Scarica Jack London, Pinched e più Appunti in PDF di Cultura Anglo-Americana solo su Docsity! JACK LONDON, PINCHED He was born in San Francisco, California, in 1876, coming from a middle-lower class and not receiving a proper education. He tried to end University but after a year, he left it in order to participate to the GOLDEN RUSH. He wrote a lot about sociopolitical situations, becoming a famous journalist and novelist, embodied the myth of the self-made artist. Lascar novels made him very popular, considering himself as a pop-writer and being popular also with the mass (which considerate himself as a sort of literary superstar). This work could be considered as an autobiographical work. In 1909, he wrote the novel, autobiographical one, the rise and the fall of a young working-class man. Pinched concerned the life in prison in London, in which the protagonist was stuck in a penitentiary for 30 days. It is contained in one collection, on the road, which publication was in 1909 and it is the autobiographical narrative of London’s life as a tramp (person that lives from town to town, begging for life) in the 1890’s. Criticism has get found a sociological intention of being a tramp – misconception since London himself, at the beginning of another chapter, who does not denying sociological aspects, playing games. The way tramp travel through USA was illegally, in trains and without paying the bill. PINCHED – it takes places in 1894, following the biggest financial crisis of 1893. The author arrives in Niagara Falls, finding a place to sleep, being stop by the police and arrested – so put in jail for 30 days, deciding to collect materials, In order to take revenge against the corrupt system of justice. This work concerns the need to not come back into prison, leaving the situation after being released. The follow chapter is more focused of life in prison, giving the idea of penitentiary as social place but also society and micro-society among convicts, that mirrors the macro-society the convicts came from, especially capitalistic one – the minority overcomes the majority. We are going to read this novel by two different points of view: • SOCIOLOGICAL The first one is about VAGRANCY REGULATIONS, offense of people who are without means of support or domicile. It could be defined as a difficult concept in legal terms, because laws do not accept the presence of certain behaviors. Poverty is not a crime, according to the constitution of US. Instead there was a problem of vague of vagrancy regulations, deemed by severe punishments for people involved, which could be considered as unconstitutional behavior (THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT OF THE US CONSTITUTION – SECTION 1). New articles developed among this theme are developed by the NEW York Times and The Guardian. The second issue is about THE PENITENTIARY – prison, jail and penitentiary are all words which refer to the same semantic domain, yet, they mean different things. A penitentiary is characterized by two main features: prisoners live in unites separated from each other and employ their daytime working. • LINGUISTIC AND STYLISTIC SLANG IN JACK LONDON’S FICTION – social and stylistic subset of the larger informal vocabulary of US English. We have synonymical expression (1,2 – 3,4 not explained) or the use of inverted commas. Random House classification are structured in a precise way which aims at giving much information as possible in a very economical manner, using fields labors. Words are classified through different manners, like hobo, to beg in order to batter. Doss as lodges for the nights. Flop in order to describe the lie down for sleeping or rest. Kip – sleep or lodge. TRANSLATION SLANG – PIZZICATO Italian translation – words perfect equivalents, not providing a translation – good expedient to transpose a reality into another one or not? The second macro-thing is that the same thing is translate into two different
