La Rivoluzione Gloriosa e l'Inizio del XVIII Secolo in Inghilterra, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica La Rivoluzione Gloriosa e l'Inizio del XVIII Secolo in Inghilterra e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! 6 ottobre LETTERATURA INGLESE, From the Enlightenment to the Sublime – Part 1 Sublime  pre-romanticism THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION Because there was no direct male heir to the throne, James II, brother to Charles II came to rule. He was a very openly devout Catholic and he was unapologetic about it. The English were not open to having a Catholic monarch rule over their very Protestant country. The succession of James II to the throne led to the “Exclusion Crisis” which divided Parliament among the Tories and the Whigs . The Tories wanted James to rule and the Whigs wanted to “exclude” James from succession. This led to the “Monmouth Rebellion” which was organised by James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth (Charles II’s eldest illegitimate son) to stop James from ruling. It was unsuccessful and the Duke was beheaded. James II then executed 320 supporters of the Duke of Monmouth and then sent another 800 to the West Indies, which with its primitive conditions was tantamount to a death sentence. James II used this opportunity to consolidate his power and to exercise more of his “divine right of kings”. He dismissed the Earl of Rochester, Lord of the Treasury, when he would not recant Anglicanism. He used his power to appoint Roman Catholics to top posts. Everything that Elizabeth I had done to keep Protestantism as the religion of England was being stripped/thwarted. More than that, Catholicism was being imposed without any toleranc e for opposition. When James II had a son, and it was clear that there was another Catholic-in-waiting to succeed to the English throne, Parliament and the English had reached their boiling point. It was clear that James II believed as King he had the right to impose his will on all matters and that he was nothing short of a despot who would stop at nothing to get his way. A list of grievances was drawn up against James II including cruel and unusual punishments (he had people who opposed him hanged, drawn and quartered), he suspended laws passed by Parliament, he intimidated Anglican bishops, he kept invoking his divine right as king and usurping Parliamentary law.  As Parliament (along with other influential leaders in England) searched for some way to depose the king , it came to their attention that James II had a daughter who was a Protestant and who was married to William III, Prince of Orange and a Dutch   Statdtholde r   (official). William had been the son of Mary, the daughter of Charles I. He was also a Protestant. William and Mary (his spouse) were first cousins. In a very bold move, the majority in Parliament decided to invite William and Mary to “invade”   England   and depose James II as ruler. In 1688, William landed in Brixham on the southern coast of England and James II was sent fleeing. James mounted an offence to regain the Crown in 1690 in Ireland. But William fought back and defeated him at the Battle of Boyne in eastern Ireland. James II went into hiding in France. Though the “Glorious Revolution” is termed a bloodless revolution, there were Jacobite uprisings and loss of life in skirmishes in Ireland and Scotland by loyalists to James II. The eighteenth century by Allegra Villarreal The Glorious Revolution of 1688 is often cited as the event that signals the beginning of the 18th century for historic and literary purposes. While the Revolution was quick and relatively bloodless, it put to an end any Catholic ambitions to the English throne and established a government that rejected the centralized, autocratic state James II had attempted to create. After centuries of religious strife, instability and disease, the island nation emerges in this century as a politically stable, and incredibly wealthy world power. In 1707, the Act of Union is passed, creating “Great Britain,” as single nation: England, Scotland and Wales. On the domestic front, elaborate systems of canals and turnpikes brought about an increase in travel and trade just as seamen were engaged in expanding and building colonies throughout the world. What made the British enterprise unique was that its focus was not on amassing vast territories (as it had been for the Spanish, Dutch, French and Portuguese) but rather on building a worldwide trading network for its merchants, manufacturers, shippers and financiers. This led to the expansion and strengthening of an unparalleled navy and also accounts for the acceleration of the global slave trade. In the 18th century, Britain was involved in 137 wars or rebellions. Apart from losing the American War of Independence, it was generally successful in warfare, and was especially successful in financing its military commitments. France and Spain, by contrast, went bankrupt. By 1800, the British had laid claim to ports on six continents and had yet to reach their era of greatest power (generally agreed upon by historians as 1815-1914). On the religious front, the Church of England had settled into a focus on duty and tradition —no longer imbued with the evangelical fervor that defined it in previous generations. Catholics, Jews and atheists were now tolerated as well though they often faced systemic prejudice. Theatres reopened and a coffeehouse culture blossomed in the cities—concerts, lending libraries, pleasure gardens sprouted up to feed an insatiable need for both beauty and intellectualism. This “opening up”—governmentally, religiously and globally— proved fertile ground for writers. Major works, such as Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, and the Lives of the English Poets define this era as does the creation of a new genre (the novel), and the rise of satire perfected by the likes of Dryden, Swift, and Pope. Perhaps it is no surprise then that demand for literature was on the rise, too: periodicals proliferated and published essays on a variety of topics as well as fiction for general audiences vied for the attentions of an increasingly literate population. Figures like Daniel Defoe, who wrote in a variety of genres, published hundreds of non-fiction pieces on current events, earning him a reputation as the English language’s “first journalist.” While much of 18th-century literature has a staid and distant formality that evokes the aristocratic class, it was largely produced by middle-class writers for middle-class readers. The movement that best defined this era is the Enlightenment which is dated from the tail end of the Renaissance until the Romanticist period; it held Reason above all else and felt that equality could be afforded all men on the basis of equal access to rational thinking - Belief in social progress. - Travel and cosmopolitanism** - Creation of public consensus.* - Foundation of new genres  rise of the middle classes  creation of the figure of the professional writer. - Looking critically at reality and judgments about reality  people start losing faith. This approach to reality is also extremely positive: improve the world, idea that everybody who can use reason will have the chance to achieve any possible goal and go up the social ladder at a time when it was difficult. The aristocracy had always had social power and prestige. This idea will lead to the movements causing the outbreak of the French revolution  democratic movement. - Democracy. - One model: classics. - Open mentality including discussion on the importance of the material side of human relations, the body and the female body as well, sex, and freedom. The age of Enlightenment is also called the Augustan age: nature, clarity, order, realism and stability  Neoclassicism (to 1750), belief in progress, rationality. The age of the Sublime of Pre-romanticism (1760-1790) Nature becomes the mirror of human hearts, people thinking that the past was better of the time they were living in and they start focusing on themselves. Romantic poets were focusing on themselves, everybody is different and unique. FEATURES: *Idea of public consensus: everybody agrees on values and ideas (moral and aesthetic). Intellectuals met in cafes and literary salons, they gather together to find a way to improve society. They would educate people using periodicals, writing and reading. **Travel and cosmopolitanism: new experiences, being part of a large context, European and world context as well. They visited Europe to learn and to write. Outside Europe  beginning of colonialism  Queen Victoria, first empress of Great Britain. TEXT ANALYSIS POETRY How to analyse a text: 1. Layout of the poet (regular, irregular), it includes also the shape of the poem. 2. Rhyme pattern (regular or irregular). 3. Sound devices (Enjambments, Anaphora, Alliteration, Assonances, Onomatopoeia and Refrain). 4. Figures of speech (allegory, antonomasia, euphemism, hyperbole, litote, metaphor, metonymy, oxymoron, personification, simile, synaesthesia). 5. Syntax (Inversion/anastrophe) 6. Language (abstract and concrete words, archaism or non-English words) 7. Register and Diction 7 ottobre The prose is written and created for the bourgeoisie. Poetry is created for aristocracy, a cultivated audience. ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744) He was a middle-class man, who lived by his pen. Alexander Pope was born in London, in 1688 into a Roman Catholic family, he and is remembered as one of the most prolific writers during the Enlightenment period. He suffered a lack of opportunity in his life because of his health and physical appearance. He wrote Discourse on Pastoral Poetry (1709); An Essay on Criticism (1711); The Rape of the Lock (1712); Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (1717); The Dunciad (1728). Pope is a physico-theological poet, he supported the scientific revolution. He was inspired by Horace, Tassoni and Parini. At the end of his production, he anticipated the idea of the sublime and combined different genres and styles. Alexander Pope was against aristocracy. He was always in competition with other intellectuals and writers. Because of his physical condition he has and shows much anger that will lead him to write down more satires than pamphlets. He was misogynist because he could not accept that a woman could be even more popular than him (es. Eliza Haywood). In her work he ridicules a typical day of the young gentleman who spends his day by doing nothing: this causes anger, because everyone has reason, but they must know how to use it. Satire goes to belittle (sminuire) the situation, a very elevated language is used to describe nothingness. Pope’s careful cultivation of poetic technique, his concern with precision and propriety, and his ambitious determination both to define and to refine the tastes and ideas of his age render him more than an exclusively satirical poet. Pope’s first popular success was a far less pictorial poem: an Essay on Criticism An Essay on Criticism (vedi analisi brano 1) Forma AsPedrS - The poet is Sreakimg + Riguai rg. covplts + He is speaking to a Gusited “Rejoua beer FRITTA avdiemie (a QMOUP $ Made : *AMenakioms der poets amd eutics. = i Alexander Pope . 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È l'hough meant each other's aid, like man and mile ts a REFERENCE enon to ide fan Spur the" Muse's steed; pe : E ni Polar Wem wrib mg È dae Uci: neraPloÈ Restrati his fury, finan, provoke his speed; 9 a Se our. dest .9- MM d The wingél courser, like a gen'rous horse, * n det Pea So ve tg Y sn 9 Shows mbst true srtie when you check ris course. on mi pa i 9p00S ap sv Te get obi cusîy = mecoi ves imcicde star SIIT, Me emengiec 4406 veale dae . INSPIRATIONS — gsusr È Read to LUOVELEME, O corto: Te port fidi a voy (iror cospiraron Ha comes fisu mature, Like A uetapho waj eu bold (adi Dot 1h 13 mor dr Ria. Tris uedw > Te PEA v He dfa qrets to balome pit (imitato, miCQEcIvaL quali) and judgeduont. and artizan, without ever meddling with [interfere in] any practical part in my life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or father, and can discern the errors in oeconomy, business and diversion of others, better than those who are engaged in them; as standers-by discover blots [marks, stains], which are apt to escape those who are in the game. I never espoused [supported] any party with violence, and I am resolved to observe an exact neutrality between the Whigs and the Tories, unless I shall be forced to declare myself by the hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my life as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper. I have given the reader just so much of my history and character, as to let him see that I am not unqualified for the business I have undertaken. […] For this reason, therefore, I shall publish a sheet-full of thoughts every morning, for the benefit of my contemporaries; and if I can contribute to the diversion or improvement of the country in which I live, I shall leave it, when I am summoned out of it, with the secret satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain. […] After I have been thus particular upon myself, I shall in tomorrow’s paper give an account of those gentlemen who are concerned with me in this work; for, as I have intimated, a plan of it is laid and concerted […] in a club. […] For I must further acquaint the reader that though our club meets only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have appointed a Committee to sit every night for the inspection of all such papers as may contribute to the advancement of the public weal [welfare]». This text is written in prose and it is non-fiction. Time: beginning of the 18th century. It was written and published at the same period of Pope’s An essay on criticism. The writer defines himself as a spectator  external perspective. He is a sort of specialist from a theoretical point of view. He is a specialist in a variety of fields and social groups: soldier, artisan even though he has never been one of them. His qualities are neutrality and balance. He is very balanced and politically neutral. He will continue to be an impartial observer even as an editor of this magazine. He is a specialist also in the theory of father and husband, in the sense that he always observes things from an outside perspective. He does not only observe, but he has an ability to discover errors. From a political point of view, there were two parties: Whigs and Tories  Robert Walpole was in power. He says that he is not a supporter of one or the other party, he is a neutral. This neutrality can be applied in the political discourse. His intention is very modern  the way he gives news about a certain field is not very neutral, he makes us choose a part. This neutrality is in opposition with the intention of educating people, typical of novelists. As regards education, it is important for them to make society better. The Spectator was published every day. The writer wants to contribute to the improvement of society and to the public welfare, he wants to be useful. We find his commitment in the text  he wants not to live in vain. The extract fits in the discourse of the English Enlightenment. Pope was not speaking for the improvement of society, but of a group of people, in particular poets and critics: he was speaking to those who wrote poetry and to those who could use the reason. This extract is written for a broader scope. This text responds to the necessity to lay new foundations of the society. The first-person presentation puts the author’s qualities in a key position. This text will be extremely important for the rise of the realistic novel. This introduction is meant to prepare the reader and consider his «weal». This is in perfect harmony with the reformist spirit of the Enlightenment. The Spectator «The Spectator» was a periodical published daily by Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele, both politicians, which was one of the bestsellers of the 18th century. Its 500 issues sold up to 4000 copies a day (at that time, it was a great number). It was meant for the general public. Everybody read the Spectator. They spoke not only about serious issues, but also lighter things, for example fashion, and carried news and comments, but especially on manners, morals and literature. The publication pretended to be the reports by a Mr Spectator on the conversations of a club comprising representatives of the country squirearchy, the town, commerce and the army. Its essays, as seen in this example, show that urban life in the 18th century was not so far different from today, with observations on begging and binge-drinking. “Mr Spectator” particularly comments on debt – “[I am] extremely astonished that Men can be so insensible of the Danger of running into Debt”. The magazine of essays was a popular model for expressing various views on society in the 18th century. Though often short-lived, they sold well and were read by thousands. «The Gentleman’s Magazine», Steele’s «The Tatler», Samuel Johnson’s «The Rambler» and «The Idler» and others created an enthusiasm for discussing ideas and literature that were at the heart of literate thinking in 18th century England. There was a diffusion of ideas through newspaper. The Tatler was one of the most popular. The Spectator was turned into a female Spectator by Eliza Haywood, which addressed a female public. We can speak about a connection between novelists and newspapers  they both aim to address a larger public (in particular, novelist, to promote literature) People gathered at that time to exchange ideas. Emblem of culture at that time  women who wanted to weaken the basis of patriarchal society. Eliza Haywood wanted to create something equally popular but addressed to women only. The Female Spectator was a different journal (at that time, there were no problems of copyright). The number of copies was elevated. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) 18th century was a tough time to be a woman. In England, the Marriages Act (1753) rendered women property, shifted from father to husband and made marriage the only viable option for a woman. Many women used the Enlightenment ideas in order to expose the injustices of their world. One of the most influential was Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft knew the ways in which women were disadvantaged in her society. At the age of 25, Mary intervened in her sister’s marriage, helping her to escape her husband. She established a school for girls in London. The she turned to writing and publishing. Wollstonecraft’s most famous text “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792) was written as a part of a response to the French Revolution and its Declaration of the Rights of Man. She argued that to give men rights would not be enough, women also required the opportunity to fully develop their own reason. Unfortunately, she continued to feel the negative effects of the society. She was left a single mother with few options. In the final year of her life she married the writer William Godwin and they had a daughter named Mary, later Mary Shelley. Wollstonecraft’s ideas became the origin of later suffragists and feminist movement. Wollstonecraft’s legacy will be the origin of later feminist movements, for example suffragettes (in 1918 women obtain the vote). Mary Wollstonecraft From A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the result?--a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow- creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore, and that women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched [unfortunate] by a variety of concurring causes, originating from one hasty conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state […]. One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers; and the understanding of the sex has been so hobbled [inhibited] by this specious [deceptive, false] homage, that the civilised women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact [obtain] respect. . . . Because I am a woman, I would not lead my readers to suppose that I mean violently to agitate the contested question respecting the quality or inferiority of the sex; but as the subject lies in my way, and I cannot pass it over without subjecting the main tendency of my reasoning to misconstruction, I shall stop a moment to deliver, in a few words, my opinion. In the government of the physical world it is Reflections has become the classic, most eloquent statement of British conservatism favoring monarchy, aristocracy, property, hereditary succession, and the wisdom of the ages. Earlier in his career Burke had championed many liberal causes and sided with the Americans in their war for independence; opponents and allies alike were surprised at the strength of his conviction that the French Revolution was a disaster and the revolutionists "a swinish multitude." MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT The first of the many published replies to Burke's Reflections was by Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797). Toward the end of 1790, when Burke's Reflections came out, she was working in London as a writer and translator for the radical publisher Joseph Johnson. Reading Burke, she was outraged at the weakness of his arguments and the exaggerated rhetoric with which he depicted the revolutionists as violators of royalty and womanhood. Always a rapid writer, she composed her reply, A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a matter of days, and Johnson's printer set it in type as fast as the sheets of manuscript were turned in. It was published anonymously in November, less than a month after Burke's Reflections first appeared, and a second edition (this time with her name on the title page) was called for almost immediately. Mary Wollstonecraft's father inherited a substantial fortune and set himself up as a gentleman farmer. He was, however, both extravagant and incompetent, and as one farm after another failed, he became moody and violent and sought solace in heavy bouts of drinking and in tyrannizing his submissive wife. Mary was the second of five children and the oldest daughter. She later told her husband, William Godwin, that she used to throw herself in front of her mother to protect her from her husband's blows, and that she sometimes slept outside the door of her parents' bedroom to intervene if her father should break out in a drunken rage. At the age of nineteen, Mary Wollstonecraft left home to take a position as companion to a well-to-do widow living in Bath, where for the first time she had the opportunity to observe—and scorn—the social life of the upper classes at the most fashionable of English resort cities. Having left her job in 1780 to nurse her dying mother through a long and harrowing illness, Wollstonecraft next went to live with the Bloods, where her work helped sustain the struggling family. Her sister Eliza meanwhile had married and, in 1784, after the birth of a daughter, suffered a nervous breakdown. Convinced that her sister's collapse was the result of her husband's cruelty and abuse, Wollstonecraft persuaded her to abandon husband and child and flee to London. Because a divorce at that time was not commonly available, and a fugitive wife could be forced to return to her husband, the two women hid in secret quarters while awaiting the grant of a legal separation. The infant, automatically given into the father's custody, died before she was a year old. The penniless women, together with Fanny Blood and Wollstonecraft's other sister, Everina, established a girls' school at Newington Green, near London. The project flourished at first, and at Newington, Wollstonecraft was befriended by the Reverend Richard Price, the radical author who was soon to play a leading role in the British debates about the Revolution in France, and whose kindly guidance helped shape her social and political opinions. Fanny Blood, although already ill with tuberculosis, went to Lisbon to marry her longtime suitor, Hugh Skeys, and quickly became pregnant. Wollstonecraft rushed to Lisbon to attend her friend's childbirth, only to have Fanny die in her arms; the infant died soon afterward. The loss threw Wollstonecraft (already subject to bouts of depression) into black despair, which was heightened when she found that the school at Newington was in bad financial straits and had to be closed. In 1790 Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France—an eloquent and powerful attack on the French Revolution and its English sympathizers—quickly evoked Wollstonecraft's response, A Vindication of the Rights of Men. This was a formidable piece of argumentation; its most potent passages represent the disabilities and sufferings of the English lower classes and impugn the motives and sentiments of Burke. This work, the first book-length reply to Burke, scored an immediate success, although it was soon submerged in the flood of other replies, most notably Tom Paine's classic Rights of Man (1791—92). In 1792 Wollstonecraft focused her defense of the underprivileged on her own sex and wrote, in six weeks of intense effort, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Earlier writers in both France and England had proposed that, given equivalent educations, women would equal men in achievement. Wollstonecraft was particularly indebted to the historian Catharine Macaulay, whose Letters on Education (1790) she had reviewed enthusiastically. At the same time Wollstonecraft was contributing to a long- running discussion of human rights that in Britain dated back to John Locke's publication of the Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690). Prefaced with a letter addressed to the French politician Bishop Talleyrand, the Vindication was in part her rejoinder to the inconsistent actions of France's National Assembly, which in 1791 had formally denied to all Frenchwomen the rights of citizens. Her book was also unprecedented in its first-hand observations of the disabilities and indignities suffered by women and in the articulateness and passion with which it exposed and decried this injustice. Wollstonecraft's views were conspicuously radical at a time when women had no political rights; were limited to a few lowly vocations as servants, nurses, governesses, and petty shopkeepers; and were legally nonpersons who lost their property to their husbands at marriage and were incapable of instituting an action in the courts of law. An impressive feature of her book, for all its vehemence, is the clear-sightedness and balance of her analysis of the social conditions of the time, as they affect men as well as women. She perceives that women constitute an oppressed class that cuts across the standard hierarchy of social classes; she shows that women, because they are denied their rights as human beings, have been forced to seek their ends by means of coquetry and cunning, the weapons of the weak; and, having demonstrated that it is contrary to reason to expect virtue from those who are not free, she also recognizes that men, no less than women, inherit their roles, and that the wielding of irresponsible power corrupts the oppressor no less than it distorts the oppressed. Hence her surprising and telling comparisons between women on the one hand and men of the nobility and military on the other as classes whose values and behavior have been distorted because their social roles prevent them from becoming fully human. In writing this pioneering work, Wollstonecraft found the cause that she was to pursue the rest of her life. The rise of the novel The new mode had been anticipated by Aphra Behn in Oroonoko or the Royal Slave (1688), that can be considered a proto-novel. The reason is that the 18th century novel (novel in 1700) had a solid narrative structure. The first-person narration was highly popular. It made the process of identification easier. Writers wanted readers to identify themselves, because they wanted them to buy their books and they wanted to educate them. It was based on facts and on materials which provided factual evidence → The key subgenre was the epistolary novel. Letters were more realistic. Time was that of contemporary times; urban spaces provided the typical setting of most English novels so that readers knew the spaces (where they lived) and the time and for this reason they were interested. The term novel is related to the latin word novus, something new and also realistic. Protagonists, both men and women, were given real names, which showed the impact of the Lockean concepts of personal identity and consciousness on literature (John Locke). It is important for everybody to believe that what they were reading was true. Language and style were generally simple and clear. The model that novelists followed was that of the press. At a socio-cultural level, novels were meant to instruct and entertain. They were meant to show that through personal improvement it was possible to cause social change. The message was always positive. The majority of titles was based on the main protagonist (Pamela, Moll Flanders, Gulliver’s travels). There was strong emphasis on individualism.  I. Watt, The Rise of the Novel (1957) – «The realism of the novels of Defoe, Richardson and Fielding is closely associated with the fact Moll Flanders is a thief, Pamela a hypocrite, and Tom Jones a fornicator. This use of realism, however, has the great defect of obscuring what is probably the most original feature of the novel form. If the novel were realistic merely because it saw life from the seamy (scadente) side, it would only be an inverted romance; but in fact, it surely attempts to portray all the varieties of the human experience, and not merely those suited to one particular literary perspective: the novel’s realism does not reside in the kind of life it presents, but in the way it presents it. » Intro to Text Analysis - Fiction  Type of narrator – First person or third person (omniscient)  Focalisation - Third person omniscient narrator → Zero - Third person narrator → internal (if he/she is part of the story) How the master treats her? He tries to seduce her. He treats her like an object and he gives her presents to make her body look even more attractive. Samuel Richardson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztuBuXeZ0kU Richardson was a printer and a publisher most of his life. He printed: - the «Daily Journal» between 1736 and 1737 - The «Daily Gazetter» in 1738 He was close to Aaron Hill and Samuel Johnson. In 1739 he wrote Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded «to promote the cause of religion and virtue». Together with Aaron Hill he contributed to set precise rules for novelists: the rules are related to positive characters, who will have a sequel. 17 ottobre The rise of the novel First part: birth and stabilization of the genre; Second part: deconstruction. The novelists’ central aim is to reach a reader who is less cultivated than that of poetry, and also to make this process as immediate as possible. Novelists try to find ways for the suspension of the trial to occur. They choose the first person, to show that what is told is or can actually happen. Finally, readers can find themselves on works and find something equivalent to what they experience or see in newspapers. The aim is to bring more readers closer and to impose a new method of writing which has a social value. Writers aim to educate and to entertain. Novelists use authentic material, belonging to private and intimate writing (ex. Diary pages) in order to make the events appear to be true. Space-time coordinates are attentive. The plot is orderly for the reader to follow the thread of events but also for the message to be clear. Characters live in urban spaces and they are heroes: they believe in man’s ability to find himself thanks to a positive example  strong social commitment. The authors are moved by the desire not only to live by their pen but also to change society. To make this possible, Richardson establishes a series of rules and he underlines the author’s task of giving space and voice to the characters who have distinguished themselves for their human qualities and who have represented a positive example for society. Almost all novelists follow his rules, except for Eliza Haywood, who decided to write the sequel to a woman who does not regret what she did in her life, who does nothing to change her behaviour and who faces life in solitude while still trying to raise her social status in a society where the only way to do it is marriage. Eliza Haywood writes Pamela’s sequel, Anti-Pamela, a woman who remains in her condition (she is and remains a bad woman). Eliza Haywood also founds The Female Spectator. Eliza Haywood Anti-Pamela (1741) It was published in the same year as Fielding’s An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews. Both works were meant to deconstruct the moral world created by Samuel Richardson, however, Anti-Pamela in particular challenged Richardson’s narrative rules and techniques. The narrator clearly expresses her/his point of view and is supportive of the protagonist’s choices. Haywood chooses suburban London as her setting. The reader is told about Syrena who is a prostitute, also about problems such as abortion and gonorrhea. Syrena reminds the reader of Molly Flanders’ epilogue. Here, however, there is no redemption. 1) P. 178-179 → From «Now Syrena…» to «severer manner» 2) P. 280 → From «This being agreed upon…» to «Entertainment». Her main works are: - Love in Excess (1719-20) - Idalia; or The Unfortunate Mistress (1723) - A Wife to be Let (1723) - Lasselia; or The Self-Abandon'd (1723) - The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity (1724) - Fantomina; or Love in a Maze (1725) - Love-Letters on All Occasions Lately Passed between Persons of Distinction (1730) - Anti-Pamela; or Feign'd Innocence Detected (1741) - “The Female Spectator” (4 volumes, 1744–1746) LAURENCE STERNE (1738)  He was an Irish writer, he graduated from Cambridge.  1759-1765 – He wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey.  He was criticized by Dr. Johnson, Samuel Richardson and Oliver Goldsmith.  He was remembered for his anti-novels and for laying the basis of Modernist fiction in the XX century.  He was influenced by Foscolo and Notizia intorno a Didimo Chierico. The Life and Opinions of Sir Tristram Shandy In Tristram Shandy, Sterne deconstructs the bases of the traditional novel. - Tristram, the protagonist, is first introduced in the third chapter - Events do not always follow a chronological order - Both time and setting are proposed depending on the characters’ perceptions - He uses flashbacks and flash-forwards - He uses typographical innovations - He describes his characters in a humorous way Laurence Sterne From The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759) I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound [tied] to it, had minded [thought] what they were about when they begot [lit. made] me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught [lit. anything at all] they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost [predominant]; —Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me.—Believe me, good folks, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of you may think it;—you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused from father to son, &c. &c.—and a great deal to that purpose: —Well, you may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man's sense or his nonsense, his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so that when they are once set a-going [in motion], whether right or wrong, 'tis not a half-penny matter,—away they go cluttering like hey-go mad [like crazy]; and by treading the same steps over and over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and as smooth as a garden-walk [a broad path in a garden], which, when they are once used to, the Devil himself sometimes shall not be able to drive them off it. Pray my Dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?—Good G..! cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate his voice at the same time,—Did ever woman, since the creation of the world, interrupt a man with such a silly question? Pray, what was your father saying?—Nothing. This story is not based on events, but on thoughts, ideas and reflections. There are not adventure here: it is important because through the void/absence in the events, the reader can use thought and. The book goes up to the third chapter. The protagonist tries to go back to the moments. Part 1  The main topic of this extract is the origin of his life. He is speaking about emotions and activities. Part 2  What does the final passage tell us about the protagonist’s parents? They don’t respect each other, a relationship is missing and also the romantic view of a husband- wife relationship.  Is their relationship conventional? The husband attempts to apply the conventional scheme, the wife wants to overturn them.  Comparison between Pamela and Tristram, regarding parents-son/daughter relationship: Tristram accuses his parents and he reproaches them for not having been good parents. He is realistic and he highlights communication difficulties. The mother deliberately ignores what her husband said, dismantling the patriarchal element with the last reply.  The topic the origin of life, an existentialist topic  The sequence reflective sequence, at the end we have a dialogic sequence.  Time and space unknown  Characters mother and father, they are not important, in fact they are secondary characters.  Language, register medium, concrete words. 27 ottobre Comparison between first and second part: Introduction of his parents, they don’t represent authority; this idea is challenged by his mother’s answer. Pamela is more conventional in fact she respects her parents; here the protagonist is not interested in them, in fact he goes against them. The only element that we have to consider in the new face of the novel is that it is related to the idea of the truth, because he represents things as they are. Narration: first person, the protagonist makes his first presentation, but we don’t know anything about him actually. There is a series of recriminations to his parents: he reproaches them for not being aware enough. The goal of this shift of the protagonist's presentation to the third chapter is to go against the rules of the novel. It is not anticipated, we will find something similar in the interior monologue: there is no gradualness between the level of consciousness and the level of dialogue. History takes a back seat. This is the best example of antinovel: there are different targets. We find the presentation of the protagonist in the third chapter: this is not normal. The author wants to give an interpretation from a moral point of view: the protagonist thinks, has opinions. Space and time are elongated through digressions, and the time is not chronological but is described according to the mood of the protagonist. this path of renewal will be taken up by Woolf with the interior monologue. First part: - first person narration. - Narrative sequence it is reflective, it is all about thinking; in fact we have the same type in the 2nd part. - Time and setting there are not any ideas about when the action took place and where the protagonist is. This is because he is reasoning. - Other characters the protagonist is the only character. - Register: medium, the vocabulary is abstract. The reader has to fill the plain page. In the past, the narrator used to give all answers and he left no choice to the reader. TO SUM UP POETRY expresses formal clarity and order. It refers to the Classics and it is addressed to the upper classes. It expresses a strong sense of decorum, and it has a strong didactic/satirical purpose. Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was the main figure. He wrote satires and mock-epic poems. FICTION – The 18th century was the Age of the realistic novel. It dealt with contemporary issues and it was addressed to the middle classes. The main writers are: - Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), the «father of the English novel» - Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) and the dystopian/allegorical novel Where is the protagonist? In a Turkish bath. What is she wearing? Travel cloth. Does she feel welcome? Yes. What can she see all around her? Naked women. How does she describe the other women? Beautiful, with very long hair which were decorated Can you find any references to English literature/European art? Yes, Guido Reni, Milton etc. What is her reaction at the end? Her attitude: she is curious, she is writing to her sister, and she used referents points that helped her to visualize the scene. The elements that help her to be clearer are Milton, the greatest poet of the time, Pope that promoted him; Guido Reni, a historian of art, and she refers to Graces, because we are in the classicism. The first part is focused on women’s body, in fact female writers were reflecting on their body, that was central and important. The description is not sexualized, in fact everybody was naked and nobody looked at the bodies. She is trying to avoid sexual implications related to female body. She is creating a space of freedom for women. 28/10/2022 Part 2 She makes a comparison between this Turkish baths and coffee houses. It is only for women, a space to visit once a week for at least four or five hours. Then something happens; one of the women tries to convince her to join the group. She undresses her and find a corset, described as a sort of machine. She was charmed with her beauty and civility. Narration: First person narrator Sequence: Narrative Character: the lady the most considerable amongst them, she is as a helper and a secondary character. She helps to undress the protagonist. Register: medium; Vocabulary: abstract Focus on Part II: Can she find an equivalent of Turkish baths? Yes, coffee houses What does she write about women’s way of life in Turkey? They like spending time together once or twice a week for an entire afternoon. How does she describe the moment when she gets undressed? At the beginning she excuses herself, but then she gives up her embarrassment. What is Turkish women’s attitude towards her? What can you say about the opposition between identity and otherness in this passage? (Focus on Montagu and Turkish women) By mentioning Guido Reni and the Greeks. It is the desire to create a comparison between what she knows and what she sees. The Turkish Embassy Letters (1718) - Initial clash between Western culture and a new Oriental ‘Other’. - Construction of a new identity. - Adoption of new aesthetic canons and of a different morality. - Appreciation of Turkish literature and scientific culture. - Lesbianism. - Sharp criticism against Western culture and moral manners. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) She is principally remembered as a prolific letter writer in almost every epistolary style. She was also a distinguished minor poet, always competent, sometimes glittering and genuinely eloquent. She is further remembered as an essayist, feminist, traveler, and eccentric. The daughter of the 5th Earl of Kingston and Lady Mary Fielding (a cousin of the novelist Henry Fielding), she eloped with Edward Wortley Montagu, a Whig member of Parliament, rather than accept a marriage that had been arranged by her father. The Turkish Embassy Letters were written during their stay in Turkey. After that experience, they remained married, but lived separate lives. She wrote a series of town eclogues and was in contact with Alexander Pope and the dramatist John Gay. In 1736 she became infatuated with Francesco Algarotti and travelled all over Italy. Lady Mary’s literary reputation chiefly rests on 52 superb Turkish embassy letters, which she wrote after her return as the ambassador’s wife in Constantinople, using her actual letters and journals as source material. The letters were published in 1763 from an unauthorized copy and were acclaimed throughout Europe. Later editions of her letters, sanctioned by her family, added selections from her personal letters together with most of her poetry. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 3 vol. (ed. Robert Halsband, 1965–67), was the first full edition of Lady Mary’s letters. The Grand Tour (1665-1820) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGu4eQ65h60 During the 18th century the Grand Tour became a highly desirable way for young aristocrats and gentry to travel and polish off their education. The traditional route of the grand tour involved arriving in Paris where tourists would bring or buy transport. They would then cross the Alps carried by a chair or a carriage before entering Italy. Tourists would aim for famous festivals, such as the carnival in Venice or Holy week in Rome. They would return home with crates of books or works of art. The Grand Tour was a journey aimed at personal growth. It represented an event and it origins when queen Elizabeth I established scholarships for young offspring of the wealthy classes, for a 3 years-stay in Europe with tutor. Even if there was no canonization and fixed stages, thereafter the time is reduced to one year for lack of scholarships. The grand Tour included also the tour of Italy. Italy was the common final destination. This tour involved: Turin, Milan, Florence, Rome. Travel reports are numerous although they all stop in Naples as the south of Italy, but as soon as the interest in volcanoes begins, they also arrive in Sicily to visit Etna. From the mid-19th century, thanks to the railway, the journey becomes shorter and cheaper so even the bourgeoisie and then the less well-off classes access the journey. The grand tour origins from the decline of universities. Outside that strict organization, travelling was very difficult. In European culture, Italy was considered a land where the ancient could be found. Towards the end of the 17th century, Naples has a highly relevant role, due to its proximity to Rome, reachable with a carriage in 2 or 2 and a half days. Naples was appreciated for the landscape and secondly for the exceptional naturalistic presences (1674, famous eruption of Vesuvius). Naples is one of the most fascinating places, full of classicism. The consul Hamilton is one of the first who gave a great incentive to the excavations of Pompeii. Therefore, the grand tour is at the same time productive for the Italian culture. Among the intellectuals who visited Naples, there are Berkeley, Montesquieu, Hamilton, Goethe etc. Esther Thrale Lynch Piozzi Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey Through France, Italy, and Germany (1789) From «On the tenth day…» to «on our arrival» They arrived early in the morning, it was stormy. There is a lexical chain that gives an idea of nature rebelling against men: the Vesuvius is erupting. She was confused and scared to death, the Franciscan frail and the maid approach. The frail said that the eruption will attract tourist (“it’s our mountain that gives us money”). It is a touristic attraction because there are no volcanos in Britain. The maid was shocked, she said in French that it was the end of the world. They found another accommodation and the sight was beautiful. She said Naples was wonderful, everything was relaxing comparing to the chaos in Britain. The South was described as dangerous, inhabitants were lazy and tourists were disturbed by lazaroni. There were children running half naked, it seemed to be few or no rules. There is a sharp contrast between nature and culture. She is enchanted by this beauty. The writer uses English and French which was an international language. Berque establishes a relationship between two elements: beauty and terror. If something doesn’t' t shock you, then it is not beautiful. Instead, before beauty was linked to order and clarity. Nature is at hearth of aesthetic discourse. This opening passage about the volcano gives us an idea about how people approached the sublime and how nature rebelled against humans and humans could not do anything about it. The term sublime is already an integral part of writing. Hester Thrale Lynch Piozzi (1741-1821) Esther Thrale Lynch Piozzi was very prolific, and she was also related to Samuel Johnson, but since she was writing at the end of the 18th century, she was also very romantic. Hester Lynch Salusbury was born in Wales in 1741, and in 1763 married wealthy London brewer Henry Thrale. After the Thrales were introduced to Samuel Johnson in 1765, their home became the center of an important coterie of literary, artistic, and political figures. Henry Thrale died in 1781. In 1784, Hester married Gabriel Piozzi, an Italian musician. The marriage was widely viewed as scandalous in London society and terminated Hester's long friendship with Johnson. The Piozzis built a country house at Brynbella in Wales, which served as their primary residence from 1794 to 1809. Hester Lynch Piozzi's publications included  Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1786);  Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1788)  Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey Through France, Italy, and Germany (1789)  Retrospection, or, a Review of the Most Important and Striking Events, Characters, Situations, and their Consequences, which the Last Eighteen Hundred Years have Presented to the View of Mankind (1801). THE SUBLIME AND THE GOTHIC  The Gothic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNohDegnaOQ The Castle of Otranto is published in 1764 and begins this enormously powerful tradition of the Gothic. Gothic fiction is fascinated by strange places: very wild and remote landscapes. At the heart of Gothic fiction is the question of power: on the one hand supernaturally powerful or obscenely powerful figure and on the other hand, completely vulnerable people. Gothic novels are full of perverse, weird, dangerous kinds of sexuality.  Features of Gothic Literature https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUNuFLHvVng Horace Walpole’s the Castle of Otranto (1764) is credited with starting the English gothic phenomenon. Full of lengthy adjectives, written descriptions, the novel had an electrifying effect on its audience. The tale of the lovers plagued by ancient curses gave rise to an interest in stories featuring unnatural beings, violent and passionate protagonists as well as other elements that define the genre: castles, the supernatural, wild nature, emotions. The gothic starts in the second half of the 18th century and ends at the end of the 19th century. Beauty slowly starts to replace the didactic purpose of the realistic novel. There also disturbing elements and scenes, especially about sex, where the element of power and vulnerability takes place and beauty shocks people. This period is characterised by uncertainty: people lost their reference point and the world is completely reversed. The gothic expressed a sudden change (shock, fluidity, uncertainty). A new code and a new language were needed to express what people were living. This genre is full of immoral behaviours which gave the writer the possibility of expressing everything that was forbidden in the past (think about Pamela). Before, even though the novel represented a prostitute, the normal developing was that, at the beginning they were bad, but at the end the redeem themselves. Here there is no interest in changing people: the bad side inside humans is represented. The Gothic Novel  Capoferro (2010) – The Castle of Otranto (1764) represents the end of the prehistory of «supernatural literature» and the beginning of its history.  Walpole was «desirous of leaving the powers of fancy at liberty to expatiate through the boundless realms of invention, and thence of creating more interesting situations».  Anderson (2016) «The brutality of the French Revolution was already Gothicized before it really got going. The ideology of British Whiggism was Anglo-Saxonist, medievalist, anti-classical, and sublime, offering a northern or gothic alternative to the perceived tyranny of imperial Rome in government, rights, religion, and culture». Distinctive features  Setting - Medieval castles - Italy  A female protagonist who is always in danger  A villain  Mystery and suspense  Prophetical elements  Visions and extraordinary or supernatural events The middle age is considered a period in which superstition and obscurity were the main characteristics. Human reason cannot explain or control the end of trust in human power. Anne Radcliffe A Sicilian Romance (1790) From Chapter 3 After travelling for some hours they quitted the main road, and turned into a narrow winding dell [lit. hollow], overshadowed by high trees, which almost excluded the light. The gloom of the place inspired terrific images. Julia trembled as she entered; and her emotion was heightened, when she perceived at some distance, through the long perspective of the trees, a large ruinous mansion. The gloom of the surrounding shades partly concealed it from her view; but, as she drew near, each forlorn and decaying feature of the fabric was gradually disclosed, and struck upon her heart a horror such as she had never before experienced. The broken battlements [parapets], enwreathed [twisted] with ivy, proclaimed the fallen grandeur of the place, while the shattered vacant window frames exhibited its desolation, and the high grass that overgrew the threshold, seemed to say how long it was since mortal foot had entered. The place appeared fit only for the purposes of violence and destruction: and the unfortunate captives, when they stopped at the gates, felt the full force of its horrors. The setting is typical of the gothic novel. Julia is the main character; she is in the woods, around her there is a mansion surrounded by trees, it is scary and gloomy. The key words of the gothic novel are terrific images, ruinous mansions, broken battlements, the presence of ivy, desolation, violence and destruction, full force of horrors. The new vision of nature something horrific that generates terror. The time passes by and destroys. Narrator: third person singular, a narrator who is there also to set the scene in a completely different way. the right conclusion of every rule. That virtue which was the principal inspiration during the first part of the 18th century is now completely lost. We can find: a female demon; the body of Antonia, the judges of Inquisition; the ignominious death. Part 1: “Beatrice… her desires” The passage speaks about a nun who is like that because her family forced her to became a nun. Reading comprehension - Who is the protagonist of this passage? Beatrice, she was a nun - Who did she run away with? The protagonist ran away with Baron Lederberg. - What happened then? Can you tell what her new life was? What caused scandal? After she ran away with him her life was scandalous for two reasons: she was living with him without being married and also, she was rejecting what she had done in the first part of her life (being a nun). - What is the main topic of this passage? The main topic that fits in the discourse of the gothic here is: there this element of rebellion and scandal in this narrative. This author in particular is kind of exaggerating this element. - How does it fit in the discourse on the gothic? This sexual appeal of the nun is connected with the gothic because it was scandalous. - Can you find any points in common with other characters that we have worked on so far? Elements on common with the characters that we saw: Syrina. At the end she denies what she had been doing in the monastery where she was living; she was creating a sort of bridge from the past. Syrina, she was living with her man and she was a passionate woman; the nun was following her instinct as a kind of rebellion. The rebellion is against her family (they obliged her to be a nun); against religion (she rejected her being nun, her past); she followed her instinct. Narrator: third person narrator, who knows everything (omniscient narrator). Setting: Bavaria in the second part. In the first one we have no setting, it is vague; Time: vague, we only have the idea of what happened before and after. Sequences: narrative Language: abstract - This is the first description of the Bleeding Nun - Sexual desire is extremely important - Escape from the rules of religion and monastic life - Escape from social conventions - Choice of atheism - The Monk was a powerful literary response to the French revolution - Lewis and his sojourn in Parigi in 1791 → sex is conceived as a tool of rebellion against aristocracy and the clergy. - De Sade (1800): The Monk is far superior in all respects to the strange flights of Mrs. Radcliffe’s brilliant imagination. Let us concur that this kind of fiction, whatever one may think of it, is assuredly not without merit. […] ‘Twas the inevitable result of the revolutionary shocks which all of Europe had suffered. […] To compose works of interest, one had to call upon the aid itself, and to find in the world of make-believe things wherewith one was fully familiar merely by delving into man’s daily lif in this age of iron». Matthew Gregory Lewis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAgO9tUHIWE (mins. 0.00-0.44 –mins. 8.48-10.00) He attended Westminster School before proceeding to Christ Church, Oxford, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1769 and his master's in 1772. In 1773 he married Frances Maria Seawell, who bore him three children. He started his literary career in 1791, when he tried to write a work similar to Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. After publishing a series of literary translations, in 1796 he wrote Ambrosio, or The Monk. On 22 March 1802 Harriett Litchfield appeared in a Gothic monodrama at The Haymarket called The Captive by Lewis. Lewis visited Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley at Geneva, Switzerland, in the summer of 1816 and recounted five ghost stories, which Shelley recorded in his "Journal at Geneva (including ghost stories) and on return to England, 1816“. He visited his estates in Jamaica in 1818 and died of yellow fever. He belonged to the highest level of education. He took his masters in 1772 and this explains why his language is more defined than Radcliffe’s. He was appreciated but he was forgotten. The Monk is a classic of gothic fiction, but when it originally came out in 1796 it caused a scandal. Critics denounced it as blasphemous, immoral and dangerous. Onn the other side, the public was avidly reading it. There are two storylines: the story of the monk Ambrosio and the mysterious novice Rosario; and the parallel story of Lorenzo and his friends. In both cases love is an important component of the story. Verse, Prose and Drama (II), An Overview  FICTION – Laurence Sterne deconstructs the traditional novel. Drawing inspiration from Burke and his theory of the Sublime, Anne Radcliffe and Horace Walpole create a new genre: the Gothic novel - Dissatisfaction with the Enlightenment and rationality - Gothic novels are addressed to all strata of society - Main components: horror and fear - The protagonist is an outcast who wanders the earth in perpetual exile; the heroine is always fighting against a villain - The setting is that of old medieval castles and scary natural landscapes - This new genre will be popular between 1760 and 1820. One of its masterpieces will be Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1819). This is the time when prose voices the cultural debate on the French Revolution as well as women’s opposition against patriarchalism: - Edmund Gibbon and Edmund Burke - Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Catharine Macaulay and Maria Edgeworth  POETRY – The new generation of poets looks for relief or escape in nature or in the humble life of country people → James Thomson (1700-1748) and William Collins (1721-1759) distinguish themselves for their elegiac tones, whereas Edward Young (1683-1765 and Robert Blair (1699-1746) is the main representative of the graveyard poetry. In this field we have the first collection of romantic poems. Poets start looking at nature in a different wat.  DRAMA – The second half of the 18th century is one of the most barren periods in the history of English drama → Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) and Richard Sheridan (1751- 1816) criticize the sentimental comedy and revive the «art of laughing». Da qui in poi non è stampato - 7 novembre 1760-1800 is defined as Late enlightenment, it introduces the Romanticism. One of the fundamental events of this period in England is the Industrial Revolution. These events anticipate Romanticism, compared to the rest of Europe. The period of maximum evolution coincides with the second Industrial Revolution (considered also from a philosophical point of view with Marx and Engels). Fundamental elements and evets for the industrial revolution: invention of the spinning machine, Enclosure Acts (1773), Invention of a power machine for weaving (1785), Invention of the steam engine (since 1800), Colonies and raw materials as new economic sources colonies and raw materials, for example cotton in India. Buying and trading cotton is a form of enrichment for middle classes  anticipation of Romanticism in England. The American war of independence was devastating for England because of the loss of many colonies and for their pride. Since the industrial revolution has a strong impact on geomorphological features of the country, nature became a key point in literature. Nature was being attacked and it became a main topic for most romantic poets who found shelter in the past but also in ideal places away from society. People started to leave the countryside to find a job in factories. Intellectuals criticised this. Nature was a strategic topic for those who wanted to rebel from the society. Enlightenment Romanticism In the Enlightenment, imagination was «beneath reason in D’Alembert’s account of human faculties», and was thus connected to the fine arts → In general, a substantial number of philosophes would argue that imagination is useful and charming, but without any relevance to their own projects. In late Enlightenment England, women intellectuals promoted history as the emblem of facts rather than the power of imagination and fiction. William Blake executed the central statue in 1815, but finished his inscriptions between 1826 and 1827. Most of them clarify the importance of - the human body - energy - imagination It is important to consider the element of comprehension and extra information within these poems. In The lamb and in The tiger as well we can find the description in the first level of comprehension. This can be found in all ekphrastic poems: images and writings. In this case art is inferior to poetry, it is very basic and simplified. Relationship with Christianity: at the beginning he was close to Christian religion, later he elaborated his vision of reality. He became closer to dissenting circles. Born into a Dissenting tradition, he remained a religious, political and artistic radical throughout his life. He was always a visionary, and associated texts to visuals, thus adding further meaning to his works. Dante, Milton, Swedenborg and Boheme are Blake’s main sources of inspirations. Works:  1790 – The Marriage of Heaven and Hell → Fascination for Blake and for oppositions.  1789-1794 – Songs of Innocence – Songs of Experience → Strong connection with the French revolution – Close description of the contrary states of the human soul – Challenges to and corruptions of the innocent state – Final perception of a future regeneration in the name of God.  1793-1810 – The Prophetic Books: In America, a Prophecy (1793) – The First Book of Urizen (1794) – A Vision of the Lost Judgement (1810). Structure of his poems: there is always the desire to put together different components to show the contrast. He was a very eclectic figure. At a certain point in his production he wanted to make poetry more open and democratic. He wanted to deprive the text of every reference to mythology. Video slides blake 10 novembre The study of the representation of nature is a consequence to the sense of rebellion face to the necessities of the time, necessities linked to England’s geomorphological aspects. Factories are built near energetic resources of the time, especially coal, and they attract workers who cause the origin of new urban centres. This element of beauty and ugliness is central in the new aesthetic debate. Other elements: the French Revolution closes the century (1789). Blake’s position is double: on the one side, he is considered as an author of the late Enlightenment and Sublime; on the other one, he belongs to the first generation of romantics. Beyond that, the distinctive point of Blake’s work is, especially in this phase, democracy and a sense of opening of the poetic genre to a broader number of readers. He makes a simplification: he chooses not to use knowledge that only a few could access (classics, mythology, Latin use of language  uso latineggiante). We witness an opening and reinterpretation of the poetic genre. From an interpretative point of view there are two elements: on the one side, a realistic description; on the other one, the symbolic level, with references to Christianism and Christ. Hence, there isn’t a simplification tout court, but a stratification of levels of comprehension: the first one is the simplest (the description of the lamb); the second level is more difficult and it can be understood by who has more knowledge. There is great optimism and enthusiasm for the process of change but this enthusiasm will be contradicted by another Blake’s collection, Songs of Experience, which expresses the profound disillusionment with the revolutionary path. From Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems (1802) [THE SUBJECT AND LANGUAGE OF POEMS] The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in these Poems was to chuse incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of language really used by men; and at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and, further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement. Low and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and, lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature. The language, too, of these men is adopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly, such a language, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation.  This is the Preface to Lyrical Ballads. It is instrumental in showing how nature develops: nature is considered as a symbol of order and clarity in 18 th century and at the same time we start to see it as a mirror of suffering and uncertainties and anxieties that people feel at the end of the 18th century. The principal object of this collection/main topic: everyday life but in rustic context; incidents and situations from common life. Compared to Augustan poetry, there are no references to the classics. The emphasis is on ordinary life. A central element is imagination: the poet doesn’t present the context as it is in reality. Possible question: distinction between vision of imagination in Enlightenment and in Romanticism. He chooses the rural context because it represents the simplicity of emotions and because there is not the negative contact with society. From a philosophical point of view, he is referring to Rousseau. Rousseau wanted to create a link between the man and the nature. According to Rousseau’s ideas the contact that men have with nature is important from the point of view of the truthfulness and the contact of men with social community is dangerous and negative (“being less under the influence of social vanity”). Wordsworth prefers the contact with nature rather than the contact with society. Wordsworth speaks about the necessity of a purification of poetry from all excesses in its form and from all the references to the past. Use of language: simple language, very few anastrophes, some archaisms, but in general we cannot compare this text to the Augustan period’s texts. What is new in Wordsworth: he could be a sort of pure reproduction of every life, but he is adding “a certain colouring of imagination”. He wants to show the reader that nature is however extraordinary thanks to imagination. Why is low and rustic life so important for him? What does he ensure? “because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature”. In the past imagination had to be controlled, because reason was more important. His vision of the common poet: negative, because they make ostentation in poetry. The last generation was too attentive to the form; Wordsworth attention is towards content. This extract of the Preface is the equivalent of Pope’s An essay on criticism. It is a sort of manifest of the poetry of the time. The 18th century was the century of the novel; the genre of Romanticism is poetry. Compare the Preface to An essay on criticism. Second part He is taking inspiration from rustic life. As regards to the language: simple, inspired to the language of people of the countryside but he doesn’t include defects, elements of dislike and disgust. He purifies the language, by eliminating vulgar phrases.  Who is speaking? The poet (“I”) The poet is recounting the moment of the vision of a number of daffodils, he was in direct contact with nature (“beside the lake, beneath the see”). Presumably it is windy, the daffodils move and they are continuous forming a long row of daffodils along the bay. Number and colour: of the daffodils: 10 thousand; the daffodils are golden, yellow. He is describing the scene in a very idealised way. Analysis Four stanzas in iambic tetrameter – The rhyme scheme is ABABCC ▫ Enjambement: v. 1-2; 7-9; 9-10 ▫ Alliteration: verso 5 “b”; verso 7 “s”; ▫ Repetition: v. 5 “the-the” ▫ Simile: v. 1; v. 7 ▫ Personification: v. 3; v. 6; v. 12 ▫ Hyperbole: never-ending line; ten thousand ▫ Anastrophe: v. 11 There is a sort of symmetry in terms of figures of speech, they are repeated the same in the strophes. It is an idealised description: the wind is a slight breeze and it makes the flowers dance. We know that the situation was different (Dorothy describes it too in her journal). He rewrote his memory. Second part – comprehension In this part he focuses on the waves. There is a sort of connection between the daffodils and the waves: both are dancing. The poet is feeling happy in this happy company, the company is nature. He feels that he is in harmony with nature. Both nature and the poet are happy. The poet is on his own but he feels in good company. Pope too feels a harmony with nature, but it is different. Pope has not an emotive connection with nature. Nature is simply a model, a reference point. Here nature is man’s companion. The experience that he is sharing with the reader is the moment when he reflects. He is lying on the couch in solitude and he can think over the past, he feels nostalgic. At the end there is a correspondence between his heart and the daffodils, both are dancing. Analysis The rhyme pattern is the same. ▫ Anaphora: last two lines “and-and” ▫ Enjambements: 13-14; 19-20 ▫ Alliterations: v. 13 “th”; ▫ Personification: v. 13; v. 16; v. 24 ▫ Anastrophe: v. 18; v. 19; v. 23 ▫ Metaphor: v. 21-22 14 novembre We are in a phase where imagination, which was kept away and relegated to a lower level than reason during the Enlightenment, is now rediscovered and emphasised. The poem “Daffodils” has been composed in a very long period: 1804-1807  Wordsworth wanted to fix the form and this period of time gives him the possibility to rewrite several times a memory that comes from a personal experience. The imagination takes a central place, also in the use of figurative language (personifications, hyperboles, etc.). The situation is idealised and shows harmony between the poet and the nature. In the last stanza, the poet is central and there is his tentative to make the reader understand that a situation of solitude too (not loneliness) can be joyful thanks to the company of nature. “I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought”  when the poet stands before the scene, he does not realise the wealth of feelings that that scene would have left him. Only after, when he remembers, his heart is filled with joy and pleasure. The first part includes the first 3 strophes and it is based on the direct observation of the scene; the last strophe is the moment of re-elaboration and of the awareness of not being alone and the possibility, given by nature, to discover emotions. The poet could have told the scene realistically, but he decided to represent the idea of the harmony with nature: the personal experience is the point of depart. ▫ Stanza 1: what type of experience is the poet recounting? He is recounting the experience of a walk. There is a transformation of mood through the poem: his mood changes when he enters in contact with nature. ▫ Where was he? What could he see? He is beside the lake, beneath the trees. He sees many daffodils. ▫ How does he describe the daffodils? What are they doing? They are golden, they are dancing. How many daffodils could he see? 10 thousand ▫ Stanza 3: What are the other natural elements in the scene? General atmosphere? The atmosphere is positive, jocund. There are many nouns and adjectives indicating joy. ▫ How does the poet feel and how does he consider nature? Nature is a friend. ▫ What does he say in the closing lines? Could he really understand the effects of such beautiful scene? No, he realises after. ▫ Connect this poem with the extract of the Preface of Lyrical Ballads  that extract was written by Wordsworth. Elements of connection: use of imagination; simple language; importance of meditation; he wants to show that it is possible to write without being victim of social vanity; emphasis on the necessity to rediscover experiences on their own. ▫ Why is this poem typically Romantic? Sense of relationship with nature. In Enlightenment, nature was the source of rules and order; here, there is a relationship with nature. From the Late Enlightenment to Romanticism • In the Enlightenment ethics and dissent were closely related to man’s capacity to improve human nature and the society at large. In the Romantic period these two concepts entailed the re-discussion of Man’s power over Nature, as well as his support of national identities and freedom. Man power over nature  because of the industrial revolution. Scientific progress is considered a danger, intellectuals (philosophes) start thinking. There is a limit: think about the Ancient Mariner, all his companions are punished; also Frankenstein, because no human creature could have the power to give life but Got. There are boundaries. This idea of dissent is divided into 2 parts: one part dedicated to the limitations to the power of men; the other related to the necessity for men to support national identities and freedom. Men want to take action and they give importance to social commitment. There is also beauty, related to nature but also to art.