La letteratura vittoriana: la prima parte dell'età vittoriana, Schemi e mappe concettuali di Inglese

Scarica La letteratura vittoriana: la prima parte dell'età vittoriana e più Schemi e mappe concettuali in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Coming of Age (FIRST PART OF THE VICTORIAN AGE): • Performer: schede prima parte "The dawn of the Victorian Age" + p.299-304 + scheda analisi film Oliver Twist + scheda "Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights" + scheda schema + scheda "Catherine’s ghost" + scheda "I am Heathcliff". Riassunto presente + schede prima parte "The dawn of the Victorian Age" + scheda schema + scheda mappa brano Oliver Twist. LITERATURE – COMING OF AGE REFERENC ES Performer: SCHEDE PRIMA PARTE "The dawn of the Victorian Age" + p.299-304 + scheda analisi film Oliver Twist + scheda "Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights" + scheda schema+ scheda "Catherine’s ghost" + scheda "I am Heathcliff". TIME 1837-1901 (19th-century) THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE The Victorian age (complex&contradictory)= progress, stability, social reforms + poverty, injustice, social unrest. Victorians= moralists, bc they faced many problems and tried to solve them, by promoting a code of values reflecting their ideal world (based on hard work, respectability, charity) and thus escaping the sad reality. Rules= same in all social classes, but respected especially by the upper and middle classes, having political and economic power. Work (able to grant the possession of properties, servants etc.) + respectability (that is a mixture of morality, hypocrisy, severity and conformity to social standards) were very important values. Good manners + philanthropy ("stray children, fallen women and drunk men") also had a relevant meaning. The Victorian family was patriarchal: the husband had power and women could only dedicate themselves to the education of children/housework. They had to be chaste and everyone had to repress sexuality in all its forms, also in art and language (otherwise= exclusion from society). [Compromise= "social contract" in which people behaved in a certain way, in order to hide from themselves and from each other the dark, sad reality.] THE VICTORIAN NOVEL WRITERS: • Jane Austen and George Eliot (daily lives and values of women in society); • Early-Victorian novel= Dickens (social themes); • Mid-Victorian novel= Emily and Charlotte Brontë (psychological themes); • Late-Victorian novel= Wilde (nearer to European naturalism). During the Victorian age-> communion of interests/opinions between writers and readers, also bc of the growth of middle classes, avid of literature (circulating libraries). Through periodicals, writers were in contact with their public. Novels= main form of literature and entertainment. Novelists had a moral and social aim= reflect the changes caused by the Industrial Revolution + the struggle for democracy + the growth of towns. They depicted society in a realistic way and denounced their evils in order to make readers aware of social injustices (no radicalism). Women were the majority of readers and also started writing under pseudonym, since writing was considered a "masculine art"-> e.g. Jane Austen and George Eliot (= Mary Ann Evans). THE MAIN FEATURES OF THE VICTORIAN NOVEL: life. Edgar proposed to her and she accepted. She told Nelly she would not marry Heathcliff as he was socially inferior. Heathcliff overheard the conversation and disappeared to return 3 years later, handsome, rich and determined to take his revenge. He won the possession of Wuthering Heights gambling with Hindley, now a drunkard; then he eloped with Isabella, married her and treated her like a servant. Catherine died giving birth to a daughter, Cathy. Heathcliff kidnapped Cathy and obliged her to marry his spoilt son, Linton. Complete revenge since he became the owner of Thrushcross Grange, too. Nelly’s narrative ends here. Lockwood leaves Yorkshire and then finds out that Linton+Heathcliff are dead and Cathy+Hindley’s son, are going to get married, to live in peace and happiness. Nelly tells Lockwood that there are rumours in the neighbourhood that a young man and woman have been seen wondering together on the moors. ROMANTIC ELEMENTS: Wuthering Heights explores human passions at different levels. Creative or destructive in their consequences, they are presented in a state of purity and concentration. The spirit of Romanticism and its concern with the human soul are still present in Wuthering Heights in the correspondence between the violent passions of the characters and the wild natural landscape. GOTHIC ELEMENTS: Heathcliff= villain of some Gothic novels in his inhuman treatment of his wife and even his son. Other Gothic elements in the novel are: the sinister atmosphere of Wuthering Heights, Catherine’s ghost, the dream and the superstitions often mentioned. They want to convey the struggle between love-hate, order-chaos.* OPPOSITE PRINCIPLES: The novel is built around the contrast between the two Houses where the action takes place. Wuthering Heights (home of Heathcliff)= severe, gloomy and brutal in aspect and atmosphere. Thrushcross Grange (home of the bourgeois Lintons)= stability, genteel refinement, kindness and respectability. Two mansions= two opposing forces: the principle of storm and energy and the principle of calm and settled assurance; though opposed, they are complementary and ideally tend to unity. With the marriage between Hareton and Cathy-> harmony at the end of the novel, after the consummation of Heathcliff’ s revenge and his death. THE THEME OF DEATH: Death is an important theme of the novel. Unlike other Victorian novels, where death is a moment of forgiveness, in Wuthering Heights death is a liberation of the spirit. The novel closes with the vision of the graveyard where Catherine and Heathcliff are buried, but the author says they are sleeping, not dead. A COMPLEX NARRATIVE: • It employs two narrators: 1) Mr. Lockwood, the polite visitor from the city, is the outsider; apart from a few occasions when he narrates what he sees, he simply writes down, in the form of a journal, what Nelly Dean tells him. 2) Nelly Dean is the second narrator, closely involved in the story and entirely reliable; other characters occasionally narrate to him. • No chronological order: we start with the end of the story + narrative within the narrative + flashbacks. • Flowing of human life into nature= sense of verisimilitude + suspense and mythical atmosphere. • Poetry and mysticism balanced by Nelly's concreteness. ACHIEVEMENT IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE: The novel marked the departure from the observation of society towords the description of the individual personality, by anticipating the narrative technique of the novelists of the early 20th century. STUDIED EXTRACTS BY EMILY BRONTË CATHERINE’S GHOST: Mr. Lockwood reads three diaries with the names Catherine Earnshaw, C. Heathcliff and C. Linton written on, during his forced stay at Wuthering Heights (->storm). He then fells asleep and is woken up from a nightmare by what he thinks to be a branch tapping on the windows. In order to reach the branch, Lockwood pushes his hand through the window, but instead of grabbing a branch, he touches an ice-cold hand. As he struggles to free his hand from the cold grasp, a voice (Catherine Linton) cries out "Let me in - let me in!" Unable to free himself from the ghost, he forces the wrist on the broken glass, tricks the ghost into letting go, then piles books against the hole. When they begin to topple, he screams, which draws Heathcliff into the chambers. He is angry that someone let L. sleep in that room. L. Says he has found the name scratched on the windowsill not to reveal he read the diaries. Gothic elements= setting, atmosphere of gloom and mystery, the exaggerated reactions, supernatural elements, the dark and melancholy hero. However, the writer uses them to*. I AM HEATHCLIFF: vedi paragrafo riassunto