English literature 1 - Chiara Battisti - Victorian Age, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica English literature 1 - Chiara Battisti - Victorian Age e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! -…BASI ELEMNTS OF THE VICTORIAN NOVEL...- • Plot= the story or the events that make out the book We can perceive differences between the plot of the novel and the one of the romance - Novel’s plot: human experiences and everyday life - Romance’s plot: derived from mythology/ legends • Time dimension They are important talking about the novel • Time in Romance: timeless stories “Once upon a time...”, there is no chronological reference • Time in Novel: description of a precise historical period (es. Dates) • Space dimension As important as time, because the aim of the novel is to create and share an idea of reality. Is important to give time and space coordinates • Characters and their development (Victorian Novel) Description of characters that can range from: - Sketches - High detailed biography of a character with different point of view in the description The emphasis to the high detailed description of a character is shown also by the choice of the titles. Very often, in the Victorian period we find that novelists use as title the name of their characters - Example: Robinson Crusoe, Mrs Dalloway, Oliver Twist The aim is to stress the idea that a character has an individual identity talking about his virtues and vices • Writing style = how a book is written Different literary forms have different technical features - Language - Structure - Length of the sentences - … • Length = how long the book is Distinction between: + Novel - Long prose production - Idea of fictionality (≠ historiography) Idea of fictionality helps us to distinguish the novel from historiography. In the early modern era, there were authors that added fictional passages to their historical productions just to enrich the content. This brought to the creation of: - Meta history Theoretical reflection on the construction of historical accounts Meta= a literary text that talks about or explains its own construction In the XVIII and XIX centuries there is the idea of an objective science that explains objective dates - Hayden White (philosopher and historian): - “Meta history: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe” (1973) Considers the historical works as a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose production According his prospective, in the XX century there is another idea of history, and implies 3 elements: 1- Certain amount of data 2- Theoretical concepts for stating these data = having a framework to interpret the data 3- Narrative structure for the representation of the data - Historiographic meta-fiction - Linda Hutcheon - “Historiographic Metafiction” (late 1980’s) Reflects on the very act of construction of the literary texts Meta fiction= literary works that are self-reflexive and show the process of their own creation The term is recent, but it can be related to literary production going back to the XVII century arriving to the XX century She analyses historical fictions and observes that it incorporates: 1- Fiction 2- History 3- Theory Short stories: - Brief production + William Golding, “Pincher Martin” (1956) • Making part of the 2° phase • His production known as: PHILOSOFICTION - Deep philosophical reflexion on the nature of being, existence, reality... Themes presented in novels that appears quite simple • “Pincher Martin” After the shipwrecked of his war torpedo, he lands on a black rocky island having lost the sight. There starts his struggling. As the time goes on, Golding describes events that to Pincher Martin seems hallucinations, for this reason he loses the condition of reality. At the end of the book, we discover that Pincher Martin is already dead during the time of the shipwrecked because people on an island find his dead body. Pincher Martin didn’t have the chance to kick off his black boots. - The boots stand for the black rocky island The novel is the description of the very last sensations of the character - In the book we’re dealing with another level of perception ➢ But I live in the age of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barthes; Fowles at this point gives us indirectly the information about the period in which he really lives and is writing the novel - Alain Robbe-Grillet - Started from Modernism moving to Postmodernism He is not a modernist or postmodernist writer, but both - Roland Barthes - Started from structuralism to post-structuralism - Both are terms that we use to reunite many critical movements Structuralism developed in the first half of the XX century, at its basis: - The text has a single meaning, and the function of the reader is to find it Post-structuralism developed in the second half of the XX century, at its basis: - The text has multiple meanings, and the function of the reader is to find one of these Under this movement we can find the concept of Reader Response Criticism ➢ So perhaps I am writing a transposed autobiography; perhaps I now live in one of the houses, I have brought into the fiction; perhaps Charles is myself disguised. Perhaps it is only a game. • Meta-fictional analysis Concept of Theory - All the titles are to be about theoretical aspects of the novel and the Victorian society We can consider Fowls's narration and the previous chapter, where there is the typical Victorian love story, interrupted by chapter 13 with the author’s reflexion. Fowles want his reader to pay attention on what he reads, because it may not be what readers expect. • In a post-modern point of view, the book and the plot are like a game or a performance. The novel is perceived like a performance where the author must write it but is up to the reader to give the text the interpretation he wants. Each act of reding is individual. - “Is the eye of the chapter the eye of the author or is the eye of the narrator?” - This includes the author as a fictional character Even if Fowles is the author, only Fowles can project himself in the novel (describing himself in the book showing only some parts) ➢ Instead of chapter headings, perhaps I should have written ‘On the Horizontality of Existence’, ‘The Illusions of Progress’, ‘The History of the Novel Form’, ‘The Aetiology of Freedom’, ‘Some Forgotten Aspects of the Victorian Age’ ... what you will. - Invites the reader to find other titles for the chapter - Getting closer to the meaning of the chapter and the whole text - “What you will...” - Fowles wants the reader to take part in the creation of the novel + Reader Response Criticism • Literature = performative act • Each act of reading is a performance • Literature exists only when it’s read • Literary texts have no correct or unique meaning and values - FEEL IN THE GAPS = Values and meanings are created by the reader - Wolfgang Iser - The text controls in part the reader and helps him to feel in the gaps - We are asked to make an imaginative effort • Roland Barthes • “The pleasure of the text” (1973) Comparing the pleasure of playing with the text to the eroitc pleasure • “Death of the author” (1967) - Goes against criticism according to the author identity (political views, context, religion..) In order to analyse only the work of the author - “To give the text an author is to impose a limit to it” Connected with the response criticism. If we think we can assign just one single meaning to a text we’re limiting its real power. - Each piece of writing contains multiple meanings A text is a tissue of quotation, and the reader has the job to find them and create inter- textual links ➢ Perhaps you suppose that a novelist has only to pull the right strings and his puppets will behave in a lifelike manner; The puppet master: the novelist moves his own character Fowles shows his knowledge of the Victorian literature by mentioning the Thackeray’s puppet master theory ➢ But I find myself suddenly like a man in the sharp spring night - The author finds suddenly himself inside the novel - Before this point he was outside He destroys the concept of inside and outside creating this movement from one part to another • Fowles plays in a postmodern way with the different levels of reality. He tries to fuse and confuse the levels. - He enters the novel like a man - Fowles makes himself a literary device (a simile) in order to get in The author is not like a man, but entering in the novel he passes from an ontological level to another - In the Victorian period, the demarcation between reality and fiction was clear • The fusion of the different levels of reality interfere also the levels of time 1- Moment of contemporary reality = moment in which Fowles writes (1969) 2- The time of the story = Victorian period 3- The time of reading = is and can’t be precise By suggesting this distinction: - Act of writing --> different depending on the temporal period (point of view) - Act of reading He shifts his attention to the relationship between the writer and the reader and the different time periods • Importance of the role of the reader - Victorian reader = passive, accepts the text and the way it is presented - Postmodern reader = engaged in creating ipothesis about the meaning the text The Postmodern must: - Create inter-textual links - The efficiency of publishing allowed people to read more - Increase public knowledge of scientific issues - Science is recognised as a profession - Governments look for support by science - The relationship between science and industry is very strict + Charles Darwin • “On the Origin of the Species” (1859) Landmark in the history of science, a turning point. The laws governing inheritance are unknown and he wants to show that the evolution of any specie is determined by: - Natural selection Which is determined by: - The individual organism and its adaption • According to many critics, Darwin influenced many poets and writers: - Wells - Huxley - Eliot - Dickens They all introduced or used Darwin’s ideas in their works - The idea of evolution, where Jekyll is the first step of evolution (Homo sapiens), while Hyde is the future step - The strange case of Dc. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Wells express the idea of evolution and mentions the species that resulted from this process - The time machine - The island of Dr Moreau ➢ Dickens ➢ The first time in which Dickens reject the idea of hereditary and support the affirmation of the self. Hereditary plays no role in the formation of the character, while it is influenced by the environment and the social conditioning - Great expectations In “Oliver Twist”, the character inherited traits which allow him not to fall in corruption ➢ Thomas Henry Huxley He is the grandfather of Aldous Huxley, the writer of “Brave new world”, in which he criticises technology, differently from his grandfather. - “The two cultures debates” = debate between two characters of the XIX century and two characters of the XX century. - Snow and Huxley were in favour of science, and the opposite for the other two - The debate mirrors the late Victorian awareness in science and literature - Thomas. H. Huxley VS Matthew Arnold The debate is very polite Huxley supported the idea of a scientific education, while Arnold criticises Utilitarianism - Snow VS Leavis The debate did not go so well ➢ Herbert Spencer He had a visionary idea of sociology and infect he is considered the father of “Social Darwinism” • He applied the concept of natural selection and of the survivor to sociology and politics • “The Social Organism” (1860’s) He compares society to a living organism and as just biological organisms evolve; society does the same. In this organism, the stronger should be more powerful than weak people. + MOBILITY + Crystal Palace • Just the structure of the palace with a lot of glass and iron represented the idea of progress of the time. • In 1851 took place the Great Exhibition, where all the nations exposed their industrial power. The event was organised by Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, as also an occasion for Great Britain to show its national power thanks also to the presence of all its colonies. • The Great exhibition can be considered as the beginning of consumerism + Opening of railway lines It created a national transporting system of people and goods ➢ Wolfgang Schivelbusch ➢ “The Railway Journey” ➢ The foundation of the railway roads influenced the way to perceive reality. - Before the train: people had a complete view of the surroundings for many time - After the train: people could see only what was standing in front of them and for a brief amount of time. It was no longer so easy to perceive things as they really were, so people had to complete the reality with their own imagination - The mental effort to recreate reality, is the same idea behind the creation of a film + Ejzenstein He is a Russian cinema director - “Dickens, Griffith and the Film today In Dickens we find an anticipation of the “Parallel Intercutting”, introduced in cinema by Griffith - Parallel intercutting in novels = creation of different but parallel story lines in order to create narrative suspense - The reader must feel involved in the story in order to buy the next number published in series - Parallel intercutting in cinema = moving between different but parallel scenes in order to create suspense in the spectator - The spectator moves within the camera ➢ Railways lines --> new way of communication --> travel With the possibility to travel, imperialism and colonialism became two important factors 1- Imperialism= cleaning and exploiting of territories outside of one's own national boundaries - British imperialism: - Increase the holding lands - Prestige - New trade centres - New raw material - Create a market for its own goods 2- Colonialism = settling of the territories and reformation of the social structure, culture, government of the native peoples - British colonialism --> empire: - Imperialistic expansion (Asia, India, Australia, Canada, New Zeeland, Africa...) Colonialism is necessary to justify the British expansion as a civilising mission based on its own moral, racial and national superiority. Non-European people: - Less evolved --> biologically and culturally - Unable to govern themselves Contemporary studies tried to understand the nature of colonialism - Post-colonial studies/ theory or post-colonialism = academic discipline that analyses the functional relations of social and political powers that sustained colonialism and post colonialism - Neo colonialism = 20th century in which we don’t have colonial expansion, but it is based on economy ➢ Edward Said ➢ “Orientalism” (1978) He works on the word Orientalism and analyses the connotations of it, pointing out: - How they are expanded to what he considers the false cultural assumptions of the western world - How they facilitated the representation of the orient In these simple representations, the East is presented as antithetical to the West (dichotomy). The basic dichotomy of the western world is the one between men and women 2- Normally something humble. 3- Real place and if not then it sounds like it is. + Time Romance 1- No or a vague sense of time. 2- Not necessarily stick to chronological order Novel 1- Time Continuum should either be measured by a clock or calendar. 2- It has to be in chronological order + Plot Romance 1- Like in a dream, smooth unrelated movements with no climax. Novel 1- Specific plot with a certain climax. + Language Romance 1- Aimed at the upper-class readers 2- Standard symbolisms. Novel 1- Simple 2- No symbolism or metaphors or similes 3- Denotative rather than connotative − Denotative = words or quotations mean really what they just mean − Connotative = words or quotations have a hidden meaning, different from what they seems to express + Tone Romance 1- One singular type of tone throughout the romance 2- Uses emotions that are Ideal. Novel 1- Changes depending on the genre of the Novel 2- Remains realistic. 3- Realistic emotions but it changes depending on situations and different characters + Concept of Archetype ➢ Northrop Frye ➢ “Anatomy of Criticism” - Behind the title stands the will to find a framework in order to explain criticism. The approach with the title shows us that Frye is a poststructuralist - He works on the differences between the romance and the novel • Archetypal literary criticism = kind of critical theory that interprets the text by focusing on myths and archetypes Jung speaks about “collective unconscious”, we can say that: - Archetypes = arguments and themes always treated in literary text through time and different part of the world ➢ Gustav Jung Archetypes have the aim to talk about the psyche and we have all of them within us 1- Shadow 2- Anima 3- Animus 4- The self We have to distinguish persona and the self: • The Persona = the social mask that identify us on the outside • The Persona is not our real self, but there is the danger that we confuse it with the self • The ego = centre of consciousness --> not the totality of the psyche but is related only to the conscious part. Talking about the archetypes: • The self = centre and totality of our psyche - It contains all our archetypes - Put in relation the conscious and the unconscious • The soul = our true self, opposite to what we show every day - Source of our creativity We can distinguish: - The Anima = the female soul image as represented by male unconscious (female part in a man and how its perceived) - The Animus = the male soul image as represented by female unconscious (male part in a woman and how its perceived) - The shadow = irrational and instinctual part connected with the social urges - Darkness, shadowing, unknown --> it can be very troubling - We deny it in ourselves and project it on to the Other - In the novels relates to the figure of the villain • Other Archetypes: • The hero - Present in every novel, play, romance and contemporary narrations - The aim: “Overcame the monster of darkness” by Jung More than a physical fight, the hero stands for light supposed to defeat the darkness - The defeat of the villain = defeat of the irrational Jung states that the hero exists only thanks to the existence of the shadow. “Consciousness only exists with the conscious recognition of the unconsciousness” - The heroin - Represented by young people --> purity - Object of desire by the villain VS desire of love for the hero - The wise - Often represented as an old man - Jung connects the figure with the one of Jesus As Jesus, the Wise offers words of advice and comfort - The aim: advice the hero on his mission The heroic mission starts with the advice of the Wise - Family Archetypes - Father - Mother - Child = birth and new beginning ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -..JANE EYRE..- • Published in 1847 --> soon a great success but very criticised On one hand: - George Lewes retained it the best novel of the period On the other hand: - Elisabeth Rigby - In Quarterly Review: “(Jane) personification of an undegenerated and undisciplined spirit” and “antichristian” But the very thing that made the novel successful was the way in which Charlotte Brontë questioned and criticised the themes mentioned by the critics. - John wants to go in India and needs Jane to be his wife Jane refuses the marriage proposal of John and starts thinking about Rochester - She decides to leave and coming back to him - Thornfield has been burnt down She finds Rochester without a hand and his sight, but the sight will be back after some time 5- FEARNDEAN • The sound is similar to “Thornfield” Critics retain that the name of the place is a willing reference to Thornfield, representing the opposite and happy life that Jane lives in Fearn dean. - Jane and Rochester will be married for 10 years - Rochester is able to see the born of his first son + THE GENRES IN THE NOVEL 1- Romance - Between Rochester and Jane on Thornfield 2- Gothic Novel - Magical elements in Thornfield and at the end (voice of Rochester) 3- Bildungsroman • From isolated and sad child to independent and happy wife • We can also talk about of a Proto-feminist novel In the book there is a reference to the feminist manifesto in a passage, with also critics: - Beauty and finding a husband were necessary to be a proper woman - The image of a beautiful woman and clever was revolutionary + CHAPTER II Mr Reed dies in the red room and wishes Mrs Reed to raise Jane as one of their daughters. - The adult Jane describes the episodes of her childhood, considering the battle between her and Mrs Reed - Jane condemned the Christian values that according to her childish view symbolised darkness and ignorance. The adult Jane criticises both Mrs Reed and her - Jane questions his own identity: Is she the angry chid or the social adult commenting? The young Jane has yet to learn the Christian values of kindness and self-control, while the adult one has already learnt and understood them ➢ EYRE = Air / Ire --> 2 possible pronunciations --> Jane’s double aspects: - Ire = young Jane = rage and passion - Air = hero = adult Jane = rationality and consciousness The double presence of her personality --> Jane gazes at the mirror - Glittering eyes = fire = passion = young Jane - Creature of fairy tales = kindness = adult Jane • Bertha Mason is the double of Jane. Jane has to deny his part of ire - The figure of Bertha is created by the repression of Jane - Being isolated and believed mad was the social death for women Jane has to learn how to behave in order to being part of society - In Victorian female novels the mirror and the women reflecting on it: - Power of denunciation of women who were the reflection of external speculations Jane is the reflection of Rochester speculations: - Describing herself with the words of Rochester - John Berger - Analysis of female-male relationship: - His theory states that women in Victorian novels, who gaze themselves in the mirror, are the male representation of their external and social image. That means that: - When women gaze themselves in the mirror their look for the representation that the patriarchal system has established - In this process there are two types of gazes: - Active gaze = male part - Passive gaze = female part In these terms there is the split of the woman self - Their social presence is determined by the control of men. Women: - Had to conform to social conventions and standards - Had to behave themselves Otherwise, women are victims of a “social death” - Mirrors reflex the fears of women to be considered as deviant forms of femininity ➢ Some critics englihted: Charlotte Brontë treats the theme of sexual repression of children • Red room = place of mystery where no one can get in • Red room = affairs of the female body and its sexuality • At the time: Natural passing by childhood to adulthood - Angela Carter finds a reference with “The bloody chamber” (Blue beard story) + CHAPTER IV Brontë doesn’t criticise the Christian religion, but a particular attitude shown by the institution and their dogmatic teaching style ➢ Mr Brocklehurst With its figure, Brontë wants to represent the values of the institutions of the time - Described as “black pillar” - By a Freudian point of view = phallic symbol The link with the phallic part of men is necessary to represent in a way the imposing and repressing masculinity of the male figure - “Pillar of society” Usually seen in a positive way, as a model. In this case, the pillar is represented by religion which is one of the most important values • The hypocrisy of Brocklehurst He preaches humbleness and poverty and pity → while he lives in the opposite way - His daughter is well dressed VS the girls of Lowood are poorly dressed The daughters talking about Lowood’s girls: “They are almost as poor people” The daughters are aware of their social status and the differences with the other girls Lowood’s girls: - Not at the same level of poor people - They lost their social prestige • According to the “Christian Remembrancer” ❑ “Every page burn with Jacobinism” ❑ Jacobins = supporters of the French Revolution In the British conservative context, it was not a good thing Charlotte Brontë replies that: - She's attacking the religious vanity of the time, instead its morality Brontë is in favour of the proper religion and not of its social perception • Perception of the “adult Jane” Mr Brocklehurst = pillar → piece of architecture = no flexibility of religion An example is the one of the reproach to Mrs Temple ↓ She gave a good meal to the girls instead of the burnt one • The function of the school Not to teach Christian virtues but to teach them their ambiguous social status • Women’s clothing In Victorian novels - Women are given the right to being well dressed in order to show the wealth of the men to which they belong + Women and the perception of religion - Helen Burns: - We find the idea of Christianity connected with compassion - The 5 sources of sublime: - Great thoughts = big, inspiring - Strong emotions - Figures of speech - Diction - Dignified words of arrangement Textual devices to magnify a landscape, contained in the domain of rhetoric. - For a text to be sublime = necessary for the author to have an inclination to words and great thoughts Great thoughts and dignified words of arrangement shows how really the concept of sublime moves from rhetoric to aesthetics Great thoughts and emotions allow to: - Espress astonishing content - Get the reader astonished ➢ Edmund Burke ➢ “A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful” He developed the theory of sublime in the XVIII century - Sublime = the strongest emotion which the mind can sustain - Compares Beautiful and Sublime - They have always been related without a particular reason - Are perceived emotionally • Reflects on “taste” Basically, people have all the same preferences, and the human feelings aren’t different. People live in a state of indifference that only string emotions can wake up - Thanks to strong emotions and the wakening of indifference, there is the birth of the “Idea of sublimity” - Through different cultural and social experiences people build different preferences Everyone is attracted in the same way, dealing with pleasure and pain, but they’re not enough to reach sublimity - Pleasure: can lead to a source of emotion but it derives from beauty - Pain: creates sublime but nobody can enjoy it In order to have sublime, it is necessary to have a mix of them - Example: - Being on a ship during storm = not sublime We’re in the middle of the danger and it is only pain - Watching a storm on the sea from the beach = sublime We’re far from the danger and have the chance to fear it but also enjoy it safely • Beautiful • Previously = result of proportion, perfection, utility • With Burke: - Comprehensible to the mind - Evoques familiar experiences - Promotes pleasurable feelings 2- PICTURESQUE From the Italian “pittoresco” - Picturesque = an object or a view, worth to be represented in a picture - Aesthetic category of the XVIII century - Applied to the landscape painting and garden design - Provides a way with which is possible to have a view of the landscape ➢ Giplin - Picturesque is the midway between Beautiful (rational) and Sublime (irrational) + CHAPTER XI - Jane compares the corridors and the mansion of Thornfield to the castle of “Blue Beard” - Bertha Mason, imprisoned and deprived of her identity = bodies of Blue Beard dead wives - Blue Beard = Mr. Rochester Rochester is: - Ugly (doesn’t respect the beauty conventions) - Strong man - Mysterious Rochester can be defined as a “Byronic hero”: - Normal Hero = treat women as fragile and powerless - Byronic Hero = treats women as equals + Madwoman in the attic The novel by Gilbert and Gubar is inspired by the work of Mary Wollstonecraft ➢ Mary Wollstonecraft ➢ “Vindication of the Rights of Woman” ➢ “Maria or the Wrongs of women” = sequel to the previous novel - Connected with the French revolution --> fight for rights of men but not for women - Madness - Misery of women under the social laws ➢ Elements pointed out: 1- Women and Madwomen’s emotional excess in common - They are unconsciously forced by society to adopt characteristics defining mad people - Emotional excess is connected with - Sentimental novels --> considered the best genre for women - Strong emotions = emotions of mad people - Emotional and irrational 2- Women are written up as physically and psychologically weak - Function of the corset = Tighten women’s body making it perfect - Lack of breath = women used to faint --> prejudice’s origin of female weakness 3- Women kept in a perpetual state of childhood - Dicken’s narration = the perfect wife is a fragile child - Weak - Tender - Protected by the husband ➢ The contemporary perspective ➢ Anna Mellor She finds the double meaning in Maria’s confinement in the madhouse - In criticism of patriarchal power - The husband = legal power - The husband and the father have the authority to define and lock up women in mad houses • Wollstonecraft is not just considering the case of Maria but • Imprisoned women = wider social phenomenon of the time • The focus: critic to marriage and the patriarchal system ➢ Michel Foucault ➢ “Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason” He works with psychoanalysis. - Reflection on the perception of madness since the enlightenment - “The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception” - “Discipline and Punish” - Control connected with the behaviour of people - “History of Sexuality” - How sexual behaviour were considered as mad behaviour through mad houses - He thinks about a new social construction of madness: - Enable the powerful ones to silence the one who stands against the authority - Depriving of human rights = Bertha is locked in silence ➢ Virginia Sapiro - When in a gothic novel we find women + madhouses + THE FANTASTIC ➢ Cvetan Todorov ➢ “The Fantastic” (1973) • Moment of hesitation • Characters have to choose between a rational or irrational explanations of the event • The choice is common to writer and reader: 1- Leave the fantastic for other genres - Uncanny → the explanation of the event follows our real world’s rules - Strange 2- Leave the fantastic for • Marvelous → explanation of the event follows the rules of another world • Two main solutions - Given by female authors → Uncanny → The ghost = Bertha Mason - Given by male authors → Marvelous → The ghost is a real one ➢ George Castex ➢ “The fantastic is characterized by «an abrupt intrusion of mystery into everyday life»” ➢ Roger Caillois ➢ «The fantastic is always a break in the acknowledged order, an irruption of the inadmissible within the changeless everyday legality” The meaning we usually give to the Fantastic (fairy tales, legends..) = WRONG - Fantastic has its roots in our real world - Born in the XVIII and XIX centuries ought to: - Weakening of human beliefs in Marvelous - Reaction to industrialisation and science - It can be socially and politically analysed - Expression of belief in nature - Representation of political and social issues • The aim: • Analyse from a psychological point of view the fears and the desires • Psychoanalysis has replaced the fantastic literature → made it useless ➢ Julia Kristeva • Between Fantastic and Psychoanalysis = RIVALRY → tend to explore the limits of knowledge - Fantastic is subversive and transgressive - Disturbs rules of artistic representation and literary reproduction of the real ↓ ➢ Christine Book-Rose • “Rhetoric of the unreal” (1981) - The hesitation → reflects in our period the method with which we intend: - Organic unity (previously) - Entropy (now) = reality ➢ Rosemary Jackson • “Fantasy: the literature of subversion” (1981) • Fantasy ≠ Fantastic • Fantasy used in reference to the Fantastic • Subversion of rules taken to be normative (proper rules of the society) FEMALE FIGURES IN J.E ➢ BERTHA MASON In chapter 25, during the night Bertha takes Jane’s wedding veil, put it on her head and gazes herself in the mirror. Then she takes it off and rippers it. Jane doesn’t know yet her identity and thinks she only dreamed it. - Fashion studies: - Analyse the style and colours of some features to determine their relevance - Double of Jane → shows Jane’s rebellion - The veil = wedding and bound = control of Rochester upon Jane - Rochester stands for the universal figure of the Victorian man Men weren’t able anymore to show their own wealth through their dresses - Wife = dressed as a doll → way to show the wealth and masculinity of the husband - No verbal Jane’s response = fear to being excluded from society - Bertha balances the character of Jane → necessary to the narration - Strong as a man • Tall as her husband • Considered with all negative traits Bertha is considered as an eastern woman according to the Victorian dichotomy - She belongs to another culture - Sexuality awareness - Savage ➢ Jean Rhys • (Foreign woman) Bertha is sacrificed to let (British) Jane’s identity realisation • Ambiguity: ➢ Bertha = necessary to express Jane’s double ➢ Bertha = necessary to let Jane realise herself ➢ “The Wide Sargasso Sea” (1966) The story evolves before the narration of “Jane Eyre” - Rochester (European society) denied Bertha (foreigner) because it can’t be a part of the society - Bertha is compared with a vampire - She can suck Rochester’s life blood Thomas unwrites and rewrites the happy ending of Brontë’s novel with the same words present at the beginning of the original “Jane Eyre”. ➢ Passage in the novel → Proto feminist manifesto Jane in a moment of solitary freedom raise the door of the attic and looks outside the fields - Hint of an idea of freedom different from the beginning - Dialog with men: - There are many stereotypes, but women are equal to men - Women are not as they appear because they have to behave themselves FOOD Analysing the food → find relevant sociological information - Description of Jane’s body - She wants to avoid attention to her body → desire to disappear - Little • Apparently weak • She refuses to eat 1- Lack of appetite (sobriety) was well seen in society - Beginning of the concept of “Anorexic logic” → supported by society 2- Consumption of food, clothes and virtues as class differentiation ➢ Thorstein Veblen ➢ “The Theory of the Leisure Class” (1899) Victorian sociologist • Duty of the wife: - Consume goods and food to show the wealth of their husbands Men couldn’t anymore express their position in the establishment, so they used women to do it 3- “Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body” ➢ Anna Silver • Lack of appetite = Victorian’s women inability to speak their desires • In Jane Eyre, the starving body is present and absent The more Jane talks about not eating, the more she is present • The body is present when it stresses its absence • Between Jane and the food → Bertha’s body - Sexualised, heavy and powerful - Model of the Victorian lady - Sexuality and self-control = influenced by appetite Jane aspires to the middle-class position → stay slim not eating - Slimmer body = spatiality - Fat body = lack of spirituality - Mrs Temple - In Lowood Jane start to internalise the idea of conventional beauty She gives food to children and Mr Brocklehurst gets angry, because she is: - Feeding their desire - Starving their pure souls + Visibility and Invisibility • Mr Brocklehurst considers Jane a liar • Someone always controls her → she tries to minimise her body language • 2 different representations in Victorian literature of anger 1- Girl’s one (in Lowood) = pity 2- Angry men = dangerous Alice in Wonderland - She rarely shows her anger - All the characters are aware of her anger She is considered as pitiful but also threatening + Places connected with food ➢ Pierre Bourdieu The way in which people eat is connected to their social class position • Jane shifts from: Reed house - She never eats with the family because she doesn’t belong to it Lowood - She eats with the other girl because they belong to the same social position. - Tea in Mrs Temple’s room → Jane feels emotionally and physically different Thornfield - She doesn’t eat with Rochester and either with the servants → social inexistence - She eats with Mrs Fairfax = Rochester’s relative and servant → social ambiguity After the marriage → Jane wants to keep yet the division Not eating together: - Inability to express desires - Keep her independence Moor’s House Jane is free not to behave as conventionally required, but she emphasises it to be independent - She eats with her cousins → same social class + Bertha and food - Bertha doesn’t bite only food but also Rochester - Not able to control herself - The journey to London affects Jane’s appetite - Consummation of their marriage VS denial to eat = denial of her sexuality ➢ Sally Shuttleworth - Jane refusion to eat = Victorian modesty - To conceal her femininity • To show it • Ambiguity The typical Victorian beauty = Thin bodies - Fragile →but →fertile without sexual desire Hourglass shape → corset (men’s size) = beauty at the cost of fragility - Required lack of appetite to wear a corset - Body of Jane - Corpulent woman → not hourglass shape = lack of auto control + Middle class home - Victorian’s families tended to eat all together - Unity of the family - Happy family → reflexion of → happy society Each member had a rule which corresponded to the public social role - Women = maintain stability - Not eating with the family = negative aspect - Attack to the idea of family and unity ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -...From Victorian to Contemporary poetry...- Conferenza con Prof. Melissa Sarikaya Usually Victorianism (Victorian era) is supposed to start with Vicotria's reign (1832 - 1901) Age of transaction • Scientific and technological advances • Industrialisation The phenomenon has pros and cons. While on one hand it means development for the country, on the other comes out many of the negative and discussed themes of the time: + Materialism + Social poverty + Dissociation • When Victorian women entered into marriage they were usually young and second they didn't receive any sexual education. So when women married, they often didn't know anything. • The fact that the girl is not pleased is why sexual satisfaction was not to be found in women, rather in men ➢ Gabriele Rossetti “The Fallen Woman” ↓ The woman has done something, and the man is punishing her With the fallen woman, the concept is that they have done something immoral and have fallen down the grace of God • The lamb It looks the event apparently suffering, ought to the net that imprisons it is symbolically the woman who is held imprisoned by the husband ➢ Richard Redgrave “The Outcast” ↓ A young girl holds in her arms a baby, and the father is probably ordering her to get out, while the mother is trying to desist the sisters from going against the father Women were obliged to keep virginity until the marriage, for this reason having a baby before it was immoral • Christina Rossetti • “Goblin Market” • In the poem the moral is that women can help other women to escape from the men 'charms In the goblin market there is an image of the fallen women from a female perspective • Lizzie, Laura are good, gentle, nice, obedient girls. As women, they need to keep away from bad men who would harm them, and in this poem this position is given to the goblin. Morning and evening Maids heard the goblins cry: “Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy: • The goblins always cry them to come closer, so they want to attract them trying to offer them fruits In the poem we discover that goblins might not refer o actual fruits • Lizzie understands the problem and tries to convince Laura of the danger Laura is curious and wants to find out what the goblins are advertising them. She suck’d and suck’d and suck’d the more Fruits which that unknown orchard bore; She suck’d until her lips were sore; • Laura tries the fruits and becomes victim of their power She can’t get enough of them, but she doesn’t hear the goblin’s cry anymore and either finds the fruits • For Lezzie was unbearable to see her sister’s behaviour like the one of an addicted She looks out and finds the goblins saying she wants her sister to stay well and mean to buy the fruits ↓ The goblins want her to sit and eat them and Lizzie initially desist but then she decides to sacrifice herself for Luara, letting the goblins sprinkle the fruit juice on her face Lizzie utter’d not a word; Would not open lip from lip Lest they should cram a mouthful in: But laugh’d in heart to feel the drip Of juice that syrupp’d all her face, Lizzie sacrifices herself for her sister • Robert Browning • “My Last Duchess” • While in the previous poem, the bond between women in very strong, male power is more dominant. The wife Duchess is now deceased, but she's dead, so the duke has become. • We have the genre of a dramatic monologue One speaker, the duke, is speaking about his wife now deceased, that's the last Duchess. • He gazes at the painting as if she were still alive The duke invites the guests to sit and gaze at the painting of his dead wife, which is covered by a curtain, which we discover can be removed only by order of the duke […] Sir, ’twas not Her husband’s presence only, called that spot Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; Visitors find in the duchess cheek a sort of joy • The visitors see something deeper in the painting than the duke There is something more that the duke can’t comprehend in the smile and the details of the duchess that the visitors notice ↓ The duke feels powerless and doesn’t know how to express himself, ought to the power of the painting Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, The duchess is supposed to smile to everyone, also to every man, that is to say, to the male visitors with the duke • The duke realises the duchess might have cheated on him, and this sort of joy is a proof Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together • The duke commands the duchess not to smile again and she does Even though the Duchess now is dead, there is still some power that she has. ➢ Elizabeth Barrett Browning (wife of Robert Browning) Alongside Christina Rossetti's probably the two female names that you should remember for Victorian writers, the most celebrated female writers of the Victorian times ➢ Sonnet 14 If thou must love me, let 1 it be for nought Except for love's sake only. • She claims that if someone loves her, it does it thanks to her, to her smile, for who she is ➢ Sonnet 43 How do I love thee? • She describes all the way of her love + Pre Raphaelite A school founded by Dante Gabriele Rossetti who was a painter and a poet and many others - The themes they tried to describe were: - Mythological - Historical - Immediate experiences • Cult for the celebration of beauty • They wrote in an ekphrasis style = combination of paintings with the poems Peace, Peace, she cannot hear Lyre or sonnet, She can’t hear the song of the liar and either the sonnet he wrote All my life’s buried here, Heap earth upon it. ➢ “The Garden of Eros” Eros is the sexual power which drives the human passion. Oscar Wilde thought “The Garden of Eros” as one of his most well written works ➢ “The Sphinx" ➢ “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” Wilde published it after his period of imprisonment + Modernism • Usually around the time of 1910 • A very complex period in which there is a mix of always new cultural and social movements The two main modernist poets were T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound ↓ Talking about Imagism: ↓ Both Eliot and Pund were men, but there is a female writer, which is Amy Lowell - She found out of Imagism and was fascinated, but men didn’t allow her to apply to it With the modernist poetry we meet a great difficulty to understand the real meaning of things, ought to the disorder that was predominant at the time and the uncertainty given by the war. ➢ Ezra Pound Imagism works in 2 steps: 1- We take an image, a situation 2- We connect that image or situation, to another situation ➢ “The Bath Tub” In this case, the thing that happens to hot water in the tub, happens to Love’s passions ↓ Slowly cooling the passions As a bathtub lined with white porcelain, When the hot water gives out or goes tepid, So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion, O my much praised but-not-altogether-satisfactory lady. The speaker is sad that the water is getting cold, that is to say their passion are diminishing. He calls “mine” because the lover is still his, but she isn’t satisfied anymore. She can’t be made happy ➢ “In a Station of the Metro” Ezra Pound expressively said that this text could only be published in “italics” The apparition of these faces in a crowd Petals on a wet, black bough. On the black bough we have flowers and then Pound describes the dark appearance of the crowd’s faces. ➢ T.S. Eliot ➢ “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Sex for Victorians was still a taboo, so they were “prudish”. + The frock is a male dress of the time = Prufrock → Reminiscences of Victorian period Let us go then, you and I Prufrock is taking a walk with somebody To lead you to an overwhelming question Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The poem takes us inside a museum, but we still don’t know the question To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Do I dare to ask this life changing question? • In the same period breaks out the 1WW The main war poets were Owen, Brooke, Sassoon Usually with the 1WW young people were very excited because they saw it as a way to change something in their world, but very quickly the optimism turned in horror for the war, with a more realistic view of it. • The Georgian movement A movement inspired by Romanticism - Thomas Hardy - William Butler Yeats He took part with other guys of his age to the Rhymers club, in which the main discussion was upon a new change in the world. Generally, the generation that took part to the club was considered as a wonderful and tragic generation. They were born too late. In order to Yeats, all the most beautiful things were already subject of some literary works, there was no more anything to invent, discover and produce + Max Bonding group • Group of the 1930’s + Neo Romantics VS Neo Apocalyptics • Group of the 1940’s • Naturalistic and optimistic point of view VS pessimistic point of view + Martian poets • Group of the 1970’s • Poets who are yet imagine that they were inhabitants from Mars coming to Earth and then describing to their fellow Martians about what's happening + (for the period from the 90’s to the 21st century) Three lists given by the Poetry Book Society • 1994 → New generation List of poets that the P.B.S thinks will have a high influence in later times - Simon Armitage