La letteratura inglese del XVIII secolo e il romanzo inglese, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica La letteratura inglese del XVIII secolo e il romanzo inglese e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! The restoration of the monarchy CHARLES II Charles II had spent his exile in France but when the monarchy was restored he came back to England. During his reign theatres, race-courses and taverns re-opened. The reaction to the Civil War and Puritan Commonwealth was a rational interest in the real. He also patronised the Royal Society, which was an association of scientists and intellectuals. THE GREAT PLAGUE AND THE GREAT FIRE In 1665 there was an outbreak of bubonic plague and the next year the Great Fire of London raged for five days. Charles II asked the architect Christopher Wren to rebuild the city and he presented a plan for a new City with wide streets, squares and churches. The king was able to finance his projects, with the help of France. In 1670 he signed the Treaty of Dover for a war against Holland. This Treaty also contained a secret agreement that would restore Britain to Catholicism. When Charles died, the succession of his Catholic brother James was assured. From the Glorious Revolution to Queen Anne FROM JAMES II TO THE JOINT MONARCHS During the reign of James II the religion was Catholicism. His protestant daughters, Mary and Anne, were married to the rulers of Holland and Denmark. James married the Catholic Mary of Modena and became the father of a Catholic son who will be the successor. The two opposing parties, the Whigs and the Tories, were alarmed because another civil war could break out; so they negotiated with William of Orange, whose Protestant wife Mary (James II’s daughter), was next in succession to the throne. The two became joint monarchs as William II and Mary II. A revolution had taken place, without fighting, known as the “Bloodless” or “Glorious Revolution”. The Toleration Act introduced more religious tolerance and the Bill of Rights established that the king could levy taxes. Meanwhile the exiled James II landed in Ireland and tried to seize control over English Protestants, but William defeated him in the Battle of the Boyne (1690). Since the couple had no children, Parliament excluded Catholics from the throne and declared that Anne would succeed William, who died a year later. QUEEN ANNE’S REIGN Anne was English and Anglican. The kingdom of England and Scotland, with the Act of Union (1707), was replaced by the United Kingdom of Great Britain with a single Parliament; Ireland remained independent. In foreign policy, the Treaty of Utrecht was signed with France at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. When Queen Anne died in 1714, George I and James I inherited two kingdoms and twelve colonies. The early Hanoverians GEORGE I George I spent most of his reign in Hanover, so he had to rely upon a council of ministers. The political scene of this reign was dominated by two parties: the Whigs and the Tories. Robert Walpole, who was a Whig, became the first Prime Minister, he opposed military expenses, promoted trade, managed to reduce land taxes and to restore trust in the established order. This period was considered a golden age. Corruption in politics and society was subject to the satire of Defoe and Swift. Coffee houses were the places where ideas were discussed. The middle classes enjoyed social mobility. Methodism, a religious movement, was founded in 1729: it stressed respectability and moral dignity, the importance of living with temperance and method. GEORGE II George II succeeded his father George I. At that time Spanish pirates damaged London’s ocean trade and the merchants asked Walpole to take action. He tried to but war broke out and this drew Britain into a general European war. Walpole was forced to resign but the Whigs stayed in power. Charles Edward Stuart raised a rebellion in Scotland and it was called ‘Jacobite’. They were defeated and Charles escaped to France. The Commons supported William Pitt who became Prime Minister. Under him, foreign policy was guided by mercantilism. In 1756 war broke out and lasted seven years, so it was called the Seven Years’ War. It was considered the first ‘world war’ because it was fought in three continents. George II died in 1760 and was succeeded by George III. The reading public The literature of the Augustan Age reflected the economic and intellectual progress of the period. It was characterised by a growing interest in reading. In the country farmers were illiterate while in the towns literacy was limited by the few schools and the early leaving age. Books were expensive and for the lower classes there were cheaper forms of printed materials like newspapers, where stories were published in serial form. Libraries led to an increase in the reading public, particularly among women who had the luxury of leisure time. The rise of the novel THE FATHERS OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson are regarded as the fathers of the English novel. The 18th century novelist was the spokesman of the middle class; the novel was concerned with everything that could affect social status and was directed to a bourgeois public. THE WRITER’S AIM Plots were taken from history, legend and mythology. The writer’s primary aim was no longer to satisfy the standard of patrons and the literary elite, but to write in a simple way in order to be understood even by less well educated readers. The writer's speed and copiousness became the most important economic virtues. THE MESSAGE OF THE NOVEL The “message” was related to the Puritan ethics of the middle classes; some hints at social justice can be found in Defoe. THE CHARACTERS The writer aimed at realism; he tried to portray different human experiences. The subject of the novel was the “bourgeois man” and his problems. He was a well-defined character and the hero of the narrative; the reader was expected to sympathise with him. The fact that characters were given contemporary names and surnames was something new. THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE The writer was omnipresent because of this he chose the third-person narrator and never abandoned his characters, or the first-person narrator, who was the main character in the story. THE SETTING Great attention was paid to the setting: time and place were considered two different aspects of the same reality. In previous fiction the idea of place had been vague and fragmentary; but in Houyhnhnms, a country governed by intellectual horses. These four settings provide Swift the opportunity to discuss everything he feels is wrong with mankind. PLOT The novel consists of four books. Book 1. Gulliver sails from Bristol, but after six months his ship is wrecked somewhere in the South Pacific. The Lilliputians carry his huge body to the capital, in a temple. Gulliver learns their language, their customs and institutions. After several experiences, he manages to return to England. Book 2. Gulliver sails for India but finds himself in Brobdingnag, a country located in Alaska. Here the natives are giants, and Gulliver becomes the king's pet and is carried around in a cage. The king enjoys talking with him about the system of government. One day Gulliver's cage is lifted up by a huge bird and dropped in the middle of the ocean. He is rescued by a ship and returns to England. Book 3. Guliver is on the island of Laputa, where its inhabitants are astronomers, philosophers and scientists. Gulliver visits their capital, Lagado, and its academy where they carry out absurd experiments. The island drops Gulliver on Japan and he manages to go back to England. Book 4. Gulliver’s last voyage leads him to the island inhabited by the Houyhnhms, intelligent horses that rule over the Yahoos, who are stupid, corrupted and similar to humans. Gulliver admires the superiority of the Houyhnhnms and is ashamed of his similarity with the Yahoos. When the horses banish him, he returns to England, where he finds that he can no longer take part in society. He decides to live among the animals that remind him of the nobility of the Houyhnhnms. THE CHARACTER OF GULLIVER Gulliver is middle-aged, well-educated and a careful observer who takes care of his family and runs his business prudently. Gulliver supports the culture which has produced him; in this way, Swift implies the transformation which takes place in Gulliver through his voyages. Only when circumstances force him to think, Gulliver learns something and begins to develop a critical awareness of the limitations of European values. However, these critical insights are temporary because when he returns home after his first voyage, he quickly fits into European life. But in the second voyage the critical awareness becomes deeper. In the fourth voyage Gulliver's transformation becomes complete and when he returns home, he can no longer take part in European society. SOURCES Swift looked to the literature of travel, real and imaginary. In fact, in the 17th century the imaginary voyage had been used by French writers as a vehicle for their theories. The traveller usually discovered some happy societies where men lived a simple, uncorrupted life, following natural instincts; European man was seen as the victim of civilisation. Gulliver's experiences are different because the people among whom live in organised societies and are governed by institutions. LEVELS OF INTERPRETATION Swift's masterpiece can be read on different levels. It has been read as a tale for children because of Gulliver's absurd adventures, especially in the first two books. It can also be read as a political allegory and as a parody of voyage literature. In the 19th century, Swift's main satiric point was to criticise the political, social and religious conflicts of the time, and the problems caused by scientific progress. A second interpretation claimed that Swift was mentally unbalanced, and the reader does not need to consider the ending of the book seriously. Gulliver himself has become the target of the author's satire. STYLE Gulliver, just like Robinson Crusoe, tells his experiences in the first person, in a prose style which is matter-of-fact. The smell of a Yahoo (testo) Gulliver has returned home from his fourth voyage to the land of rational horses and Yahoos. In this text Gulliver says that he wants to use the lessons he learned among the horses to instruct the Yahoos of his own family. He permitted his wife to sit at dinner with him to answer some questions, because although it is hard for a man late in life to remove old habits, he hopes to have a Yahoo in his company without being afraid of him. Gulliver thinks that if the Yahoos would be content only with their vices and follies, he could easily reconcile with them. He never loses patience, except when he sees a mass of deformity and diseases due to pride because he can't understand how such an animal and such a vice can live together. The horses have no terms to express evil things, except those with which they describe the qualities of the Yahoos, among which they are not able to distinguish these of pride. But the rational horses, who live under the government of reason, are not proud of the good qualities they possess. At the end of the text Gulliver says that he desires to make the English Yahoo society not insupportable, so he entreats those who have any trace of this vice, that they will not come in his sight.