L'età vittoriana: politica, società, arte e letteratura, Sintesi del corso di Inglese

Scarica L'età vittoriana: politica, società, arte e letteratura e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! QUEEN VICTORIA Came to the throne in 1837 (18 y.o.). Constitutional monarchy (64 years) stability in the country. Married Prince Albert + 9 children  their family life were a respectable model. Gave Albert the title of Prince Consort. Albert died and she had the Albert Memorial built in London. REFORMS 1832: The Great Reform Act: voting right extended to the large industrial towns. 13/18 y.o. = max. 72 hours a week of work. 1833: The Factory Act: 9/13 y.o. = max. 48 hours a week of work; 1834: The Poor Law Amendment Act: building of workhouses (places of work with board and lodging). price of corn went down in Ireland. 1846: Abolition of the Corn Laws (taxes on imported corn) by the Prime Minister Sir. Robert Peel: the 1867: The Second Reform Act: voting right extended to some male workers. 1872: Ballot Act: introduction of the secret ballot. CHARTISM Universal male suffrage○ Equal electoral districts○ Voting by secret ballot○ Pay for Parliamentarians and annual elections○ 1838: a group of radicals demanded, in a People's Charter: This democracy was too modern for that time  the Chartism failed. THE IRISH POTATO FAMINE 1845: Destruction of potato plants in Ireland (cause: bad weather). Famine deaths and emigrations to America. WORKHOUSES Places of work with awful board and lodging for poors, phisically/mentally sick, the elders and the disabled (hard life and work, sobriety  Puritan ideas). The government made it as awful, brutal, bad as possible, with the faith that poors would try to get out from there and improve their own conditions. Run by the Church. TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS Middle of the 19th century: 2nd wave of industrialisation. Great Exhibition (organised by Albert) at the Crystal Palace, to show England's power to the world. Then: other exhibitions Money, employed to build the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the London Underground for the transport of people and materials. 2) England and France VS China OPIUM WARS (China wanted to stop the opium trade): 1) England VS China England took 5 Chinese ports and the control of Hong Kong. INDIAN MUTINY: rebellion of Indians to the British rules. Britain supported the Italian independence from Austria. then) Turks, England and France VS Russia CRIMEAN WAR: originally) Turkish Empire VS Russia (too powerful) It was the 1st war narrated on journals. Florence Nightingale (the Lady with the Lamp), with a team of 38 nurses, went to the war zone in order to help English soldiers. FOREIGN POLICY THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE VICTORIAN AGE VICTORIAN AGE Pagina 1 A COMPLEX AGE Change, progress, stability + contradictions, poverty, injustice (Victorian compromise) ART: revival of Classicism and Gothic. RELIGION: Evangelicalism (influenced people Charities, civil and political actions). Believed in God, but also in progress and science. PHILANTROPY: increased Associations of volunteers, almost women of the middle-class. FREEDOM: freedom of coscience (optimism and national identity). RESPECTABILITY Was the image that working and middle class wanted to show to the society. Based on self-care and restraint, good manners, education and hygiene. Mantain an high social level, behind poverty, dissolution and hypocrisy. WOMEN: protected by men, because of their phisical weakness. But divine guides (inspiration to men) and morally and phychologically superior: they controlled the familiar finances and economy and reised children. SEX: seen as a bad action. Female chastity was essential for respectability: single women with children were called "fallen women". Nudity was censored in art (ES. Michelangelo, classic statues,…) and in literature and vocabulary. VICTORIAN AGE Pagina 2 - world of the Victorian middle class: people are respectable and aware of the moral values and the human dignity. The characters are caricaturized: symbols of the problems of the society and the difficulty of that time. He is always on the side of poor people and children. CHILDHOOD: children are the masters of adults, because they oppose themselves to the ugly world of industrialisation. Children were seen in a different way: innocent, poor, abused by the adults (this is the real problem). He said that the only tool they could use to survive is violence. THEMES: childhood, poverty, workhouses, social and economic difficulties of his time. Please Sir, I want some more Scene where Oliver asked for more food and he was punished. Hard Times PLOT: in Coketown, the educator Thomas Gradgrind, who believes in facts and statistics, founded a school which represses imagination and feelings, just as he educates his children Tom and Louisa. He marries Louisa with a rich banker, Josiah Bounderby, and Tom is brought to work in the Bounderby's bank, but he robs his employer andhe is obliged to leve his country. So Mr Gradgrind understands his mistake and leaves behind his materialistic mind. SETTING: imaginary city of Coketown (the term Coke comes from smoke), the riproduction of the real industrial towns in the mid-19th-century Victorian England. The upper class seem to be proud of the pollution of the town (symbol of productivity and industry). STRUCTURE: Divided in 3 sections, and in different chapters. 1 book) SOWING (semina): speaks about the materialistic education of Gradgrind and Bounderby. 2 book) REAPING (raccolta): deals with the results of this education (Tom = criminal; Louisa = sad wife). 3 book) GARNERING (guadagno): last part of the story, which reveals the instability of this system, mentality. CHARACTERS: represent the many defects of his time (exaggerates them with their name) and, through them, he wants to arouse the interest of the readers. Mr Gradgrind: grade (classe) + grind (disintegrare). Mr Bounderby: bound (canaglia). Denunciation novel towards the negative effects, the illness and the quallor of the insustrial society (materialism, utilitarism), the gap between riches and poors (unacceptable level of poverty). The main idea is the UTILITARISM (what are important are only the facts, not emotion, sensibility, creativity, but facts that bring only pleasure, not pain, because it's important to make money). The education system wants to destroy children's imagination and creativity. Dickens thinks that, if you allow people to become machines, you have no compassion and imagination and the world without these things could be terrible. VICTORIAN AGE Pagina 5 LIFE AND WORKS Lewis Carrol = pseudonym of Charles Dogson. Born in Cheschire, 1832. Happy childhood (interests, activities), called a true "wonderland" by himself. Euclid and His Modern Rivals Through the Looking-Glass (sequel), written for 3 little girls (Alice) Books for children: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Mathematician. Link between poetry (delightful personality of Carrol) and logic (mathematical personality of Dogson). Regarded as a man with a clever and abnormal mind with the heart of a normal child. He was affected by a mental neurological disease (1955: "Alice in Wonderland Syndrome"): he sees a different size of the things, which are smaller of bigger in the reality (like Alice's transformations). Creator of a nonsensical world, where the system of the time is extremised in its logical way, in order to focus on the absurdity of the world and, finally, to question and criticise the social and moral principles of Carrol's period. He loved children, was obsessioned: he took photos to some naked children  accused of pedophilia. ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND PLOT Alice, a young girl, dreams to follow a white rabbit in a hole  Wonderland. She meets strange creatures: Mad Hatter, March Hare, Cheshire Cat, King and Queen of Hearts. Finally, she wakes up in the real world. SETTING Strange creatures, animals acting like normal people.  Wonderland: imaginary crazy world (our world seen through the eyes of a child). In place  The real world: where Alice, at the beginning, follows the white rabbit. In time  indefinite, always in the day-time. Difficulty of a child to live in the adults' world. New way of living, different from the one of the real world. At the end of the voyage, Alice grows up and loses the childish imagination, so she can't stay in Wonderland  she wakes up in the real world.  Identity linked to growing up: when we grow up, we get our own identity (in the story, he identifies herself by the creatures, but she is insecure about her physical appearance: she becomes small, big…).  THEMES STYLE Puns, details of typography (capital letters, spacing,…) He adds the poetic language (parody of nursery rhymes and songs). THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS Specular image of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS Begins on the 4th of May Warm spring day Begins on the 4th of November (6 months later) Cold autumn night LEWIS CARROL VICTORIAN AGE Pagina 6 Warm spring day Cold autumn night THEME: the playing cards THEME: the chess VICTORIAN AGE Pagina 7