L'età della ragione e la letteratura inglese del XVIII secolo, Sintesi del corso di Inglese

Scarica L'età della ragione e la letteratura inglese del XVIII secolo e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! THE AGE OF REASON The 18th century in England is considerate as a “golden age”, in this period there is the flourishing of the arts and it is called as “The age of reason” because was very important the use of reason to have a critical thought on every aspect of reality. The art of pleasure, moderation became the perfect ideal of this time, this influenced the figure of gentleman. The English women were more active and independently than the other women in the continent. In this period the women could visited their friends, the theatres and the coffee house and began a writing career for example Aphra Behn. Woman readers and writers influenced the rise of the novel of the period, because the novel described the normal people in the every day. Many novels were epistolary. The prices of books were reduced so the access to books increased. In this period the people wanted not only understand the world but try to improve it. They refused the Calvinist because they thought that the life in controlled by God or Devil. This rational age wanted to improving nature, the “English garden” was invented and it was copied for example in Versailles in France. The new optimistic view and the thought that the reason could improve the society and the life of the human people encouraged the exploration. So there were a lot of voyage in a foreign country was commissioned to Captain Cook by the Royal Society. The Enlightenment was a European intellectual movement , this period consists in the freeing of man from ignorance and superstition through the use of reason; with the scientific revolution, this movement has developed. RESTORATION POETRY AND PROSE POETRY POETRY:The Restauration was a period of innovation. Verse repelled complexity in favour of classical simplicity. The real world with social events, etichs and ideals, became the main object of interest. The true spirit of Restauration poetry was satiric. PROSE:The new scientific attitude encouraged self-confidence and credit in human progress, at the same time it freed the minds of men from scare and superstition. RESTORATION DRAMA Restoration theatres were covered and artificially illuminated with candels, there were lights of the scene, a folling curtain and painted mobile scenery at the back of the stage for the most important scenes in a play. The audience sat in the dark in galleries. The prices of performances varied, but were mainly expencive. In this period there were the advent of actresses playing femal roles. The audiences appartained to the upper classes, insteand Elisabethan audiences had been drawn from all classes. the best literary expression of Restoration drama was the “comedy of manners”, which excited laughter by making fun of the manners and absurdities of an artificial, lot of sophisticated society. In the comedy of manners characters were more likely to be types than individuals. The use of prose dialogue, rather than rhymed verse, increased realism on the stage. The other realistic element of the comedy of manners was the theme of marriage, without feelings, but principally linked to sex and money. A SURVEY OF AUGUSTAN LITERATURE the literature of the Augustan age reflected the economic and intellectual progress of the period. Books were expensive and luxury the lower classes couldn’t afford. For them were cheaper forms of printed materials like ballads, pamphlets and newspapers, where short stories and novels were published in serial form. Lending or circulating libraries led to an increase in the reading public, particularly among middle and upper classes women, who had the luxury of free time. Prose the growing importance of the middle classes, both in the political and social range, had a strong influence on literature, encouraging the rise of prose. Credence in the power of reason and the individual’s trust in his own abilities found expression in the novel and in journalism. THE RISE OF THE NOVEL Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richarson are generally regarded as the fathers of the English novel. The 18th century novelist was the spokesman of the middle class. The writer’s primary aim was no longer to satisfy the standards of patrons and the literary elite, but to write in a simple way in order to be understood even by lower well educated readers. Since it was the bookseller and not the patron who rewarded the writer, speed and copiousness became the most important economic virtues. The story was particularly attractive to the practical-minded merchant, who was self- made and self reliant. The subject of the novel was always the “bourgeois man” and his problems. All the characters struggled either for survival or social success and they could be divided into two groups.The first was composed of people who believe in reason, like Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, the latter by those who cannot control their passions and subordinate reason to their desires. The writer was omnipresent. He chose or the third person narrator, who was omniscent or the first person narrator, who was the main character in the story. A chronological sequance of events was generally adopted by the novelists. Scott made an extensive use of Scottish dialect, while Manzoni removed any regional inflections from the language employed in the definitive edition of “promessi sposi” because he aimed at creating a national consciouness. MARY SHELLEY was born in 1797, she was a doughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, a feminist philosopher and novelist, and William Godwin a philosopher. Both her parents had been influenced by the ideas of French Revolution. Ten days after Mary’s birth, her mother died. Four years later her father married Mary Jane Clairmont and she and one of her daughters were to be the cause of Mary Shelley’s suffering and troubles. Godwin’s house was visited by some of the most famous writers of the day, like the Romantic Coleridge and Percy Shelley. Percy was immediately attrected by the young, beautiful Mary. The couple escape to France and later Shelley decided to rent a country house, Villa Diodati. Shelley began to write Frankestein, which was published anonymously in 1818. In 1822 Percy set sail in a storm and was found drowned ten days later. Mary returned to England and she died in 1851. FRANKESTAIN Victor Frenkenstein, a Swiss scientist, created a human being by joining parts selected from corpses. The result of the experiment is ugly and revolting. The monster becomes a murderer and in the end he destroyed his creator. The story is not told chronologicaly and is introduced a series of letters written by Walton, a young explorer on a voyage of expedition to the North Pole, to his sister Margaret. The most important setting is the North Pole, where Walton and his shipmates are stuck by the ice and where Frankenstein is found following his creation. In the introduction to the novel, Mary Shelley gives her own cause of Frankenstein’s origin. It seems that a number of things, like the reading of ghost stories, speculation about the re-animated of corpses, her personal anxieties and the memories of her sense of loss at the death of her own mother. Even the influenced of Percy was important. He and Marry were interested in science, in particularly chemistry. The ghost stories read at Villa Diodati provided an immediate stimulus, even if Frankenstein differs from the Gothic tradition, since it is not set in a dark castle and does not deal with supernatural events. Another important influence was the work of the Romantic poets, derived from Coleridge’s “the rime of the ancient mariner” is the fact that both Coleridge’s ballad and Shelley’s novel are tales of crime against nature. The main themes of the novel are: *the quest for forbidden knowledge * the overreacher *the double: walton is a double of Frankenstein since he manifests the same ambition, the wish to overcome human limits. Frankenstein and his creature are complementary, they both suffer from a sense of alienation and isolation, both begin with a desire to be good but becomes obsessed with hate and revenge. *the penetration of nature’s secrets *the usurpation of the female role.