4+4 • 2 triplets (3x2)  sestet; 3+3 Why are these number important? Number four: the earth, man, material things and stability = four cardinal points, four elements, four bodily humours, 4 limbs, etc… Number three: God and perfection = the holy trinity The sonnet is therefore a miniature “picture of the world” (or IMAGO MUNDI): this sums up the physical and metaphysical world, the creator and the creature, the interaction between micro and macrocosm according to the principle of proportion. This principle communicates a sense of harmony and interplay between man and universe where man, seen as a male human being, is the perfectly proportioned and becomes way to measure the world and universe outside him. Where? Sicily When? At the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II (1198-1250) By whom? By Giacomo Lentini, called “il notaro”, the notary. About what? Love: not sacred or holy but earthly love, between “man and woman” • Giacomo da Lentini (1250 ca) Amore è un desio che ven da’ core Per abbondanza di gran piacimento; e li occhi in prima generan l’amore e lo core li dà nutricamento. Ben è alcuna fiata om amatore Senza vedere so’ namoramento, ma quell’amor che stringe con furore Da la vista de li occhi ha nascimento: Che li occhi rapresentan a lo core D’onni cosa che veden bono e rio Com’è formata naturalemente; e lo cor, che di zo è concepitore, imagina, e li piace quel desio: e questo amore regna fra la gente Giacomo da Lentini describes the “physiology of love” and tries to understand it: love is a desire that comes from the heart, for something you like so much that the eyes generate and the heart nourishes. Important to notice, in the last triplet, is the role that the imagination has in falling in love: something that you see and like forms an image in your mind. Sonnets become the base of the debate on the nature of love: The troubadour tradition conceived love as: • “love service”; • “request of a guerdon (guiderdone) or reward” (contraccambio); • “vassalage” modelled on the feudal relationship between lord and vassal; Conversely The sonnet sets a new conception of love and sees it as the way to define one’s identity  through love a man can be singled out as that and only man, a specific individual A man is a man if: 1. He loves 2. He talks of love  Giacomo describes a phenomenology of love;  Love had already been theorized by Andrea Cappellano in De Amore¸ 1185 ca., but Giacomo presents us with a new idea of love;  Love originates from sight but it can only grow if it is “fed by the heart” (lo core li dà nutricamento) that is by an inordinate cogitation  love is obsession caused not by lust but by intellectual strain;  The sonnet is the phonic and metric idea of the obsession for the object of love Emile Benviste, Problèmes de linguistique générale, 1966 “Subjectivity in language”: “the capacity of the speaker to posit “himself” as subject […] “Ego” is he who says ‘ego’. That is the foundation of subjectivity, which is determined by the linguistic status of ‘person’” • I  “the person who is uttering the present instance of the discourse containing ‘I’” • You  “the individual spoken to in the present instance of discourse containing the linguistic instance of you” Whenever there is an I uttering a sentence there is also a you to whom that sentence is addressed • I/YOU work as a “linguistic forms indicating person”; they work within a concept of language as “an instrument of communication” discourse  dialogical nature of communication (enunciation) • HE/SHE/IT  the third person is the ‘non-person’, a category of language that stands for the narrated object, it is outside dialogue, outside the communicative act and it exists as something that is spoken of (enunciated) In the sonnet there’s an I (the poet) and someone who is reading the poetry (you) and the woman is outside the discourse and is the object of the “conversation”. (she’s the protagonist of the dialogue, she ‘generates’ it but doesn’t have a voice nor the voice inside the discourse). << in una lingua come l’inglese in cui le coniugazioni verbali si limitano a un paradigma praticamente privo di variazioni nelle desinenze, i pronomi e le altre forme pronominali assumono compiti dichiarativi assai vasti. Sono essi a indicare e determinare la funzione comunicativa della frase, stabilendo una rete di rapporti che, in ultima analisi, si estendono al campo più strettamente sociale, ci dicono a chi sono dirette le forme espressive e che cosa vogliono esprimere. Sono, insomma, i veicoli della comunicazione. >>  Giorgio Melchiori L’uomo e il potere. Indagine sulle strutture profonde dei sonetti di Shakespeare, Torino: Einaudi, 1973 THE SONNET IS BROUGHT TO ENGLAND 3 centuries after its birth in Italy Italy  from mid-13th to the end of 14th century England  in the 30s of the 16th century (1530) The English sonnet is the result of an intense activity of translation from other languages into English. At the beginning of the 16th century the English language had almost no prestige abroad. English travellers were compelled to learn some French, Italian or Spanish. (How the turntables) Ambassadors were considered a special kind of travellers. Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 -1542) He was an ambassador at the Spanish Court (during Charles V rule). He was sent to Italy on a diplomatic mission in 1572 where he met Pietro Bembo (who had just published Prose della volgar lingua in 1525: Petrarch had been assumed as the model of poetry and Boccaccio as the model of prose). He was imprisoned in the Tower of London twice (1536 and 1541). In Tottel’s Miscellany preface, Tottel writes about Wyatt’s “weightness” and his “deepwittedness”. He tries to translate – or better to adapt - Petrarch’s Una candida cerva, n. 190, who is said that he dedicated to Anne Boleyn (that is also one of the reasons he was imprisoned). The first difference we see is the title (who is usually the first verse of the sonnet). The two have very different meanings and refer to two very different things: Petrarch’s refers to a “Candid Hind” that he sees on the green grass and Wyatt’s opens with “his knowledge” on where to find a hind to hunt. Even though the structure of the sonnets are the same (4+4; 3+3), the order of the rhyme is different: ABBA; ABBA; CDE; CDE and ABBA; ABBA; CDD; CDD. Wyatt does try to recreate the same scheme, as close as he possibly can but it is indeed very difficult, because the two languages are very different and the poems that are utilised at court are also very different. This makes Wyatt’s sonnet be also read as CDDC DD, in fact the meaning inside the poem is distributed exactly so: the last two lines are preceded by a colon (:) and enclosed in quotation marks (“”): this transforms the sonnet in three quatrains and a couplet. Often, the couplet resolves itself in a kind of “motto”. The English sonnet, when it reaches its maturity, after Wyatt’s and Surrey’s first experiments, will resolve its structure in the three quatrains and a couplet and not the two quatrains and two triplets like the Petrarchan sonnet. Petrarch, Una candida cerva: the poet is remembering a vision, a dream, of a beautiful white hind that’s standing on emerald green background, with two golden horns. He starts to follow this deer in order to catch her, and he notices she’s wearing a diamond and topaz necklace with an inscription on it that says “don’t touch me, because my Caesar (my owner => god) wanted me to be free”. It was already midday, and his eyes were tired but not satisfied with the view (he always talks about eyes when referring to the heart, because through the eyes he feeds his heart.), but then he falls into the water, because she’s standing between two rivers, and the hind disappears. Sir Thomas Wyatt, Who so list to hunt: he opens the poem by asking who’s ready to hunt because he knows a place where they can find a hind, but for what concerns me, I can no more hunt (caesura: there’s a period that closes the thought). This vain fatigue has made me so sore that has made me one of those who always falls behind. And yet I can’t seem to be able to detach my mind from thinking about the deer, but as she flees forward I almost faint so I decide to leave her be since it seems to me like I’m trying to catch the wind with a net. For whom still may desire to hunt he gives a warning that, just like him, they’re wasting their time. Because engraved around her neck with diamonds there’s a text saying “don’t touch me, for I am Caesar’s and to be left wild even though I seem tame”. Wyatt definitely takes inspiration from Petrarch, but almost completely changes the text. One of the main differences between the two poems is that Wyatt is describing a hunting scene whilst Petrarch’s looks more like a contemplative situation or self-reflection. The hunting scene described by Wyatt is particularly accurate in reporting a situation that’s typical at court (which he’s accustomed to, he being an ambassador at Henry VIII’s court). Many scholars also point out the possibility of the hind representing Anne Boleyn, since he had an affair with her. In Wyatt’s poem we find a reference to the gospel (“Noli me tangere” the phrase Jesus says to the women once he exits the cave where he was buried), that we don’t find in Petrarch. ‣‣ The sonnet has had a bug fortune all around Europe, that is still considered today one of the most important, recognisable and elastic poetical forms. In fourteen lines we can say and read a number of things and it is possible to use its logic to demonstrate our ideas. The repetition of sounds of its rhymes is so well thought that we have this recurrence that fashions as a sort of echo that helps us focus on the concepts that are expressed inside the poem. It is also important to remember the sonnets were born to be accompanied by music, gradually though it becomes a literary form that has to be read silently in your mind. This sets a big difference in the expression of the poem. Poetry vs. Prose Poetry in the hierarchy of literary outputs was definitely at the top during the Renaissance, even though theatre was the most popular. [the hendecasyllable, in Italian, is the most natural verse because it fits perfectly in the span of one breath. This applies to all languages. es. All’ombra dei cipressi e dentro l’urne, if you try to add something to the sentence you’ll see that you’ll find yourself short of breath.] Poetry goes very much with your body especially when you don’t simply read it in your mind, but read it out loud. Poetry is usually distinguished from prose for its rhythm and rhyme. Rhythm: it has to do with the ‘tempo’ of poetry, its pace (faster or slower). • Meter is the means by which rhythm is measured and described. In Latin and Greek meter was established on a quantitative basis (regular alternation of long and short syllables). In English meter is established by stressed and unstressed syllables (accentual-syllabic). • Foot is the unit that is repeated to give steady rhythm to a poem:  Iambic foot consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (repeat, insist)  Trochaic foot inverts this order. It is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (ùnit, ìnstant) We can count the number of feet in each line (formally called a verse): in that case we say we “scan” the verse. Verse lengths can vary but one of the most used in the Elizabethan age is the pentameter. A caesura is a strong grammatical pause within a line. Rhyme: consists of a repetition of accented sounds in words, usually those falling at the end of the verse lines (masculine rhyme: rebound/sound, or feminine rhyme: hounding/bounding): • Zephiro torna is a sonnet about the return of spring, and with it the return of lust in animals and love in men and women. There’s a beautiful description of Spring coming back (that almost recalls Botticelli’s Primavera) and uses classical myths in order to recall nature (Zephyr; Procne and Philomela – the name that, respectively swallows and nightingales have in Ovid’s Metamorphosis –; Jove and her daughter Proserpine) that brings a whole narrative behind that. But for me more grave sighs come back, that the one the took the keys to my heart takes and brings with her in the sky, because she’s dead. And for me singing birds and beaches and honest women are desert and wild animals. • Where Petrarch uses myth, Surrey uses nature (something very typical for writers to observe nature with an objective eye). The sweet season – in this case summer – that brings buds and blooms has covered the vale and the hill. The nightingale sings with new feathers, and the turtle (tortora) told her tale to her make (mate). Summer has come and the deer has shed his “antlers” and the buck changes his winter coat and fishes swim with new scales. The viper sheds her skin, and the fast swallow tries to eat the little fly, and the bee prepares her honey. Winter is worn out, that has been the “death” of the flower. And thus, I see among all these beautiful things that each worry ends and yet his sorrow is born. 5 SONNET SEQUENCES Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella, 1591 (108) Samuel Daniel, Delia, 1592 (50) Edmund Spenser, Amoretti, 1595 (89) Michael Drayton, Ideas Mirrour, 1594 (89) Shakespeare, Sonnets, 1609 (154) Total percentage referred to the five sequences: • I/me/my/mine  42.2% • He/she/it, him/her/it, his/her/its  30.6% • Thou (you), Thee (you) Thy (your), Thine (yours) 25.6% The sonnet is mostly the site where a subject (the <<I>>) looks at and comments on a reality which is outside the discourse (the <<She>>). According to Melchiori: << La chiusa forma del sonetto si presta innanzitutto all’espressione del sentire del parlante* e quindi a una contemplazione e meditazione distaccata sul mondo circostante. Solo di rado si apre al rapporto diretto, al dialogo con uno o più interlocutori>> ⁕He who speaks has the “power” transmit and reflect on his emotions. Helpful: Emile Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale, 1966 | Giorgio Melchiori L’uomo e il potere. Indagine sulle strutture profonde dei sonetti di Shakespeare, Torino: Einaudi, 1973 In analysing these canzonieri and the percentages resulted, Melchiorri, sees that 42,4% (almost the half) of the pronominal forms are connected to the first person singular. So, we can say that the sonnet is a poetic form where the ‘I’ dominates. For what concerns the other pronominal forms, 30,6% is linked to the third person singular and the 25,6% refers to the second person singular. This means that the dominating ‘I’ in sonnets addresses indirectly the object of his love. • Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) Sir Philip Sidney was a very important aristocrat, and was part of a very ancient and noble family. He died really young, as a hero, in a battle against the Catholic Spain in the Low Countries at only 32. He had witnessed in France the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day (Paris, August 24, 1572), where 50.000 Huguenots were slaughtered by the catholic party; from that episode he had become an even more ardent Protestant. His grandiose funeral almost bankrupted his father-in-law, Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen’s spymaster. The “Cult of Sidney” = After his death, Sidney, came to be considered the embodiment of Castiglione’s perfect courtier: soldier, poet, patron. [Il libro del Cortigiano by Baldassarre Castiglione (1528), translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1561 as The Courtier] Fulke Greville, a commoner at the time but later appointed Baron Brooke, became his biographer: <<Though I lived with him and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him other than a man – with such a staidness of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as carried grace and reverence above greater years.>>> (The life of the renowned Sir Philip Sidney, 1625) In 1580 he opposed Queen Elizabeth’s prospective marriage to the Catholic duke of Anjoue Elizabeth banned him from the court. He retired to Wilton, the estate of his sister, Mary Herbert, countess of Pembroke (she was a patroness of the arts, among which we can find Shakespeare). Here Sir Sidney wrote Arcadia, a long elaborate epic romance in prose. Astrophil and Stella (<<Starlover and Star>>) First English Sonnet Sequence: 108 sonnets and 11 songs Astro means star in Greek, while -phil means he who loves => “The Starlover and his Star” Stella in the poems is actually Penelope [Devereux] Rich, a real feeling of the poet for a real person. In fact, these sonnets were written between 1581 and 1583 and only published after Sidney’s death. Divided in three parts: 1. To Stella: 1-43 Anatomy of love, where the lover meditates on what is love, how he behaves as a lover and, in return, how the loved one behaves as well, how they act, what is fair and what isn’t; 2. With Stella: 44-85 The love-story, the moment when the poet and lover actually has “intercourses” with Stella, and they even exchange a couple of kisses; 3. Without Stella: 86-108 Theme of absence, eventually their story ends, she asks him to leave her alone and not importune her anymore. Here we can find the author meditating on ‘absence’. We can find a dramatic quality in this sequence, it almost looks like a play where they enact their love story. <<The tragicomedy of love […] performed by starlight […]. The argument cruell chastite, the Prologue hope, the Epilogue despaire>> - Thomas Nashe, (the publisher of the sonnet sequence) . The way the poet writes is very sophisticated and we can tell how pleased he is to be able to use all these rhetorical figures that recall the art of painting, through the work that painters do with the use of the shade and light technique. The first important thing to notice is the format of the Sonnet 15: it resembles the Petrarchan form, which is in contrast with the form “invented” by Surrey. Here Sidney brags about being able to write Petrarchan sonnets “unlike other poets” that need dictionaries to create rhymes. ‣ You that search every purling spring (sorgente che sgorga) from the ribs of the old Mount Parnassus (consecrated to Apollo and the nine Muses), and every flower that grows nearby try so hard to put in your poems. You that bring the use of dictionary in your sonnets to help you find rhymes to put into your lines, you that sing poor Petrarch’s sorrow, long deceased, renewing his sighs and his wit that has become part of this Land, you are wrong (< here he follows the logic structure of the Petrarchan sonnet, giving a “turn” in the sestet), because these little hints you get from the dictionaries lack the sensitiveness of a personal touch, this is why, in the long run, all of this will come to light and be revealed. But if your self-respect for love and your own skill at writing, you wish to see your name in the breast of fame, then you should behold Stella and only then begin to compose. Sonnet 7: particular this sonnet is the mastery with which Sidney uses a series of oxymorons to describe Stella’s eyes almost pictorially, that show all the talent and brilliance of the poet. The poem is a succession of rhetorical questions about Stella’s beauty. In contrast with the stylistic feature (stilema) of the time and especially the sonnet, where beauty was a beautiful fair woman with blue eyes (Laura, Beatrice…), Stella’s eyes are black and thus Sidney tries to “justify” her eyes addressing Nature herself. ‣ When Nature (personification) created her most important work, Stella’s black eyes, why did She wrap them with beams so bright (black/bright, oxymoron)? Did She want to frame them in delicate lustre, in beamie blacke like a wise painter mixing shades and light? Or maybe, did She devise this dark colour in order for our sight to become stronger, for She could not have disguised these sun-like beams that otherwise would have blind us more than delight us? Or would She show us her miraculous power, that even if black is the contrary of beauty, she is also capable of making beauty flow even in black? After all these truths just mentioned, she decided that love should be placed exactly there (in Stella’s eyes), gave him (Love) this mourning dress to honour all the deaths that bleed for her (Stella). • Facts  A few evidences are moreover to be found in parish registers and legal documents: baptism, funerals, marriage, sale contracts, bills and the will. • Anecdotes  (from Greek “anekdota”: things unpublished) It is said that once, William Shakespeare was deer-poaching at Charlecote, he was caught in the act and refused to apologise and this started a feud with Sir Thomas Lucy, the owner of the estate. For this reason, he had to flee to London from Strutton. This was seen as a sign of rebellion against aristocratic authority, that wouldn’t allow poor people to eat (through hunting, in this case), and made Shakespeare appear like a democratic person that wouldn’t bend himself to nobility. [from Nicholas Rowe, 1709 to Samuel Schoenbaum, 1970] • Literary Reputation  Short references to his name and work in Robert Green’s Groats-worth of Witte, bought with a Million of Repentance (1592) and Francis Meres’ Palladis Tamia (1598), or Wits Treasury: ‣ 1592  Robert Green, Greene’s Groats-worth of Witte, bought with a Million of Repentance. Greene was one so called “university wits”, one of the first playwrights who made his living by his writing and “hiring his pen”. [he won a scholarship in grammar school, to go to university, just like Ben Jonson] <<There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tyger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hyde, [3 Henry VI (1.4.137): York to Margaret: <<O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide>>] suppose he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Iohannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country>>. Robert Green died pretty much poor and most importantly he died resented that there where people – Shakespeare – that came out of nowhere and were successful. [“upstart crow”: wannabe, social climber; “our feathers”: not only the pens used for writing, but also in the romantic poetry birds were considered as symbol of the voice of poetry, think of John Keats or the nightingale and the skylark; Act 3rd Henry VI, one of the first plays written by Shakespeare in which York talks to Margaret Lancaster he she abruptly tells him that his son has died and accuses her of being a tiger wrapped around a woman’s skin, Green, in the same way, accuses him of being a tiger wrapped around an actor’s skin]; ‣ 1598  Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia, or Wits Treasury Chapter entitled: << A Comparative Discourse of our English Poets, with the Greek, Latin and Italian Poets>> “As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras: so, the sweet wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous & honytongued Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared Sonnets among his private friends, &c.” This portrait had belonged to Thomas Betterton, a collector of Shakespearian objects, today it is exposed at the National Portrait Gallery in London, known as the Chandos Portrait We don’t know, if this portrait is based on the portrait in the book or vice versa. The Cobbe Portrait. This portrait was adopted by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust as reliable portrait depicting the playwright’s face. Here he’s portrayed like a noble man. This is the header of a Shakespeare’s Sonnet Sequence printed by Thomas Thorpe, that reads: Shakespeares Sonnets Never before imprinted 1609 154 sonnets Published by Thomas Thorpe + Dedication <= “The well-wishing adventurer in setting forth wishes all happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet to the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets: Mr W.H.” Adventurer: Thomas Thorpe, that has “given” to the printing press the sonnets [adventurer: why? Did he stole the sonnets? Did he print them when he shouldn’t have done it? he also does wish happiness and eternity to the poet as a sort of apology; Setting Forth: composing with the little letters the pages that are going to be printed, but also to “sail forward”; Mr. W.H.: who is he? The Sonnet Sequence is “split” in two halves:  1-126  fair youth (male)  127-154  dark lady The sonnets are arranged in a way that seem to tell a story, but we don’t know: if WS gave the printer the succession of the sonnets or the printer arranged them in that order or if the printer stole them. ‣ 1-17  they seem to have been written with the purpose of urging a young person to have children (variations on the theme of increase)  poetry of occasion (commission); ‣ 15-18-19-55-60-81-101  theme of immortality (poetry is capable of preserving beauty forever); ‣ 77-80 and 82-86  the rivalry with another poet in the contest to win the fair friend’s love; ‣ 40-42, 133-134, 144  the fair youth is seduced by the dark lady. Who is the “Fair Youth”? Two hypotheses: Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. (Miniature by Nicholas Hilliard) Born in 1573, to him Shakespeare, dedicated his two Ovidian poems: Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece (1593-4). Here the initials would be inverted. Very handsome nobleman, feminine kind of beauty: blue eyes, fair skin, long curled blond hair. William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, in his (supposed) portrait as a young man. Born in 1580, he was an aristocrat nephew of Sir Philip Sidney, in the circle of Shakespeare’s acquaintances. To him Heminges and Condell dedicated the Folio in 1623. Who is the “Dark Lady”? Three hypotheses: Lucy Negro, research claims that the 'Dark Lady' of Shakespeare's sonnets was a notorious London prostitute named Lucy Negro or Black Luce - a dark-skinned madam who ran a licentious house in Clerkenwell. Above the Bard in London. Emilia Lanier was an English poet and the first woman to assert herself as a professional on English soil and the fourth in the British Isles. She came from a family of Court musicians, she fits Shakespeare's picture of a woman playing the virginal in Sonnet 128. Mary Fitton: was a gentlewoman who became a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth I. She is noted for her scandalous affairs with William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, which is the basis for the claim that Fitton was the "dark lady" of Shakespeare's sonnets. Sonnet 1, theme of “increase”: Mature English sonnet form and “Shakespearean”. It’s meter is the iambic pentameter. Since the first quatrain we can find a reference to the world of nature through the rose, symbol of beauty that when in wither can be replaced by another bud (or heir) that bears the memory of the previous flower. ‣ From the most beautiful creatures we (humans) desire increase, an augment (which is also a biblical teaching: to reproduce so that the human race can survive), so that the beauty of the rose (metaphor) may never die, but as nature commands, once the old ripes is replaced by the new that brings on his beauty and memory. (The first quatrain as an universal truth). But (turn in the sonnet, already in the second stanza) you, focused and charmed by your own bright eyes, feed the flame of your light with a “self-sufficient” fuel (narcissism), and in doing so you create famine when abundance lies; making yourself your own enemy, you are too cruel to your sweet self. (Against the universal truth in the first quatrain we found the foolishness of a narcissist man, that can’t get enough of himself, going against the laws of nature). The emphasis of the second quatrain is restrained in the third one: you that now are the world’s fresh ornament and the only herald of Spring, bury your content within your own bud – yourself - and create a waste in niggarding (avarizia). In the couplet we have a closure – as usual in the English sonnet: pity the world or else be a glutton (gola, peccati) by eating what’s due to the world and share it only with your grave. | increase ≠ decease; we/thou |. ORIGIN OF THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE In the Christian world theatre has its origin in the Mass <<Quem, quaeritis?>> / <<Whom seek ye?>> is considered by many critics as the nucleus from which the Medieval theatre develops  13th century onwards liturgical drama spreads across Europe, in England religious theatre goes back to the 14th century. • First English theatrical texts appeared in manuscript in the 15th century Religious teaching were communicated in an attractive form, the annual cycle of services (anno liturgico) offered episodes of particular intensity and meaning that could better be apprehended in performance: The Passion of Christ. • Mysteries  Each episode was entrusted to a specific guild* (guilds were also known as “mysteries”) in the town and it was often performed on carts and mobile platforms (pageants: parata, corteo in costume) which moved through the town streets with agreed stopping points *gilde= associazioni di mestieri  also known as mysteries perché avevano accesso ai “segreti” professionali Corpus Christi Feast with the procession of the Holy Host; At each stop the performance was repeated so the spectators could wait at one point and view the entire cycle 4 manuscripts of the cycles survive = York, Wakefield, Chester, N. Town (maybe Coventry, molto vicino a Strutford upon Avon) There was no Explicit author for these pageants, and it contained robust realism and lively comedy, secularisation => hostility of the Protestant Church  suppression in the second half of the 16th century • Morality Plays  staged an allegorical conflict between good and evil figures struggling to capture the soul of the character who symbolically represented the whole Humanity (es. Everyman, ca. 1500) • Interludes  a play offered between courses in banquets They could be moral play like John Skelton’s MAGNYFICENCE (1515-16?) or a comic play like John Heywood’s the play called the Four PP (a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Pothecary, a Pedlar). • PROFESSIONAL THEATRE Vagrancy Act, 1572: the act that started the professionalization of acting, issued under the reign of Elizabeth I by the parliament and stated that: Only the companies who were <<servants of any baron or any other honourable personage of greater degree>> were given the right to exercise their profession. Companies of sharers under the patronage of wealthy aristocrats:  The Leicester’s Men, 1572  The Lord Admiral’s Men, 1576  The Queen’s Men, 1583  The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, 1594  The King’s Men, 1603 They wore the livery of a Patron but earned their income from commoners: making commoners, Londoners, paying a fee at the entrance is a novelty. Repertory Companies:  The roles were all played by the company’s actors;  Often, they’d had playwrights inside the company, without having to buy screenplays;  Small companies (half a dozen)  doubling: if the play had more then six characters, actors would play more than one;  Boy actors (apprentices)  cross-dressing;  The plays didn’t belong to the playwright or the writer but to the company itself; Companies of non-professional actors - Choir boys; - School boys; - Law students; First Playhouses • The red lion 1567  Whitechapel • The theatre 1576  Shoreditch Other performance spaces • At court • At inns • In the halls of Oxford and Cambridge colleges • At the inns of court • In the great mansions of aristocrats Public playhouses: outdoor amphitheatres; bathing houses or Inn-yards; Private playhouses: indoor halls; banqueting halls; Thomas Platter (swiss traveller): “And… every day at two o’clock in the afternoon in the city of London sometimes two sometimes three plays are given in different places, which compete with each other, and those which perform best gave the largest number of listeners. The places are so constructed that the actors play on a raised scaffold and everyone can see everything. After dinner … about two o’clock, I went with my companions over the water and in the straw thatched house saw the tragedy of the first Emperor Julius with at least fifteen characters were very well acted. At the end… they danced according to their costume with extreme elegance, two in each group dressed in men’s and two in women’s apparel.” Love’s Labour’s Lost: in-folio 1598, in-quarto 1623 Three main groups of character are depicted in the play: the King of Navarre and his Lords, the Princess of France and her ladies in wait and the group of outer characters that help the plot with the comedic arc. The king of Navarre and his companions take an oath that says that for three years they’ll focus solely on studying, limiting their sleep, their eating and most of all completely avoiding the contact with women, on pain of death. At the same time the princess pf France and her ladies in wait arrive in Navarre, to discuss the cession of Aquitaine, and camp outside the court, as written on the decree. The king and his companions fall for the princesses and her ladies, making it difficult for them to respect the pact made. At the same time, a Spanish emissary visiting court falls for the dairymaid. Everything converges to the courting of the women until every group is together and scene is interrupted by the arrival of a French messenger that announces to the princess the death of her father. This will lead to the separation of the groups and the promise that if in a year from now the princesses will still be in love with the courtiers and kings and vice versa, they’ll marry. In this play Shakespeare shows his ability to use different types of rhetoric to tell a story: rhetoric of academies, rhetoric of love and courtly love, there’s also an anti-rhetoric element which is Don de Armado which is the comedic plot of the play in which is also present the rhetoric of love in his love for Jaquenetta. What is a comedy for WS? Formal aspects: plot/characterization It is mainly about love that ends in marriage or the promise of marriage  i.e. reconciliation of characters at odds  social harmony Affective (emotional) aspects It must make the audience laugh (comic laughter vs tragic catharsis) Women are protagonists  boy-girls; androgyny and cross-dressing • A NEW DYNASTY James I, Stuart England (and Wales) + Scotland, (would-be) King of Great Britain 1603-1625 Son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, executed in 1587 (because she represented a threat for the crown, being catholic) PARLIAMENT  Queen/King in parliament + House of Lords + House of Common Elizabeth’s rule had been limited by the House of Lords and the House of Commons: but “limitations” of the Monarch’s power had existed in England and Wales since the Magna Carta Libertatum (1215) Such limitations, however, were stressed in official documents during Mary and Elizabeth’s reigns because of their gender. STUART KING  (MALE) ABSOLUTISM JAMES I  Patriarchal and absolutist royal style, he loved to be represented as a roman Augustus (that brought peace after the civil wars in roman empire after Ceaser’s death) Rex Pacificus  ended the war with Spain Political treatises written by James VI of Scotland  Philosopher-king: Wrote two treaties: • The true law of free monarchs (1597) • Basilikon doron [royal gift] (1598) (a series of suggestions as a gift to his new-born son) The Court Masque: << It was an aristocratic entertainment created in order to serve a private social occasion […] the masquers were intended to be spectators, and the spectators its masquers. with its audience ‘taken out’ by the performers to join the dance in order to generate an unusually participatory theatrical form: Allardyce Nicoll declared a masque to be ‘an invitation to a dance’.>> - J.L. Styan, The English Stage, A History of Drama and Performance, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1996, p. 187 The Masque was a kind of entertainment that exalted the almost non-human political power of the sovereign. It was private and exclusive and performed at court. Actors and those who enjoyed the show combined, so the participants were both the professionals and the guests and vice versa: it was “participatory entertainment”, so there was no real separation from one to the other. This theatrical form survived through 4 reigns: • Henry VIII Tudor: Allegorical Characteristics • Elizabeth I ⁕ James I Stuart: Political Characteristics ⁕ Charles I The main difference we can see between Elizabethan theatre and Jacobean Masques (beside one being public and the other private and elitist) is the shape of the room in which the entertainment was performed: unlike the round Elizabethan theatres, the halls of the Jacobean masques were rectangular. This brought a different and privileged perspective of the show: in theatres di audience surrounded the stage not only from the pit below, but also from the galleries above. This didn’t happen in the dancing halls during masques. Inigo Jones, Whitehall: Banqueting House, 1622, on the ceiling The Apotheosis of James I A Masquerade Ball at the Louvre The Masque of Blackness, Ben Jonson Plot: The text begins with Niger talking to his father Oceanus. Oceanus asks him why he has left his usual eastward course and flowed westward, into the Atlantic. Niger tells him that he has come to request help. Niger's daughters are upset because they thought themselves to be the most beautiful goddesses in the world, only to discover that paleness is thought more attractive - and so no longer feel beautiful. The moon goddess, Aethiopia, tells the daughters that, if they can find a country whose name ends in "tannia", they will be beautiful once more. The daughters try desperately to find the country whose name ends in "tannia", travelling as far as Mauritania (North Africa/Morocco), Lusitania (Portugal), and Aquitania (France) in their quest. Despondent at their lack of success they pray once more to Aethiopia, who tells them that the country is Britannia and that they should seek out its sun-like king, who has the power to bleach their black complexions white. Aethiopia further advises the daughters that once a month for the next year, they should bathe in sea-dew and, thus prepared, at the same time next year, they should appear before the king again, whereupon his light will make them beautiful and white. The story is based on the concept of searching for a beauty that is not black, but a new white attractiveness, that could only be granted by “a Sun that doesn’t scorch the skin but has the power to make it beautiful”. The Sun here, is used as a metaphor for the King. This Masque was performed on 12th Night: Epiphany, that was a day of festivities where, at court, you could find great entertaining moments. James’s wife, Anne of Denmark, loved this type of balls and commissioned to Ben Jonson (playwright, who was also Shakespeare’s “competitor”, which enjoyed the Queen’s favours) different versions of this masque, what is more is that she was intrigued by these “new” ethnicities and particularly black people (in that period the American continent and Africa were being explored). All that concerned the plot and the main concepts was curated by Jonson. Clothes and scenery were very peculiar and expensive, just as much as music, singers and machines for special effects and illusions, everything was curated by the architect Inigo Jones. Everything was patronized by the Queen. In this play, Niger’s daughters are played by the queen herself and her ladies in waiting, and for this occasioned they blackened their skin in order to appear black. (Racist concept, blackface) If Ben Jonson hadn’t documented these masques, today we wouldn’t have known anything about them. The Masque of Blackness, Personated at the court at Whitehall, on the Twelfth-Night, 1605 Pliny, Solinus, Ptolemy, and of late Leo the African, remember unto us a river in Æthiopia, famous by the name of Niger; of which people were called Nigritæ, now Negroes; and are the blackest nation of the world. This river taketh spring out of a certain lake, eastward; and after a long race, falleth into the western ocean. Hence (because it was her majesty’s will o have them blackmoors at first) the invention was derived by me and presented thus: First, for the scene, was drawn a landtschap (landscape) consisting of small woods, and here and there a void place filled with huntings; which falling, an artificial sea was seen to shoot forth, as if it flowed to the land, raised with waves which seemed to move, and in some places the billows to break as imitating that orderly disorder which is common in nature. In front of this sea were placed six tritons, in moving and sprightly actions, their upper parts human, save that their hairs were blue, as partaking of the sea-color: their desinent part fish, mounted above their heads, and all varied in disposition. From their backs were borne out certain light pieces of taffeta, as if carried by the wind, and their music made out of wreathed shells. Behind these, a pair of sea-maids, for song, were as conspicuously seated; between which, two great sea-horses, as big as the life, put forth themselves; the one mounting aloft, and writhing his head frim the other which seemed to sink forward; so intended for variation, and that the figure behind might come off better: upon their backs, Oceanus and Niger were advanced. Oceanus presented in a human form, the color of his flesh blue; and shadowed with a robe of sea-green; his head grey, and horned, as he is described by the ancients: his beard of the like mixed color: he was garlanded with alga, or sea-grass; and in his hand a trident. Niger, in form and color of an Æthiop; his hair and rare beard curled, shadowed with a blue and bright mantle: his front, neck, and wrists adorned with pearl, and crowned with an artificial wreath of cane and paper-rush. These induced masquers, which were twelve nymphs, negroes, and the daughters of Niger; attended by so many of the Oceaniæ, which were their light-bearers. The masquers were placed in a great concave shell, like mother of pearl, curiously made to move on those waters and rise with the billow; the top thereof was stuck with a cheveron of lights, which intended to the portion of the shell, struck a glorious beam upon them, as they seated, one above the other: so, they were all seen, but in an extravagant order. - Introduction by Ben Jonson In this introduction, Ben Jonson, describes the scenery he has imagined for the masque in which he tries to give to the audience the idea that they are in front of a sea in motion. He then describes the costumes, the fabrics, the colours and the head-pieces. The way they made music with seashells, and artificial lights all to give illusion on the scenery itself. Everything gives a sense of luxury, movement and the attempt at recreating the ‘real’ in an aesthetic way, that only art can do. This particularly accurate description allows us to relive exactly what the nobleman saw at the time. Everything was extremely expensive and, as a form of rite, at the end of the masque, every single thing that had been used was burned. Puritans were extremely against this type of entertainment because they gave rise to drunkenness and orgies. In these masques, unlike in public theatre, were it was forbidden, women were not only part, but also protagonists which made this an “erotic trap”. Even more scandalous, was the fact that the women, protagonists of the play, were the Queen and her maids. The masque was generally divided into three parts: 1) First song and dance (performed by masquers on a raised stage) Oceanus and Niger with his 12 Daughters (Black Nymphs) who travelled the ocean in search of the new land Britannia where: <<Their beauties shall be scorched no more; This sun is temperate, and refines All things on which his radiance shines>> 2) Second song and dance (performed by masquers and the audience) Of indefinite length. Upon the singing of another song the nymphs were <<To make choice of their men and dance several mesures [slower dances] and corantos [tripping dances]>> 3) Third song and dance (performed by masquers) The nymphs danced back into the sea (the raised stage) at the sound of a new song: <<Daughters of the subtle flood, Do not let earth longer entertain you; 1° echo: Let earth entertain you 2° echo: Longer entertain you >> Costume for Oceaniæ, by Inigo Jones Costume for the Daughters of Niger, by Inigo Jones From monarchy for divine right to rational absolutism:  Artificial sovereignty  Full right and power of a governing body “Non est potestas super terram quae comparetur ei” – Iob. 41.24 Imperial crown  Sovereignty Sword  Civil power Crozier  Religious power Body  Composed by tiny little heads that represent the people The State, which is represented by the crowned giant, has got one head and one crown and holds in his hands the symbols of both civil and religious power. There must be one sovereign for both powers, be it a Monarch or an Assembly (Parliament);  idea of modern state or modern sovereignty ∞ John Milton (1608-1674) Self-conscious writer seeking poetic immortality:  Saint Paul’s School + Cambridge University  1638-1639 Italian Grand Tour Poetic career modelled on that of Virgil: from Pastoral to Epic Cultural and historic past in contrast with strong Catholicism when he visited Italy during Gran Tour, which he didn’t like. He met Galileo Galilei in Fiesole, and who had tried to support his scientific views with the aid of the telescope and had been prosecuted by the church and confined to his home. Milton thought that Galileo should have been free to proclaim his own truths, and he also attributed Galileo’s limited freedom to the Catholic Church. This mix of classical ideals and catholic repression of freedom that he found in Italy, influenced his idea of what poetry had to be and what it had to proclaim, among the most important values he considered there was surely freedom. • He imposed on himself six years of self-directed programme reading in: • Ancient and modern theology • Philosophy • History • Science • Politics • Literature • He studied and had a good command of: • Latin • Greek • Hebrew • Italian • French • Spanish • Dutch He was a very learned man, and studied so much that he became blind and wrote Paradise Lost in complete blindness, he had to dictate the entire text, and formed the lines in his mind. Milton’s main preoccupation: LIBERTY vs. LICENCE Liberty, to him, did not mean the freedom to do whatever one wants, but was more of a philosophical concept that meant that a person reaches liberty when they succeed in purging themselves and their soul from the passions that can force them to act differently from what is good. A man can only be free when he’s not led by passions. Licence on the other hand, allows you to do what you want at any given time, and is at the base of the behaviour of the libertine. • 1642 he joins the political life of his country in favour of the Parliament and the idea of Republic and starts to write his first political treaties. He puts aside his poetical career because the politic of the country is in need, in fact he became Latin Secretary, as Latin was the language of politics (similar to our Minister of Foreign Relations). • On education 1644  reformation of the traditional education system; • Aeropagitica 1644  a passionate defense of freedom of the press; • 4 Pamphlets on Divorce  not only adultery but incompatibility; • The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates 1649  on the eve of Charles beheading he writes on the importance of freedom and how people are free by nature. ‣ Paradise Lost 1667 (1 edition) 10 books (tragedy) 1674 (2 edition) 12 books (epic) A great narrative poem, it tells the story of a defeat, and a fall after temptation. Every book is introduced by The Argument, which is a sort of summery of what will be contained inside each book. Satan  the hero of the poem - Martial qualities of the classical epic heroes (he is a soldier and has its qualities – fearless, ruthless, strong, a valiant fighter, a rebel that has republican sentiments -, knows how to fight even though he’s lost the fight, but continues to fight him) - Defiant republican sentiments Milton gives Satan these characteristics, and in some way, it is strange that a man like Milton, who was supporting a theological republic, writes a poem in which Satan is protagonist. However, what strikes the reader, in approaching the figure of Satan in Paradise Lost, is the fact that, he can’t bear the “bondage” of God, he wants to be free. Freedom is what he’s looking for, at the cost of everything else. <<Milton’s Devil as a moral being is far superior to his God as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture is to one who in the cold security pf undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments! >> - P.B. Shelley, Defence of Poetry, 1821 Adam  not particularly interesting before the fall Happy sin: when Eve takes the fruit of knowledge, Milton describes the sin as happy because it brings new awareness in human beings. What is important to Milton is the freedom of choice. (felix culpa)  love, labour (work for man and pregnancy labours for woman); After this they are exiled from paradise, they acquire the condition of choosing between good and bad, suffer the pain of labour (work for men, pregnancy labours for women) but most importantly they get to know what love is since they become a couple. «The insights of a great narrative poem […] are not located […] in any of its local parts – even those in which the poet apparently speaks in his own voice and offers his own commentary on the action – but in the temporally unfolding and cumulative effect of the whole, and the dramatic interplay between its descriptive passages (included the extended similes that are such a notable feature of epic poetry) and the various ‘voices’ that speak within it» - (David Hopkins, Reading Paradise Lost, 2013) The Argument, Book I: we can find an analogy because Satan is exiled by paradise and Adam is exiled from earthly paradise, the garden of Eden: they both share the feeling of being torn from a place you love, and this affects them and it almost makes it look like they didn’t belong there in the first place. Why does god have to exile them? What does it mean to belong to paradise? The book then touches the first cause of the fall of the man, the snake, or better, Satan as a snake that turns to god and bringing with him many legions of angels and thrown into the great deep, with a fall that lasts nine days. After introducing everything, the poem starts in medias res (in the midst of things; exactly like epic poems) • FROM CHAOS TO STABILITY: FROM CIVIL WARS TO MARITIME POWER AND GLOBAL TRADE Important differences between these two portraits: • Charles II is seated on his throne, wearing an imperial crown, holding the globe and the sceptre, there are people behind the throne, probably from court which marks the importance of the court in that period. • George II is standing near the crown, which is put on the table, near the globe and the sceptre, and on the background, you can see a window overlooking the city of London. What strikes in these portraits is the different kinds of monarchy each of the King is ruling in, this because a huge change happened between the two reigns: first of all, the birth of the Constitutional Monarchy, the first in Europe and in the World. Moreover, England, is once and for all pacified from the point of view of religious turmoil and wars. ‣ Supporters of the monarchy and the rights of James II to succeed Charles II were dubbed <<Tories>> after Irish catholic brigands of that name VS. <<Whigs>> (exclusionists) a colloquial Scottish term for Presbyterian rebels. • RESTORATION THEATRE, 1660-1702 From 1642 to 1660 theatres had been closed, however as soon as Charles II landed at Dover in May 1660, by the month of August he had granted a monopoly – the Royal Patent - to run 2 theatre companies: Thomas Killigrew’s and William Davenant’s => Close relationship between Court and Theatre. Charles, being in exile for a long time in France, was particularly fond of “neoclassical” theatre, which was different from the English one. This new theatre, had to please the aristocrats at court and, obviously, the king. One of the most important innovation was permission to employ women to act female roles: Killigrew’s Patent (1662) explains, in the words of the King, That: <<for as much as many plays formerly acted do contain several prophane, obscene, and scurrilous passages, and the women’s parts therein have been acted by men in the habit of women, at which some have taken offence, for the preventing of these abuses for the future we do likewise permit and give leave that all the women’s part may be performed by women […] such reformation [many produce] harmless delight [and be] also useful and instructive>> Samuel Pepys  Diary, Sat. 18 August 1660  about Edward Kynastone, the last man to ever play a woman’s role at theatre. Pepys mentions a play at the Cockpitt, constructed in 1529 as a tennis court, a bowling alley, and a tiltyard, and also for cock fighting, it was redesigned in 1629 by Inigo Jones for Charles I as a private theatre. Charles II updated it in 1662. Samuel Pepys attended several plays here. He attended The Loyall Subject [tragicomedy by John Fletcher] where «one Kinastone a boy, acted the Duke’s sister, but made the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life, only her voice not very good». RESTORATION THEATRE: ROYAL LICENCE OR PATENT DUAL MONOPOLY: Robert Killigrew: - King’s Men; - Drury Lane Theatre - William Davenant: - Duke of York’s Men; - Lincoln’s Inn Fields and then Dorset Garden Theatre under the direction of Thomas Betterton  More innovative with moveable and changeable scenery (illusionistic kind of theatre) Neoclassical Theatre poetics were based on a French interpretation of Aristotle, according to which there was a set of rules for the construction of a play: unities of time, place and action. Even Shakespeare’s plays were rewritten to suit the request of the neoclassical formal and moral standards of the restoration theatre. ‣ Example: Nahum Tate The History of King Lear, 1682  poetic justice had to win over tragedy Aim of the theatre is to teach the audience a lesson of morality and virtue. ‣ Right Examples: Virtuous heroes and heroines (tragedy) VS. Obviously ridiculous comic villains and fools (comedy) COMEDY TRAGEDY PLACE/TIME Contemporary World Distant CHARACTERS Recognizable European social types Noble or Royal Heroes and Heroines LANGUAGE Every day prose speech Heroic couplet Negative examples so repulsive that they do not arouse a desire for identification: libertines and fops Positive examples We could not always find a balance between exaggeration and realism. ∞ The comedy of Manners • The Country Wife, William Wycherly, 1675 • The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter, George Etherege, 1676 George Etherege, 1636-1692. He was a dramatist, raised in the middle class, but part of the court who was exiled during the Republic. Once Charles II, comes back to England and restores the theatres, Etherege narrates it through the comedy of manners. One of is most important works for the genre is definitely The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter, published in 1676 The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter is a Restoration comedy by George Etherege, written in 1676. The play is set in Restoration London and follows the womanizer Dorimant as he tries to win over the young heiress Harriet and to disengage himself from his affair with Mrs. Loveit. Despite the subtitle, the fop Sir Fopling is only one of several minor characters; the rake Dorimant is the protagonist. The character of Dorimant may have been based on John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647-1680, probably died by an STD). THE LONG EIGHTEEN CENTURY Period of political stability after the civil wars it can be divided in at least 4 literary periods - THE RESTORATION Charles II, James II and William III 1660-1702; - THE ENLIGHTENMENT NEOCLASSICISM: QUEEN ANNE 1702-1714 [end of Stuart’s line] - REALISTIC LITERATURE: George I and George II [beginning of the Hanoverians 1714]1702-1760 - GOTHIC & PRE-ROMANTIC LITERATURE: George III and George IV [Hanoverians] 1760-1830 NEOCLASSICAL LITERATURE: It aims at imitating Roman and Greek Literature it has a polished and refined language (poetic diction) it originates in France  end of XVII century  Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes: Imitation of classical models Appreciation of the classical past and of ancient literature as “General Nature” (what we mean by general nature is human nature, as human beings) Learning and Witticism (being learned, capacity to use language with irony and the ability to entertain your readers but not in a baroque way but in a Rococo manner). • The way you use language and literature is through: Modes: Parody and Satire (parody: models from the past in a new way; satire: as a literate person, you are able to mock the protagonists of the social gathering you are describing in which you are participating in); Genres: Poetry and Translation (translation because if you want to use ancient models you have to able to translate it; which is also an exercise to produce new poetry); Realistic Literature: it springs from the observation of reality and the appreciation of common sense, it uses a clear and objective language. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for Advancement of Learning (founded in 1660, the same year of Charles II coronation; which also be the base of a new language, less articulate and more straight-forward) + John Locke, 1690: Essay on human understanding (in which tells us something new about human understanding: that there’s no other way of perceiving if not through our senses; our perceptions then have to become thoughts and then, once all united, will form our perception of the world => empiricism. Importance of education) Appreciation of Novelty and Utility (=> the Novel) Invention of new literary forms Teach and Entertain: Politeness and good manners • Mode: Realism • Genres: Newspapers, diaries, conduct books, novels FATHERS OF THE BRITISH ENLIGHTENMENT • Isaac Newton (1643-1727) Extraordinarily important for the scientific culture In Philosopiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica he presents his scientific foundings which he expresses in the language of mathematics  laws of nature (necessary and incontrovertible) His laws of motion and of gravitation explains the universe in terms of a perfect machinery  foundation of mechanics  a clockwork universe Since he had found out the mechanism which rules universe only on the bases of observation and reason now all the other disciplines could follow the same method (President of the Royal Society) • John Locke (1632-1704) Extraordinarily important in the theory politics and for the development of modern psychology. State is not something God-given via a Divine right to the King, but is created by men for their own benefit, that is for the protection of their freedom and property (contract). There is a state of nature which comes before the State of Society and men set up the state for their own good. • THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1744) Neoclassicism 1) Translations of the Greek classics Homer’s Iliad 1715-18 Homer’s Odyssey 1726 Previous translations by George Chapman (respectively 1598-1611 and 1616) << Mr. Addison was the first whose advice determined me to undertake this task; who was pleased to write to me upon that occasion in such terms as I cannot repeat without vanity. I was obliged to Sir Richard Steele for a very early recommendation of my undertaking to the public. Dr Swift promoted my interest with that warmth with which he always serves his friends.>> -Alexander Pope preface to Homer’s Iliad 2) Critical editions of English authors: Shakespeare’s Works, 1725 Neoclassicism Literary circles and the birth literary criticism An Essay on Criticism 1711 (23yo/ written in couplet – versi) Pope deals with the quarrel that has been going on in French criticism: if you imitate the great writers you can follow both nature and the rules. Art imitates nature, but since by nature both Dryden and Pope mean “human nature” when a writer imitates Homer and Shakespeare he imitates (general) nature. An Essay on criticism, 1711 This is a text that blends criticism and poetry and the best introduction to the canons of taste of the English Augustan Age. Pope is writing in the wake of Horace (Ars poetica) and Nicolas Boileau (Art Poétique) It is written in heroic couplets: a form that Pope brought to perfection. This “binary system” – if we want to use an astronomical metaphor – consents Pope to bring together in the same small space (2 lines) concepts that are often separated or even opposed, balancing between them with stringent but serene reasoning. ↆ SATIRE - In satire the author holds a subject up to ridicule or to scorn - The great model for formal verse and satire were the Roman poets Horace (civil witty style) and Juvenal (indignant and angry manner) - Modern times are seen through the screen of classical myths and classical form Double vision: Glorious Heroic Past used to describe The Fallen Unheroic Present; Irony  to say the thing which is not the satirist doesn’t speak straight: he conceals what he really wants to say against VANITY and against FALSE LEARNING Jonathan Swift, “a modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people from being a burthen to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick”, 1729 The Rape of the Lock (1714) Canto I Lines 1-23 Canto I Lines 121-148 ∞ Female Readers <<the toilet is the great scene of business, and the right adjusting of their hair the principal employment of their lives […] I hope to increase the number of these by publishing this daily paper, which I shall always endeavour to make an innocent if not an improving entertainment, and by that means, at least, divert the minds of my female readers from greater trifles. » The Spectator, 12 march 17 Pat Rogers  writes about the rape of the lock: small poetic cells grow out of a set of notions which have mainly to do with the “court” • << what mighty Contests rise from trivial Things>> incapsulate not only the theme but the central action of the poem: “a tempest in a teacup” (literally) • Constructing by fractals: << a rough of fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole >> • <<Couplets are therefore a miniaturised statement of the larger issue at stake, just as objects and events within the text present a diminished replica of the materials in epic>> COURTLY LOVE? CANTO II – The Rape of the Lock vv. 29-46 Th’adventurous Baron the birght locks admired; He saw, he wish’d, and to the prize aspired. Resolv’d to win, he meditates the way, By force to ravish, or by fraud betray; For when success a lover’s toil attends, Few ask if fraud or force attaine’d his ends. For this, ere Phoebus rose, he had implor’d Propitious Heav’n, and every Power ador’d, But chiefly Love – to Love an altar built Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves, And all the trophies of his former loves; With tender bille-doux he lights the pyre, And Breathes three am’rous sighs to raise the fire. Then prostate falls, and begs with ardent eyes Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize: The Power gave ear, and granted half his prayer, The rest the winds disperse’d in empty air. 1710 Statue of Anne or Copyright Act: Legislation conferring exclusive rights upon the author of books not yet printed or published for a period of 14 years and for further 14 years if the author was still alive at the end of the first period. An author could finally consider the product of his wit as a property and make money out of it; however, The Copyright Act also facilitated the growing importance of booksellers: BIRTH OF THE BOOK TRADE AND CULTURAL INDUSTRY= pages of advertisements + soliciting of reviews + catalogues of available printed books. John Dryden, An Essay of Dramatic Poetry, 1668; the preface to fables Ancient and Modern, Are the ancient to be imitated? Is English dramatic poetry worth? Form  a dialogue among friends (different points of view) Context  a boat trip down the Thames to listen to the cannonading of the English and the Dutch fleets  the discussion are sure of the English victory (patriotism, nationalism) • Crites praises the drama of the ancient • Eugenius protests against their authority and argues for the idea of progress in the arts • Lisideius argues the excellence of French plays • Neander defends the native tradition and the greatness of Shakespeare, Fletcher and Jonson «If I would compare [Jonson] with Shakespeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakespeare the greater wit. Shakespeare was the Homer, or Father of our dramatic poets; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing: I admire him but I love Shakespeare» *poetry= qui indica scrittura di immaginazione The rise of English literature Idea of national literature which is defined by contrast with French Literature and in continuity/discontinuity with the literature of the Ancients  imitation of Nature (general human nature) Samuel Johnson: Dictionary + Life of the English Poets (52 poets, among whom Dryden and Pope)  Literary English language, specific characteristic of the English people is a love of freedom “Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never, never, never shall be slaves” Rhetoric of freedom  unruliness of Shakespeare <<Shakespeare is, above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature, the poet that holds up to his reader a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters […] are the genuine progeny of common humanity such as the world will always supply and observation will always find >> The dictionary was commissioned to Johnson by a group of London publishers in 1746 and was finished by 1755 (9 years) It is notable in 3 respects 1) Size (40.000 words) 2) Wealth of illustrative quotations (raging from Sydney to Pope) 3) Excellence of the definitions <<I have devoted this book, the labour of years, to the honour of my country, that we may no longer yeld the palm of philology without a contest to the nations of the continent, the chief glory of every people arise from its authors.>> Johnson dedicated the Plan of the work to the Earl of Chesterfield but received no economic help = > Patron: n.1 one who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery ∞ THE BLUESTOCKINGS (SECOND HALF OF THE CENTURY) Circle of brilliant aristocratic literary women who met at the homes of three London hostesses in the middle of the Eighteenth century to informally discuss literature and politics with men, on the same level: 1. Elizabeth Montague (An Essay on the Writing and Genius of Shakespeare, 1769) 2. Elizabeth Vesey 3. Frances Boscawen  BIRTH OF THE FEMALE ENGLISH NOVEL Blue Stockings were the English version of French Salons Elizabeth Montague: marries a nobleman a lot older then she is, she manages the economy of her husband. She has always been very dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge, she organized informal meetings with men and women, in which were served only soft drinks (activities that were common at court and in the high society were banished, like game of cards), and the “art of the conversation” was practised. It was called “blue stockings” because men that went to these gatherings, and wore comfortable blue wool stockings instead of the formal white silk ones. Women’s productions were supported, which started to bloom in the second half of the ‘700. One of the most important ones was Elizabeth Carter, who writes a series of treaties that were particularly appreciated, and was esteemed also by Samuel Johnson. Women that were part of these clubs were especially dedicated to the topic of teaching and of women’s education. Ironically enough, Jane Austen wasn’t part of any association of the sort and conducted a very private life.