Intero programma di inglese 5ª, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Intero programma di inglese 5ª e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! THE ROMANTIC AGE 1. BRITAIN AND AMERICA: ● George III, came to the throne in 1760 ● His reign lasted 60 years and is one of the longest in English history ● To reduce the public debt due to the Seven Year’s War, the king introduced new duties on corn, paper and tea THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: ● At the Boston Tea Party in 1773 some rebels, threw the British tea coming from another part of the British Empire, into the harbor; ● The rebels maintained that the taxes were unjust, as the colonies had no political power; ● In England, the philosopher Edmund Bruke, recognised the justice of their cause; ● The Americans divided into Patriots, who wanted independence, and Loyalists, who wanted to remain part of Britain, and the War of Independence began in 1775. ● In 1776, the congress, signed the Declaration of Independence, largely written by Thomas Jefferson; It claimed that all men had a natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; ● In 1781, at the British army was defeated and Britain recognized the independence of its former colonies with the Treaty of Versailles in 1783; ● In 1789, George Washington, became the first president. WILLIAM PITT THE YOUNGER: ● After the loss of America, George III had a difficult time with his ministers until, he asked William Pitt the Younger to become Prime Minister; ● He was in office for 18 years, during which he tried to simplify the financial system and reduce the national debt. 2. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: ● At the end of 18 century, economic changes took place in England that would transform the country from an agricultural to an industrialised nation. ● The origins of the economic transformation can be traced back to the Black Death and the rise in living standards that followed it. ● The population increased, ● The soil was drained and made more fertile, animals were bred selectively, therefore producing more meat. ● People began acquiring more goods for the house, such as wardrobes, clocks and china. ● Clothing marked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution because mass consumption of machine-made goods started. TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION: ● During the 18th century there was a succession of technological innovations that transformed and improved the productivity of workers The most important invention were: o James Hargreaves’s Spinning Jenny a worker could work eight spools at once. o Edmund Cartwright’s loom linked cloth manufacture to water and steam power. ● Changes in transport: transport was made more efficient, new waterways were built and road conditions were improved. THE WORKER’S LIFE: ● Industrial cities lacked elementary public services – water-supply, sanitation, streetcleaning, open spaces; ● the air and the water were polluted by smoke and filth; ● Women and children were highly prized by employers because they could be paid less and were easier to control. ● Besides, the fact that the children were so small meant they could move more easily in mines, or crawl between the machines in the cotton industry to carry out repairs. ● Long working hours, about 65-70 a week, and monotony marked the work of industrial laborers. ● Food prices rose, diet and health deteriorated with an increase in the mortality rate. 3. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE NAPOLEONIC WARS: ● In 1810 George III became totally incapable of reigning and in 1811 his son George; ● Meanwhile in France, in 1789, the principles of social equality of the Enlightenment had led to a revolution. ● In 1792 the French had abolished the monarchy and declared their country a republic. ● Just as the British Parliament was debating how to react to the threat from across the Channel, France declared war on Britain and Holland in 1793. The French had a weak navy but proved unbeatable on land. ● Much of their success was due to the skills of a general named Napoleon Bonaparte. ● Napoleon, surrendered in 1814. ROOTS AND REFORMS: ● The costs of the war were huge. ● Increases in the price of bread led to riots in the cities, while in the factories the so-called ‘Luddites’ smashed the new machines which had taken their work away. ● The authorities tried to repress discontent under many laws allowing arrest without trial, and silencing the freedom of expression. THE SUBLIME FOR BRUKE: ● The distinction between the beautiful and the sublime became a main theme of 18th century aesthetics; ● For Bruke, the sublime is everything that exalts the idea of pain, danger and sometimes terror. ● He argues that terror and pain are the strongest emotions and that there is pleasure in these feelings. ● Whatever provokes these feelings is defined by him as: sublime. THE ROMANTIC POETRY WILLIAM BLAKE William Blake is both a visionary poet and a visual artist. He was considered as a sort of prophet (with supernatural qualities), he was a rebel who rejected contemporary institutes poet's feelings couldn't be written immediately but in tranquillity so that the poet has the possibility to think about his experiences and relive it. Sonnet composed upon Westminster Bridge This poem, written by William Wordsworth in 1802, describes the view of London from the Westminster BridgeThere. There is an accurate description of the landscape, but also of the emotions that it conveys like the quietness, typical of the dawn. The poet also reflects on the coexistence between men and God and then between nature and civilization. In the text there also are two similes like in lines 4-5: "the city, like a garment, wears the beauty of the morning.." and in line 13: ….houses seem asleep….". There's a metaphor, too: line 14 "…all that mighty heart is lying.." In the whole poem there are many personifications like the city (in line 4),the river (in line 12)and some houses (in line 13). Daffodils This poem, written in 1804 and published in 1807, recounts the experience of a walk the poet went for with his sister, near their home in the Lake District. The poem was inspired by the sight of a field full of golden daffodils waving in the wind. The key of the poem is joy, as we can see from the many words which express pleasure and delight: in fact the daffodils are golden, waving in a sprightly dance and outdoing the waves in glee: they provide a jocund company and the sight of them fills the poet's heart with pleasure. The flowers are set in a natural environment made up of land, air and water. The words related to the three elements are: for land: vales, hills, tree. For air: cloud, breeze, stars, milky way. For water: lake, bay, waves. All nature appears wonderfully alive and happy in fact the cloud floats on high; the stars shine and twinkle, the waves dance and sparkle in glee. The daffodils, too, are not static like in a painting, but alive with motion. They are in fact fluttering and dancing in the breeze, and tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The sight of the daffodils amazes the poet at first because of their great number in fact they a crowd, continuous, ten thousand, host, never ending-line. Yet Wordsworth is not interested in the flowers as such, but in the way they affect him; that is from inner to deter worlds and vice verse. The sight of the flowers brings the poet delight but he doesn't realize that at the moment but only later, when memory brings back the scene. It is clear that the daffodils have a metaphorical meaning. They may represent the voice of nature, which is scarcely audible except in solitude, the magic moment when our spirit develops a visionary power and we "return to the enchanted unity with nature we knew in childhood; they may represent a living microcosm within the larger macrocosm of nature. Describing the daffodils the pot mentions only one colour: golden; but the whole poem implicitly suggests a wealth of colours: white = clouds; green = hills, vales, trees; blue = lake; silver = star; silver-white = milky way. In stanza 4 the poet suggests the perfect state of mind we should be in to hear the voice of nature; he says we should be in a sort of inner emptiness almost like that of the mystics when they enter into communion with God. This state of mind favours the poet's inner perception, which he calls "in ward eye". Tanks to this inner perception the poet's physical "loneliness" turns into a moment of ecstasy, which to calls bliss of solitude. Brief as it is, the poem presents a perfect structure. It is divided into four stanzas which correspond to the various moods of the poet. Stanza 1 Setting and "shock" at the scene Stanza2 Description of the flowers Stanza 3 Relationship between the flowers and the poet, the emotions of the poet (in the moment of the vision) Stanza 4 Emotion recollected in tranquility, consequences of the experience The poem "Daffodils" by Wordsworth is a clear example of Romantic poetry for its naturalistic theme. The poet, during a walk in the Lake District, saw a great quantity of daffodils which made him feel happy and in contact with nature the flowers are personified, in fact they are described as a dancing crowd whose beauty is superior to everything else. This experience was so important to become a source of joy, even for the poet's sad moments thanks to the idea of "memories recollected in tranquility". Nature was for Wordsworth a protection and the clear manifestation of God. SAMUEL COLERIDGE Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772. Coleridge began writing. He became friendly with William Wordsworth. Meeting Wordsworth also marked a dramatic change in Coleridge's political ideas: after his early optimism for the French Revolution he turned conservative, because he was horrified by its violence. In 1797 Coleridge wrote one of his most famous poems, Kubla Khan. Together with Wordsworth he composed the Lyrical Ballads, which included his celebrated long poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. He lived with the Wordsworths for a while, then he moved to London, where he lived for the rest of his life. He published his last works and died in 1834. The "Rime of the Ancient Mariner' is a ballad, a long narrative poem divided into seven sections. Each section is introduced by an 'argument', that is, a summary of the content of the section which follows, and each section contains a poetic part and captions. Captions are meant to clarify to the reader the content of the poetic part. The extract ' The Killing of the Albatross' starts with the ancient mariner who is stopping a wedding-guest on his way to the wedding feast and obliges him to listen to him. There is something magic and weird in the old man, his glittering eyes have hypnotic power and his skinny hands and long beard make him more like a specter than a human living creature. The wedding guest is reluctant and disappointed, he would like to join the wedding feast but he is 'spell-bound' and he "cannot choose but hear'. The Ancient Mariner starts his tale from when the ship leaves the harbor bound southwards. Let's notice the presence of man-made things as the harbor itself, the church and the lighthouse. Their presence contrasts with the description of natural elements as the storm, the ice, the snow and the mist which, later on in the narration, are charged with symbolic meaning. In line 41, the 'storm-blast came', as the poet says and 'it was tyrannous and strong. It is represented as a huge bird chasing the ship with its large wings. The storm is personified through the use of personal pronouns, adjectives and verbs. Next mist, snow and ice come. The ice surrounds the ship and traps it; the sensation we have is one of impotence and paralysis; the ice is personified through the use of verbs as 'growling, roaring and howling' which are generally attributed to wild, fierce animals. The mist and snow increase the atmosphere of mystery and uncertainty. Finally, out of nowhere, comes the Albatross. It represents the benign spirit of nature and this makes its killing even more absurd. For no reasons at all, the ancient mariner shoots it with his cross-bow. Notice the references to the Christian religion and Jesus Christ in line 65 'as if it had been a Christian soul' and line 81 'With my cross-bow. Line 81, in particular, reminds us of Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross. The religious interpretation of 'The Rime' says that it is a process of self-knowledge through sin and expiation. The mariner's punishment for his sin against God's creation is that he feels obliged to go from place to place and tell the people he meets about what happened. The aim is to teach them to love all of God's creatures. ROMANTIC FICTION MARY SHELLEY LIFE ● She was born in 1797; ● Both parents were influenced by the French Revolution and were part of a small radical group with also William Blake; ● She had so many intellectual stimulus from some romantic writers of the time like Coleridge or Percy Shelley; ● She wrote “Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus” in 1814; ● In 1816, she tried to write Frankestein but it was published only in 1818; ● She died in 1851. "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus” Plot Frankenstein is a talented young medical student who strikes upon the secret of endowing life to the dead. He becomes obsessed with the idea that he might make a man. The resulting creature is lonely and miserable; he is an outcast who seeks murderous revenge fo mr his condition. The creature flees, and Frankenstein pursues him. Origins In the introduction to the novel, Mary Shelley gives her own account of Frankenstein's origin. It seems that a number of things, like the reading of ghost stories, speculation about the re-animation of corpses or the creation of life, her personal anxieties and the memories of her sense of loss at the death of her own mother. THE INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE ● Mary Shelley dedicated Frankenstein to Godwin and used many of the ideas held by her parents,including social justice and education. She clearly sympathises with the monster but is afraid of the consequences of his actions. ● Even the influence of Percy Bysshe Shelley was important. He and Mary were interested in science, and particularly chemistry, so that by the time she wrote Frankenstein, she was aware of the latest scientific theories and experiments in the fields of chemistry, evolutionism and electricity.In fact Frankenstein tries to create a human being using electricity and chemistry without respecting the rules of nature. Inside there were many exhibits from several countries, including China, America, Canada and many more. On each industrial country’s exhibit they showcased their biggest designs, fabrics and their latest creations to show that their home nation was better than any other. FOREIGN POLICY: In the mid-19th century England was involved in: ● two opium wars: against China which was trying to suppress the opium trade ● Indian mutiny: because India was the most lucrative colony of the British empire ● Crimean war: when Russia became too powerful against the Turkish empire. Britain and France got involved since they wanted her to limited Russia’s power in the area England gained access to five Chinese ports and the control of Hong Kong after the Second Opium War. British rule acquired greater responsibility after the Indian Mutiny. ● Florence Nightingale led a team of 38 nurses at Scutari base hospital during the Crimean War. Once back to England, she formed an institution for the development of the nursing profession. THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE: it was an agent in which progress, reforms and political stability coexisted with the poverty and injustice. The Victorians were great moralisers, they supported personal duty, hard work, decorum, respectability, chastity. Respectability was a mixture of morality and hypocrisy. The unpleasant aspects of society – dissolution, poverty, social unrest – were hidden under outward respectability. Victorian’, synonymous with prude, stood for extreme repression; even furniture legs had to be concealed under heavy cloth not to be ‘suggestive’. ● The powerful middle-class was obsessed with gentility and decorum (decorum: strict idea about authorities) ● Victorian private lives dominated by an authoritarian father. ● Women were subject to male authority; they were expected to marry and make home a ‘refuge’ for their husbands. ● Single women with a child were marginalised as ‘fallen’ women. EARLY VICTORIAN THINKERS: Evangelicalism: •Strict code of behavior, literal fruit of the Bible; •Dedication to humanitarian causes and social reform; •Base of Victorian emphasis upon moral conduct. Utilitarianism: ➔ an action is morale writer if it is the consequences that lead to happiness •Neglected human and cultural values. •Any problem could be overcome by reason. •Usefulness, happiness, avoidance of pain. Empiricism: ➔ happiness is a state of mind not a search for selfish pleasures •Legislation should try to help men develop their natural talents. •Progress came from mental energy. •Supported popular education, trade union organization, extension of representation to all citizens, and the emancipation of women. DARWIN AND THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION: •All living creatures have developed their forms through a slow process of change. •Favorable physical conditions determine the survival of a species, unfavorable ones its extinction. • Man evolved from a monkey. Darwin’s theory discarded the version of creation given by the Bible. THE OXFORD MOVEMENT: •A reaction of British Catholics to the challenges of science by returning to the ancient doctrines and rituals •Revival of religion. THE VICTORIAN NOVEL CHARLES DICKENS LIFE ● Was born in Portsmouth in 1812 and died in 1870. ● He was considered the greatest English novelist of the Victorian era. ● He populated his novels and other works with dozens of distinctive characters. “Oliver Twist" 1837-1839 - Style: no judgment, irony in the description + names and surnames - - Plot: ➔ Oliver is an orphan born in a workhouse, his mother died in childbirth and his father is unknown ➔ Terrible conditions in the workhouse, kids suffer constantly from hunger ➔ The children drew lots and he was chosen unfortunately by the other kids to ask for some more food→this caused a furious reaction from the officials→seen as a form of protest, considered a rebel ➔ The officials of the workhouse offered 5 pounds to any person wishing to take on Oliver ➔ Firstly, a man wanted to take him to work as a chimney sweeper, but he refused because he didn’t want to die, so he was taken by an undertaker ➔ The other kids who worked for the undertaker and the wife treated him badly because they were jealous→the wife gave him dog food ➔ One day Oliver fought with a boy who mocked his mother so he lost his job ➔ He ran away to London, where he was involved with a gang of thieves, led by Fagin ➔ On his first mission as a pickpocket, he got arrested → he was honest and naïve, pure heart ➔ He was looked after by Mr. Brownlow, the victim of the theft ➔ Fagin and his gang were very determined to recapture Oliver → Monks, one of Fagin’s accomplices was in reality Oliver’s brother and they both were sons of a wealthy father who left most of his fortune to Oliver’s mother ➔ Monks wanted to kill Oliver in order to get the entire inheritance ➔ Fagin was caught and sentenced to be hanged and Monks died in prison ➔ Oliver could finally enjoy a peaceful life in the countryside, free from the cruelty of the workhouse and of Fagin Themes ➔ Social criticism ➔ Cruelty of the workhouses ➔ Exploitation of children ➔ “Twist” recalls how he is all the time twisted around by circumstances or by people he comes into contact with ➔ Minor labor (from the New Poor Law) was legal → also Verga writes about this theme in “Rosso Malpelo”, where he presents the kid through the eyes of the community, who sees the boy as nothing more than a brute unworthy of any consideration “OLIVER TWIST” : The workhouse ● the parochial world of the workhouse is revealed ● is described the criminal world , with pickpockets ● the people live in dirty , squalid slums ● is described the world of the Victorian middle class Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse and his mother died immediately after his birth. He was taken by attendants who announced his arrival into the workhouse by sticking a badge and a ticket to him: he was brought out as an orphan by the parish authorities. Authorities at the workhouse send Oliver to a branch-workhouse for “juvenile offenders against the poor-laws.” The overseer, Mrs. Mann, receives an adequate sum for each child’s upkeep, but she keeps most of the money and lets the children go hungry, sometimes even ● He became popular as a novelist in 1880 when he published lots of novels, like The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE PLOT ➔ The novel is the portrayal of good and evil , and its characters, Jekyll and Hyde, are stereotypes of people who are good and evil. As Jekyll has lived a virtuous life, his face is handsome, his hands are white and his body is larger than Hyde. Since Hyde is pure hate and evil , he is pale , his hands are dark and he gives an impression of deformity .All the novel takes place in London in 1870 and at the time London had a double nature and reflected the hypocrisy of Victorian society. Story of the door ● Chapter 1, this is the beginning of the novel. The first chapter highlights the proper, respectable, eminently Victorian attitudes of Enfield and Utterson. The text describes these men as reserved, so reserved, in fact, that they can enjoy a lengthy walk during which neither man says a word. Declining to indulge their more impulsive thoughts and feelings, they display a mutual distaste for sensation and gossip. They steer away from discussing the matter of Hyde once they realize it involves someone Utterson knows. The Victorian value system largely privileged reputation over reality, and this prioritization is reflected both in the narrator’s remarks about Utterson and Enfield and in the characters’ own remarks about gossip and blackmail. In a society so focused on reputation, blackmail proves a particularly potent force, since those possessing and concerned with good reputations will do anything they can to preserve them. Thus, when Hyde tramples the little girl, Enfield and the crowd can blackmail him into paying off her family; Hyde’s access to a respectable man’s bank account leads Enfield to leap to the conclusion that Hyde is blackmailing his benefactor. In this chapter Stevenson highlights his character’s inability to express and come to terms with the events that they have witnessed. Jeckyll’s experiment Chapter 10, here the mystery about Jekyll/Hyde is solved by Jekyll himself, who explains his experiments in a narrative left laboratory for Mr Uttersons. The theme of the double is one of the most important. Jekyll is a mixture between god and bad, he is respectable. Hyde is a pure evil; he is shorter and thinner than Jekyll because the good part was stronger than the bad part. Here there is a change of focus, the mysteries of the novel are no longer seen from Utterson's point of view but are seen from the point of view of Jekyll and Hyde; By changing perspective in this way, all doubts are clarified. This chapter offers a transcription of the letter Jekyll leaves for Utterson in the laboratory. Jekyll writes that upon his birth he possessed a large inheritance, a healthy body, and a hard working, decent nature. By the time he was fully grown, he found himself leading a dual life, in which his better side constantly felt guilt for the transgressions of his darker side. When his scientific interests led to mystical studies as to the divided nature of man, he hoped to find some solution to his own split nature. Jekyll insists that “man is not truly one, but truly two,” and he records how he dreamed of separating the good and evil natures. Jekyll reports that, after much research, he eventually found a chemical solution that might serve his purposes. Buying a large quantity of salt as his last ingredient, he took the potion. At first, he experienced incredible pain and nausea. But as these symptoms subsided, he felt vigorous and filled with recklessness and sensuality. He had become the shrunken, deformed Mr. Hyde. He hypothesizes that Hyde’s small stature owed to the fact that this persona represented his evil side alone, which up to that point had been repressed. Upon first looking into a mirror after the transformation, Jekyll-turned-Hyde was not repulsed by his new form; instead, he experienced “a leap of welcome.” He came to delight in living as Hyde: Transforming himself into Hyde became a welcome outlet for Jekyll’s passions. Jekyll furnished a home and set up a bank account for his alter ego, Hyde, who soon sunk into utter degradation. But each time he transformed back into Jekyll, he felt no guilt at Hyde’s dark exploits, though he did try to right whatever wrongs had been done. It was not until two months before the Carew murder that Jekyll found cause for concern. While asleep one night, he involuntarily transformed into Hyde—without the help of the potion—and awoke in the body of his darker half. This incident convinced him that he must cease with his transformations or risk being trapped in Hyde’s form forever. after a murder committed by Hyde, Jeckyll, sorry and kneeling to God, decided he never wanted to transform himself again. To finish the transformations, Jekyll took a double portion of the potion: Hyde became stronger while Jekyll became weaker and Hyde commits suicide . The actual nature of the sins of Hyde and Jekyll turns out to be less important than Stevenson's broader point that the lure of the dark side constitutes a universal part of our human nature. We are all Jekyll, desperately trying to keep our Hyde in check. Aestheticism and Decadence OSCAR WILDE He ended the Victorian age and opened the new one (1900). LIFE ● He was born in 1854 in Dublin; ● He was an Aestheticist so he followed the “Art for Art” a thought line who wants to search the beautiful in everythings; ● He was a Dandy: in the sense of that he was an aristocrat man for his behavior not for his heredity; ● He was also a witty so he criticized his society by using irony in counter with Steavenson who tries to not offend his society; ● Wilde was an important play writers; ➔ “The picture of Dorian Grey” 1891; ● He is also famous for his aphorisms like “I have nothing to declare except my Genius” that was an aphorism who underline his figure of dandy (he is a genius between the society); ● He dies in 1900. “THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY” This novel was setted in London at the end of 19st century. ➔ In this way it reflects the reality in which Oscar Wilde lives. Plot The protagonist is Dorian Gray, a young man whose beauty fascinates a painter, Basil Hallward, who decides to paint his portrait. Under the influence of the brilliant, but corrupt, Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian throws himself into a life of pleasure. While the young man's desires are satisfied, including that of eternal youth, the signs of age, experience and vice appear not on Dorian but on the portrait. Dorian makes use of everybody, even letting people die because of his insensitivity. When the painter sees the corrupted image of the portrait, Dorian kills him. Later Dorian wants to free himself of the portrait, witness to his spiritual corruption, and stabs it but, in doing so, he kills himself. In the very moment of Dorian's death, the picture returns to its original purity, and Dorian's face becomes withered, wrinkled, and loathsome. Characters Dorian: prefigure the idea of beautiful; Watton: is a brilliant speaker and a dandy man (wild sees himself in him); Basil: a painter who falls in love with Dorian’s beauty. The moral of the story: 1. Every excess must be punished and nobodies can escape from reality ➔ Dorian destroys the pictures but he can’t escape so he died; 2.Wilde wants underline and denunciate the corruption/immorality of middle class; 3.Art is eternal and on the contrary mens die ➔ Aesthetic movement influence. “THE PREFACE” The Preface is a series of epigrams, or concise, ironic sayings, that express the major points of Oscar Wilde’s aesthetic philosophy. In short, the epigrams praise beauty and repudiate the notion that art serves a moral purpose. ➔ manifest of the Aesthetic Movement • The preface is composed of some sentences apparently without any links • “ART FOR ART’S SAKE” (sort of motto of the aesthetic movement) during the Victorian age art was linked to morality, respectability • His preface outlines his philosophy of art, based on the principles of Aestheticism: art is neither moral nor immoral, it has no moral purpose, but beauty in itself is a supreme value. • Dorian's sins and his hedonistic life lead to his own destruction • Dorian's double life is only a sign of his hypocrisy; he uses his innocent appearance to be accepted in society and also to fulfill his desires without paying the consequences. The age go anxiety the first world war left Britain in a disillusioned and cynical mood: ● some soldiers celebrated their return home with a frantic search for pleasure ● other were haunted by a sense of guilt for the horrors of trench warfare Writers like Forster became averse to political relationships based on equality and feeling. Scientists and philosophers destroyed the old , predicable universe which had sustained the Victorians in their optimistic outlook . The influence of Freud The first set of new ideas had been introduced by Freud in his essay The interpretation of Dreams. Freud’s view of the developing psyche emphasized the power of the unconscious to affect behavior ; the discovery that man’s action could be motivated by irrational forces of which he might know nothing was very disturbing. The effects in the sphere of family life were deep: the relationship between parents and children was altered; the Freudian concept of infantile sexuality focused attention on the importance of early development , and childhood regained a status it had only in the pages of Rousseau. Also Freud provided a new method of investigation of the human mind through the analysis of dreams and the concept of “free association “. After years Jung continued Freud’s studies and added the concept of collective unconscious, a sort of cultural memory containing the universal images and beliefs of the human race. Jung said that only the psychologist or the poet could understand the symbols of figures and could explain them. The theory of relativity Einstein’s theory of relativity discarded the concepts of time and space, which he saw as subjective dimensions. As a consequence , the world view lost its solidity and the scientific revolution was complemented by verbal experimentation and the exploration of memory in literature. The idea of time , like Einstein, was also questioned by James and Bergson. ● James held that our mind records every single experience as a continuous flow of the already into the not ye. ● Bergson made a distinction between historical time and psychological time. the historical one is external , linear and measured in terms of the spatial distance . The psychological is internal , subjective, and measured by the relative emotional intensity of a moment . what was the big problem of the time? THE PICTURE OF MAN ● to Freud man was a pat of nature, a biological and psychological phenomenon ● to Marx he was the outcome of social and economic forces ● Nietzsche that said “God is dead” snd he substituted Christian morality with a belief in human power and perfectibility . CLIL: UNCONSCIOUS , FREUD Freud developed his first theory of the psyche in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) , in which he stated that the unconscious is where dreams and all the automatic thoughts that arise spontaneously without a recognisable cause are formed. the unconscious is where the forgotten memories lie in a dormant state and they may become accessible to the conscious mind at a later time. Freud believed that out personality develops through interaction between the three main parts of the human mind: ● ID ● EGO ● SUPEREGO ID: the most primitive ; ID are all the inherited components of personality we are born with, including the sex instinct . The ID operates entirely unconsciously ; it doest not change with time or experience. EGO: is the rational; the pragmatic part of our personality. it is less primitive than the ID and is both conscious and unconscious; it represents what may be called reason and common sense. SUPEREGO: is concerned with social rules and morals , and covers that may would refer to as conscience develops around the age of 3-5 and it consists of two systems: ● the conscience that is the part that can punish the ego by making it feel guilty ● the ideal self that creates an imaginary picture of how you ought to be, and deals with ambition and social behaviour, including how to treat others and how to be a useful member of society. Finally , according to Freud, the ID , EGO ,SUPEREGO are in constant conflict so that adult personality and behavior are derived directly from the results of these internal childhood struggles. Second World War When war began in 1939 in Britain evacuation schemes were organized to move people , especially children , from the towns and cities . ● April 1940: Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark by sea and air, because about a third of Germany’s iron supply came from Scandinavia. The Prime Minister Chamberlain resigned in 1940 and Churchill took over. The British ordered the retreat of their troops to Dunkirk , where they had to be lifted from the beaches by Royal Navy ships and private boats whose owners volunteered to bring back our boys. Operation Sea Lion After ,Hitler was planning the invasion of Britain, the Operation Sea Lion . The German air force had to put Britain’s defense in the Southeast out of action , in order to open the way for the sea invasion. ● 1940: the battle of Britain saw English and German bombers fighting in the skies over Sussex and Kent. The battle was won by Britain but Hitler changes his strategy and ordered the Blitz : an intense bombing of civilian targets in London and other cities , with the aim of weakening the enemy. 1941: Operation Barbarossa ; German forces advanced south and east , and in Africa General Rommel forced the British army to retreat. In June , Hitler decided to declare war on the Soviet Union because he wanted to get the oilfields in the Caucasus region .The so-called Operation Barbarossa was the largest military operation in history snd would consume Germany’s resources for the rest of the war. December 1941: Japan bombed the US fleet in Pearl Harbour. Roosevelt declared war on Japan , and Germany declared war on America. November 1942: Montgomery defeated Rommel at El_Alamein July 1943: The Allies landed in Sicily led by General Patton . After The Allies continued to score victories against the Germans , also helped by the science of sonar , radar and the enigma code-breaking computer. 1944: The Allies entered Rome and decided to open a western front in France Operation Overlord 6th june 1944: the D-day. The Germans retreated across France and counter-attacked at the battle of the bulge in the Belgian Ardennes in december. General Patton’s forces played a key role in defeating the German counter-attack , after which they want across the Rhine River and into Germany. —- THE END OF THE WAR 30th april 1945: Hitler commited suicide , and Berlin fell on 2nd may. At the Yalta Conference in Crimea in February 1945, Roosevelt , Churchill and Stalin made important decisions concerning the future progress of the war and the post-war world. The war ended in Europe on 8th may 1945 but it took another trarre months to defeat Japan in the Far East . Victory come only with the explosion of two atomic bombs on the Japanese towns of ● Hiroshima ● Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August MODERN POETRY First decade of the 20th century was a period of extraordinary originality and vitality in poetry. A variety of trends and currents expressed the nature of modern experience: ● The Georgian period; ● The War poets; ● Imaginist poets; ● he wrote some sonnets; ● he went to the trenches in Greece; ● in his life was lucky and unlucky, he wanted to fight but he died before he could do it; ● he suffered from fever; ● his sonnets became famous because they were used to convince young people to enlist; ● these sonnets are full of enthusiasm but also awareness of the difficult and the risk of war, so they were used as a mean of propaganda Works His reputation as a war poet is linked to the five sonnets of 1914 in which he advanced the idea that «war is clean and cleansing». He thought that, during a conflict, only the body can suffer and death is a reward. The publication of Brooke’s war sonnets coincided with his death in 1915and made him famous like a young romantic hero who inspired patriotism. THE SOLDIER The tone is neither dramatic nor dark, it’s quiet restful because there’s a sort of idealisation of people who go fighting for their own country, in fact it starts with ‘If I should die’, so he is directly speaking about his own experience as a soldier and he is aware of the fact that people who go fighting may die, in fact there’s a sort of romantic idea of war but it is not unrealistic, he know that you may die and in fact the poem starts with the probability that he could die. He is thinking about dying in a foreign field where he goes fighting, but he will be forever in England because there’s the corpus of an English soldier and this will be able to transmit to that land whatever he got from England. Now he is speaking about him but also to all the soldiers that may die. So the body of soldiers who die in a foreign field will make this foreign field even richer, but speaking about himself he says that he will be a dust. There are no references to the horror of the war, but a description of the beauty of England and of the positive values that England is able to transmit, just flowers, love air, rivers... it makes us think about Wordsworth poems, such as The Lake District. England transformed him into a courageous, brave and proud man. In the first line he is directly speaking to the reader and people who are at home with the word ‘think’, so they want to make people that are at home aware of what living and dying in a foreign country is like. Even death is not seen as something negative, but makes the person who dies part of the eternal mind, because dying to defend your own country is the only way a man has to be able to reward England for what he has received. According to him, the body that suffers is the only way a man has to reward his own country for what he has received from the country, in the first stanza there’s a description of what he has received: the ability of loving, the capability of bring positive, and because of this he is ready to die for his own country. He has ‘her sights and sounds’, this ‘her’ is referred to England there’s a personification of the country. England is represented as a mother who feeds her children and teaches them how to live, how to love, how to be brave enough to go fighting. The atmosphere is a positive one, because the words are love, happiness, dreams, gentleness and even though he will die in a foreign country he will forever remain English because his heart and his qualities are English.The image of death, seen as a noble act, is a death able to give the person who dies glory and immortality. In conclusion dying for the homeland is glorious because it is like bringing a part of the latter to a foreign country. The tone of the poem is patriotic, nostalgic and romantic. The structure is an Italian sonnet, two quatrains and two tercets. WILFRED OWEN LIFE ● 1893 - 1918; ● He was a disciple of Sassoon because he was convinced of the importance of the war; ● Sassoon was hospitalized, he was very dangerous because in the trenches he expressed his ideas against war. He was kept in hospital instead of letting him fighting in the trenches because he convinced soldiers not to fight so it was considered a traitor. He convinced Owen that that type of war was unnecessary; ● Owen write some poets about the uselessness of war; ● He was unlucky because he died in a machine gun attack just some days before the armistice so he couldn’t see the end of the war. Works His poems are painful and are about men who have gone mad or men who are clinically alive although their bodies have been destroyed. He uses a lot of assonances and alliterations that give the poems a haunting quality.The poet denounces the evils of the war and the pity of the war. His poetry is not about heroes, it is not a patriotic poetry and it is not consolatory; on the contrary, his poetry is just about War and the pity ofWar. He wants to awaken people's conscience, he also criticizes war and propaganda. Dulce et Decorum est The poem is based on the poet's experience of the horrors of war in the trenches and it is an attempt to communicate the pity of War to future generations. The Latin title means "it is sweet and honorable; it is a quotation from the Latin poet Horace. He illustrates the brutal everyday struggle of a company of soldiers, focuses on the story of one soldier's agonizing death, and discusses the trauma that this event lett behind. The speaker begins with a description of soldiers, bent under the weight of their packs like beggars, their knees unsteady, coughing like poor and sick old women, and struggling miserably through a muddy landscape. They turn away from the light flares (a German tactic of briefly lighting up the area in order to spot and kill British soldiers), and begin to march towards their distant camp. The men are so tired that they seem to be sleeping as they walk. Many have lost their combat boots, yet continue on despite their bare and bleeding feet. The soldiers are so worn out they are essentially disabled; they don't see anything at all. They are tired to the point of feeling drunk, and don't even notice the sound of the dangerous poison gas shells dropping just behind them. Somebody cries out an urgent warning about the poison gas, and the soldiers fumble with their gas masks, getting them on just in time. One man,however, is left yelling and struggling, unable to get his mask on. The speaker describes this man as looking like someone caught in fire or lime (an ancient chemical weapon used to effectively blindopponents). The speaker then compares the scene-through the panes of his gas-mask and with poison gas filling the air - to being underwater, and imagines the soldier is drowning. The speaker jumps from the past moment of the gas attack to a present moment sometime afterward, and describes a recurring dream that he can't escape, in which the dying soldier races toward him in agony. The speaker directly addresses the audience, suggesting that if readers could experience their own such suffocating dreams (marching behind a wagon in which the other men have placed the dying soldier, seeing the writhing of the dying soldier's eyes in an otherwise slack and wrecked face, and hearing him cough up blood from his ruined lungs at every bump in the path-a sight the speaker compares to the horror of cancer and other diseases that ravage even the innocent), they would not so eagerly tell children, hungry for a sense of heroism, the old lie that "it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country." MODERN NOVEL THE ADVENT OF MODERNISM The term Modernism refers to an international movement of the first decades of the 20th century; Modernism as literature is linked to the period of the outbreak of WWI. The horror of the war had completely changed the optimistic look and it was replaced by disillusionment and fragmentation; Modernists expressed the desire to find new fields of investigation (technology, urbanization and mass communication). Modernism gave shape to the modern consciousness and expressed the nature of modern experience through forms of experimentations; The most common feature in Modernism are: ➔ Intentional distortion of shapes (Picasso and Guernica) ➔ the breaking down of limitations in space and time and the disruption of the linear flow of narrative verse; ➔ emphasis of subjectivity, in literature the objectivity of the omniscient third-person narrator is replaced by techniques as stream of consciousness; ➔ the use of allusive language and association of words; ➔ the intensity of the isolated moment or image to provide an insight into the essence of things; ➔ importance of unconscious as well as conscious life; ➔ need to reflect the complexity of modern urban life in artistic form Novelist and poets drew inspiration from classical as well as new cultures to create a new subjective mythology; Artists regarded the past as a source which they could reshape in an original way; For example James Joyce’s use of the stream of consciousness; English literature was becoming cosmopolitan; THE MODERN NOVEL ● He conveyed a vision of human fraternity and of the misery caused by poverty and deprivation . ● 1949: he published Nineteen eighty-four NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR novel that describes a future world divided into three blocks: ● Oceania ● Eurasia ● Eastasia The oppressive world of Oceania is ruled by The Party which is led by a figure called Big Brother . The story takes place in a terrifying London in the year 1984;Orwell’s aim was to work on a memory that every reader was likely to have and he wants the reader to see the class distinctions. themes ● memory; ● mutual trust; ● decency; ● tolerance; ● morality. Big brother is watching you meaning of Big Brother : The phrase refers to the government’s surveillance of the people with listening devices and cameras, in a totalitarian society, where Big Brother is the head of the totalitarian regime. Everyone in this society is under surveillance by the authorities, which reminds people of an endless catchphrase “Big Brother is watching You,” showing a dictator’s mindset of a Big Brother. Generally, the idea conveys a line of propaganda, meaning citizens have to follow what a dictatorial government wants them to do, and if they do not, Big Brother will know, as it spies on them all the time. is the beginning of the novel and gives an insight into life in London, the capital in Oceania: totalitarian state where men have lost control of their inner being and the only person who tries to resist indoctrination in the protagonists is Smith. On a bitter April day in London, Oceania, Winston Smith arrives at his small apartment on his lunch break. The face of Big Brother is everywhere. It is immediately obvious, through Winston's musings, that the political weather of Winston's London is grim and totalitarian. Winston pours himself a large drink and sets about to commit an act punishable by death — starting a diary. He believes he is fortunate because a small corner of his apartment is hidden from the telescreen — a device that allows him to be viewed and heard twenty-four hours a day by the authorities — or Big Brother. Here is where he begins the diary.Winston is stuck by a pang of writer's block when he suddenly realizes that he doesn't know for whom he is writing the diary. In his panic, he begins to write a stream-of-consciousness account of a recent trip to the movies. While writing this, he has a memory of a significant happening earlier in the week, in which he was simultaneously attracted to and repelled by a young woman working in his building. He felt as though she was following him. He also remembers sharing a brief moment with O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party, an encounter in which Winston believes that O'Brien attempted to show solidarity with him against the tyranny of Big Brother. He continues writing, this time with more substantive material about his feelings on the current environment in which he lives. He is interrupted by a knock at the door. One of the most important themes of 1984 is governmental use of psychological manipulation and physical control as a means of maintaining its power. This theme is present in Chapter I, as Winston’s grasping at freedom illustrates the terrifying extent to which citizens are not in control of their own minds. The telescreens in their homes blare out a constant stream of propaganda, touting the greatness of Oceania and the success of the Party in ruling it. Each day citizens are required to attend the Two Minutes Hate, an intense mass rally in which they are primed with fury and hatred for Oceania’s rival nations, venting their own pent-up emotions in the process.