L'Inghilterra ed il mondo dalla fine dell'era vittoriana alla fine della prima guerra mondiale, Dispense di Inglese

Scarica L'Inghilterra ed il mondo dalla fine dell'era vittoriana alla fine della prima guerra mondiale e più Dispense in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! From the Edwardian Age to the First World War Edwardian England After the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, the royal house took the Germanic surname of Prince Albert of Saxe- Coburg-Gotha, and came to the throne her son Edward VII. In this period Britain was one of the most important countries in the world, in fact it covered a fifth of the total globe, it had a navy. But, Britain was in competition against France, Germany, that was building a navy, and America, especially for the industries of cars, cinema and innovation. So, King Edward signed an agreement with France in 1904, the Entente Cordiale, that established that Britain could follow his interests in Egypt, and France in Morocco. The king leds to a new alignment of European countries: Britain could count of France and Russia, against Germany, Austria and Italy. But, the Edwardian society was similar to the Victorian’s because there was still the class distinction, the same moral values and the poverty. The seeds of the Welfare State There were changes in the political landscape. In 1906 was instaured a new Labour Representation Committee into the Labour Party. In this year the elections were won by the Liberals, that were divided into 2 groups: ● The supporters of the values of laissez-faire and self-help; ● The supporters of the New Libealism, that wanted changes in the social life. One of this was David Lloyd George, the Exchequer in charge, responsible of the financies. His People’s Budget of 1910 was rejected by the House of Lords: its members would have to pay more taxes. The Welfare State was introduced by some measures, such as the old-age pension for 70 years old people (1908), or free meals (1905), or regular medical inspections in schools (1907). 1908 The Children’s Act gave children some legal protection; it restricted the sale of alcohol and cigarettes. In 1909 were fixed minimum wages; in 1911, thanks to the National Insurance Act, were given free medical treatment and sickness benefits to workers. In 1910 the king died, and secceded him his son, George V. In 1911, passed the Parliament Act, with: ● the Lords’ right to veto money bills passed in the Commons was removed; ● they could only delay them for two years; ● a general election would be held at least every five years. [It’s the same system that we have today]. But, in 1911, there were a lot of violent mass strikes of miners, seamen, dockers, railways, because of high prices and low wages. Lloyd George responded with unemployment benefits and health insurance for the workers of important industries. The Suffragettes At the beginning of the 20th century only men were allowed to vote. A few educated ladies had been arguing in favour of voting rights for women since the 1860s. In 1903 Mrs Emmeline Punkhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). So, was created a movement called “Suffragettes”, that were women that wanted the right to vote. For this, they creates violent protests, marches, they chained themselves to railings in Downing Street and Buckingham Palace, broke windows, they made arson attacks onchurches, railway stations, on post boxes. Some of these were arrested and started an hunger strike, and prison authorities began force-feeding them. So, women over 30 obtain the right to vote in 1918, instead women over 21 in 1928. The Easter Rising in Ireland One of the most important theme of the Britain politics at the beginning of the 20th century was the “Irish Question”, referred to the fight for Irish Independence. In 1916, happens a rebellion in Dublin, the “Easter Rising”, because the Home Rule, voted by the Commons, was suspended till the end of the war. The leaders of this insurrection received the support of Germany. The rebels seized the General Post Office and other buildings in the centre of the city. The rebellion was repressed, followed by the execution of 15 leaders. The Irish Republican Party Sinn Féin was fighting for the reunification of Ireland. The outbreak of the war In 1914 a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Astro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, in Sarajevo. After this event, happens some reactions: ● Austria began to bomb Belgrade, the capital of Serbia; ● The German Kaiser, Wilhelm (Guglielmo) II, declared war on Russia and France; ● Germany, to attack the France, invaded Belgium; ● Great Britain, that had partecipate to the creation of Belgium in 1831, and had promise to Belgium the neutrality, was with Germany in the North Sea and in the Channel; so, Great Britain declared war on Germany on 4th August 1914, and 130,000 British soldiers crossed the Channel to fight on the Western Front in northern France. Britain at war By September 1914, the German army was stopped in River Marne in France. Britain relied on volunteers until 1916 when was introduced the Conscription. The Empire sent troops from the dominions. Women replaced men in their civilian jobs, that brings to the women’s suffrage. A war of attrition In 1915 a German submarine sank the British ship Lusitania, and died a lot of people including 128 Americans. So, the US president Thomas Woodrow Wilson started to fight against Germany; in this month Italy joined to France and Britain and the German Zeppelin airship carried out the first aerial bombing of London. The bloodiest battle was on the Somme, in the Northern France, in 1916. This is an example of “war of attrition” because the objective was to kill the enemies. Soldiers retreated into trenches, used new weapons, such as machine guns, poison gas, tanks, aircraft. The Germans used the submarines, called U-boats. Life in trenches was very stressfull for the mud, the lack of hygiene, and the doctors use the term “shell shock” to allude to the psychological effects of the explosions. The horror was narrated by the poets. The changes happen between the 1917 and the 1918: in Great Britain George V changes his surname from the german Saxe- Coburg- Gotha to the British Windsor; in Russia the Bolshevicks takes the power; the Italian army collapsed in 1917 in the Battle of Caporetto; the Austrians were deserted; Germany was starving. Instead, the United States, joined to war in 1917 on Britain’s side. The end of the war In September 1918 Britain started to bomb the shells of Hindenburg Line, a series of impenetrable German trenches. In October the Germans were retreating along the Western Front. This war caused about 260 000 victims. On 4th October 1918 Germany asked to the president Woodrow Wilson an armistice that had bring to the German withdrawal, national self-determination and no punishment for the country. Britain and France agreed for the fear of the American power. On 11th November , at 11 o’clock, the guns fell silent, and this day is remembered as the “Armistice Day”. It was also called “Remembrance Day” or “Poppy Day” as the poppy was one of the only plants to grow on the battlefields. In 1919 was signed at Versailles a peace treaty by the Allied powers (Britain, France, USA, Italy). The American President Woodrow Wilson proposed Fourteen Points to work out the peace treaty and prevent future wars. So, he proposed a plan to set up the League of Nations, that was an international organisation, with the site in Geneva, Switzerland, to resolve international disputes, that granted political independence and territorial integrity to all. But was difficult and Wilson left office without managing to convince the United States to join. The League of Nations was the forerunner of the United Nations. One of the consequences of the WWI was the world economic boom. In particular, in Great Britain, started the construction of houses, progresses in the public health, the boom in the sales of the daily press and in 1927 the creation of BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). But, after the crash of Wall Street in 1929 also the European banks were bankrupt, and this led to a negative position of Great Britain as bigger exported of manufactured goods, because there was an increased production of weapons; but also because South America and Asia became new suppliers. Also, the prices of the salaries fell down, like also the working hours. In 1926 was declared a General miners Strike. But the most pressing theme was the unemployment: the old North of England, the South Wales and the Central Scotland became depressed in opposition to the new automobile, chemical and electrical industries in the South and in the Midlands. The difficult 1930s From 1935. The Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was the guise of the Conservative party, and he opposed to another war. After George V, succeeded him his son King Edward VII, but he wanted to marry a twice divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson, so he was forced to abdicate by Baldwin, and succeeded him his brother George VI. Money was invested on the Royal Air Force (RAF). Towards World War II Adolf Hitler was part of the Nazi Party from the 1933, and sent illegally troops into the Rhineland in 1936. In the same year, in Spain broke out a civil war between Nationalists and Republicans. In 1935, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini attacked Abyssinia and created an alliance with Germany. In 1937 Japan attacked China. In 1938, Hitler decides to invade Austria, breaking the Treaty of Versailles and created an union with Germany. In 1938 happens the “Kristallnatch”, the violence against the Jewish people, and in 1939 Germany occupied Prague. In the same year, Hitler signed the secret Motolov-Ribbentrop with Stalin, and on 1st September he invaded Poland. Two days later, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. The USA in the first half of the 20th century The beginning of the 20th century At the end of the 19th century the United States became one of the richest country in the world, the world leader, because of the agriculture, the massive industrial output, the mineral resources, the cars manufacturation and for the “trusts”, that are big corporations. But, despite this economic boom, the poverty was spread, especially in the North’s cities, like Chicago, Boston, Pittsburg, New York, in fact workers lived in bad conditions, in overcrowded slums and they worked long hours with a low salary. In the first part of the 20th century there were a lot of problems, the bad life conditions of workers, the corruption of the government, wrote in books and articles by investigative and reformer-minded journalists, called “muckrakers”. This led to opinions of people, that started to think that the government, through reforms, could change this problems. So, the belief of “laissez-faire” of the 19th century was replaced by the Progressivism, that had as leader the 26th President of USA, Theodore Roosevelt. He was an expansionist, he made the navy stronger, he focalised more on the trusts, he made a new programme of social legislation and control more the big business. He also helped to create 58 National Parks, and believed in the superiority of the American culture, in fact he wanted to spread these values. Imperial expansion Roosevelt also focalised his attention to the imperial expansion. After the conquest of Alaska from Russia, he focalised on Cuba; in fact, after the Spanish-American war (1895) he takes the control over almost Latin America, including Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, to protect the American trade in China. The United States also annexed Hawaii; they supported the revolt for Independence of Panama from Colombia, and in 1914 they built the Panama Canal to connect The Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean. But, the Imperialism doesn’t get along with the Democratic values of the American Constitution, so they started to give the Independence to their dominions except for Cuba, because in Guantanamo Bay they wanted to built a large naval base. America and WWI America doesn’t join the First World War immediately, not even after the sinking of the Lusitania with 128 American deads; America join the war in 1917 (was part of the Entente) because of German attacks to the American ships. The Armistice was signed in 1918. During the 1920s, USA was growing quickly because were created new industries and there was little competition from Europe, so the population was growing and taxes were cut by the Republican government. This led to the spread of feeling of euphoria, new music genre, such as the jazz, the dance, the fashion. This is the reason because this period is called “The Roaring Twenties”. But, this progress doesn’t arrive anywhere, such as the south-west mining towns, the farmers of the Midwest and the urban industrial workers. Red Scare and Prohibition The Twenties in addition to positive consequences has led to reactionary attitudes, like the famous “Red Scare”, that is the fear of Socialism, that bring to the persecution and execution of political activists, socialists, communists and anarchists; such as the Italian anarchists Sacco e Vanzetti. In this period there was the restriction of immigration and the segregation of minorities into slums, such as Harlem, that became the big Afro-American quarter in New York. This “open door” policy, had brought to several restriction of immigration, till the spread of feelings of Xenophobia and racial persecution. The puritanical attitudes had led to the 18th Amendement of Constitution, and so to the “Prohibition”, that is the ban of manufacturation and sale of alcohol; this was made to fight the alcohol addiction among the poor. But, this had led to the illegal traffic of bootleggers, the illegal production and sale of alcohol, and also the Gangsterism. The Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression Some investors started to sell their actions, and, to prevent a collapse, the bankers buy them; but on 24th October 1929 Wall Street, the home of the New York Stock Exchange, crashed. This day is known as “Black Thursday” and marked the end of the prosperous Twenties and the beginning of the Great Depression, the worldwide economic crisis. Businessman, common people, who had invested their money in shares found themselves broke and in debts; who couldn’t pay the mortgages lost his house. The factories, the banks closed and crashed. Nearly 8 million of people were unemployment in 1930s and spent their time in “breadlines” to receive free food. In this period happens the famous phenomenon “Dust Bowl”: the Great Plains regions, in particular Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas had to face the drought, because the winds picked up the dry earth and chocked cattle and pasture lands. So, people moved to the West, such as California. In 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt became President and promised a “New Deal” of reforms, based on 3 objectives: ● Relief, to provide jobs for the unemployed and to protect farmers from foreclosure; ● Recovery, to recover the economy; ● Reform, to regulate banks, to abolish child labour, and to conserve farmland. The New Deal talked about also: ● Physical rehabilitation of the country, in fact were built dams and were developed water power resources; ● Human rehabilitation; the government was responsible for the health, welfare and security, as well as for the protection and education of its citizens; ● Extension of democracy; the concept of democracy included not only political rights but economic security and social justice as well. This government focalised his attention to help the unemployed, public works, the conservation of natural resources, it instructed to plant trees and grass, to hold rainwater and to regenerate the soil leaving portions of land uncultivated. WWII and the atomic bomb When the United State joined to the Second World War in 1941, they spent all their resources to win the war; in particular they used two thousand million dollars on the Manhattan Project, a research project to produce and test the first atomic bomb. The center of construction was in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and a lot of scientists worked on it, also an Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. Modernism The advent of Modernism The term “Modernism” refers to an international movement of the 20th century that talked about the Western literature, music, visual arts and cinema. The first decades of the 20th century were marked by originality and innovation. Paris was the centre of the artistic activity but the representatives of the Modernism current came from Europe and America. It is a literary movement that takes place after the World War I, that had eliminated the certainties of the pre-war society and had replaced them by disillusion and fragmentation. New modes of expression were due also thanks to new ideas in Psychology, Philosophy, Politics. The Modernists wanted to break with the past and the traditional forms and subjects, and wanted new things to explore, such as the war, urbanisation, technology, mass communication, speed. They wanted to express their experiences through creative forms. Main features of Modernism All the artistic forms of Modernism have the same characteristics: ● The distortion of shapes; such as the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque; ● The breaking down of the concepts of space and time, and the interruption of the linear flow of the narrative verse; ● A different and subjective perception of the reality; ● The emphasis of subjectivity; is more important how perception takes place rather than on what is perceived; in literature the objectivity of the omniscient third-person narrator is replaced by the stream of consciousness; ● The allusive language and the association of more words; ● The rejection of conformism and conventions; ● The intensity of the moment or of the image to give a real view of the nature of the things; ● The importance of the unconscious; ● The use of spontaneity and inner emotions; ● The reflection on the complexity of the modern urban life, in artistic form. Towards a cosmopolitan literature Since the 18th century, in Defoe and Richardson’s novels was present the introspection. In the 19th century the characters were explained as social beings also with a moral and emotional inner life. At the beginning of the 20th century writers began to give more importance to the human mind, but they understood that was impossible describe it with the traditional techniques; so, they search new way of representation. They adopted the interior monologue to represent the unspoken things of the mind. Main features of the interior monologue The main features of the interior monologue are: ● It is the verbal expression of the stream of consciousness, psychic phenomenon; ● Lack of chronological order; ● May be present the narrator; ● Possible lack of formal logical order; ● The actions takes place in the mind of the character; ● The speech could be immediate, without any introduction. The interior monologue could be seen as the couch of the psychoanalyst where character’s could wander. Types of interior monologue It can be indirect or direct: ● Indirect: the narrator controlled the flow of thoughts in the character's mind, there was a logical and grammatical organization; The character's thoughts were introduced directly by a description, comment or introductive phrases: The narrator is a guide for the reader. The character himself stay fixed in space while the consciousness moved freely in time. All the events happened in the present in the character's mind, one event can be infinity or only a moment. This is a conventional conception of the time that was called "external time": the time is irregular and disrupted. This concept was influenced by the Relativism of a subjective experience. ● Direct: the narrator didn't exist, the character's inner self is direct (first person narration); Joyce created two different kinds of direct interior monologue: The first kind had two levels of narration: o The first is external to the character's mind: description; o The second is internal: emotions, feelings; In the second kind, there was the mind level of narration where the character's thoughts flow freely: non interrupted by external events; The extreme interior monologue where words and free associations created new expression that were linked to the human experience. There were two levels of narration: ● In the first, there was a mix of third person narration, reality and symbols and the time is external, linked to the concept of the "inner time". Symbols: a banal object\sound have a very deep meaning; ● The second was the second kind of the direct interior monologue with the mind level of narration: the character's thoughts flow freely, not interrupted by external events. This kind of monologue (the extreme interior monologue) was used by Joyce in Finnegans Wake: Inside the mind of the main character takes place the narration (he's dreaming). James Joyce Dublin: 1882-1904 James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882, and he had 4 brothers and 6 sisters. He received a Jesuit’s education, but later he became a rebel, and after he graduated at University College in Dublin, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree, focused in Modern Languages. His interests weren’t the freeing of Ireland from English dominance, but he was interested on European culture; in fact, he felt that he belonged not to Ireland, but to Europe. This idea was in contrast to Yeats’s that, instead, to create a national conscience he could rediscover the Irish- Celtic identity. But Joyce believed that to focalised more on the Ireland’s awareness, he could use a cosmopolitan and European point of view, so external. To start a writing career, he established in Paris, but his mother’s death in 1903 made him come back to Dublin. In this period published his first short story: “The Sisters”, in the Evening Telegraph, that after became the opening story of his collection “Dubliners”. He fell in love with a 20-year-old girl that worked in a hotel, Nora Barnacle, and their first date was on 16th June, that became the “Bloomsday” of Ulysses. Bloomsday happens every 16th June and goes for a week. It is a celebration of James Joyce’s life and masterpiece Ulysses. During this celebration, Bloom’s route through the streets of Dublin is followed by participants in the festival, with readings along the way. Other locations from Joyce’s pages are visited, films are shown and the Theatre Company brings Joyce to the city streets and squares. Trieste: 1905-15 In 1905 Joyce and Nora settled in Trieste, had 2 children, Giorgio and Lucia, and married in 1931. Here, Joyce became an English teacher and made friends with Italo Svevo. But, these years were difficult for the economic and financial problems and the disappointment. Because of some obscene elements in his prose, he had problems with publisher and printers, so his first published book was a collection of 36 short poems, “Chamber Music”. “Dubliners”, finished in 1905 but published just before the beginning of the WWI, is a collection of shorts stories that talked about Dublin. It was unsuccessful, but caught the attention of the American poet Ezra Pound for the unconventional style and the voice. This led him to the publication of his semi-autobiographical novel, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”. After he wrote “Exiles”, his naturalistic drama. Zurich: 1915-20 Because Joyce was British, and Trieste was occupied by the Austrians, in 1915 Joyce and his family were forced to moved to Zurich. His 2 poems didn’t solve his financial difficulties and, thanks to an anonymous donation, he could complete his novel “Ulysses”, that was published in serial form in The Little Review, but after was suspended on charge of obscenity. Paris: 1920-40 In 1920 Joyce moved to Paris where the American bookseller Sylvia Beach published “Ulysses”. There were various editions: from 1000 copies, 2000 copies, until the unlimited edition in 1924 in Paris, after in America, and after in Britain. This novel was acclaimed by some important writers, such as: ● Pound acclaimed it; ● Eliot declared that this novel “was the most important expression which the modern age has found”; ● Yeats considered it a work of a genius. The story talks about the 3 protagonist and their experience on 16th June 1904 in Dublin. This period was dark because the illness of his daughter Lucia worse, until she went to a mental hospital. He encouraged his daughter’s hobbies, such as painting, dancing and drawing. This period gets worse and worse also for his blindness and the death of his father, but despite that, he continued to write “Finnegans Wake”, published in 1939. This book was more difficult that his previous books for the puns, the new words, but it was an immediate success, in fact was called “book of the week” in the USA and in the United Kingdom. Zurich: 1940-41 In 1940 were the Germans occupied France, Joyce, his wife and his son returned to Zurich, where they refuge during the World War I. Joyce died at 59 years old and was buried in Zurich, and never seen the end of the World War II. Ordinary Dublin Although Joyce went to voluntary exile at the age of 22, he set his stories in Ireland, especially in Dublin, and talks about ordinary people that do ordinary things and that live ordinary lives; the descriptions are very detailed. In this way he made a general idea of man’s mental, emotional and biological reality, joined it to the cultural heritage of modern civilisation and to the natural world. The rebellion against the Church He received a Jesuit education, but he was a rebel; in fact he rebelled to it and to the Catholicism. This hostility against the Church was the revolt of the artist-heretic against the official doctrine, or the struggle between an aesthete-heretic and a provincial Church. It can be seen as a conflict between a son and a parent for his artistic potentialities. Style Joyce was influenced by the French Symbolists, so he believed in the impersonality of the artist, so he had to give back a realistic and objective reality. He is objective (for example, Dickens was a guide). This led to the isolation of the artist from society, and he used different points of view and different narrative techniques. His style, his technique, and his language developed: from the realism and the prose of Dubliners (with impressions, different points of view, the free direct speech); to the third person narration, the minimal dialogue, the prose, the free-direct speech of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; to the external interior monologue with two levels of narration of Ulysses (to give more realism). So, the language change: the words were used without punctuation, grammatical connections, infinite puns, without the use of the direct speech. The reality that Joyce tells is an exploration of the inner world, of the human psyche, of symbolic archetypes and cultural knowledge. Key Idea- A subjective perception of time Joyce was a Modernist writer. The themes become less relevant than the “narrative” itself. The facts became confused and are explored from different points of view, and not trough an omniscient narrator. In Dubliners and in Ulysses are geographic and sociological characteristics, and Joyce analyses the particulars of an external events and what produced in the inner world of the character. All the novels wrote by Joyce begin in medias res, with the analysis of a particular moment. The description of the characters are based on the introspection rather than on description. The time is subjective and it lead to a psychological change. So, the description of Dublin derives from character’s floating mind, so is subjective. Dubliners Dublin The Dublin represented by Joyce in his work isn’t static, but is the “revolutionary montage of Dublin”, thanks to different juxtapositions and styles. In this city are settled a lot of novels of Joyce, for example in “A Portrait of the Artist”, the city is influenced by the concept of time and space; in “Ulysses” Dublin is so important to overwhelm the reader. Structure and setting It was published in 1914 in the newspaper “The Irish Homestead” by Joyce with the pseudonym Stephen Dedalus. Dubliners is formed by 15 short stories, settled in different places in Dublin, that talked about the people living in Dublin, lower and middle class people, affected by the oppressive power of religion, politics and culture. They brings to a moral, spiritual and social revelation. The author choose Dublin to wrote a moral story because that city seemed to him “the centre of the paralysis”. Unlike the Victorian writers that celebrated the developments of the city, Joyce know that the city degraded the citizens. So, he divided the story into 4 aspects: ● Childhood; “The Sisters”; The story includes the great themes of Dubliners. Gabriel's marriage and the condition of nearly all the characters are clearly suffering from paralysis. The paralysis is represented by the colors yellow and brown, but Joyce also employs the Symbolism of snow and ice because are something frozen, motionless and paralyzed. In the final paragraphs, Joyce uses the Symbolism with: ● the description of the snow that covered Ireland; in particular, the entire homeland/country of Gabriel has been paralyzed. (The snow on the ground represents the paralysis). The snow represents the Gabriel’s desire to change; ● The falling snow; it represents the heaven or death reached by people at the end of their life; ● Gabriel’s journey to the west; it represents the fact that is better to pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither with age. The epiphany happens when they hear the song🡪 the memory of the seventeen’s love of Gretta. There are some series of symbolic antithesis: Living🡪dead; light🡪darkness; warmth🡪cold; present🡪past. Gabriel’s Epiphany- Extract Eveline Plot Eveline is a 19 year old girl that had the opportunity to change her life but she can’t leave her family and her situation life in Dublin. “Eveline”- extract The story started with the third person narrator that explain what the protagonist is doing. Every object had a symbolic meaning. The extract starts with Eveline that is sat at the window while she is watching the evening; she is leaning at the window and there is a smell of a tissue of dusty cretonne. She is mentally and psychologically tired. Out of the window some people are walking, in particular she heard his steps on concrete pavement before the new red houses. There is a flashback: in that place her and other children played together when they were children, until a man from Belfast bought it and built new bright brick houses, different from their little brown’s (this is not a bright colour🡪 bad connotation). This children which she played together were the Devines, the Waters, The Dunns, the Keogh, her sisters and brothers, except Ernest that was too grown up (now, we know an information about Ernest). Her father, with his blackthorn stick, hunted them; the little Keogh run before he arrived. But, they were happy anyway. At that time her father wasn’t so bad and her mother was alive (now, we know that her mother is dead). Now they grow up, her mother is dead and also Lizzie Done; the Waters leaves England, and now she is planning to leave her home. She look around her, watching the room and all the objects, that maybe she doesn’t see never again, on which there was the dust🡪 it’s a symbol of paralysis🡪 neglet. Another symbol is the yellowing photograph of a priest, a friend school of her father, and she is thinking that she never knows his name. This photograph is situated above the broken harmonium near the photos of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque🡪 this is referred to the Church and to the religious idea of Joyce. She remanded that every time she showed this photograph to a person, her father said that he was in Melbourne. She started to made questions to herself (also because no one known this secret), and she is considered all the negative and positive aspects of this decision. She had to work hard in each case: at her home, and also if she leaves her house. She asked herself what people in the Store (where she worked) had think about her that had go away with her boyfriend🡪 she said that probably they had think that she was a fool, except Miss Gavan that would be glad. In this moment, from a memory of Miss Gavan, we know Eveline’s surname: Hill. From this, we also know that Eveline doesn’t like her job. Now, she is thinking about her future life: she would be married and treated with respect, thing didn’t happen to her mother. She said that in 19 years (now we know her ages) she felt terrorised by her father and his violence (her father raped and beat her mother). After the death of her mother, her father started to terrorised her, for her mother’s sake, respect her brothers Harry and Ernest (now, we know her brother’s names). But now nobody can protect her because Ernest is dead and Harry travelled for his job (he was a church decorating business). Her father wanted that her and her brother gives to him all their wages, and he spent them in alcol. But, she wanted some money, and sometimes, he gave to her some money to buy Sunday’s dinner. She had also another difficult work to do: take care of the children who had been left. Now, the narrator talks about Frank, by the behavioral point of view. Frank is her boyfriend, and he is kind, joyful, fine and in Buenos Ayres has an house where they can live together, taking the night-boat. There is another flashback: the moment in which they met. He had an house and she was walking in that street. After this moment, he waited her outside the Stores every evening and he accompanied her to her home. He took her to the theatre to see “The Bohemian Girl”; they sang together and she felt happy when the song was about a girl that loves a sailor. In fact, Frank was a sailor and he tells her a lot of stories about his adventures at sea. For example, he said the names of his ships, the stories of the terrible Patagonians (in Argentina) He started as a deck boy on a ship of the Allan Line. He had sailed trough the Straits of Magellan. He called her “Poppens” out of fun🡪 difference between her father that trait her in a bad way. When her father discovered this relationship, he said that he know this sailor, and probably he isn’t serious, and that will make fun of her. In fact, he had a fight with Frank. Now, there is another flashback: she remembered some moments in which her father wasn’t very bad with them, so was better that now. For example, one day she felt sick and he read to her a story. Also, one day all the family went to a picnic and her father made the kids laugh wearing the hat of her mother. In that moment, she was still sitting at the window when she heard a street organ play, and she remembered the promise made to her mother: she was supposed to keep the family together and look after her father🡪 epiphany. She remembered everything about the last night of her mother in a dark room: her father expelled an Italian organ- player. In that moment Eveline realizes what happened to her mother after a life of sacrifices, and realizes that Frank can save her and make her happy. So, she decides to go with Frank, and she is in the Station of the North Wall, while he held her hand and he was talking about something. But, her wasn’t listening to him because she was thinking about this decision. There were a lot of soldier with brown baggages, and the ship was black. But, she felt a sense of nausea when she thinks that the next morning they would be found at Buenos Ayres, and she would leave this life. In that moment, when they had to go on the ship, her heart made a decision: she run away because she couldn’t ignore the promise made to her mother. When Frank shouted to join him, her face was passive and without any signs of love. Time and place The story takes place in the evening in Evelin’s living room. The room his characterised by darkness and dust (polvere) that represents the paralysis. Another symbol for the paralysis is the old, yellowed picture of a priest, a school’s friend of his father. The sound of the street organ can be considered the epiphany of the story since reminds her the promise she made to her dying mother: she promised her that she would take care of his father brothers and house. Eveline would like to escape from his family and start a new life with Frank in another country in a new house, but she doesn’t manage to break the chains that links her to her promise and family. So, her desire to escape becomes a failure. She lacks the courage to make a decision and have a happier life🡪 she is paralysed. There are symbolic words: dust = decay🡪 paralysis; sea = action🡪 escape. Style The story opens in medias res: “She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue”. There is a subjective perception of time. The narrator used in the story is a third person narrator and adopted Eveline’s point of view. The writer uses the free direct thought. Eveline is not introduced by the writer in a traditional way; we don’t know anything about her physical aspect, or about her school, her family. The readers know something more from her thoughts. She just appears tired (psychologically) 🡪 symbol for the paralysis. Themes ● The struggle between one’s happiness and one’s responsibility; ● dream vs reality; ● action and inactivity; ● paralysis and the failure to find a way out of it. Characters ● Eveline; she is passive; influenced by her family’s mentality; ● Her father, he is a violent and strict man; he represents her fear; ● Her mother; she is a conservative; she represents her duty; ● Frank; he is Eveline’s fiancé, a very kind, open-hearted and brave boy; he represents her unknown future. The antithesis between Eveline’s house and her new one in Buenos Aires🡪 Paralysis / Escape. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man The indefinite article “A” is important because the novel is only one of all the possible interpretations of a subject. It is settled in Dublin. It’s a semi-autobiographical novel, first published in the literary periodical “The Egoist” from 1914 to 1915, and then published in book form in 1916. It is divided into five chapters dealing with the spiritual evolution of a young Irish writer, Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter-ego of Joyce, from childhood to maturity. The hero So, they are similar; in fact Joyce, like Dedalus was the son of a religious mother, was the eldest of ten children and received his education at Jesuit schools, had early experiences with prostitutes during his teenage years and struggled with questions of faith and left Ireland to pursue the life of a poet and writer. Joyce choose the name “Stephen” because is a name of the Christian martyr: he is a martyr of Art. He choose the surname “Dedalus”, because Daedalus is a mythological character that tried to escape from Crete’s labyrinth; like him, he must escape from the social, political labyrinth of Dublin’s life to reach the neutrality of art. The concept of time In Joyce’s novels time takes the reader back and forth immersing him/her in the narrator’s experience. It becomes frozen in some parts while expands in other parts, by detailed descriptions of a moment of its narrator’s feelings, thoughts, and experience. Time is both fragmented and dilated. It perfectly fits the inner psychology of the characters always tormented by their lives and personal relationships. They are confused and alienated, paralysed in their life and also the time in the story is altered, sometime blocked, sometime expanded. The writer concept of time probably reflect the modern spirit of the age, the influence of James and Bergson. There is no difference between past, present and future. Differences between Ulysses and Victorian novel Finnegans Wake It is a pun = fin (French) + again = end and beginning. It comes from an old Irish ballad, Finnegan’s wake. The word wake is also used for the custom of staying with the dead for 24 hours after their death – so again a link between life and death. Plot It is the story of a night, a dream, a ‘night-maze’. It contains the whole human history, from creation to Judgment day in the guise of comic events linked to a family living in the western suburbs of Dublin. Structure Joyce used analogy and parallel, as in Ulysses. There are Vico’s theory of history provides the structure, so that man’s history proceeds cyclically in 3 phases: ● Theocratic; religion, family; ● Aristocratic; heroes; ● Democratic; cities, laws followed by anarchy, chaos. Then the cycles begin again. The structure: 3 books + a final short book where there is a collapse. Characters The characters are tells by their functions, not qualities. Are fixed pattern of relationship (family). The whole of human history, myth and ritual is presented in terms of this constant framework. Style There is the logic of a dream: the characters are often exchanged; an idea can take different meanings. There isn’t customary surface. There is a continuous word-play, verbal extravagance, puns, use of different languages. Are presents the harmonious words🡪 the novel has to be read aloud. There are sentences of enormous length. The aim is to express how things are at night.