La Gran Bretagna Vittoriana e l'opera di Charles Dickens e Oscar Wilde, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica La Gran Bretagna Vittoriana e l'opera di Charles Dickens e Oscar Wilde e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! VICTORIAN TIMES BRITAIN UNDER VICTORIA The first years of Victoria’s reign were a period of social reforms and political developments, material progress and imperial expansion. The merits of these achievements belonged to the queen who reigned constitutionally, avoiding the storm of revolution which spread all over Europe in 1848. During these years, there was a strong working-class movement calling for social reform. The Great Reform Act of 1832 had extended the vote to almost all male members of the middle classes. The Ten Hours Act of 1847, which limited working hours to ten a day for all labourers. On a political level, the two main parties were the Liberals, formed from the former whigs, and the Conservatives, from the Tories. The Liberals promoted a strong campaign to make corn accessible to all, Corn Laws in 1846. Imperial expansion, especially India, production of cocoa, coffee and diamonds. CITY LIFE By the middle of the 19th century, Britain had become a nation of town dwellers due to its industrial development. The census of 1851 recorded half of the population of Britain living in towns, and finding solutions to problems linked to the overcrowded urban environment was the target of Victorian political and social reforms. The majority of Victorian city poor lived in unhealthy towns overrun by disease and crime. Here the mortality rate was high and disastrous effect, especially on children’s healthy. Epidemics of cholera and typhoid. Modern hospitals were built and professional organisations were founded to regulate and control medical educations and research. The gradual introduction of services such as running water, gas, street lighting and paved roads. Public houses, music halls, parks and stadium were build, also prisons, police stations and boarding school. THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE The Victorian Age was a complex and contradictory era: it was the age of progress brought about the industrial revolution, the rising wealth of the upper and middle classes, stability and great social reforms. It was also characterised by poverty, injustice and social unrest. In an age which believed in progress, it seemed natural to believe that material progress would result from hard work. The family was a patriarchal unit where the husband represented authority and the role of women was the education of children and the management of the house. CHARLES DICKENS The first part of the Victorian age was linked to social and humanitarian novels, whose main representative was Charles Dickens. He has a very unhappy childhood and started to work at the age of 12, than he became a newspaper report. The protagonist of his novel are: exploited children, criminal world and the Victorian middle classes. His aims are: to draw attention, to public abuses, depiction of Victorian society in its variety (richness and sqallor) OLIVER TWIST Oliver Twist is a poor boy of unknown parents; he is brought up in a workhouse in an unhuman way. He run away to London. A gang of young pickpockets lead by Dodger and trained by Fagin. One day, Mr. Brownlow is stricken by Oliver’s ragged appearance and after learning more about the boy, he decides to take him into his home. Oliver is eventual kidnapped by the gang and forced to commit a burgle. Than he is adopted by Mr Brownlow and at last receives kind and affection. Investigate are made about who Oliver really is and it is discovered that he has noble origins. This novel was setting in London which show on three different social levels: -the parochial world of the workhouse -the criminal world, poverty drives people to crime - the world of the middle class This novel was write to attack the cruelty of institutions, like the workhouse and of the individuals towards poor children. Childhood and the terrible effects of poverty on individual’s life are the other important themes in Oliver Twist. AESTHETICISM In the second half of the 19th century there were a new artistic and literary movement, Aestheticism. -it says that art had nothing to do with morality and didn’t have to be didactic; -it had to deal with the elevation of taste and the pursuit of beauty, which was the most important element in life -the famous motto ‘art for art sake’, the admiration of the sensual qualities of art In literature, Walter Pater said that art was the only means to stop time. He thought life would be lived I the spirit of art, felling intense experience, felling all kinds of sensations. The task of artist was to feel sensations, to be attentive to the attractive and the gracious, to express detachment from contemporary society. Oscar Wild claimed that life imitates art and show this concept presenting himself as dandy whose life ‘as a work of art’, the artist was the creator of beauty thing. OSCAR WILD Oscar Wild was born in Dublin in 1854. After attending Trinity college he went to Oxford. He became a disciple of Walter Pater, accepting the theory of ‘art for art sake’. After graduating, he moved to London, where he become a dandy, for his wit and his extravagant way of dressing. After he did a tour of United States and he married Costance Cloyd with whom he had two sons. He published the novel ‘the pictures of Dorian Gray’, after he developed an interest in drama. His novel and the tragedy were considerated immoral. Than he fell in love with Lord Alfred Douglas, he was accused of homosexual pratices and sentenced to two years of hard labour. After he was released he went to France where he spent the rest of his life in poverty, he died in 1900. THE PICTURES OF DORIAN GRAY Plot: the novel is set in London at the end of the 19th century. The protagonist is Dorian Gray, a young man whose beauty fascinates a painter, Basil Hallward. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian throws himself into a life of pleasure. Dorian Gray’s desires are satisfied, including the eternal youth, the signs of age appear on his portrait. When Basil sees the corrupted image of his portrait, Dorian kills him. Later Dorian wants to free himself of the portrait but he kills himself. In the very moment of Dorian’s death, the picture returns to its original purity, and Dorian’s face become old and imperfect. Characters: DORIAN GRAY, is the most important character of the novel, stands for the ideal of youth, beauty and innocence. His last name ‘gray’ suggest he is morally neigther black or white. He decides to lead a life of pleasure and sensations but in the end, his vanity and selfishness ruin him. LORD HENRY WOTTON: is a brilliant talker and an amoral aesthete, he believe youth is the most important value and expresses criticism of institutions. BASIL HALLWARD: he is an artist and falls in love with Dorian’s beauty and youth, the portrait he pants of his young friend is his best work, but he doesn’t want to exhibit it because he is afraid that it reflects his obsession with Dorian. Themes: the opening dialogue of the novel between Lord Henry and Basil focuses on the importance of beauty and appearance as the values in life, reflecting the motto of aestheticism ‘art for art sake’. This discussion leads Dorian to keeping his youth and beauty. The horrible corrupted picture represents the dark side of Dorian’s personality, his double. The contrast between reality and appearance is present the novel, whose moral is that every excess brings its own punishment and no one can escape reality. Style: the story is told by an obtrusive third person narrator. The characters reveal theme selves through what they say or what other people says of them, typical of drama. FREUD_ 1856-1939 Sigmund Freud developed ideas about the human mind. He was interested in helping people with mental illness. Freud was born in Moravia on 1856, after he and his family move to Vienna and he decided to go into a private practice to treat people with mental illness. Freud learned how to use hypnosis to treat his patients but he was unhappy with the results. Patients would just lie on a couch and talk about what was bothering them. To get well, patients had to remember and then deal with their childhood fears. 1900 Freud wrote a book called ‘the interpretation of dream’, he explained his ideas about the meaning of people’s dreaming. Freud also studied how children’s personalities develop. He was even asked to give lectures about his work in the United States. After he published his theory about how the human mind works. Many people agreed with his ideas, and many didn’t. Freud and his family left Vienna in 1937 to escape from Nazist, and he died of a cancer two years later. WORLD WAR 2_ 1939-1945 Britain was between the Italian fascism and the German Nazism. The British Prime Minister Chamberlain met Hitler after signing the Munich Agreement in 1938. This agreement permitted the German annexation of a part of Czechoslovakia. The war broke out in 1939 because German invaded Poland, after that, Britain and France declared war on Germany. In 1940 Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France fell to Germans. In Britain Chamberlain resigned in 1940 and Churchill became Prime Minister. The war saw the Allied power formed by France, Britain, USA and the Soviet Union. Against the Axis power who were Germany, Italy and Japan. In 1941 the German army was destroyed by the long Russian winter and the heroic resistance in Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad. Other important factors in Germany’s defeat were that the USA joined the allies in 1941, after a Japanese air-attack on the US navy base at Pearl Harbor. In 1943 the Soviet Red Army liberated some countries occupied by the Germans and American and Allied troops landed in Sicily. On 6th june 1944 there was the D-Day, when the Allied forces landed on the beaches near Dunkirk. In 1945 Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker and in may Germany surrounded. In 1945 the American President Truman order atomic bombs to be dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. WINSTON CHURCHILL Churchill was born in England in 1874, he travel a lot, in 1900 Churchill was elected to Parlament as a Conservative than he became a Liberal. From 1906 to 1922 he brought in employment old-age pension, and health laws that improved people’s lives. He update the British Navy, which than defeated the German Navy in the first wold war. Churchill became a Conservative again and by 1939, Nazi German was trying to take over Europe, and Churchill was put in charge of Britain’s war plans, and rest Prime Minister for the rest of the Second World War. Churchill asked the United States to help and also needed the Soviet Union’s help, to get it, Britain and the United States said that the Soviet Union could control Eastern Europe after the war. When the war ended Churchill lost the next election, he was made knight and he won the Noble Prize for the Literature, and he became an honorary American citizen. Churchill retired in 1955 and died in England in 1965