La vita nell'epoca vittoriana e la letteratura di Stevenson e Wilde, Sintesi del corso di Inglese

Scarica La vita nell'epoca vittoriana e la letteratura di Stevenson e Wilde e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! PROGRAMMA INGLESE 2021-2022 THE VICTORIAN AGE 1837-1901 Victorian Britain and the growth of industrial cities. The Victorian age took its name from Queen Victoria, industrialisation was a period of rapid expansion of manufacturing industry and international trade, Britain become the most powerful nation in the world and because of that the number of colonies grew with lowly paid workers. Urban poor were a potential danger, so, over the century they were taken to incorporate the working class into society through reforms. Life in the city. While the upper and middle classes made large profits and occupied up to 50% of land, workers were forced into overcrowded slums where building regulations were ignored and cheap materials were used for new buildings. These unsanitary conditions led to spread deadly diseases like cholera and tuberculosis, to confront these terrible conditions the government promoted a campaign to clean up towns and built hospitals. The pressure for reform and the Chartist Movement. After the call for democratic reform, the first reform bill of 1832 excluded the working class, industrial regions of the country were not represented; these factors rose to the Chartist Movement and its goal was to gain political rights for the working class from 1836 to 1848. It took its name from its petition, the People’s Charter which contained six points for example vote for all men, secret ballot, annual elections for parliament. The People’s Charter was created in 1838, but was rejected three times; all the Chartists’ demands became law as a series of reform bills which extended the vote to members of the working classes. Managing the empire. The Victorian period saw the expansion of Britain’s empire all over the world, in 1877, Queen Victoria was declared Empress of India; it was vital to the British economy, Britain ‘annexed’ a number of territories like South Africa, Egypt and Afghanistan. However, control of these routes was made more difficult by political instability and war and Germany and France became economic powers and through their own colonies became rivals to Britain. Australia, which originally served as a prison and began to develop as a white colony based on the British model. The transport and communication revolution. The 19th century was also a time of great technological innovation, for example the invention of steam-powered machinery, around 6,000 miles of railways were built in Britain and inaugurated in 1825, the invention of the telephone and printing became cheaper. The Great Exhibition in 1851 held in the ‘Crystal Palace’ in London, displaying 100,000 objects from all over the world and became a symbol for Britain’s dominant position. But because British-built machines were strong there was no need to replace them, this is one of the reasons why technological progress was slower than in the USA, where machines were made more cheaply and broke down quickly. Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwin’s theories determined Victorian religious beliefs and marked the beginning of a crisis in values, the theory of natural selection demonstrated that the determining factors were selection, reproduction and variation. Darwin’s theory concerned the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest so those best adapted to the environment. However, such reasoning ignored the fact that social and economic structures were created and manipulated by elites to make sure they stayed in control. The United States: birth of a nation. It was during the 19th century that the United States began to grow, cities were raised and railroads constructed but also innovation in productive technology. Slavery and the American Civil War. The abolition of slavery in the USA happened later than in Europe, from the 1830s to the 1860s, the movement to abolish slavery became stronger in the northern states. Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1861, this led to the American Civil War (1861-1865), the southern plantation economy was dying and was being rapidly replaced by new industries which needed workers. It was one of the most violent conflicts in modern history, and it was one of the world’s first industrial wars involving railroads, the telegraph and mass-manufactured weaponry. The American dream? The modern American nation was born from the exodus of millions of immigrants from Europe, who came in search of freedom and a new home where they would be accepted. The American dream was associated with the idea of a suburban idyll, where one’s neighbours were of the same socio-economic and ethnic group. The invention of photography. The invention of photography was one of the most significant events in the 19th century, this helped to develop movements like realism and modernism. In 1826 the first photograph machines were produced using a ‘camera obscura’, 1861-65 Gardner produced a photographic record of the American Civil War. From Victorian schools to modern education. Children were divided into two categories: privileged or middle classes who went to private schools and poor children who laborers in mines, farms and factories. The Elementary Education Act in 1870 saw the introduction of mandatory education for all children up to the age of 11 but in the 19th century we saw the creation of the first schools for girls and new universities. The schools of Victorian England were harsh places, boys and girls were separated and classes were extremely big; teaching was often the job of unmarried ladies and teaching methods were mechanical and based on learning by memory and repetition. The Education Act in 1944 recognised education as a universal right and extended compulsory schooling to the age of 15 and later 16. From Bertha point of view: Her husband locked her in an attic while he flirted in her own house, her husband blamed her for her madness saying her mom was mad and drunk and Bertha copied her; Rochester tricked her into marrying him. Jane Eyre p. 48\49 Wide Sargasso Sea p. 50 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Life. ➔ 1850 he was born in Edinburgh. ➔ 1876 he met his future wife Fanny Osburne in France. ➔ 1888 he left with his family for the South Seas. ➔ 1894 he died while working on his masterpiece Weir of Hermiston. Literary production. ➔ 1878 An Inland Voyage the description of a tour in France with his monkey, by this time he had published several short stories. ➔ 1883 he published his first novel Treasure Island. ➔ 1886 he published his famous short story The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The story is set in London, a lawyer Utterson hears the story of a girl who was trampled by a mad called Hyde who pays her relatives with money from Dr Jekyll. Dr Jekyll is a Utterson’s client and leaves a will to leave his possession to Mr Hyde. A year later, a girl sees Hyde beating a man to death who was a politician and was carrying a letter for Utterson. Utterson calls the police but the killer has vanished, and Jekyll says that they don’t talk anymore with Hyde. He shows a letter from Hyde but the handwriting was similar to Jekyll’s; Lanyon, a friend of theirs dies in a mysterious way and Jekyll locks himself in his laboratory. Utterson decides to break in and inside he finds Hyde’s body with a letter written by Jekyll; in this letter Jekyll said that he found a drug that can divide two sides of human nature 8duality in human nature, a mixture of good and evil). Mr Hyde was Jekyll's bad part and he started to take over Jekyll’s life; Jekyll killed Hyde and he was arrested. The story is told from different points of view, Jekyll appears as a respectable doctor and the theme of the double dominates the story and we all have in us the potential for evil. Stevenson considered evil to be a real presence in human nature and also Darwin’s theory of man’s primordial animal side. OSCAR WILDE, he is a dandy so an aristocratic self-image and he is dressed with extravagant clothes. Aesthetics were a kind of religion that elevated him, they rejected the increasing uniformity of industrial society so they used social masks to escape from reality. Life. ➔ 1854 he grew up in Berlin, his father was a famous doctor and his mother was a translator and a poet. ➔ 1874 he settled in London, he was an eccentric dandy and he wrote aphorism. ➔ 1882 he gave a lecture tour in America. ➔ 1884 he married Constance Lloyd. ➔ 1895 he was arrested for homosexual offences. ➔ 1897 he moved to France where he lived in poverty. ➔ 1900 he died and was buried in Paris. Literary production. ➔ 1881 he published his first volume of poems. ➔ 1891 he published his famous novel The Picture of Donan Gray and than he wrote comedies. The Picture of Donan Gray. The preface was a manifesto of the Aesthetic movement, for example the artist is a creator of beautiful things. Basil Hallward is an artist who is fascinated by Dorian so he decided to paint him, Dorian understands that the beauty won’t last forever so he will kill himself when his youth fades. He meets a girl who loves him but he doesn’t reciprocate the sentiment so she kills herself, now the painting is ruined. Dorian embarks on a life full of vice and sensual gratification and also murder, letting the paint assume the consequence of his soul but than he realises the horror of his act and he kills himself. Dorian made a faustian pact with a devil: his own life became a work of art and became a mirror of his soul (Boudelaire, D’Annunzio). Wilde suggested spiritual purity and that beauty cannot be questionable. Art for art’s sake. A’rebours is a manifesto for an idea of life and it became the key of decadent literature, a movement of writers who rebelled against what they saw as vulgar and commonplaces of realism. The book’s central character is Des Esseintes who rebelled against notions of conservatism and radicalism. WALT WHITMAN Life. ➔ 1819 he was born in New York and he started to work at a young age and than he became a writer and an editor. ➔ 1873 he retired to New Jersey. ➔ 1892 he died. Literary Production. ➔ 1855 he published his first edition of Leaves of Grass, a collection which continued to grow throughout his life and he was inspired by the transcendent philosophy Emerson. ➔ He also published an elegy and some prose works. sd Leaves of Grass. It is an ever expanding work in progress of the vision of himself as the voice of the American experiences with the American voices free from European influences and was connected to the idea of ‘society of brothers’. He noted that the expanding states of America were rapidly inventing new words and new linguistic combinations, and the arrival of successive waves of immigrants contributed to the linguistic melting pot. He often breaks with rules of grammar and syntax. The idea of travel is as a spiritual vagabond with nature. Song of Myself. This is the longest and central poem from Whitman, he attempts to include all faces of common humanity, nothing is too low to merit inclusion in the poem. He considered himself as an open democratic project.