Inglese, programma completo quinto anno liceo scientifico, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Inglese, programma completo quinto anno liceo scientifico e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Romanticism It wasn't a unified movement, it was born in Germany and spread in the UK between 1798 (French Revolution and Lyrical ballads) and 1837 (coronation of Queen Victoria). The 1st generation of poets was Wordsworth and Coleridge, the 2nd generation was Byron, Shelley, and Keats → they gave voice to a period of political, social and intellectual change. Enlightenment - reason and judgment - focus on society as a whole - followed authority - science and technology - objectivity Romanticism - imagination and emotions - valued individuals and refused society - looked for freedom - supernatural - represented common people - subjectivity - irrational parts of human nature - introspection and nostalgia - exaltation of the rebel and cult of the hero - civilization brings restrictions on the individual - cult of the exotic → adoration of what is far away both in space and in time ➢ growing interest in humble and everyday life; ➢ attention to the countryside (a place where there could still be a relationship with nature, as opposed to the industrial town); ➢ revival of the past ➢ the concept of nature was no longer abstract and philosophical, something that men could not control, it began to be perceived as a manifestation of divine power on earth; ➢ childhood became a state unspoiled by civilization and closer to God (Rousseau → the ideal man is the one who lives in a solitary state, civilization is corrupted and evil). William Wordsworth ● democratic in the French Revolution → led to a nervous breakdown ● healed by the contact with nature ● had a little sister: Dorothy, his biggest supporter who wrote journals about their life ● friendship with Coleridge, they wrote the “Lyrical Ballads”, the manifesto of English Romanticism ● used simple language to be understood by common people too, the poet was the one who had to teach ● had a pantheistic view of nature = something alive because God lives in it → in this relationship with nature, men can get the deepest meaning of life. John Keats Born in London in a well-off family, decided to study to become a surgeon after his parents died. He decided to become a poet and left medicine. Became friends with Shelley. He died of tuberculosis in Rome, where he traveled, to recover from the illness. > Negative capability: the poet has to “be in uncertainties” and deny his personality to identify himself with the object which is the source of his imagination → deeper experience. > Beauty: he distinguished two types of beauty - the one caught by the senses and by physical sensations - the one that never fades, which is eternal, and more important, the spiritual beauty > Imagination: divided into two primary forms - world of his poetry is artificial - vision of what he would like human life to be like > “I” didn’t stand for a human being linked to the events of his time but for a universal being. > “Scenery is fine but human nature is finer” → no Wordsworthian pantheistic sense of mystery. > Experience is just behind the Odes (1819) but not their substance. > Of all the romantic poets, Keats was the most aesthetic, in the sense that he believed that poetry had the function of conveying an experience of beauty ≠ Wordsworth believed that poetry had an uplifting moral influence on mankind. > Bright Star (page 235) Structure: Shakespearean sonnet, 3 quatrains, and a final rhyming couplet. In 1819 Keats fell in love with Fanny Browne, the sonnet talks about the poet’s wish to be with his lover for eternity. Keats used nature as a muse, to describe his feelings (≠ Wordsworth’s nature has an uplifting value for poetry). The poet wishes to be steadfast as the Bright Star, watching the beauty of nature from above, he wishes to be steadfast on his lover’s young breast, to feel its fall and swell (breath) → if he can’t live like that, he says, he’ll welcome death. employment as an office boy at a lawyer’s, then he became a very successful reporter of parliamentary debate in the House of Commons and began to work as a reporter for a newspaper. Then he started a full-time career as a novelist and published Oliver Twist (1837), Nicolas Nickleby, A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, and Hard Times (1854). His autobiographical novels, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield became symbols of an exploited childhood and confronted with the sad realities of slums and factories. Hard times dealt with social issues, such as the conditions of the poor and the working class in general. > Coketown (page 291) It is an extract from “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens, and it talks about Coketown, the typical industrial town, which isn’t a real town. Third-person omniscient narrator. It was a town of brick that would have been red if ashes and smoke allowed it, it was a town of machinery and tall chimneys → interminable serpents of smoke. There was a black canal, where the purple and ill-smelling water of the river flows. In the piles of buildings, the windows rattle and tremble all day long and the piston of the steam engine works monotonously. There were several streets, all similar one to another. There are some repetitions (same) that are used to convey the monotony of the city. Then there’s a list of public buildings in Coketown: chapel, warehouse, church, infirmary, town hall, jail, school, and cemetery. There was no difference between them, as they were very similar. Everything was facts = something that you can measure with scientific methods. The Teetotal society showed in tabular statements that people from Coketown would get drunk and use opium, in general, they were a bad group of people, never thankful, never knew what they wanted, rejected all but prime parts of meat, and still, they were eternally dissatisfied. The author uses precise words because his aim is both to entertain and educate. Education according to Dickens Children in Victorian England received a different type of education according to their social class, for example, boys and girls from rich families were thought by a governess, while poor children worked 16 hours per day. The ragged schools were schools for poor children run by the charity. In 1843 Dickens began his visits to ragged schools and became one of their supporters, even though he was aware of their limitations, especially the lack of qualified teaching, he also objected to certain educational methods. The method that Victorian teachers mainly used was the object lesson= they observed the object they were put in front of, the teachers would write lists for children to copy, and then the children would recite the words by heart. Punishment was given through caning (bastonare) or making children stand on a stool with a hat on. Dickens believed in universal education, the extension of education to all citizens, but did not offer a specific strategy for achieving this goal. The same year of his death, the Parliament passed the Elementary Education Act (1870) which made education compulsory. Oliver Twist Oliver Twist is a poor boy of unknown parents. He is brought up in a workhouse in an inhuman way. He’s later sold to an undertaker, but the cruelty and unhappiness he experiences cause him to run away to London. There he falls into the hands of a gang of young pickpockets, who try to make a thief out of him, but Oliver is helped by an older gentleman. He’s eventually kidnapped by the gang and forced to commit theft, during the job he’s shot and wounded. It is a middle-class family that adopts Oliver and shows him kindness and affection. Investigations are made about who the boy is and it is discovered that he was of noble origins. The gang of pickpockets and Oliver‘s half-brother, who paid the thieves to ruin Oliver and have their father's property all for himself, are arrested in the end. A lot of children from the poor and working class were working in factories and mines or as domestic servants and chimneysweeps. Dickens was very concerned with this topic and presented children as either innocent or corrupted by adults, they generally started in a negative situation but then rose to happy endings. The main setting of the novel is London, which is depicted at three different social levels: 1. the world of the workhouses where people from the lower middle class lived; 2. criminal world with pickpockets and murderers, poverty drove them to crime, they live in dirty, squalid slums and generally die of a miserable death; 3. the world of the Victorian middle class where respectable people lived. The residents of the workhouses were subject to hard regulations: labor was required, families were almost always separated, and portions of food and clothing were small and poor. The idea upon which the workhouses were founded, was that poverty was the consequence of laziness and that the terrible conditions in the workhouse would inspire the poor to improve their conditions, however, it was impossible as the workhouses did not provide any means for social or economic advances, and instead of alleviating, the suffering of the poor, the workhouses abused their rights as individuals and caused further misery. > Oliver wants some more (page 303) The setting is a canteen, with a big copper (pentolone di rame) inside, where the master (a fat, healthy man) distributed the gruel (pappa di avena). The boys were allowed to have just one portion, except on big occasions, when they were allowed to get two (hypocrisy). They were so hungry that they could eat bricks and the bowls didn’t even need washing, they polished them with their spoons. They had generally excellent appetites, the boys had to suffer the tortures of slow starvation (the narrator becomes obtrusive). One day they decided to ask for more supper and it fell to Oliver Twist → the master was astonished, the assistants paralyzed with wonder and fear, as Oliver committed a serious crime. In the end, Oliver is sold for 5 pounds to whoever wanted him. The victorian compromise The Victorians had to face several problems, and they felt obliged to support values that offered solutions or escapes. This code of values that were promoted reflected the world as they would like it to be. Respectability was a mixture of both morality and hypocrisy (they exploited poor children), severity, and conformity to social standards, it implied: - hard work - good manners - ownership of a comfortable house with servants and a carriage - regular attendance at church - charity: philanthropy became a widespread phenomenon and the people who received help were stray children, drunk men, and fallen women. Fallen women were generally single women with children. Victorians were very concerned with female chastity. They repressed sexuality both in public, and privately they were prudish, didn’t like nudity in art, and rejected words with a sexual connotation. The family was considered a patriarchal unit where the husband was the authority and women were in charge of the education of children and managing the house. The role of the woman The woman in Victorian society was considered an angel, her duties were: - educating the children - managing the household - providing emotional support for her husband. The husband, on the other hand - was the head of the family - had to keep his wife out of the workplace - had to provide one’s living. It was the queen, who established the ideal figure of the Victorian wife and mother, as she was an authority, a mother, and a wife at the same time. Sport: women were able to enjoy a day out at the seaside, they could try archery and croquet, however, physical exercise was made difficult by bulky skirts → Mrs. Bloomer introduced knickerbockers for women. Travels: Lady Anne Blunt traveled in the Arabian desert with her husband; some other women emigrated to America or Australia with their families and had to adapt to rough conditions. Medicine: Florence Nightingale left her position as superintendent of a sanatorium to lead a team of nurses to Crimea. She was considered a national heroine for reforming the military hospitals. The value of professional nurses was recognized for the first time in 1860 when Saint Thomas‘s Hospital in London opened its training school for nurses. Writers and painters: Marianne North was the daughter of a wealthy Victorian family, after her mother’s death she traveled with her father and decided to paint the flora of the distant countries she visited, such as Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada, South Africa, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, and Jamaica. Her paintings were mostly of natural landscapes, flowers, plants, birds, and animals. The British Empire Britain’s imperial activity began during the second half of the 16th century. Plantations = the setting of English and Scottish people in Ireland on lands taken from the native Irish. India came under rule by Britain and Queen Victoria was crowned Empress of India. Britain also occupied Australia, New Zealand, parts of China, Africa, and Southeast Asia. In particular, their expansionist activity reached the top with the scramble for Africa = a race among European countries to claim their power over parts of the continent. Setting: Victorian London in the 1870s. The town had a double nature and reflected the hypocrisy of Victorian society: the respectable West End (where wealthy people lived) vs the appalling East End slums. On one hand wealth, civilization, and imperial expansion while on the other, there was poverty, criminality, and double moral standards. This ambivalence is reinforced by the symbolism of Jekyll’s house, whose two façades represent the two opposite sides of the same man: the front, used by the doctor, is attractive, while the rear side, used by Mr. Hyde, is part of a “sinister block of buildings”. Most of the scenes take place at night. Style: - Multi-narrative structure, there are 4 narrators 1. Utterson, the lawyer, an old friend of Jekyll’s 2. Enfield (a distant relative of Utterson’s, tells a story about a man trampling a child) 3. Dr. Lanion (friend and colleague of Jekyll’s, he talks about his transformation) 4. Maid 5. Dr. Jekyll’s letter (final confession) For most of the novel, we follow Mr. Utterson's point of view and we only learn the whole story when he does. The effect is to keep us in the dark and to make us share Utterson's bewilderment and horror as the story proceeds. - Language is simple and clear - Use of puns (giochi di parole) - Use of opposing terms / contrasting images - Uses both realism and symbolism (Stevenson is very precise in his descriptions. But the detailed physical descriptions of Jekyll turning into Hyde also have a deep symbolical meaning). Themes: The author doesn’t clearly express any moral message and doesn’t offer a moral solution (Jekyll suffers both when he represses his instincts and when he liberates them), however this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have a moral message, it’s just not expressed by the author. - The double nature of human beings: man is divided into two parts (a good one and an evil one, one spiritual, the other physical), and these contrasts can lead to sin. It is Jekyll who creates Hyde because he likes being bad without paying the consequences even though he disapproves of Hyde’s mischiefs (a reference to the doppelgänger theory, meaning “look-alike”). The two beings are in perpetual struggle. Dr. Jekyll appears to be the embodiment of the respectable Victorian gentleman, reserved, formal, and known for his charitable works, he’s also handsome and agreeable. Hyde is the embodiment of the uncivilized part of humanity that hides beneath civilization, he’s small and pale, and extremely ugly. The two are perceived as two discrete entities but belong to the same individual and embody the opposite sides of it. Their relationship is mutually dependent. - The individual and “forbidden knowledge”: like dr Faustus and Frankenstein, also Jekyll wants to go beyond human limits but is punished in the end. - Human personality and psychology: the story shows that the repression of a part of man’s personality (the instinctive part) only increases its force and leads to the destruction of the personality. - A satire on contemporary morality: a critique of Victorian morals, in which everything was fine as long as corruption remained unknown to the outside world. The human mind is not a single, well-defined block, but is made up of multiple, often contrasting pieces. This vision anticipates the age of psychoanalysis. > The story of the door (page 339) Third-person narrator, who tells most of the story, follows the movements of Mr. Utterson and introduces the protagonist Hyde. Mr. Utterson is described: he is a lawyer, a man of severe expression, cold, reserved, and yet somehow lovable. He was austere with himself but tolerant to others, he drank gin when was alone, and though he enjoyed the theater, he had not crossed one for twenty years. Mr. Utterson and his relative Mr. Enfield were walking in a busy quarter of London, when they came across a sinister building. It had two doors, no windows and gave a feeling of sordid negligence (they didn’t take care of the building); the door didn’t have a bell or a knocker and was blistered and distained. Mr. Enfield talks about the event he witnessed in front of the door: it was about three o’clock on a black winter morning, everyone was asleep, when suddenly he saw two figures. A little man was stumping and following a little girl, who was running as hard as she could, the two ran into one another at the corner and the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming on the ground.The little man seemed perfectly cool. The people that showed up afterwards were the girl’s family and doctor (everytime he looked at the thing he turned sick and white with the desire to kill him). Killing was out of the question and they told the man they would make a scandal out of this. Aestheticism Aestheticism developed at the end of the 19th century, mainly in France and England but also in Italy, Germany, and the United States. In Britain, Aestheticism developed between 1860 and 1900 in reaction to the ugliness and materialism of industrialization and urbanization as well as against the strict moral code of the bourgeoisie and the social philosophies of the middle class which excluded art for the sake of wealth and progress. A lot of goods are made by machinery, an artist felt that beauty had got lost. The Victorians believed that industriousness and commitment were all that was needed for the upwardly mobile young man to succeed in a modernizing Europe. Aestheticism focused on the importance of beauty in a period of misery and depression when access to higher education was limited to the élite. The aspiring middle classes used books not only to educate themselves in the skills they would need to succeed in the working world but also cultivate their moral sensibilities, and to become refined both in mind and spirit. Aestheticism rejected the idea of “improving” art, the idea that art should be used exclusively for moral and intellectual instruction, Aesthetes believed that art did not have any didactic purpose (aim): art should serve no purpose other than its own enjoyment. Art is not meant to instruct or uplift. It isn’t a moral instrument meant to improve its audiences (at the time this was a revolutionary idea). [Wordsworth and Dickens believed that literature was useful and meant to convey a message. Wordsworth’s nature was meant to teach, while Dickens’ social novels were meant to spread awareness and protest. To the Aesthetes the cult of beauty was not useful]. The Aesthetes developed the cult of beauty, which they considered the basic factor of art. The main theorist of Aestheticism in England was Walter Pater. In his “Conclusion” to Studies in the history of the Renaissance, Pater encouraged his readers to discover happiness by pursuing “poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for art’s sake”. His works were successful for the subversive (provocative) message they conveyed: - he rejected religious faith - art was the only means to halt (stop) the passing of time - life should be lived as a “work of art” How? Filling each passing moment with intense experience and feeling all kinds of sensations. The artist’s task was to feel sensations and be the transcriber of the “sense” of the world and not of its mere facts. The main implication of this aesthetic position was that art had no reference to life and therefore it had nothing to do with morality or didacticism. “Preface” to The Picture of Dorian Gray by O. Wilde The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty. - Dorian Gray represents the ideal of youth, beauty and innocence - Lord Henry Wotton, a brilliant talker and an amoral aesthete, sharp in his criticism of institutions, who pushes Dorian to adopt a hedonistic style of life - Basil Hallward, an intellectual who falls in love with Dorian’s beauty and innocence. He becomes an example of how a good artist can be destroyed in a sacrifice for art Themes: - Appearance and reality - Truth and beauty: a work of art is neither simply true nor false, the opposition between good and evil, true and false, moral and immoral don’t exist - Mortality and the corruption of innocence - Good and evil - The role of Art and its relation to morality - Double and Doppelganger: the picture is Dorian’s double, it stands for the dark side of Dorian’s personality, and is also a metaphor or mask for erotic desire and the alibi of a life of secret vices - Temptations: ageless beauty “Not of two persons, in this case, but of the man and his portrait, the latter of which changes, decays, is spoiled, while the former, through a long course of corruption, remains, to the outward eye, unchanged, still in all the beauty of a seemingly immaculate youth - the ‘devil’s bargain” -W. Pater. Moral: the story has a strong message, which is that every excess must be punished and reality cannot be escaped. Basil Hollward, worshipping physical beauty far too much, dies by the hand of Dorian. Dorian Gray, having led a life of mere sensation and pleasure, tries to stab the picture and kills himself. The horrible, corrupting picture could be seen as a symbol of the immorality and bad conscience of the Victorian middle class. The picture, restored to its original beauty, illustrates Wilde’s theories of art: art survives people, art is eternal. Lord Henry Wotton seeks to be merely the spectator of life. He finds that those who reject the battle are more deeply wounded than those who take part in it. > Dorian’s death Setting time: night. He told the girl that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him, and answered that wicked people were always very old and very ugly (ideal of the Renaissance that ugly=bad), she had everything that he had lost (innocence). He threw himself on the sofa and began to think: his youth was of unstained purity, but then he filled his mind with corruption, and became an evil influence to others. all his failure had been due to the portrait, however, there was purification in punishment. His beauty had been a mask to him, a mask that concealed all his crimes; however, nothing could change the past → he started thinking of a new life where he would be good. Dorian wonders if the portrait had changed so he went and looked, however, the painting didn’t change → did it mean that he was to confess? No one would believe him, because there was no evidence against him, the only evidence left was the picture itself, and he decided he would destroy it. Then Dorian took the knife that had stabbed Basil Hallward and stabbed the painting as well. A cry was heard from the outside → when people entered the room, they found a splendid portrait hanging up on the wall, and a dead man lying on the floor with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome, it was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was. The Edwardian age On the death of Queen Victoria, her son Edward VII was crowned. He was able to assist in foreign policy negotiations and was the first British monarch to visit Russia. He founded the Order of Merit to reward those who distinguished themselves in science, art, or literature. In 1906 the Liberals won the general election and took the first steps towards the creation of a welfare state: national insurance and old-age pensions were introduced. However, the Edwardian period was a time of industrial unrest, strikes, and violence. The strikes, meant to be weapons against the government, were called because of high prices and low wages. They were remarkable for the number of men involved and for the violence which often accompanied them. Violence came also from women→ the suffragettes, they were educated ladies who wanted women to have the vote, however, no one paid much attention to them until when Mrs. Pankhurst founded theWomen's Social and Political Union. The Liberal program led to a constitutional crisis when the House of Lords refused to pass the “people’s budget”, which included welfare (health) programs and unprecedented taxes on the wealthy. Edward VII was succeeded by his son, George V, who was considered a model monarch. In 1914 the First World War broke out and the king made several visits to troops and to hospitals; he pressed for proper treatment of German prisoners of war and he also pressed for more humane treatment of objectors. In 1917, anti-German feelings led him to change the family name to that ofWindsor (they had a germanic surname before). World War I The war broke out when the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914. Germany marched through Belgium, a neutral territory, in order to attack France. The war involved the Central European Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) on one side and the Allies (Britain and the British Empire, France and Russia and their allies, including later Italy and the United States) on the other. Britain declared war on Germany in August because it signed an agreement to respect Belgium's neutrality. Germany nearly defeated the Allies in the first few weeks of the war in 1914, since it had better equipment, better-trained soldiers, and a clear plan of attack. This was Britain's first European war since the Napoleonic Wars, and the country was unprepared for the terrible, destructive modern artillery, machine guns, and tanks, and the use of gas and shells during the attacks. 'Shell shock' was the term used by doctors to allude to the psychological effect of shell explosions. The United States joined the war in 1917, and American participation accelerated the German defeat. The armistice was signed in 1918 and ended the Great War, which was considered the 'war to end all wars', however, the conflict was only officially concluded with the signing of the peace treaties in 1919 in Versailles. President Wilson proposed to set up the 'League of Nations', an organization in which the world's nations would try to prevent the break out of wars. The American Senate, however, didn't want to be involved in European problems, and the United States never joined the League of Nations. A deep cultural crisis led to the end of the system of Victorian values. The First World War left the country in a disillusioned mood: stability and prosperity proved to belong only to a privileged class, and consciences were haunted by the atrocities of the war. Nothing seemed to be right or certain even science and religion seemed to offer little comfort or security. New concepts of man and the universe emerged: Albert Einstein published his theory of special relativity, which radically changed the concepts of time and space. The War Poets When the First World War broke out, thousands of young men volunteered for military service as the war was seen as a noble cause. However, after the Battle of the Somme in 1916, this sense of pride and exhilaration was replaced by doubt and disillusionment, and war became a brutal atrocity. For the soldiers, life in the trenches was hell because of the rain and mud, the decaying bodies that rats fed on, the repeated bombings, and the use of poison gas. Common soldiers started writing verses, rough, genuine, and obscene, however, they didn’t reach the ears of the literate people living comfortably at home. There was a group of poets who actually experienced the fighting and 1. managed to represent modern warfare in a realistic and unconventional way 2. awoke the conscience of the readers to the horrors of the war. These poets are known as theWar Poets. Theirs can be considered a definite move away from the 19th-century poetic conventions, which could not convey the harsh new reality that faced them and forced them to find another mode of expression. The poet’s task is to awaken/warn, how? with realistic and unconventional descriptions and brutal and direct language. before 1916 (the watershed) after 1916 focused on the virtue of sacrifice a sense of disillusion and absurdity war=noble cause war=brutal atrocity language and structure more classical new content↔linguistic experimentation patriotism and excitement New content: 1916 was a watershed in literature as well, a lot of things changed in terms of style, and themes… that’s why they needed to create a new form of language, to express the new experience of war. Brooke Rupert Brooke was born into a wealthy family, he saw little combat during the war since he contracted blood poisoning and died in 1915. He wrote five war sonnets of 1914, in which he advanced the idea that war is clean and cleansing. He tried to testify to the safeness of war, in which the only thing that can suffer is the body, and even death is seen as a reward, he didn’t witness trench warfare. flows. A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.’ The stream of consciousness refers to the mental process, the literary technique which expresses this mental process is the interior monologue. Freud Freud published Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, this work contributed to changing the way that people thought, behaved, and learned about sexuality. In particular, the second essay, in which he discussed sexuality in infancy and childhood, appeared to be controversial. In 1900 Freud published “The interpretation of dreams”. He created a structural model of the psyche where he identified three parts: - id: a set of instinctual impulses lacking organization - ego: coordinated, realistic part, the one you can control - superego: has a critical and moralizing role. Freud introduced the concept of the subconscious and discovered that men's actions could be motivated by irrational forces of which they might know nothing. Freud's new method of investigation of the human mind through the analysis of dreams and the concept of 'free association of ideas' also deeply influenced the artists and writers of the modern age. Henri Bergson He theorized a new concept of time, divided into two parts: - historical: measured by the hands of a clock and organized in unities - psychological: internal, subjective, measured by the relative intensity of a moment. James Joyce James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882, he was educated at Jesuit schools, including University College, where he studied European languages and literature and English literature. The political movements, which had as their objective the freeing of Ireland from English dominance, held very little attraction for him. His interest was in a broader European culture, and this led him to begin to think of himself as a European rather than an Irishman. In June 1904 he met and fell in love with Nora Barnacle, on 16th June they had their first date, which then became the ‘Bloomsday’ of Ulysses. They moved to Italy and settled in Trieste, where Joyce began teaching English and became friends with Italo Svevo. His most relevant works are Dubliners (1914), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (semi-autobiographical novel), and Ulysses (Paris, 1922). Hitler's advances in Europe forced the Joyces to flee from France to neutral Switzerland, where the writer died in 1941. Though Joyce went into voluntary exile at the age of twenty-two, he set all his works in Ireland and mostly in the city of Dublin. He wanted to give a realistic portrait of the life of ordinary people doing ordinary things and living ordinary lives. The artist's task was to render life objectively, Joyce used different points of view and narrative techniques in order to separate the man who suffers from the man which creates. Dubliners Dubliners consists of fifteen short stories, arranged into four groups: ‘My intention was to write a chapter of the moral di history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis. I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life. The stories are arranged in this order.' The description in each story is realistic and concise, with an abundance of external details, even the most unpleasant and depressing ones. The use of realism is mixed with symbolism, in fact, Joyce thought his function was to take the reader beyond the usual aspects of life and he used a technique to reach his purpose: the 'epiphany', that is, 'the sudden spiritual manifestation/revelation' caused by a trivial (banale) gesture an external object or a banal situation, which is used to lead the character to a sudden self-realization about themselves or about the reality surrounding them. The paralysis of Dublin which Joyce wanted to portray is both physical, resulting from external forces, and moral, linked to religion, politics, and culture. Joyce's Dubliners either accept their condition because they are not aware of it or because they lack the courage to break the chains that bind them. All the Dubliners are spiritually weak and scared people, they are to some extent slaves of their familiar, moral, cultural, religious, and political lives. The main theme is the failure to find a way out of ‘paralysis’, The opposite of paralysis is 'escape’ and its consequent failure. It originates from an impulse caused by a sense of enclosure that many characters experience, but none of them succeeds in overcoming. The only way out from paralysis is escape. Narrative techniques: - no omniscient narrator - no single point of view - no interior monologue - perspective of a character - free direct speech (allows the reader to acquire direct knowledge of the character). Eveline Eveline is a 19-year-old girl who has the opportunity to change her routine life but she is unable to leave her familiar community in Dublin. It’s evening, Eveline sits at a window (not moving), leaning against the curtains, with the odor of dusty cretonne (gloomy atmosphere), and looks out onto the street while recalling her childhood, when she played with other children in a field now developed with new homes. They were happy then, when her father was not so bad and her mother was alive. There’s a description of familiar objects: dust, broken armonium, yellowing photograph. She then starts to have doubts, she wonders if the decision she made was right, in her home she had a shelter and food. Eveline faces a difficult dilemma: remain at home like a dutiful daughter, or leave Dublin with her lover, Frank, who is a sailor. In her new home it would not be like that (future→ expresses the possibility of change, hope to find a better life), she would be married (marriage is an escape) and she would not be treated as her mother had been (ill-treated) by her father. He was violent and an alcoholic, she had to work to keep the house together and give him all the money she earned by working. But now that she was about to leave, it didn’t seem like a wholly undesirable life (she is both enthusiastic and scared about the future, the unknown). She was about to explore another life with Frank, kind and open-hearted (≠her father). He wants her to marry him and live with him in Buenos Aires, and she has already agreed to leave with him in secret. She remembers the first time they met, he brought her to see The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated (happy) since there was no music in her house in Dublin (broken armonium). He told her tales from distant countries. Her father had found out about the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him. Eveline holds in her lap two letters (representing her decision to leave), one to her father and one to her brother Harry. She is worried for her father since she was the one in charge of taking care of him. Eveline then remembers the past: the times when her mother was still alive and her father was a nice person, her time was running out, though (objective time→ Bergson), but she continued to sit (all the movements the reader perceives are in Evelin’s mind) by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, with the odor of dusty cretonne (x2). She could hear a street organ playing→ it reminds her of the promise to her mother to keep the home together as long as she could, and she feels guilty, then she remembers the life of common (banal) sacrifices her mother had done→ Eveline trembles as she identifies with her mother, and fears she would end up ill, crazy and mad like her→ this is the EPIPHANY. She stood up and realized she must escape. Frank would save her and give her life (first he would give her life, then, maybe, love as well). There’s a change in setting, she is sitting at the North Wall station, unsure of what to do anymore. Physical paralysis→ distress, nausea, and gripping at the iron railing, moral paralysis→ passive face, no sign of love, or farewell, or recognition. The escape ends up being a failure, it is impossible for Eveline to start a new life, and Frank sails without her. Joyce goes back and forth past-present-future. Ulysses Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, published in 1922 in Paris. - Setting (Place): Near and in Dublin, Ireland. - Setting (Time): 16th June 1904 (Bloomsday), one day - Protagonist(s): Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom - Structure: 18 episodes about the actions and interactions of the three characters. - Prospective: ‘Ulysses’ is told in both third-person and first-person narration (episode twelve). Some episodes feature the interior monologue. - Narrative technique: “stream of consciousness”: flux of ideas, thoughts, mental associations, impressions, and memories is rendered on the page without any logical or rational organization. - Themes: The quest for paternity; the remorse of conscience; compassion as heroic; parallax or the necessity of multiple perspectives. Plot The story is divided into three parts: - “The Telemachiad”, where we meet the young Stephen Dedalus - “The Odyssey" focuses on the urban wanderings of a common man, Leopold Bloom, who gets up, walks around Dublin, and meets some people such as Stephen Dedalus. - “Nostos” where Leopold Bloom finally goes home to his wife Molly. Similarities between Ulysses and Odyssey Common theme: voyage. Bloom’s wanders through the city of Dublin ironically reflect the travels of wanderers of Ulysses in Homer’s Odyssey. The Odyssey Ulysses Ulysses is the Greek hero whose ship is blown off course. He is involved in dangerous events, but he survives and he can return to his home of Ithaca. Leopold Bloom is a common agent who leaves his wife asleep in bed to go around Dublin where he meets Stephen Dedalus. Telemachus is the son of Ulysses, who waits for his father with his mother. Finding news for his father, he turns to King Nestor, who gives him good advice. Stephen Dedalus is a young writer who doesn't have a home. In Dublin, he meets Bloom who offers to take him into his home. Penelope is the faithful wife of Ulysses, who waits for her husband’s return, avoiding her suitors by making work that has never been completed. Molly Bloom is the unfaithful wife of Leopold. She is a semi-professional singer but has many lovers. While Bloom is out, she is meeting her last boyfriend, Blazes Boylan. Joyce’s Ulysses wants to reproduce through a common man the life of humanity. It's an epic novel that offers different visions of daily life, personal attitude, political and cultural discussion, and reflection. The various odysseys of Bloom, Stephen, and Molly are voyages through the internal sea of their own consciousness. The novel is like a bridge that divides the modern and the classical worlds. Joyce uses ancient myths to represent the squalid reality of modernity, where heroism has disappeared and sterility dominates. Virginia Woolf The Bloomsbury Group The Bloomsbury Group was a small, informal association of intellectuals and artists who lived and worked in the Bloomsbury area of central London, around the British Museum. They challenged Victorian values, which were founded on ideals of morality and respectability, and questioned the conventional values of sexual and personal relations. That’s the reason why they were ostracized and ignored, however, they had no mission, they just lived how they wanted. Life Virginia Woolf was born in 1882. Her father, Leslie Stephen, was a man of letters, therefore she grew up in a literary and intellectual environment, she had access to her father’s library. She spent her summers in Cornwall (Cornovaglia) and the sea became a symbol of her art → water represented two things: what is harmonious and feminine and the possibility of the resolution of conflicts in death. The death of her mother, in 1895, affected her deeply and brought about her first nervous breakdown. She began to revolt against her father’s tyrannical personality and his idealization of the woman (her father was a symbol of conflict, as he represented Victorian morals). With her father’s death, Virginia began her literary career, moved to Bloomsbury with her sister, Vanessa, and joined the Bloomsbury Group. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf (he described the B.Group as an “aggregation of friends” made up of 10 men and 3 women). In 1915 she published her first novel The Voyage Out, which still followed a traditional pattern, closer to the Victorian style. During this time she attempted suicide by taking drugs. In 1925 she published Mrs. Dalloway, where she experimented with new narrative techniques (interior monologue), followed by To the Lighthouse and Orlando (it’s a history of English literature in satiric form. The book describes the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history). She was also a literary critic and an essayist, she delivered two lectures at Cambridge which later became A Room of One’s Own, a work of great impact on the feminist movement, where she insisted on the inseparable link between economic and artistic independence (→ Suffragettes). In 1929 she began to work on her novel The Waves, where she found there was a link between her creative process and her illness. The Second World War increased her anxiety and fears, she became haunted by the terror of losing her mind and drowned herself in the River Ouse at the age of 59. Style of writing - omniscient narrator disappears and the point of view shifts inside the characters’ minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas, and momentary impressions presented as a continuous flux - use of the INDIRECT INTERIOR MONOLOGUE - human personality conceived as a continuous shift of impressions and emotions - what mattered was the impression the event made on the character - give voice to the inner world of feelings, thoughts, and emotions Moments of being There are two kinds of experiences: moments of being and moments of non-being moments of being. The first ones are acts experienced intensely and with awareness, moments when an individual is fully conscious of their experience; instead, moments of non-being appear to be moments that the individual is not consciously aware of even as they experience them. It is a moment of intensity, similar to the "Epiphanies" of Joyce. It is not the nature of the actions that separate moments of being from moments of non-being. One activity is not more extraordinary than the other. Instead, it is the intensity of feeling that separates the two moments. Throughout the moments of being, Woolf seems to tell each reader to always face life, to understand it, and to love it for what it is. Mrs Dalloway (1925) > Setting: the story takes place on a single ordinary day in June 1923 and it follows the protagonist through a very small area of London, from the morning to the evening of the day on which she gives a large formal party. > Use of tunneling technique: she allows the reader to experience the characters’ past, providing a sense of their background and personal history → make the reader better understand the character’s present. > The novel also deals with the way people react to new situations and changes in the social life of the time (spread of newspapers, increasing use of cars and planes, new standards in marital relationships). Big brother is watching you Insight into life in London, where men have lost control of their inner being, the only person who tries to resist indoctrination is the protagonist Winston Smith. > The setting is Winston’s flat, the protagonist turns a switch and the voice coming from the telescreens was dimmed (the telescreens couldn’t be shut off completely). > Then Winston is described as a small, fragile, and skinny man, wearing a blue overall, the uniform of the Party. His hair was fair, his face optimistic and his skin roughened by coarse soap, blunt razor blades, and the cold winter. > The world looks cold, there are posters plastered everywhere, representing a face with a mustache and dark, deep eyes, there was written BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. > In the distance, there was a helicopter flying and trying to snoop inside people’s houses (it was a way of controlling people’s actions). > The telescreens received and transmitted simultaneously, any sound that Winston made, above the level of a whisper, would be picked up by it. There was no way of knowing when you were being watched, it was possible that they watched everybody all the time, or that they plugged in your wire whenever they wanted to. One had to live with the assumption that every sound one made was overheard. That’s why it was safer to keep one’s back turned to the telescreens, as they couldn’t read your lips. > Winston works at the Ministry of Truth, which he didn’t really like, it was different from any other object in sight: it was an enormous pyramidal structure of white concrete. From where Winston stood, it was possible to read the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE (Oceana was always at war, however, people believed they were always at peace) FREEDOM IS SLAVERY (discourages people to look for freedom) IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH (encourages people to accept everything the party says). This is what is called DOUBLETHINK: the Party teaches people to believe to two contradictory things as true. George Orwell Life Born Eric Blaire in India in 1903, was taken to England by his mother and educated at Eton College. He couldn’t stand the lack of privacy, and the humiliating punishments of the English public school tradition (personal conflict). He started to wear second-hand clothes, spent short periods living in common lodging houses in the East End and directly experienced poverty, and learned how institutions for the poor (hostels, prisons, lodging houses, and hospitals) worked (economic conflict). In 1936 he joined the Spanish Civil War and fought against Franco’s totalitarian government (war conflict). When the Second World War broke out, Orwell moved to London and joined the BBC. He began to write Animal Farm and published it in 1945, then 1984, his last book, published in 1949. Orwell died of tuberculosis the next year. Orwell’s life and work were marked by the unresolved conflict between his middle-class upbringing and education and his emotional identification with the working class. He chose committed literature and social themes (→Dickens and Auden). 1984 The dystopian novel While utopia concentrated on the positive, dystopia painted the most negative picture of the present and the future. The utopian society is perfect in the moral sense, the dystopian one is perfect in the social sense: the victory of tyranny. 1984, written in 1849, is a dystopian novel, set in a bleak future and denounces the dangers of totalitarianism by representing a world, in which, human individuality has been canceled by the actions of an oppressive government. It is a satire on hierarchical societies which destroy fraternity. The novel describes a future world divided into three blocks: Oceania (where England is just an outpost); Eurasia and Eastasia. Oceania is ruled by The Party, which is divided into Outer Party and Inner Party, the Inner Party is made up of a limited number of people and is led by The Big Brother. He doesn’t watch over his people like a brother should, but, instead, controls them. In order to control people’s lives, The Party uses several means: - Newspeak, an invented language with a limited amount of words - Thought Police, which threatens people and doesn’t allow them to have sex, to express any form of individuality and free thought → people were accused of thoughtcrime (crimine di pensiero) - Telescreens, which give no privacy to people and watch every step they take - propaganda - any form of rebellion is punished with prison and torture The protagonist isWinston Smith, a middle-aged man, physically weak, who experiences alienation from society, his name has a symbolic value, Winston refers to Churchill, and Smith is the commonest surname in England. He keeps a diary (illegally, it is an act of rebellion) in which he writes all his thoughts and memories, addressing them to the future generations, as the regime wanted to change history too → who controls the past, controls the future. He works at the ‘Ministry of Truth’, where he rewrites historical records, there, he meets a girl, Julia, he’s afraid she might be an informant of the government but she proves to be a rebel and they begin a secret affair. Winston is a silent rebel, as he illegally keeps the diary and falls in love with Julia. One day, O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party, invites them to his flat and tells them he too hates the Party and works against it as a member of the Brotherhood (led by Goldstein), a secret organization that is trying to overthrow The Party. In the end, O’Brien turns out to be a Party spy, therefore Winston and Julia are taken to the ‘Ministry of Love’, where they are tortured and brainwashed, then sent to Room 101, where Winston is forced to confront his worst fear: rats on his head, ready to eat his face. Winston is then released but no longer loves Julia, he has completely given up his identity and has learned to love Big Brother. Winston tries to keep his individuality but fails, according to Orwell, individuality couldn’t be destroyed because identity arises from interaction, not isolation. The novel doesn’t offer consolation or reassurance but reveals the author’s sense of history and sympathy with the millions of people persecuted and murdered in the name of the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century. We can’t read 1984 without considering the historical period, in 1948 ONU is funded after two World Wars. Orwell just wanted to show people the consequences of a bleak society and tries to tell the reader ‘Don’t forget’.