Hardy, Stevenson, Wilde, Dickinson + naturalism + poetry in victorian age, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Hardy, Stevenson, Wilde, Dickinson + naturalism + poetry in victorian age e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! THOMAS HARDY Life Thomas Hardy was born near Dorchester in Dorset in the south of England. At the age of 16, he was apprenticed to a local architect ● 1862 He went to London to follow his profession. ● 1867 Hardy returned to Dorset and began his first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady, but it was rejected by publishers. ● 1868 Hardy went to do an architectural job in Cornwall, where he met Emma Gifford, who he later married. It was Emma who encouraged him to give up architecture and become a full-time writer. ● In the following years, Hardy wrote eleven novels. Although he enjoyed the admiration of London's literary society, he was also attacked by critics for the 'pessimism' and 'immorality' in his later novels ● 1928 Thomas Hardy died in 1928 and was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. Literary production ● In 1874, Hardy published his first successful novel, Far from the Madding Crowd. ● In the following years, he wrote a number of novels, including The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders (1887) and Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891). ● In 1896, he published his last novel, Jude the Obscure ● In Wessex have necessity to have defined territory Narrative structure Literary production ● 1887 "The Woodlanders" ● 1891 “Tess of the D'Urbervilles” ● 1896 published his last novel, "Jude the Obscure" JUDE THE OBSCURE The story ● The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, a young stonemason who dreams of studying at university and becoming a classics scholar. However, he is trapped into marriage by a local girl, Arabella Dorn, who pretends to be pregnant and then leaves him to go and live in Australia, where she marries another man. ● Jude decides to quit his classical studies and go to the university town of Christminster where he works as a stonemason, hoping to eventually make enough money to enter the university. ● There he meets and falls in love with his cousin, the atheist, free spirited Sue Brideshead. ● He makes the mistake of introducing her to his former teacher Mr Phillotson, who she marries, though she quickly regrets her decision. Physically disgusted by Phillotson, Sue leaves him for Jude, who she loves. ● The couple live together platonically for a time until Arabella reappears. Jude divorces her, and Sue also divorces her husband. Arabella returns to Australia, but not long afterwards informs Jude of the existence of his son, little Jude, who she sends to live with his father. ● The boy's sullen, intensely serious character earns him the nickname 'Old Father Time'. Sue and Jude eventually begin to live together as lovers and have two children of their own. However, the scandal of being an unmarried couple with children makes life extremely difficult for them. ● Jude loses his job and they have to move from town to town and job to job. ● They eventually return to Christminster, but 'Old Father Time' has become convinced that he and the other children are the cause of Jude and Sue's misery. In an act of appalling violence, he kills them and himself, leaving the shattered parents a note with the words 'done because we are too menny'. ● Sue blames herself for the tragedy, believing it to be divine retribution for the couple's 'immoral' lifestyle. She becomes intensely religious, hoping to pay for her 'sins' by returning to Phillotson. Jude, meanwhile, remarries Arabella after falling into alcoholism. ● He sees Sue one last time before becoming ill and dying. At the end of the novel, we discover that Sue, under the influence of Phillotson, has lost her beauty and her spirit, while Arabella, unmoved by Jude's death, has already found a new suitor. Themes and features ● Jude the Obscure is a scathing critique of the institutions of Victorian society and their effects. ● Central to the novel are the intertwining themes, which Hardy wants to examine, of the l’overdose of learning and the possibility of learning to love. ● First there is the university system which excludes people of Jude's class from "higher education", Jude's desire to pursue a formative career that would make him a representative of the social order that oppresses people like him and his is paradoxical. ● Then there is the Church and its patriarchal structure which tries to control the sphere of sexual relations and which leads to unhappiness. ● In this novel as in many of Hardy's others, we discover a world in which passionate natures like those of Jude and Sue are continually hampered by the conventional morality and social order, they make unwise or desperate decisions that will have tragic consequences for their lives. ● The novel's epigraph is 'because the letter kills but the spirit gives life', a phrase that alludes to the way in which laws and codes, both religious and social, often destroy the vital spirit of the ideas on which they are based. ● Self-taught, Jude and Sue are united in part by a passionate faith in letters. They often quote classical or biblical texts, as if a higher authority could justify their unconventional attitudes. But this attachment to classical culture and the Bible also marks the limit of their rebellion. ● The terrible pessimism of the novel is that there is no place in the society he describes for a life-giving spirit to flourish. NATURALISM total immersion in nature allowed to express emotion Pessimistic view, in love: create disillusion ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ● man’s salvation (based on the destruction of one part of his nature if he lives in a civilized society); ● the critique of Victorian values (as hypocrisy for example when people doesn’t report the man to the police, they ask for money or the absence of women that highlights the male patriarchal world of Victorianism); ● Stevenson said that the story came to him first under the form of a dream. Excited by its Gothic aspect. However, his wife convinced him that he should have written something more than a 'horror story' and should have dealt with human nature in general. ● In these accounts, Jekyll appears as a respectable doctor. It is not until the last part of the story that Jekyll himself becomes the narrator in a final confession before he kills Hyde and himself, ● In this way, the story moves from the atmosphere of a mystery tale to a more profound level of confession and self-examination, Double ● there are a lot of elements of double: ● the double nature of setting: The setting of the novel seems to be halfway between London and Edinburgh. Both cities had a double nature. This setting dualism is reinforced by the symbolism of Jekyll’s house that is one but has two very different faces; ● the double of characters: Jekyll and Hyde are the opposites but are two faces of the same character, also Enfield and Utterson replay to the theme of double. The theme of the double dominates the story. Influenced by ● his Calvinist upbringing, in particular by the belief that we all have in us the potential for evil, Stevenson considered evil to be a real presence in human nature. Jekyll is a respectable man but, he says, has always been 'committed to a profound duplicity of life' and has always contained within himself a potential for profound wickedness. ● An interesting aspect of the story is the way that the strict morality that informs Jekyll's aspirations in society obliges him to completely deny his instinctual side, whose hidden presence therefore grows more oppressive ● A number of critics have pointed out that The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde makes us reflect on the fact that it is dangerous to try to completely suppress aspects of human nature, which must find a socially acceptable form if they are not to become dangerous and destructive. ● Stevenson's story goes beyond a simple moral vision based on religious notions of good and evil. ● Darwin's theory of evolution which try to confront the problem of man's primordial animal side which Darwin exposed and which Victorians feared might still be present inside the civilised, socially disciplined self. ● In social and ideological terms, attempts were made to differentiate scientifically between levels of human evolution, reflecting social, class and racial prejudices. As a result, physical appearance and stature took on a moral connotation. Hyde, for example, is presented as a degenerate, physically deformed being, and the Victorian reader would probably have seen this as a sign of a criminal 'nature'. OSCAR WILDE life ● 1854 Oscar Wilde was born and grew up in Dublin, the son of an influential Anglo- Irish family. His father was a famous doctor and his mother was a translator and poet. ● 1874 After graduating in classical studies from Trinity College, Dublin, Wilde went to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he became familiar with the Aesthetics of Walter Pater and John Ruskin. He settled in London and became a spokesman for the school of 'Art for Art's Sake'. He was a popular and eccentric dandy, and was famous for his witticisms (clever and humorous observations) and aphorisms (short phrases which express a general truth). ● 1882 Wilde gave a lecture tour in America, famously saying on his arrival in New York: 'I have nothing to declare but my genius'. He then spent several months in Paris, where he met Mallarmé, Verlaine, Hugo, Zola and Balzac. ● 1884 He married Constance Lloyd, and they had two children. ● 1895 Wilde was arrested and imprisoned in Reading Gaol for homosexual offences. ● 1897 After his release from prison, Wilde moved to France, where he lived in poverty and obscurity under an assumed name. ● 1900 Oscar Wilde died and was buried in paris Literary production ● In 1881, Wilde published his first volume of poems. ● These were followed in 1891 by the essay The Soul of Man under Socialism, the collection Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories and his famous novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. ● The climax of Wilde's success, however, were his witty comedies, which were staged from 1892 to 1895. These included Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. ● During his two years in prison Wilde wrote the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) and his prose confession De Profundis (1905) which describes the extravagant lifestyle which eventually led to his imprisonment for indecency. Oscar Wilde and The picture of Dorian Gray The rebel and the dandy ● Wilde adopted “the aesthetic ideal”, as he affirmed in one of his famous conversations: “My life is a work of art”. He lived in the double role of rebel and dandy. ● The Wildean dandy is an aristocrat whose elegance is a symbol of the superiority of his spirit; ● he is an individualistic who demands absolute freedom. Wilde’s interest in beauty - clothes, words or physical beauty - had no moral stance. ● Finally, he rejected the didacticism that had characterised the Victorian novel in the first half of the century. Art for Art’s Sake ● The concept of “Art for Art’s Sake” was to him a moral imperative and not merely an aesthetic one. ● He believed that only art as the cult of beauty could prevent the murder of the soul. Wilde perceived the artist as an alien in the materialistic world, he wrote only to please himself and was not concerned in communicating his theories. ● The dandy is a rebel, so he is an outcast for his society The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) The story ● The story begins with the artist Basil Hallward who is painting a portrait of Dorian Gray. ● While Dorian poses for the painting Lord Henry is also present and takes the opportunity to explain to him his life ideals based on Hedonism and invites Dorian to enjoy his beauty and his youth because one day they will end. ● Due to Land Henry's words Dorian starts to consider youth as something really important and he is envious of his own portrait which will be eternally beautiful. ● So he stipulates a sort of "pact with the devil" and thanks to this pact he will be eternally young and beautiful, while the painting will show the signs of his moral corruption. ● So he starts to commit horrible actions and falls in love with Sybil Vane. He love her only because she is an actress, so when she lost her job, Dorian broke up with her and she commits suicide. ● Because of his actions the portrait starts to get old, so he hides it and continues to commit injustices. ● Basil Hallward, who represents his conscience, criticizes him, so Dorian kills Basil. ● At the end of the story, Donian decides to destroy the portrait and kills himself. But the portrait returns to his original beauty, while Dorian dies old and ugly and he is recognized only by his ring. CHARACTERS ● Dorian Gray represents the ideal of youth, beauty and innocence. Dorian is influenced by Lord Henry, who teaches him about hedonism, and starts to look for a life of pleasure and sensations. His vanity and selfishness ruin him, and the portrait provides a visual representation of the degradation of his soul. ● Lord Henry Wotton is an intellectual, a brilliant talker, apparently superficial but sharp in his criticism of institutions, considered sacred by his contemporaries. He is able to influence Dorian and as the story goes on, Dorian’ s speech seems to mimic Lord Henry’s style. ● Basil Hallward is an intellectual who falls in love with Dorian’s beauty and innocence. He does not want to exhibit the picture because he is afraid that it reflects the strange attraction he feels for Dorian. He is killed by Dorian because his painting and his passion are considered responsible for the young man’s tortured existence. Basil becomes a sad example of how a good artist can be destroyed in a sacrifice for art. NARRATIVE TECHNIQUES This story is told by an unobtrusive third-person narrator. The perspective adopted is internal, since Dorian’s apparition is in the second chapter, and this allows a process of identification between the reader and the character. The settings are vividly described with words appealing to the senses. ● She was detached from the current taste, from the great events and contrasts of her age, including the campaign for the rights of women, the abolition of slavery and the Civil War ● She was the poet of what is broken and what is absent ● Her poetry was a rebellion against the Victorian tendency to explain the narrow of the world Themes ● Eternal issues of life: death, loss, love and desire, time, fear, sorrow, despair, God, nature, man’s relation with the universe ● She was deeply interested in death: she wrote about it from the point of view of the person dying or of a witness and she even wrote about her own death: it remained the great mystery for her, still regarded as a moment of liberation from her anxiety ● The theme of love is also explored from the ecstatic and sensual celebration of it to the despair connected to the separation ● Nature: it is a source of wonder or fear, and it is represented through an objective description, by juxtaposing the thing observed and the observer; emphasising an abstract concept or theme Structure of the poems ● Short and organized in simple quatrains (4 line stanza) ● They do not have a title ● The language is characterized by monosyllabic words and terms derived from law, geometry and engineering but we may also find common words. ● Syntax and punctuation are combined in such a way that the meaning of the sentences remains ambiguous, highlighting the emotions ● She often makes use of alliterations, metaphors, ellipsis, paradox and capitalisation ● The tone can be witty, ironical, cheerful or melancholic There is a solitude of space There is a solitude of space A solitude of sea A solitude of death, but these Society shall be compared with that profounder site That polar privacy A soul admitted to itself – Finite infinity. Stylistic features ● Emily Dickinson referred to herself as the 'Queen of Calvary, and her poetry often reflects the intense interior struggle and the immense solitude that she experienced. ● Her avid reading of the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton and the metaphysical poets had a profound influence on her writing, although her style is very original and the language of her poems is extremely cryptic and elliptical. ● The brevity of most of her poems - her short verses, her monosyllabic words and the frequent use of dashes - reflects a poetic vision immersed in solitude and silence ● Dickinson's syntax is often obscure or ambiguous, making the lines open to many different interpretations. ● Her poems reach towards the limits of what can be expressed in words. ● With their gaps and silences, we might think of her poems as precarious, incomplete rope bridges of words suspended over an abyss, except that the ends of the bridge are not tied to anything. TESTO ● In There is a solitude of space, the word solitude is repeated three times in the first three lines, always as 'a solitude of something. ● There appear to be many solitudes or many species of solitude. In each case, solitude is qualified by putting it in relation with another idea - space, the sea, death - ● Another problem of qualifying solitude through these metaphorical associations is that the notions of space, the sea and death evoke many other images and meanings. ● Space can be abstract, geographic, cosmic, physical, social, empty, populated, etc. It is never alone and self-sufficient, but always relates to a meaning. ● Likewise, the sea can be rough, calm, violent, friendly. ● Even death, with its conflicting religious and secular meanings and their associated practices is, like space and sea, a social or discursive phenomenon. ● Therefore, they suggest and incarnate a dimension of 'solitude' that is missing from the previous definitions. POETRY IN THE VICTORIAN AGE Characteristics ● In poetry, the Victorian age was a productive age, but poets were not a cohesive group since they differentiate a lot because of their different ideas ● The most notable Victorian poets were: Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold and Gerard Manley Hopkins ● Women poets: Elizabeth Barret, Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti ● Pre-Raphaelite poets: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne- Jones ● The new Victorian poetry’s concern is about the problems which affected the contemporary society, rather than escaping from them as it was for the Romantic poetry. Poets reflected in their poetry the conflicts of doubts and faith, women and children’s conditions and the conflicts between people of different social classes. ● The poet was regarded as a ‘prophet’ or a ‘philosopher’ in whom the reader could find the key to balance the unromantic materialism of the modern life with faith and progress The male poetry The most notable male poets were: ● Alfred Tennyson who was appointed Poet Laureate by Queen Victoria after Wordsworth; ● Robert Browning, who is remembered as an original creator of characters in his best “dramatic monologues”; ● Gerard Manley Hopkins, noted in particular for his ‘sprung rhythm’ which broke with conventional rules, since he rejected the metrical conventions of Romantic poetry; ● Matthew Arnold, who used poetry to express his dissatisfaction with the state of things The female poetry ● Elizabeth Barrett (1806-61), Robert Browning’s wife was more famous than her husband. She was a great formal experimenter and her most famous poem, Aurora Leigh (1857), is a novel in verse. In part autobiographical, it uses the framework of a woman writer’s life story to explore the possibilities of female poetic identity and self-expression in a male-dominated society. Elizabeth Barrett is one of the first writers to explicitly articulate a feminist consciousness and her work was a great influence on Virginia Woolf. According to the Victorian poets’ philosophy, she firmly believed that the poet must address the problems of the age rather than celebrate the past or escape from them. ● Christina Rossetti unlike Elizabeth Browning, shows little concern for the social issues of her time. She wrote poems of various types: fantasy, ballads, sonnets and religious poetry. Much of her work is characterised by a combination of religious devotion and repressed erotic desire. Rossetti’s poetry expresses many of the contradictions in the Victorian female self, for example, the need for independence versus a sense of duty, spiritual purity versus sexuality. The pre-Raphaelites poets ● They were group of poets and painters which included Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones ● They reacted against the unimaginative art of their period by returning to the aesthetic values of the Italian painters of the 13th and 14th centuries (who lived before Raphael) since they believed they were less artificial than Victorian artists. ● The main characteristics of the group’s work include fidelity to nature, an excessive sensuality, a re-evaluation of medieval religion and legend, as well as an enthusiasm for mysticism, which was symptomatic of the crisis in religious values of the time. ● The Pre-Raphaelites’ revolutionary aims, therefore, often became inextricably mingled with nostalgia for an older world. ● The Brotherhood dissolved in the 1850s, but its influence was enduring. In particular, the Pre-Raphaelites in some ways anticipated the Aesthetic Movement of the last decades of the 19th century, whose motto was ‘Art for Art’s Sake’. The American poets ● Walt Whitman he invented a new kind of syntax through long, wandering sentences that mirrored the writer’s ethic of life on the open road, where he was open to encounters and exchanges with its various peoples and the natural environment. ● Emily Dickinson