La Regina Vittoria e l'età vittoriana, Appunti di Inglese

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QUEEN VICTORIA REIGN of WILLIAM IV In 1832: REFORM BILL – Franchise extended In 1833: FACTORY ACT – Limited hours of work In Education: school for working-class children In 1833: ABOLITION of SLAVERY In 1834: POOR LAW ACT – Set up of workhouses Sir Robert PEEL Tory Government As Prime Minister (1834-1835; 1841-1845) : -Penal Reform -Reform of the Tory Party – Conservative -Social Reforms: Mines Act; Factory Act -Acceptance of Reform Bill of 1832 -Economic Reform: Repeal of the Corn Law (which restricted the importation of foreign corn) -Reduced Taxes on Goods (enacting free exchange) Other Conservative Governments/ Prime Ministers: Disraeli - Lord Salisbury In 1867: Disraeli – Second Reform Bill: right of vote to the town laborers Trade Union Act In 1874-1880: Disraeli – period of depression, German predominance, unemployment, Irish problem In 1877: Queen Victoria Empress of India, Crisis of Near Orion, Expansion of Russia In 1886-1892: Lord Salisbury – England’s Splendid Isolation: no allies on the Continent LIBERAL GOVERNMENTS: GLADSTONE - 1st Government: 1868-1874: Public Health Act , Education Act, Emancipation of Religious Sects - 2nd Government: 1880-1885: Act for Ireland (rejected), 1884 – Third Reform Bill – agricultural laborers and miners got the vote - 3rd Government: 1886 – First Home Rule Bill (for Ireland: rejected) In 1901: Queen VICTORIA’s death In 1901-1910: EDWARD VII In 1910: GEORGE V In 1899-1902: Boer War; In 1905 General Election and Liberal Government In 1906: Foundation of the Labour Party The Irish Question THE VICTORIAN AGE His reign was the longest in history and Britain became the most powerful nation in the world. People began to live in cities and as they became crowded, citizens were forced to live in slums. More and more diseases develop. In 1832 the rst reform is created that deprives workers of their rights to defend their causes . For this the working class creates a Chartist movement .power is divided into two parties : 1. the conservatives , who defend the aristocracy and the middle classes. They wanted to maintain the existing institutions . They are represented by Sir Robert Peel and Benjamin Disraeli. 2. The Liberals, on the other hand, evolved from the Whigs, wanted free trade and were represented by Lord Palmerston andWilliam Gladstone. REFORM 1)corn laws (1815) keep the price of corn in Britain . There is widespread hunger . The Reformation was abolished in 1846 by Robert Peel . 2) The Ten Hours Act of 1847 limits the working day of women and children 3) various mining laws prohibit underground use of women and children 4) Primary education under Act 1870 gives all children the right to basic education 5) The Trade Union Act 1871 makes trade unions legal EMPIRE: the Victorian Empire extends from Canada to the west east of New Zealand. In 1876 Queen Victoria was declared Empress of India and to avoid rebellion several colonies were granted autonomous governments or are turned into dominions. VICTORIAN NOVEL : the novel became the art most capable of reflecting the complexity of the modern world and became the main source of entertainment for the educated bourgeoisie.- the idea of the linearity of the novel developed, given by serial publications in magazines. Many of the most important Victorian writers were women, and during the Victorian age, American prose tried to nd its independence from English Victorian prose. THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE (from Only Connect) The Victorian age was a complex and contradictory era in that it was an age of progress, stability and major social reforms and on the other hand, it was also characterized by poverty, injustice and social unrest. The Victorians were great moralisers: they faced a great number of problems and thus promoted a code of values that reflected the world as they wanted it to be, not as it really was, based on hard work, respectability and charity. These values were rened by the middle and upper classes, who had political and economic power, but were equally applicable to all strata of society. Indeed, one of the most important notions throughout the 19th century was the need to work hard. The idea of being respectable distinguished the middle class from the lower class.Respectability was a mixture of morality and hypocrisy, severity and conformity to social standards. Conformity to social standards implied the possession of good manners, owning a comfortable home with servants and carriage, regular attendance at church and Philanthropy was a widespread phenomenon; it catered to all kinds of poverty, to 'stray children, fallen women and drunken men' and absorbed the energies of thousands of Victorians, a large number of themwomen. The family was a patriarchal unit in which the husband represented authority and the key role of women was in the upbringing of children and the running of the home. Victorian society was deeply concerned about female chastity and single women with a child suffered the worst of society's punishments . Sexuality was generally repressed in its public and private forms. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) he was born in edinburgh in 1850 and from an early age suffered from tuberculosis and spent much of his time in bed. to improve his health he traveled extensively and these travels served him well in his writing. As an adult he moved to Samoa and died in 1894. Treasure Island (1883) was very successful and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Hyde (1886) earned him a reputation. He wrote several other books that were successful including The play central plot – the man who is both and isn't Ernest/earnest – presents a moral paradox. Earnest, misspelling for “Ernest”, means earnest, honest. None of the characters are really truthful. Characters are used to criticize Victorian prudery. What Wilde wants us to see as truly moral is really the opposite of earnestness: irreverence. Rudyard Kipling The mission of the colonizer The concept of the white man's burden' was exalted in the works of colonial writers like Rudyard Kipling, and the expansion of the Empire was often regarded as a mission. Every time the British took control over a territory, they felt they brought civilisation to the barbarian, faith to the heathen, wealth to the poor and law and social order to primitive societies. Rudyard Kipling's (1865-1936) poem 'The White Man's Burden', written in 1899 to give advice to the United States on the occasion of the annexation of the Philippines, contains the author's most famous phrase, 'the white man's burden', which made him the bard of the English Empire and came to symbolize the belief in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. The white man's burden In Kipling's work the British Empire acquired almost a mythical status. He exalted imperial power, whose purpose was to provide order and stability among the natives. He believed in the 'burden' of the British, who, as the elected race, had to carry civilisation all over the world and establish their government based on honor and dignity. In 1899 Kipling celebrated the American conquest of the Philippines in a poem, The While Man's Burden, which made him the bard of the British Empire. Two epics Kipling wrote epics rather than novels; his major works, Kim and 'Ihe Jungle Book, are a series of episodes held together by a central character: Kim and Mowgli, who both represent the citizen of two worlds, Kim is a novel about British India, but also a spy story set at a time when Russian expansion in Central Asia was a cause of concern for the British. The character of Mowgli, a child growing among wolves in the Indian jungle, appears in eight of the 15 stories of the Jungle Book. In spite of the imperialistic overtones of this book, Mowgli has become famous among children, especially thanks to the 1967 Disney lm. The short stories In his short stories Kipling often employed the device of the trame story, a narrative form popular at the turn of the century consisting of a story in which several tales are related. This technique was a reaction against the omniscient narrator in favour of a more ambivalent vision of the world. the story is told by a ctional character in different situations: in an army camp, on board ship, in an Indian hut. The 'frame situation is well described and this generally allows the writer to provide an ironic comment on the central story that follows. Style Kipling was a master in the handling of language: both his poetry and prose show his love for words and his ability to use them to convey feelings and emotions. He also excelled at portraying exponents of both the British ruling class and the natives.