INGLESE LETTERATURA 5, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica INGLESE LETTERATURA 5 e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! JOHN KEATS He was born in 1775 in London and he died in Rome in 1821 He was first made an apprentice to a doctor and apothecary and then went on to study medicine at Guy’s Hospital but soon abandoned a medical carreer for literature. In 1818 he published ENDYMION is a long allegory of his search for an ideal female love. His first poems were badly reviewed by critics and the poet returned from walking tour in the lake District. In the same years he fell in love with Fanny Brawne buti t impossible for him to marry her. These suffering and the hounting presence of death shoved in his sonnet WHEN I HAVE FEARS THAT I MAY CEASE TO BE Keats developed an early admiration for the art of ancient Greece. ODE ON A GRECIAN URN  represents a glorious paradox as far as Romantic poetry goes. It touches none of the typical Romantic themes: it does not deal with external nature, or with the life of ordinary people or with magic and the supernatural or with exotic tales of love and adventure. Keats finds in the urn the perfect answer to man’s longing for permanence in a ever changing world. He aptly describes the urna s cold, it’s Keats immagination that brings life to the vase, which makes it live again. It’s only in our imagination that we can find perfection, but that perfection cannot be reached through the physical senses. Keats love of beaty has an ethical basis, he belived in he close union of beauty and truth. STYLE AND LANGUAGE are now universally acknowledged. His search of beauty finds expression in melodic verse and in a language which is sensuous and hypnotic. Keat’s life and remarkable archievements have now acquired a mytical force of their own, resting on: - The fact that he was born into a uncultured family yet became a great polt - His tragic illness and hearly death - His absolute dedication to his art at a great personal cost and self-sacrifice ODE ON A GRECIAN URN In the first stanza, the speaker stands before an ancient Grecian urn and addresses it. He is preoccupied with its depiction of pictures frozen in time. It is the “still unravish’d bride of quietness,” the “foster-child of silence and slow time.” He also describes the urn as a “historian” that can tell a story. He wonders about the figures on the side of the urn and asks what legend they depict and from where they come. He looks at a picture that seems to depict a group of men pursuing a group of women and wonders what their story could be: “What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? / What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?” In the second stanza, the speaker looks at another picture on the urn, this time of a young man playing a pipe, lying with his lover beneath a glade of trees. The speaker says that the piper’s “unheard” melodies are sweeter than mortal melodies because they are unaffected by time. He tells the youth that, though he can never kiss his lover because he is frozen in time, he should not grieve, because her beauty will never fade. In the third stanza, he looks at the trees surrounding the lovers and feels happy that they will never shed their leaves. THE POET CELEBRSTES THE LOVE AND THE ETERNAL LOVE. He is happy for the piper because his songs will be “for ever new,” and happy that the love of the boy and the girl will last forever, unlike mortal love, which lapses into “breathing human passion” and eventually vanishes, leaving behind only a “burning forehead, and a parching tongue.” In the fourth stanza, the speaker examines another picture on the urn, this one of a group of villagers leading a heifer to be sacrificed. He wonders where they are going (“To what green altar, O mysterious priest...”) and from where they have come. He imagines their little town, empty of all its citizens, and tells it that its streets will “for evermore” be silent, for those who have left it, frozen on the urn, will never return. In the final stanza, the speaker again addresses the urn itself, saying that it, like Eternity, “doth tease us out of thought.” He thinks that when his generation is long A conflict came with the Crimean War due a dispute between Turkey and Russia over their border. Britain and France sided with Turkey and Russia was finally defeated. Florence Nightingale, an Englishwoman, went to the Crimea to organize hospitals and to relieve the soldiers’ sufferings. COLONIAL POLITICY during the reign of Victoria the british empire greatly expanded. It grew out of 2 complementary process: the impulse to consolidate overseas markets and the surplus of population at home. Australia and New Zelanda became flourishing centres for cattle and sheep raising. Many people also went to Canada, part of which was already occupied by the french. The british government took over from the east india company and ruled directly over india which for the first time in its history was united under one single power. In 1876 queen victoria became empress of india, the territories controlled actually included today’s India, bangadlesh and pakistan. In africa the british occupied uganda, kenya, rhodesia and the niger territories. They also obtained the majority of the sharess of the Suez Canal, the crucial route between the mediterranean sea and the indian ocean. The boar war was won by britain, which gained control over the provinces of orange and transvaal, rich in gold and diamonds. Victoria’s golden and diamond jubilees, celebrating the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the queen’s accession, in 1887 and 1897, were occasions for the display of britain’s commercial and financial greatness. THE VICTORIA COMPROMISE Compromise is the combination between 2 opposite, agreement in order to reach/find a solution. Themes: the poor, moral values, respectability, the rich on the top, the middle class, hipocrisy, tolerance. The term Victorian has acquired a negative meaning in our time, it suggests an idea of prudery (extreme propriety in behaviour or speech, and expecially in sexual matters. The principales of utilitarian philosophy were material happiness. Competition and expoitation of human and natural resources. The victoria compromise is meant the existence of a materialistic philosophy of life, trying to cover the unpleasant aspect of progress under a veil of respectability and facile optimism. The outward strictness of victoria morals and behaviour was highly inconsistent with was actually happening in society. The upper and middle class cuold not tolerate the word leg spoken in polite society, both womens and table legs were covered with long skirts, were responsible for social conditions that pushed thousand of women into a prostitution. There are many theories concern the working class: - BENJAMIN DISRAELI is conservative orime ministre aptly definied as the 2 nation the rich and the poor+ - THOMAS CARLYLE, MILL, RUSKIN were all concerned dor the dMge industrialization had brought to man and eviroment. - The fabian society took its name from quintus fabious maximus, the roman general nicknamed cunctator (one who dalays things) because of his delaying was tactis; the fabians believed in gradual reforms rather than violent revolution. Victoria morals and religion were deeply shaken by the publication of the origin of species by charles darwin, about evolution scientist challenged the Christian belief in the creation of man by gold as told by the bible. THE EARLY VICTORIA NOVEL In the victoria age the nove became the leading genre. The greater part of the reding public read novels. The novel reflect the pratical bent of the age, the new social and economic developments, scientic discoveries and the ethical problems raised by the industrial revolution. Victorian readers expected to e instructed and at the same time to be entertained. Novelist were conditioned by their readers expectations and so they clearly shoe both the desire to please and the fear to shock. This explains why early victorian novels present conformity to accepted moral standars together with a great liveliness. CHARLES DICKENS is the most rapresetative novelist of the age. In his great novels he shows his consciousness of social injustice, the poverty and the suffering of the masses, political competence and corruption. In OLIVER TWIST are ckear the comic element helps to highlight serious issues such a the bad treatment of orphans in workhouse and the gangs of child thieves in London. In hard times it deals with the themes of the inhumanity of the factory sistem and the unnatural teaching methods of the utilitarian philosophy. 2 women novelists: EMILY and CHARLOTTE BRONTE. They came from a small village on the wild and desolate Yorkshire moors, they lived a life of isolation in the countryside but they were also educated. EMILY’S novels is the archetypal novel of Romantic love. Its hero, Heathcliff, is a romantic dark hero dominate by his self destructive passionfor catherine, she is madly in love with heatcliff but bends to social convention and marrries another man. Theri love will continue after their death: their 2 gosths are said to walk togheter on the moor. Charlotte’s most famous novel is KìJANE EYRE, the story of the heroyne’s life and her love or the misterious Mr Rochester. The book’s originality is in its mixture of realism and romantic imagination. The novel’s strenght devives from its heroine: VARIETY OF SETTINGS the provincial towns which figure in most of his stories. The industrial settlements of the north in hard times. Dickens’s most typical setting is London: the cast, crowded city where different classes and social groups live alongside each other and yet do not communicate. CHARACTERS AND PLOTS he was a great entertainer who created lively unforgettable characters : ECCENTRICS, VAGABONDS, CRIMINAL AND ORPHANS. His characters are mainly from the lower and middle class and their physical features, clothes, gestures and accents. The plot was intrigue, often mystery. STYLE he’s also very good at mixing social criticism combing the patheticwith the comic. He create dialogue and is melodramatic or openly didatict passages. THE NOVELIST REPUTATION He’s the most popular english novel. He profoundly influenced by Dostoyesky and Kafka. Contemporary cristics tend ro see his works and combing social realism and symbolism. OLIVER TWIST Oliver is a foudling. When he is 9 year old, he is taken back to the workhouse in which he was born, where he lives a miserable life, is underfed and receveis no education. He then runs away and meets a young pickpoket on the road. Oliver thinks he was found a friend and follows him to london where he is introduced to other friends, who say they will give him food and lodging. The new friends turn out to be a gang of young criminals led by Fagin, an old Jew who is one of Dickens’ best characterizazions. The thieves force Oliver to help them in their criminal acrivities. Oliver is temporaily rescued by Mr Brownlow, a benevolent gentlement, but some membrs of the gang kidnap the body. After many incidents, some involving a mysterious charcter called Monks, the gang is caught by the police and Oliver is discovered to be a relation of Mr Brownlow’. He has finally found a family. DICKEN’S MELODRAMA D. combines the sentimental, melodramatic story of an orphan child exploited by a gang of thieves, typical of romances about crime written by the Newgrate School of novelist, named after London’s prison with keen social satire and realism. In oliver twist combing the pathetic with the comic. HARD TIMES is set in Coketown, an industrial city in the north of England. The novel is built around 2 issues much debated at the time: the inhumanity of the factor sistem and the application to school programmes of the principles of the utilitarian philosophy, which judged the value of everything according to its pratical value. The utilitarian teaching method is presented in the passage below trought lively and convincing characters: MrGradgrind, the teacher who is all for facts and figires against feeling and good sense; and the couple of students in his class, Sissy and Bitzer. The scene is full of moments which are both naturalistic and higly symbolical, as in the loss of identity involved in the change of Sissy’s nam to more impersonal form, Cecilia. The passage is also comic and satirical. THE STORY—> Thomas Grandind has founded a school where his educational theories are put into pratice: children are taught nothing but facts, and he educates his own children, Louisa and Tom, in the same way, neglecting their imagination and affections. He also adopts an orphan, Sissy Jupe, whose father worked in a circus before his death. Mr Grandgrind syggests his daughter should marry Josiah, a rich factory owner and banker much older than she is. Louisa, desiring to help her brother Tom in his career, consents to the marriage. Tom is given a job inBounderby’s bank and eventually steals some money from it. Discovered, he hides among the circus folk, who show kindness and sympathy by sheltering him. In the end Grandgrind understands the damage caused by his narrow-minded and materialist philosophy. Structural Analysis of COKETOWN by Charles Dickens Dickens' first word makes immediately clear the setting: COKETOWN. The word “coke” takes the reader attention, the reader expect the text to be about industrialization. He provides an apparently positive judgment by describing it as a "triumph of fact". To tell the truth though it's just a pretext to create a contrast with the absence of "fancy", a contrast that reminds to the double face of the Industrial Revolution. The introduction is refers to two characters Messers. Bouderdy and Gradgrind who are walking towards the town. The narrator is a third person omniscient intrusive narrator and he influences the reader. After introducing, Dickens describes the city from a materialistic point of view by using sense impression. The first sense he appeals to is sigh. The reader can imagine "a town of unnatural black and red". The adjective "unnatural” is even more disparaging if combined with the colors of damnation, black and red. With this sentence the narrator creates the idea of a damned city, the city of Hell. In addition by using the similarity "like the painted face of a savage" he underlines, one more time, the artificial and false nature of the town. As the narrator goes on explaining where the “unnatural” comes from, the image of coketown becomes more concrete. He keeps using senses to describe the brutality and sadness that were affecting not only the landscape but people and thus society. He refers to the religious code. Indeed, he uses the image of “interminable serpents" to represent the smoke that comes out from the chimneys, serpents which, in a puritan society, like the one he was living in, symbolize the devil. It was because of those reptiles that the canal was black and the river purple and smelly: they create pollution which destroys the nature as well as industrialization destroys society. Moreover, the verbs "rattling" and "trembling", which appeal to the sense of hearing and the onomatopoeically sound of the pistons, that go up and down all day long give the reader a clear image of the monotony of worker's lives. This image is reinforced by the anaphoric use of the adjective same ("same hours", "same sounds", "same pavements", "same work”). With this brief description, Dickens creates an obsessive and suffocated atmosphere that perfectly embraces the reality of that time. All this, he adds, was in opposition with all the "comforts" and "elegancies" that were spreading all over the world. But again, as Dickens did in the first paragraph by ironically describing coketown as "a triumph of fact", this time he judges the Victorian society he's living in full of "fine ladies, who could scarcely bear to hear the are going to read LIFE AS THE GREATEST OF THE ART well describes the sense of mynistery and pleausure with which Dorian creeps upstairs to the locked room that contains the picture. The end of the novel is in line with classic horror and crime stories. The novel would seem to have no moral basis. Dorian grey leads the kind of hedonistic life that disgregards moral consideration and even ordinary human feelings. However, the ending of the story is intensely moral and seems to suggest that there is a price to be paid for a life of pleasure. THE STORY Dorian Grey, a young man of outstanding beauty, is sought after by the best london society. Everybody loves him and wants to be in his company. Lord Henry Wotton introduces him to the phylosophy of a new Hedonism, a life of pleausure founded on Youth and Beauty. The artist Basil Halloward paints a portrait od Dorian that wonderfully captures the young man’s extraordinary charms. Dorian, impressedby the perfection of his own beauty as it is portrayed by yhe painter, wishes never to grow old. Unaccountably, his wish is granted: his dissolute and immoral lifeleaves no signs on his own face but disfigures the painting, which shows the marks of Dorian’s moral decay. Disgusted by the portrait, Dorian finally tries to destroy it but, as soon as he does, he dies. After his death, the portrait resumers its perfect beauty, while the signs of age and physical corruption appear on dorian’s body. LIFE AS THE GREATEST OF THE ARTS This is the passage of the book (chapter 11) where Dorian’s and the author’s, hedonistic philosophy is full stated, both in theory and in the practice of his life. The cult of beauty, of life aimed at sensual pleasues and beyond common morality are the themes debated in this passage, which opens with rumors about Dorian’s life. These, howover, are silenced by the admiration paid the world to his everlasting beauty. The passage then goes on to describe Dorian’s pleasure for what he is, a plausure which is heightsnsx when Dorian carefully examines the horrible portrait of himself on the canvas. It ends with the description of the exotic and refined things he loves to be sorrounded by. PREFACE In the famous Preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray, a sort of poem, Wilde affirmed his concept of Art and the Artist. The artist is a creator of beautiful things and the aim of art is to reveal itself but even to conceal the artist. The critic can translate his impression of art into another manner; criticism is actually a mode of autobiography. To find ugly meanings in beautiful things is a fault, while to find beautiful meanings in beautiful things is to be cultivated. However, there aren't moral or immoral books: books are well written or badly written. Moreover the artist doesn't desire to prove anything and hasn't ethical sympathies but he can express everything. He is always in accord with himself. Finally, Art doesn't mirror life but the spectator, and is quite useless. This preface expresses his view of art as the cult of beauty that could prevent the murder of the soul. Moreover the concept of Art for Art's sake was to Wilde, still Victorian at heart, a moral imperative and not only an aesthetic one, infact in the end he stressed the integrity and coherence of the artist saying that he must be in accord with himself.