Inglese, per scuola superiore, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Inglese

Scarica Inglese, per scuola superiore e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! THE BRONTË SISTERS The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne, were daughters of an Irish Reverend. Of the three sisters, Charlotte lived longer away from home, in Brussels to learn French. Then Charlotte and Emily tried to open a school in Haworth, where they lived, but they found no pupils. In 1846 Charlotte, Emily and Anne jointly published, at their own expense, a volume of poems, but it attracted no attention. All the Brontë sisters had a tragic destiny: Anne died at the age of 29, Emily at 30, Charlotte married a curate but she died after less than a year of married life, at the age of 39. The three sisters’ principal work was Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. Charlotte Brontë wrote some novels such as Shirley, a story at the time of the Napoleonic Wars; The Professor, about her experience in Brussels; Jane Eyre, a romantic love story about an orphan governess, Jane, and her rich master Rochester, married to a mad wife. Jane Eyre did not obey to conventions and revolutionized the existing novel form. It was published under the pseudonym of Currer Bell to avoid the prejudice directed towards women writers, and was soon a bestseller. It was greatly admired by contemporary novelists and critics. The novel is divided into 5 phases, each set in a different place and each representing a new stage in Jane’s growth, teaching her something new, and it is linked to all other phases by imagery and symbolism. The novel also established the theme of the free spirit fighting for self-respect in the face of money-oriented society. The story is told in the 1st person. The protagonist’s character is intense, imaginative, passionate, rebellious and independent with a new quality: the voice of a woman who speaks with frankness about herself. The heroine is the narrator and everything is seen from her point of view, never receding to the role of the observer. The Gothic convention is used in a personal way, from childhood terrors to strange noises and malevolent force that anticipates the tragedy at Thornfield that is the fire caused by Rochester’s mad wife who dies throwing herself downstairs. Rochester has the quality of a Byronic hero. He becomes a nobleman attracted by Jane’s soul and personality rather than by physical appearance. Emily Brontë wrote the novel Wuthering Heights, the most poetic and romantic novel of the Victorian Age. She gave romantic voice to the Victorian novel, in which the poet is a link between human nature and a transcendental world. She was a mystic and she believed in the interpenetration between the world of the living and the world of the spiritual beings. The plot is not very simple as it involves two generations. The central hero is Heathcliff. As a parentless gipsy orphan he is picked up in the streets of Liverpool by Mr. Earnshaw, the master of Wuthering Heights, who raises him with his two children, Catherine and Hindley. Heathcliff falls in love with Catherine, who loves him too. Yet, one day, overhearing that the girl considers a possible marriage with him, Heathcliff flees from the place. He returns 3 years later rich and still in love with Catherine. But now Catherine is married to the weak and wealthy Edgar Linton. Catherine dies when giving birth to a daughter, Cathy. Heathcliff, in the meantime, has married Linton’s sister, whom he ill-treats. To complete his revenge, he forces a marriage between the young Cathy and his own son, who soon died. Heathcliff has become a drunkard and a gambler and only when he dies he is finally reunited with his beloved Catherine. The structure is very complex because it is not based on a normal chronological sequence of events. The book starts at the end of the story when a Mr. Lockwood pays a visit to Heathcliff at Wuthering Heights and he is obliged to stop for the night because of a snowfall. During the night he goes outside the house and he is touched by mysterious ice-cold fingers. Heathcliff wakes up at Lockwood’s cries and he discovers the ghost of Catherine roaming on the moors. Lockwood goes back his home and he asks his housekeeper Nelly, who knew Catherine, to tell him the story of Heathcliff. The following autumn, Mr Lockwood goes again to Wuthering Heights and he finds that Heathcliff is now dead. Death is an important theme of the novel and it is not seen as an end but as a liberation of the spirit. The novel is built around the contrast between the two houses where the action takes place: one reflects stability, respectability, calm and assurance, the other one severity, brutality and energy. The main features of the novel are: • a particular use of time: the novel doesn’t follow a chronological order but it moves through memories, flashbacks; • the story covers two generations: the first section, centred around Heathcliff and Catherine, is the most romantic part; while the second, centred around Cathy and Hareton, shows a mature approach to love; • the indirect narrative technique through two story tellers: Nelly and Lockwood, who represents two contrasting kinds of reality and culture; • the combination of romanticism (the love theme, nature, Heathcliff – a wild and daemonic Byronic hero) and realism (the description of settings and of the ways of living, the conflict between two cultures); • a touch of Gothicism (ghosts, superstitions, prophecies, dreams);