La Rivoluzione Industriale e la Poesia Romantica, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica La Rivoluzione Industriale e la Poesia Romantica e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Revolutions in society and in literature At the end of the 18th century, economic changes took place in England that would transform the country from an agricultural to an industrialized nation. The population increased in the 1500s and 1600s, and agriculture was intensified. First, open fields were enclosed into smaller portions of land to make more efficient arable farms. Moreover, the soil was drained and made more fertile, so that cereal production was greatly increased. Finally, animals were bred selectively, therefore producing more meat. Economic activity was gradually diversified, especially through the manufacture of woollen cloth. People began acquiring more goods for the house. The clothing of ordinary people changed with the introduction of white linen underwear, of stockings, ribbons and hats. Clothing marked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution because mass consumption of machine, made goods started. Cotton was the leading sector of industrialization. More and more people also began to consume things for pleasure, like tobacco, tea, coffee, sugar or alcohol. Rural, household-based production supplied these new kinds of demand. During the 18th century there was a succession of technological innovations that transformed and improved the productivity of workers. Thomas Newcomen invented an effective and practical steam engine in 1712, which made pumping water out of coal mines possible; in 1769 James Watt patented a steam engine that was more powerful and wasted less fuel than its predecessors. Edmund Cartwright’s loom linked cloth manufacture to water and steam power. As a result, cheaper products met the growing demand for goods. Heavy investment in technological development increased and innovation became linked to energy generated from coal. This changed the geography of the country, concentrating the new industrial activity near the coalfields of the Midlands and the North. People shifted from the rural South to the North and the Midlands, and small towns, the so-called “mushroom towns”, were constructed to house the workers near the factories. Industrial cities lacked elementary public services - water-supply, signification, street-cleaning, open spaces -; the air and the water were polluted by smoke and filth; the houses, built in endless rows, were overcrowded. Women and children were highly prized by employers because they could be paid less and were easier to control. Besides, the fact that the children were so small meant they could move more easily in mines, or crawl between the machines in the cotton industry to carry out repairs. Industrial labour imposed new work patterns, which no longer depended on the weather or change of season, but were determined by the mechanized regularity of the machine and a rational division of labour. Long working hours, discipline, routine and monotony marked the work of industrial laborers. Food prices rose, diet and health deteriorated with an increase in the morality rate. -> A NEW SENSIBILITY In the second half of the 18th century a new sensibility emerged. The poets of this period were less intellectual than Augustan poets and more intimately emotional. The poetry was essentially reflective. Many factors produced this change. The noisy activity of the industrial town was compared negatively withe the simple serenity of the countryside. There was a growing interest in humble. Related to this was an interest in melancholy. A new taste for the desolate, the love of ruins, graveyards, ancient castles and abbeys were part of a revival of interest in the past felt as a contrasting period to the present reality. The distinction between the beautiful and the sublime became a main theme of 18th century aesthetics. For Edmund Burke the sublime is “whatever is fitted in any sort of excite the ideas of pain and danger […] or operates in a manner analogous to terror”. He argued that terror and pain are the strongest emotions and that there is an inherent pleasure in such feelings. Whatever provoked these emotions could be defined as sublime. William Blake William Blake was born in London in 1757. His origins were humble and he remained poor all his life. He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts. As a painter, he created a new kind of art which emphasized the power of the imagination. A political freethinker, he supported the French Revolution. He witnessed the evil effects of industrial development on man’s soul and came to believe that the artist should have a new role, as the guardian of the spirit and imagination. Blake had a strong sense of religion. The most important literary influence in his life was the Bible. His experiences as a visionary and a radical contributed to the development of his poetry, which is regarded as early Romantic because he rejected neoclassical literary style and themes. He emphasized the importance of imagination over reason and believed that ideal forms should be created from inner visions. The poetic collections “Songs of Innocence” (1789) and “Songs of Experience” (1794) are the most accessible of his works. Songs of Innocence was produced before the outbreak of the French Revolution, when Blake’s enthusiasm for the liberal ideas was high. The narrator is a shepherd, who received inspiration from a child. Its symbols are lambs, flowers and children playing on the village green. The poem deal with childhood as the symbol of innocence, a state of the soul connected with happiness, freedom and imagination. The language is simple and musical. Songs of Experience appeared during the period of the Terror in France. Blake did not reject the songs of the innocence shepherd, but he created their counterpart in the form of the bard who questions the themes of the previous collection. The visual world of the collection is more complex; a more pessimistic view of life. “Experience”, identified with adulthood, coexists with and completes “Innocence”, thus providing another point of view on reality. He also wrote the same poems in both of the collections, changing them according to which collection they belong, to show the readers the two points of view. Blake considered the imagination as the means through which man could know the world. Imagination means “to see more, beyond material reality, into the life of things”. The poet therefore becomes a sort of prophet who can see more deeply into reality and who also tries to warn man of the evils of the society. Blake was concerned with the political and social problems of his time: he supported the abolition of salverà and the egalitarian principles of the French Revolution. He believed in revolution as purifying violence necessary for the redemption of man. Later, disillusioned, he focused his attention on the evil consequences of the Industrial Revolution. Blake’s poems have a simple structure and an original use of symbols. His verse is linear and rhythmical, it shows a close relationship between sound and meaning and is characterized by the frequent use of repetition. He believed in the reality of a spiritual world but regarded Christianity, and the Church especially, as responsible for the fragmentation of consciousness and the dualism characterizing man’s life. To this dualistic view he substituted his vision of “complementary opposites”: good and evil, male and female, reason and imagination, cruelty and kindness. Traditionally, individuals are thought to move from the state of innocence to the state of experience, as in the change from childhood to adulthood. For Blake contrary states exist not in linear sequence, but in parallel. THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER (scheda) Romantic poetry At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, English Romanticism saw the prevalence of poetry, which best suited the need to give expression to emotional experience and individual feelings. Imagination gained a primary role in the process of poetic composition. Romantic poets could see beyond surface reality and discover a truth beyond the powers of reason. Imagination allowed the poet to re- create and modify the external world of experience. The poet was seen as a visionary prophet whose task was to mediate between man and nature, to point out the evils of society, to give voice to the ideals of freedom, beauty and truth. To the Augustan Age, a child was important only in so far as he would become an adult and civilized being. Childhood was considered a temporary state. To a Romantic, a child was purer than an adult because he was unspoiled by civilization. His uncorrupted sensitiveness meant he was even closer to God. Childhood was a state to be admired and cultivated. There was new emphasis on the significance of the individual. The Augustans had seen man as a social animal. The Romantics, instead, saw him essentially in a solitary state. The current of thought represented by Rousseau stated that the conventions of civilization represented intolerable restrictions on the individual personality and produced every kind of corruption and evil. The savage may appear primitive, but actually has an instinctive knowledge of himself and of the world often superior to the knowledge which has been acquired by civilized man. Rousseau’s theories also influenced the “cult of the exotic”, that is, the veneration of what is far away both in space and in time. The Romantic poets also regarded nature as a living force and, in a pantheistic vein, as the expression of God in the universe. Nature became a main source of inspiration. The Romantic poets searched for a new, individual style through the choice of a language and subject suitable to poetry. Symbols and images lost their decorative function to assume a vital role as the vehicles of the inner visionary perceptions. The poets of the first generation, William Wordsworth and Coleridge, were characterized by the attempt to theories about poetry. While planning the Lyrical Ballads, they agreed that Wordsworth would write on the beauty of nature and ordinary things with the aim of making them interesting for the reader; Coleridge, instead, should deal with visionary topics, the supernatural and mystery. The poets of the second generation, Byron, P.B.Shelley, Keats, experienced political disillusionment which is reflected, in their poetry, in the clash between the ideal and the real. Individualism and escapism, as well as the alienation of the artist from society. The revolutionary spirit and stubborn hope of Shelley’s. The term “Romanticism” comes from the French word romance. The adjective “Romantic” first appeared in English in the second half of the 17th century, “Romantic” was used to describe the picturesque in the landscape. In the literary field, Sehnsucht was opposed to Stille; poetry was always new and spontaneous, no longer the imitation of the classics. In Germany, anticipated by the Sturm und Drang movement of the late 18th century, the Romantic ideas of the brothers Friedrich and august Wilhelm von Schlegel appeared on the pages of the periodical Athenaum in 1798. In the same year, in England, the Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Coleridge were published. The second edition of 1800 contained a “Preface” by Wordsworth which is usually regarded as the Manifesto of English Romantic poetry. Madame de Stael spread the Romantic principles in France, and Giovanni Berchet marked the official beginning of the Romantic movement in Italy. William Wordsworth William Wordsworth was born in the English Lake District, near the Scottish border, in 1770.he graduated from St John’s College, Cambridge. His contact with revolutionary France had filled him with enthusiasm for the democratic ideals, which he hoped could lead to a new and just social order. Then he returned to France and fell in love with Annette Vallon. In 1795 he received an inheritance and moved to Dorset with his sister Dorothy, who remained his most faithful friend. She constantly supported his poetry. In the same year he met Coleridge. Their friendship proved crucial to the development of English Romantic poetry: they produced a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads which appeared anonymously in 1798. The second edition in 1800 also contained Wordsworth’s famous “Preface”, which was to become the Manifesto of English Romanticism. In 1805 he finished his masterpiece, The Prelude, a long autobiographical poem. The last years of his life were marked by the growing conservatism of his political views. He died in 1850. For Wordsworth poetry was a solitary act, originating in the ordinary. He belonged to the first generation of Romantic poets. While planning the Lyrical Ballads with Coleridge, they decided that he would deal with man, nature and everyday things trying to make them interesting for the reader, while Coleridge should write about the supernatural and mystery making them seem real. In his “Preface” he explained that the subject matter should deal with everyday situations or incidents and with ordinary people. The language should be simple. According to Wordsworth in humble rural life the man is nearer to his own purer passions. Therefore the poet is a man among men, writing about what interests mankind. Wordsworth shared Rousseau’s faith in the goodness of nature as well as in the excellence of the child. He thought that man could achieve that good through the cultivation of his senses and feelings. His poetry offers a detailed account of the complex interaction between man and nature, of the influences, insights, emotions and sensations which arise from this contact. Wordsworth believed that man and nature are inseparable; man exists not outside the natural world but as an active participant in it. In his pantheistic view Wordsworth saw nature as something that includes both inanimate and human nature. Nature is a source of pleasure and joy, he teaches him how to love and to act in a moral way. For Wordsworth nature was also a world of sense perception. Wordsworth was most interest in the growth of his relationship with nature, in the ways it influenced him at different points in his life and the ways in which his awareness of it changed. Memory is a major force in the process of growth of the poet’s mind and moral character. The poet has a great sensibility and an ability to see into the heart of things. The power of imagination enables him to communicate his knowledge. His task consists in drawing attention to the ordinary things of life, too the humblest people, where the deepest emotions and truths can be found. He almost always used blank verse, though he proved skillful at several verse forms such as sonnets, odes, ballads and lyrics with short lines and simple rhymes. A CERTAIN COLOURING OF IMAGINATION The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in these poems was to choose 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 way; 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. […] Taking up the subject, then, upon general grounds, I ask what is meant by the word ‘poet’? What is a poet? To whom does he address himself? And what language is to be expected from him? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting, and who rejoices passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to contemplate similar volitions and to create them where he does not find them. To these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if they were present; an ability of conjuring up far from being the same as those produced by real events, yet (especially in those parts of the general sympathy which are pleasing and delightful) do more nearly resemble the passions produced by real events, than any thing which, from the motions of their own minds merely, other men are accustomed to feel in themselves; whence expressing what he thinks and feels, and especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or from the structure of his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement, and from practice, he has acquired a greater readiness and power in. […] I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred of powerful feelings: it takes its origin to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on; but the emotion, of whatever kind and in whatever degree, from various causes is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any passions whatsoever, which are voluntarily described, the mind will upon the whole be in a state of enjoyment. Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in 1792. He was a conservative Member of Parliament. He rebelled early against his conventional background and in 1811 he was expelled from Oxford University because of his radical ideas. Shelley made revolutionary propaganda against Catholicism and English rule. In that period the idealistic drive of the French Revolution had already been exhausted. Shelley, therefore, lived in a time of conservatism which was hostile not only to any radical ideas but even to political moderation. He rebelled against existing religions, laws and customs; he became a republican and an advocate of free love. He had an interest in the occult sciences and in scientific experiments. Shelley eloped with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of the radical philosopher William Godwin. They went to Switzerland, where they met Byron. In 1816 Mary wrote her novel Frankenstein. In 1818 the Shelleys went to live in Italy, in voluntary exile, during which much of Percy’s best work was composed, for example, Ode to the West Wind. In 1822 Shelley’s intense life was cut short by an accident: while sailing near Livorno, he was drowned during a storm. Shelley’s grave is in the Protestant cemetery in Rome. He presented his poetry as the expression of imagination which should be understood as revolutionary creativity, capable of changing the reality of an increasingly material world. Shelley’s nature is a beautiful veil hiding the eternal truth of the divine spirit. Nature provides him with images, such as the wind and the clouds, and symbols for the creation of his cosmic schemes. Nature also represents a shelter from the disappointment and injustice of the ordinary world, the expression of his dreams and of his hopes for a better future. The poet is both a prophet and a titan challenging the cosmos. His task is to help mankind to reach an ideal world where freedom, love and beauty replace tyranny. Shelley’s verse converse a wide range of metric and stanzaic forms. ODE TO THE WEST WIND O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and Preserver; hear, oh, hear! Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion, Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine aëry surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith’s height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear! Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystàlline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave’s intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear! If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seemed a vision I would ne’er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawakened earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?