Letteratura inglese 1 - Gender e femminismo, Dispense di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Letteratura inglese 1 - Gender e femminismo e più Dispense in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! Literature expresses, represents and challenges gender concepts: Gender studies Women's studies Masculinity studies Gender refers to ways of seeing and representing people based on sex differences. While sex is biological, Gender is a social construct. These beliefs are culturally produced. Gender- term denoting the cultural constitution of notions concerning femininity or masculinity and the ways in which these serve ideologically to mantain gendered identities Key prhase: cultural constitution of notion, serve ideologically to mantain gendered identities The concept of gender argues that a person may have male sex but have feminine attributes in relation to cultural norms of his society. Literary texts in different ways challenge the gender rapresentation which is a much more difficult subject rather than how she or he was born. Gender issues affect the writing as well as the reading of literary texts. When our reading has its focus on the representation of gender it is always important to look at the context, it is in that context that it is represented and that's why gender norms are never the same throughout human history. One of the first important studies examining the differences between sex and gender is written by Robert J Stoller SEX AND GENDER: ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY (1968) Stoller influenced the american feminist Kate Millet the author of one of the founding texts of feminism: SEXUAL POLITICS Stoller is a psychologist and he uses the word gender to refer to behaviours, sentiments, thoughts, fantasies associated with being a female or male within a specific socio-cultural context, All these behaviours are not determined by the biological sex. Passage that comes from this book: Gender identity starts with the knowledge, whether concious or unconcious that one belongs to one sex and not the other, though as one develops gender identity becomes more difficult, as a man not only identifies as a man but a masculine man or a feminine man or a man that fantasizes in being a woman. After Stoller we need to talk about feminism, Feminism is a politics: the awareness of the historical and cultural subordination of women, and a will to solve the problem. We have three waves: -first wave, 19th and the early 20th century, mainly concerned with women's right to vote (suffragettes) -second wave in the 60s and 80s/ women's liberation movement for equal legal and social rights (the personal is political- suggested that women's inequality were linked together, the slogan ackwnoledge how the roles they played in personal life reflected the inequal norms of society) Betty Friedman published this ground breaking book: THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE Big literary achievement, different portrait of women characters from the perspective of female writers and not from the male perspective -third wave, from the 90s which is a continuation of the second wave of feminism Intersectional- looks at the intersection of various factors in women's life- ethnicity, religion, social class, race, cast, physical appearance (not just gender) Woomenhood is not generic. Nowadays feminism protects categories such as women of color and trans women. Literature is used to denounce gender inequality. Academic approach to the study of literature applying feminist thought to the analysis of literary texts and the contexts of their production and reception Key names and works: -Mary Wollstonecraft (18th) -Virginia Woolf in the early 20th -Elaine Showalter in the 18th -Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gilbert “Judith Butler In the 80s all these works were included in specific academic courses: Women's studies: concerned with the representation, rights and status of women. Gender studies: concerned with the representation, rights and status of both women and men. They draw on feminist scholarship but also discuss men and masculinity in historically specific ways. Even men somehow were affected by gender norms. Women leave behind the secrecy and find their place in literature Does not concern only women: Masculinity studies: revision of men identity vs traditional gender categories. The results of patriarchy on men themselves. Adjectives conventually used on women Angelic, beautiful, light Il. SHAKESPEARE SONNETS During Shakespearean times England had been struck by the plague, when it spread the theatres were closed. Shakespeare wrote the sonnets mainly during the period of the plague (1593-1603). Elizabeth the | died in 1603, there was a crisis in the reign, and her closest relative became the new king of England, James the VI of Scotland who became James the | of England and Scotland, uniting the kingdoms (union of the crown). We move from the Tudors to the Stuart dinasty. Thou art more lovely and more temperate: (B) But thy eternal summer shall not fade, (E) 9 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, (A) Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st (F) 3 Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, And summer's lease hat all too short a date; (B) (E) Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, (C) When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st: (F) And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; (D) So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, (G) And every fair from fair sometimes declines, ( C) So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. (G) By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; (D) 8 The poet initially compares his friend to a summer day, but later he says that the friend is definitely better and because he is more beautiful, more temperate and above all eternal, his poetry and fame will live on as long as there is life on earth. The first line is a rethorical question, the speaker wonders if to describe the beauty of the fair youth he should compare it to a summer's day; it's rethorical because in the second line the poet admits he's far better than a summer's day. There is no metaphor that can describe his beauty for there is no perfect metaphor. //Lovely is a synonym of beauty// //temperate meant gentle nature// The beauty of the fair youth goes beyond the physical aspect. In the second line he opens the sentence with Thou (archaic way to say You) as in he was directly talking to the subject of the poem. From line 3 to 8 the poet gives examples of the ups and downs of nature, he wants to emphasise that the young man's beauty is beyond comparing. Summer's lease hath all too short a date/the lease of summer is too short a date, because in England summer can easily become winter, it is a subject of change either too hot or too cold. In line 8 Shakespeare suggests that everything in nature is doomed/destined to die and so is beauty. In line 9 there is a big change by the use of BUT because youth will persist against death and death himself cannot be proud of capturing youth because it cannot conquer it. How can this be possible? After all fair youth is human It is in the last 3 lines that we find an answer, for in the poem he will grow, a living part of time that will never die, forever captured in the lines of the poem. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. Love as it is celebrated by heart The poem presents stanza division 3 quatrains so 3 stanzas od 4 lines with alternated lines (A,B,A,B,C,D,C,D,E,F,E,F) And then at the end we have a rhyming couplet (G,G) (Couplet=distico in italian) 14 iambic pentamiters lambic pentamiter: line of 10 syllables, 5 stressed and 5 unstressed, caracterized by a rising in rhythm (iamb- giambo in italian) Foot is a unit, composed by 2 syllables, first unstressed and second stressed. Example: Shall I/ comPARE/ thee T0/ a SUM/mer'"s DAY? Almost all of his sonnets present this characteristics. Some critics do argue that the first line is not an iamb because of it being a question and the stressed part being the first word, It is in this case a Trochee (inversed iambi: first syIllable stressed, second unstressed. Same goes, not as consistently as the previous one, on the foot "thee to" where the stressed syllable could as well be the first one. In line 3 again the rhythm is interrupted by what we call a Spondee (foot consisted of 2 stressed syllables: rough winds) Used to put weight on the bad weather giving strong impact on the reader. Again in line 10 and 11 The stress in both cases is on Nor, so we have a Trochee Still in line 11 the stress is on DEATH BRAG, so we have a Spondee. FIGURES: 1.Alliteration (repetition of the same sound at the beginning of several words in a sequence): “(E)very fair from fair declines” (1.7) 2. Assonance (repetition of similar vowel sounds, usually close together): “(A)nd this gives life to thee” 1.14 3. Anaphora (repetition of the same word at the beginning of successive clauses or verses): The line 13 and 14 (couplet) both start with the words “So long” PERSONIFICATION: the attribution of human characteristics to things that are non-human. (Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May) (Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines) (Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade) METAPHOR: I am an angel SIMIL: I am innocent as an angel SONNET 18 About the poet's love/or strong friendship Belongs to the fair beauty sequence The subject is a very young man. Portrait of Mr W.H by oscar Wilde (in late vicotrian period) The narrator says he has discovered the secret of shakespeare sonnets, that he is the young man the poems talk about. In reality there is stil no answer as who this young man is. COLIN BURROW, the complete sonnets and poems (oxford UP, 2002) "Shakespeare's homosexuality is a reader fiction generated by a desire to read narrative coherence into a loosely associated group of poems: the poems present a multiplicity of structural patterns and overlapping groups and semi-sequences. To lock them in, where most, perhaps, seek to be free" Why do we want to fix forever the meaning of such sonnet in relation to shakespeare's sexuality? We don't need to do that but we need to consider that nobody at that time would consider themselves to be homosexual; this word enter the english languge in the 1890s (Oscar Wilde period), same sex love was a crime. Does it really matter do identify the kind of love Shakespeare represents? Perhaps not. Colin Burrow (ibidem) "The poems relish the elasticity of sonnet conventions, and their author shows his strenghts by toying with, and sometimes parodying, those conventions" Shakespeare's toys the role of the angelic woman with an angelic man. The gender of the subject is not present but it its beauty is immortalized; many critics agree this poem is for a young man. DYMPNA CALLAGHAN, shakespeare's sonnets (blackwell 2007) In a lyric "we are shown the contours of a deep impression made by the individual on the mind of the poet. This is the very nature and essence of a lyric image- that is, it is the poetic (mental and emotional) impression of real people and real events, without ever aspiring to the status of a record or description of the people and events themselves". Let's bear in mind that the subject of sonnet 18, whoever she or he may be, it is not given for sure that this person actually existed in his life. While in nature there is both summer days and cold winters, the nature of the young man will never make these changes, the poem will forever keep him in his lines. Immortality, he will never die, his image will forever be kept alive by this poem. My mistress ' eyes are nothing like the Sun, Till my bad angel fire my good one out. The two loves are a man right fair and a woman colored ill (pale sick, could also be an allegory for a sick mentality, corrupted mind). They embody a battle between good and evil, this battle takes place within the speaker's soul, two opposite sides of love These kinds of loves were represented during medieval times as Morality Plays. A Morality Play is subjected to the presence of personified virtues and values (Dr Faustus by Shakespeare makes use of this play, good angel bad angel)(Otello) In the sonnet, good is the speaker's love for the fair youth, elevated love, stable constant love, as temperate as the fair youth's beauty; Evil is the speaker's love for the dark lady, a sense of submission, sexuality and passion. According to the critics, this represents two experiences that divided his heart Although Shakespeare never mentions his private life, but creates two angels, the truth lies in between. The speaker in sonnet 144 is caught in between two opposite emotional sources, The woman colored ill is tempting the young man and she is driving him away from the speaker. How can she take him away? The speaker thinks that they're having an affair but he cannot be sure until he has true evidence. In the final couplet it seems that the woman is stronger than the young man (till my bad angel fire my good one out) The speaker lives between two characters, their voices remain silent but the speaker's voice is strong enough to tell this story. (comfort and despair) two extremes he's caught in The term SPIRITS used in line two suggests that these are not people, rather mental and spiritual characteristics. These spirits always tempt him. Line 3 and 4 are opposites fighting (the better angel/the worser spirit) (a man right fair/a woman colour'd ill. The use of the word ANGEL/SPIRIT emphasizes that the issues the man is going through are internal and mental rather than physical. The first 2 lines set the dramatic scene. Each character personifies an emotional state that the character is going through. The woman being called the worser spirit, acts as an antagonist The man would rather live his love life with the young man but he can't because of the woman. He feels hell with her but he also feels guilty because he let himself be in that situation. The woman tempts the young man away, the reader is left with a question: Does the woman seduce the young man or does she seduce the speaker bringing him away from the young man altogether? This sonnet does not present an answer to this question. The second quatrain explains that the woman is trying to seduce the young man physically with sexual advances. In the last quatrain the speaker expresses a doubt that he's not able to answer Lines 11 and 12 are rather ambiguous, does he mean that they're too far away from telling or that they come from inside of him? because he cannot know whether the bad side will try the good side. There are two readings: The psychological one: he sees these two spirits as two opposite feelings, and he does not know whether the good or the bad prevails. The physical one: it is a love triangle, until he has the proof of the venereal disease, he does not know whether he will attempt the fair youth. Or these two people are too far away from him, so he can't know... or according to a more psychological reading, he cannot know which of the two will win because they are inside him, they are mental. Inside of him eventually the evil side will prevail but still he doesn't know There is another meaning of Hell, used as a methaphor of a woman's genital...so sex BUT we still don't know, we are destined to live in doubt like the speaker. He can't tell ifthe young man was corrupted until he has proofs; critics believe that the proof he's looking for is a venereal disease. VI. Shakespeare is a man of theatre, actor (the king's men (James 1)) and manager. The Tempest, very last work that he wrote by himself, he wrote other two works but in collaboration with others. Most of the stories he tells aren't completely original, he takes them from previously written story, and that's the case for history plays; Macbeth takes part in the history play, it is taken from an important work that came out in 1577 entitled “Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland" Shakespeare continues living through revisitations, adaptations. The theatre he became manager of continues living (THE GLOBE)- the world itself is a stage (Pirandello). There were many rewritings of Shakespearean 'experience' (Charles Marowitz) MACBETH (1605-1608) Belongs to the great tragedies such as Othello, Hamlet etc etc... -Macbeth about the world of theatre: (...). Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. (V.5) The world is a stage. - Written and first stages in 1606 - Tragedy in 5 acts - Published in 1623 (first folio edition, ed. by Heminges and Condell, 2 actors of the King's Men company) - Historical source: Holinshed's chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1577) PLOT - Setting: 11th century Kingdom of Scotland - The thanes Banquo and Macbeth win the war against Irish and Norwegian invaders. dopo che entrambi hanno vinto la Guerra, prima di entrare nel castello appare la prima strega con la prima profezia dicendo che macbeth sarà re e banquo padre del re - The witches' first prophecy: Macbeth will be king and Banquo father of kings - Macbeth kills king Duncan after lady Macbeth tells him to (lady Macbeth is the mind, Macbeth is the hand) - Macbeth kills both Banquo and Macduff's family (Macduff manages to escape to England and puts together an army that will invade Scotland and liberate it) - The witches' second prophecy: "Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until/ Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill/ shall come against him" (IV.1) The army Malcolm and Macduff are leading to the castle (from England) in Dunsinane Hill (Scotland). They're going there in disguise with leaves and branches from the forest. [Macbeth non sarà mai vinto fino a quando la grande foresta di Birnam avanzando verso l'alto monte di Dunsinane non marci contro di lui] Lady Macbeth receives a letter by her husband telling her about the prophecy, she doesn't think he has the qualities to make this prophecy real; Her train of thoughts (soliloquy) is stopped by a messanger telling her that her husband and king Duncan are visiting (back from Ireland to the castle), then she prepares herself for the killing of Duncan. She tells her husband about the execution and she puts the dagger in his hands The raven himself is hoarse Th'effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan And take my milk for gall, you murth'ring ministers, Under my battlements. Come, you spirits Wherever in your sightless substances That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full And pall thee in the dunnes smoke of hell, Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood; That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Stopo up th'access and passage to remorse, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, That no cumpunctious visitings of nature To cry 'hold, hold!' Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between This contains the suspance that will keep on moving throughout the whole play, a soliloquy that stops time and discussion. In these 17 lines we are offered lots of images that reveal lady macbeth's mentality. The raven is linked to bad, and it was said to eat the dead human flesh of the fallen in war, this bird feeds on innocent victims. Lady Macbeth calls 2 spirits for assistance, she asked for radical change, to rip off her femininity (unsex me here) She wants to assume characteristics that are monstrous. She dehumanizes herself. Thick blood. She speaks as the witches She reveals her humanity when she asks for help from supernatural forces, because her human mentality couldn't stand it normally. She wants the audacity not to feel remorse or regret and to go ahead with her plan. Images of obscurity. She appeals to thick night, not even the night will be able to see her weakness. A way to hide her own weakness. In this scene she is the puppet master (burattinaio), controlling Macbeth. In this soliloquy her language explains how lucid she is. Lady Macbeth: yet here's a spot. (...) out, damned spot! Out, | say!- One:two:why?, Then, 'tis time to do't.- hell is murky!- Fie, my lord, Fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who Knows it, when none can call our power to account? -Yet who would have thought the old man to have Had so much blood in him. (act V, scene 1) That's the moment when she becomes mad, when clarity leaves her body, she tries to reach on that little humanity left inside her. Lady Macbeth: the thane of fife had a wife: Where is she now?- what, will these hands Ne'er be clean?- no more o' that, my lord, no More o' that: you mar all with this starting. (act V, scene 1) It is in the end ofthe work that the conventional gender roles go back to "normal" (perché Lady Macbeth riprende la sua umanità, a differenza di Macbeth) Madness forces Lady Macbeth into her femininity. And Macbeth goes into toxic masculinity with his foul acts. In order to achieve her goals, Lady Macbeth would do anything (Machiavelli- the end justifies the means) "Place Lady Macbeth in comparison with Richard IlI., and you see at once the essential distinction (...)- though both in extreme and overleaping all restraints of conscience or mercy. Richard says of himself, that he has 'neither pity, love, nor fear': Lady Macbeth is affected by all three (A.M Jameson) Is this a dagger which | see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me cutch thee. l have thee not, and yet | see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sigh? Or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? | see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now | draw. Thou marshall'st me the way that i was going; And such an instrument | was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, Or else worth all the rest; | see thee still, And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, Which was not so before. There's no such thing: It is the bloody business which informs Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep. He sees a dagger that is not there, Troubled mind (heat-oppressed) (calore) He's not entirely convinced of doing the crime. He's foretelling what is going to happen. (sta prevedendo ciò che succederà) He's upset, his mind is not as cold, he still has some doubt. During the night our anxieties torment us, just like it happened with Lady Macbeth PROSE IN MACBETH A lower class character's speech (like the comedic Porter in II.3) A situation out of control (as in this scene) A domestic, family scene (when Lady Macduff talks to her son in IV.2 before both are killed) - Paradox, contradiction, antithesis: structural principle from the incipit MORAL DISORDER- embodied by the witches They appear in a very chaotic kind of climate Thunder and lightning. Enter the three Witches First witch: when shall we meet again?/ in thunder, lightning or rain? Second Witch: when the hurly-burly's done,/ when the battle's lost and won. THE BEARDED WITCHES (weird sisters of destiny) Banquo: "you should be women; And yet your beards forbid me To interpret That you are so" (1.3) - Projection of evil, but they never execute it- homo faber fortunae suae THE WITCHES AND LADY MACBETH (here after reading Macbeth's letter, Act I, Scene 5) Glamis thou art, nd Cawdor, and shalt be What thou art promised. Yet do | fear my nature: It is too full o'the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it. (...) hie thee hither That | may pour my spirits in thine ear, And chastise with the valour of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem To have thee crowned withal. (..) (qui lady Macbeth legge che non si possono ottenere con dolcezza e virtù per essere un grande regnatore, legge che egli non vuole essere sleale, per essere un buon re, ella legge che al re manca il malvolere, troppo pieno di umana dolcezza, e per questo non lui ma un potere metafisico lo vuole re) SOME KEY SCENES: class analysis - Act II, scene 1: Macbeth and the crime- imagined before committing it - Act V, scene 1: Lady Macbeth's sleeplessness and insanity. VII. LIFE He was born in 1795 in London. In 1811 after leaving school, he was apprenticed to an apothecary-surgeon (a kind of pharmacy, a chemist’s shop), and in 1815 he became a student at Guy's Hospital, London. In 1816 he abandoned medicine for poetry. In 1818 Keats nursed his brother Tom, who was ill with tuberculosis (same illness that killed their mother). After his brother death in December, he moved into a friend’s house in Hampstead where he met and fell in love with Fanny Brawne. In 1820 John was very ill with tuberculosis and he moved to Rome hoping that warmer climate would help him. In 1821 he died in Rome and is buried in the Non-Catholic cemetery there. LITERARY PRODUCTION: In 1817 was published the first volume of Keats’ poems but it wasn't well received. (one year later he abandoned medicine) In 1819 he wrote a lot of poems despite his health and financial problems. The Eve of St Agnes, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Ode to a Nightingale, Hyperion, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy and To Autumn are the poems written during this period and his second volume of poems appeared in July 1820. He's one of the greatest romanticist poets. KEATS AS PRE-AESTHETE : Beauty is truth, truth beauty that is all we know on earth and all we need to know. (ode on a Grecian urn). Keats believed that what truly determines truth is experience, an experience which is felt also through our senses, almost physical. Oppositions between what is related to the heart and what is beyond. He wrote many letters: “The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate from their beingin close relationship with beauty and truth" (letter to his brother, 22 December 1818) "Circumstances are like clouds continually gathering and bursting while we are laughing the seed of some trouble is put into the wide arable land of events-- while we are laughing it sprouts, it grows and suddenly bears a poison fruit which we must pluck." (Keats, letter to his brother and sister, 1819) KEATS'S AESTHETICS: Keats's verse is in many ways much quieter and more subtle than the other poets’ of the Romantic age. He has no moral or political purpose. His aim is not to show how clever or smart he is. His aesthetic was not mean to be a meaning. He is just interested in the sensuous qualities of poetry. Keats anticipates the “art for art’s sake’”’ tendency of the 19th century, which we will see more detailed with Oscar Wilde and Baudelaire. He is fascinated by immortal perfection, which is lifeless and artificial, and seduces us away from the possibilities of our lived experience. NEGATIVE CAPABILITY: it is the ability of a poet or an artist to produce something beautiful, perfect although still uncertain. “several things dovetailed in my mind, and at once it struck me, what quality went to form a man achievement especially in literature and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — | mean negative capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”. Keats does not talk about negative capability, but he was one of the first one to have this concept in his poetry. KEATS' POETICS — OPPOSITES AND PARADOXES: - Pain and pleasure - Melancholy and joy - Mortal and immortal - Life and death - Dream and reality - Ideal and real - Transient and eternal LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI (1819) This ballad was written in April of 1819 and the title comes from another poem by a French poet, Alain Chartier and was a medieval ballad. The medieval theme of the French poem was the non-reciprocal courtly love (even in the Keats ballad maintains the medieval theme and rhythms). In Keats “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” it's not the unattainable object of love, it's not a woman that he cannot conquer, it's a symbol of art as a seducer and as deceiver, who's perfection remains out of reach, because in reality we do not have perfection but in art we do. If we try to grab it, we may be caught into it and not go back to reality itself. The poem is structured as a series of Chinese boxes/ Doll house The poet\speaker (we don't know the identity of this man) meets a pale ill looking knight in a desolate lake side, he asks him what's wrong and the knight describes his meeting with a beautiful woman who told him she loved him and took him to her cave. -SECOND STANZA Ordinary life, harvesting time is over. -THIRD STANZA Knight is presented rather ill - The fever may be a physical one or a metaphorical one. -FOURTH STANZA The woman doesn't seem quite human, she goes beyond the confines of the real world - a faery's child, and her eyes were wild. -FIFTH AND SIXTH STANZAS This woman seduces the man, and they can have a sexual meeting. He's enchanted. -SEVENTH STANZA Encourages her powerful identity, suggesting magical world. -EIGHTH THROUGH ELEVENTH STANZA The knight describes this cave as an elf cave but then proceeds to give her humane feelings - she wept, she cried. They are connected physically but here they are connected emotionally. Stanza nine: he does say that this love gives him pain- woe betide. He dreams of knights and princes telling him he's trapped by this woman; these people were sick, starving. When he woke up, he found himself on the hill side. Last stanza: he answers the question and repeats the first stanza. We do wonder if the knight is dead or alive. The images of death in the poem can represent the illness that Keats and his brother suffered for. - Finally there is no ‘why’ to solve the mystery of la belle dame sans merci or to dispel its lingering effects. There are 2 readings in stanza five for this sentence: She looked at me as she did love A) she looked at me as if she did love B) she looked at me while she did love Critics have always pointed out that there is no punctuation between the two voices, this reinforces the idea that the speaker is almost enchanted by the knight, he can only listen to the story, hypnotized. The first speaker gradually disappears through the story. Is the speaker there or is it a discussion with a voice coming from the inside of the knight? She is a sublime image. x I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all. They cried- la belle dame sans merci Hath thee in thrall! The reader in thrall "enthralled by the lack of narrative information and the excess of implication, readers tend to submit to the bondage of enthrallment, to agree that they are in the poem's thrall" (A. Bennet) THREE MAIN INTERPRETATIONS: I - WHO IS THE BELLE DAME SANS MERCI? A femme fatale (either a real or supernatural- Lamia/ Vampire woman) is a woman that doesn't respect the gender rules of that time. - WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE KNIGHT'S SELF-CONSUMING EXPERIENCE? Passionate love may be destructive - love and pain are both part of Keats’ dialectics. - WHY DOES HE KEEP LOITERING? Because he can never get enough? Obsessive carnal love creates dependence. - WHAT IS THE MEANING OF HIS HALLUCINATORY DREAM? His subconscious warning him of the danger. - Femme fatales proliferate in the Romantic and Victorian imagination: Mermaids, Lamias, Medusas, Circe, Salomé, the Sphinx... vs. Angelic woman. S. De Beauvoir, le deuxieme sex (1949): “The woman who makes free use of her attractiveness- adventuress, vamp, femme fatale- remains a disquieting type” - Anticipation of Freud's idea of woman's sexuality as the "Dark Continent" AND "the Uncanny" (1919) “that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once familiar”. Il - WHAT ELSE COULD BE THE BELLE DAME SANS MERCI BE? Pre-Jungian idea of ANIMA (vs animus) = feminine archetype, the source of Eros, the irrational, an individual's true inner self (Goethe's 'eternal feminine' in Faust). - WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE KNIGHTS SELF-CONSUMING EXPERIENCE IN THIS CASE? To realize our deepest aspirations, the irrational impulses of our soul, our Unheimlich may be troubling. -WHY DOES HE KEEP LOITERING? -Fear but also attraction of what goes beyond human limits, of the mystery of life, of our inner life. -WHAT IS THE MEANING OF HIS HALLUCINATORY DREAM? Again, a warning against the danger inherent in unbalanced irrational forces, if out of control. ul - WHAT ELSE COULD BE THE BELLE DAME SANS MERCI BE? The beautiful and ecstatic without or outside the moral (pre-aesthetic concept) - the ideal world of imagination. - WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE KNIGHT’S SELF-CONSUMING EXPERIENCE IN THIS CASE? The overwhelming experience and the power of art. Swart-head mulberries, (gelsi ofa dark color) Wild free-born cranberries, (mirtilli selvatici nati liberi) Crab-apples, dewberries, (little apples, more piccolo più simili ai lamponi) Pine-apples, blackberries, (blackbarries= more) Apricots, strawberries;- All ripe together (tutti maturi insieme) In sunmer weather,- Morns that pass by, (le mele che passano) Fair eves that fly; (le belle vigne che volano) Come buy, come buy EVENING by evening Among the brookside rushes, (the river where the goblin stay) Laura bowed her head to hear, (bowed= chinò) Lizzie veiled her blushes: (..) "oh" cried Lizzie, "Laura, Laura You should not peep at goblin men." (peep at= sbirciare) Lizzie covered up her eyes, Covered close, lest they should look; (si coprì da vicino, per evitare che guardassero) Laura reared her glossy head, (alzò la sua testa lucid) And whispered like the restless brook: (restless brook= ruscello inquieto) "look, lizzie, look, lizzie, Down the glen tramp little men (giù per la valle, i piccoli uomini vagano) (...) How fair the vine must grow (vine= vite) Whose grapes are so luscious; How warm the wind must blow (come deve soffiare caldo il vento) Through those fruit bushes" (fruit bushes= cespugli di frutta) "no," said Lizzie "no, no, no; Their offers should not charm us, Their evil gifts would harm us." She thrust a dimpled finger In each ear, shut eyes, and ran: Curious Laura chose to linger, Wondering at each merchant man, (meravigliandosi di ogni...) One had a cat's face One whisked tail, (whisked tail= coda sbattuta) One tramped at a ratt's pace (uno camminava a passo di ratto) One crawled like a snail, (strisciava come una lumaca) One like a wombat prowled obtuse and (come un vombato si aggirava ottuso e peloso) Furry, One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry. (ratel=tasso del miele, ruzzolava in frutta e furia) She heard a voice of doves (doves= colombe) Cooing all together, (cooing= tubavano) They sounded kind and full of loves In the pleasant weather. (tempo piacevole) (part where Laura gets the fruit) But sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste: "good folk, I have no coin; (folke=gente) To take were to purloin: (prendere era rubare) I have no copper in my purse, (non ho rame nella borsa) I have no silver either, And all my gold is on the furze (furze= pelliccia That shakes in windy weather (che si agita nel tempo ventoso) Above the rusty heather" (sopra l’erica arrugginita) "you have much gold upon your head," They answered all together: "buy from us with a golden curl" (golden curl=ricciolo d’oro) She clipped a precious golden lock, (clipped=tagliò) She dropped a tear more rare than pearl, Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red: Sweeter than honey from the rock, Stronger than man-rejoicing wine, (più forte del vino che rallegra l’uomo) Cleared than water flowed that juice; (più limpido dell’acqua scorreva quell succo) She never tasted such before, How should it cloy with length ofuse? (come potrebbe stancare con l’uso?) She sucked and sucked and sucked the more Fruits which that unknown orchard bore; (Frutti che quel frutteto sconosciuto portava) She sucked until her lips were sore; (sore=indolenzite) Then flung the imputed rinds away, But gathered up one kernel-stone, And knew not was it night or day As she turned home alone. (Lizzie wanting to buy the fruit from the Goblin) -Sit down and feast with us, Be welcome guest with us, Cheer you and rest with us."- "thank you," said Lizzie; "but one waits At home alone for me: And without further parleving, If you will not sell me any Of your fruits, though much and many, Give me back my silver penny I tossed you for a fee ."- (ti ho dato in cambio di un compenso) They began to scratch their pates, (iniziarono a grattarsi i pasticci (?) ) No longer wagging, purring, (non più scodizzolando, facendo le fusa) But visibly demurring, (ma visibilmente demoralizzati) Grunting and snarling. (grugnendo e ringhiando) One called her proud, Cross-grained, uncivil; (crudele, incivile) Their tones waxed loud, Their looks were evil. Lashing their tails (frustando le loro code) They trod and hustled her, (la calpestavano e la spingevano) Elbowed and jostled her, (l'hanno presa a gomitate e l'hanno spintonata) Clawed with their nails, (clawed= graffiavano) Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking, Twitched her hair out by the roots, (le strappavano i capelli dalle radici) Stamped upon her tender feet, (le calpestavano i suoi teneri piedi) Held her hands and squeezed their fruits (squeezed= schiacciavano) Against her mouth to make her eat. White and golden Lizzie stood, (Lizzie era bianca e dorata) Like a lily in a flood,- (come un giglio in piena) Like a rock of blue-veined stone Lashed by tides obstreperously, Like a beacon left alone (come un faro lasciato solo) In a hoary, roaring sea, (in un mare vecchio e ruggente) Sending up a golden fire,- (che emette un fuoco d’oro) (She goes back home to her sister filled with fruit juice) She cried, "Laura," up the garden, "did you miss me? Come and kiss me. Never mind my bruises, (bruises=lividi) Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices Squeezed from goblin fruits for you, Goblin pulp and goblin dew, (polpa di folletto e rugiada di folletto) Eat me, drink me, love me; Laura make much of me: For your sake I have braved the glen (per il tuo bene ho sfidato la valle) And hadto do with goblin merchantmen." (...) She clung about her sister, (si aggrappò a sua sorella) Kissed and kissed and kissed her: Tears once again Refreshed her shrunken eyes, Dropping like rain After long sultry drouth; Shaking with aguish fear and pain, (tremava di paura e dolore aguzzo) She kissed and kissed her with a hungry Mouth. Her lips began to scorch (scorch= bruciare) That juice was wormwood to her tongue, (warmwood=assenzio pianta) She loathed the feast: (detestava la festa) Writhing as one possessed, she leaped and (contorcendosi come una posseduta, saltà e canto) Sung, Rent all her robe and wrung (si strappò tutta la veste si strinse le mani) Her hands in lamentable haste, (in fretta e furia) And beat her breast. (e si batteva il petto) (Symbol of one of them sacrificing for the other one.) ( they are grown up and married ) Days, weeks, months, years, Afterwards, when both were wives With children of their own; Their mother-hearts beset with fears, (assaliti dalle paure) Their lives bound up in tender lives; Laura would call the little ones And tell them of her early prim, Those pleasant days long gone In 1882 he visited America for a long lecture tour, during which he started audiences by airing the gospel of the “aesthetic movement”. Wilde liked to gain attention, in fact he favoured colourful costumes, in marked contrast to the sober black suits, and even when he approached middle age, he continued to emphasise the gap between generations. his writings he excelled in a variety of genres: as a critic of literature and of society, and also a novelist, poet, and dramatist. In the spring of 1895 his success suddenly crumbled when Wilde was arrested and sentenced to prison, with hard labour, for two years. Although Wilde was married and the father of two children, he did not hide his relationship with men, with the handsome young poet lord Alfred Douglas. In 1895 Lord Alfred’s father accused Wilde of homosexuality. His two years in jail led Wilde to write two sober and emotionally high-pitched works, a poem and his prose confession. After leaving prison, Wilde, a ruined man, had been divorced and declared a bankrupt, in fact he emigrated to France, where he lived the last 3 years of his life under an assumed name. For Wilde art is a beauty experience, it is not meant to have another mind of purpose- art is beauty and cut itself and that's all. Art always winds while humans are condemned to death by life herself. Search for pleasure: experience of the senses and of the soul. "London is too full of fogs and...whether the fogs produce serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs, | don't know..." His mom was one of the supporters of the Irish national cause. "beauty is truth, truth beauty,"- that is all/ ye know on earth, and all ye need to know (john Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn) Aestheticism- feel through the senses (somehow connected to romanticism//senses) (new hedonism) From the preface of the picture of Dorian Gray "to reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim (...). They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty(...). There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. (...) AII art is quite useless." - Walter Pater, John Ruskin, Swinburne - Art for art's sake - Life must be lived as a "work of art" vs. values of the bourgeois capitalist world- hedonism The picture of Dorian Gray This novel could be read from different points of view, but we will concentrate on the gender aspects and the theme of homosexuality and homophobia in relation to the Victorian context. First published 1890/1891 The picture of Dorian Gray (1890) is the only novel that Oscar Wilde wrote, but he also wrote plays and short stories: The importance of being earnest, the proudness, the ballad of reading gaol, a woman of no importance, Salomè and also the collection the happy prince. He is also very famous for his aphorism. “London is too full of fogs and... serious people... Whether the fogs produce the serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs, | don't know” Wilde here transmitted some messages about the Victorian society, messages that are transmitted to us nowadays too. Like the category of the monsters, from Gothic Novels, can be linked to specific social culture responsibility concerning an individual sexual desires, habits, rights. The world which is depicted in Dorian Gray is one in which there seems to be no possibility of a full integration for someone that is different, for someone that does not respect the moral and behaviour codes of the times. As in the novel “the strange case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde” the protagonists of Wilde's novel can be seen as victims of Victorian hypocritical culture, especially regarding sexuality: Basil and Dorian. Both will set out on a path that will lead them to self-destruction; we know that Basil indeed will not commit suicide unlike Dorian, but even Basil death can be related to the concept of the monstrous, how society judges certain behaviours. The world of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde is monstrous because it condemns the primordial instincts of an individual, who is forced to repress that nature. Stevenson represents the fragmentation of oneself, through Doctor Jekyll's forced separation of his evil side. The world of Dorian is also monstrous in different ways; in fact the adjective monstrous allude to the fact that there is something unhealthy and therefore dangerous in the society of the time. The characters used the word ‘monstrous’ in different parts> in chapter 2 Henry says to Dorian “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful”. Monstrous are both the laws of society that prevent an individual from expressing his or her desires, and the way society sees those desires; desires that do not conform to standard morality. In chapter 4, before Dorian meets the actress Sybil Vane, he talks with Lord Henryò The London that is the image of darkness, in the novel Dorian is both Dandy and Bohemian because he lives in the most rich and diverse places. This dark side of London is somehow like the back door of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Monstrosity is associated with this weird figure (the hideous jew) representing the abbies of London. Monstrous is also how Dorian describes the portrait that represents his soul; also describes the sensations that the portrait evokes when he looks at it. The expressions “monster sublime about the painting. monstrous” ecc. are pretty frequent during the novel. There is something In chapter 10: “It would kill this monstrous soul-life, and, without its hideous warning, he would be at peace. He seized the thing, and stabbed the picture with it” Here he is referring to the same knife that Dorian used to kill the artist, he cannot kill that monster because that monster is himself. Does his appearance refer to a monstrosity which was codifing\constructed by society? With this question we are referring to his sexual behaviour, which is never made explicit in the novel but can be deduced from his relationship with male figures and especially when he visits the most hideous and dark side\part of London. Also for Basil the portrait becomes monstrous: (chapter 13) “Christ!What a thing | must have worshipped! it has the eyes of a devil, my god! if it is true (...)” He is speaking about a monstrosity which concerns both Dorian and himself. It refers to how Victorian society saw and judged homosexuality. Basil also speaks of a lesson, a lesson that should be learned from the portrait metamorphosis from something so perfect to something so brutal: the lesson is that society brutally punishes those who do not respect (sexual) norms and conventions. There is also another interpretation of the lesson, that is that we do not have to hurt the other in our search for beauty. Anyhow we have to respect the beauty. Even Lord Henry makes use of the adjective monstrous to refer to Victorian society and especially to its hypocrisy (chapter 15). For a long time Dorian feels pleasure in this double life, although there is a moment when he asks: (chapter 11) “Is insincerity such a terrible thing? | think not. it is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities” He ends up being disintegrated by his own doubleness, by his own inconsistencies after all. In this way he escapes social responsibilities and from the possibility of being judged; but then the picture tells him there's something wrong in living a life of excess and a life of renunciation. An example of renunciation is when he renounces living his homosexuality in the light of the day and therefore decides maybe to live it when he goes to the oppium dense or squallid parts of the city. Lord Henry says that: (chapter 2) “the aim of life is self-development. To realise one's nature perfectly that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays” here he suggests what people are afraid, maybe, of revealing their impulses and desire. Here he maybe implies that some people afraid of revealing their true self can turn into monsters. Were both Basil and Dorian afraid of themselves, of their sexual nature mainly? Dorian and Basil didn’t want to reveal their secrets; after all the meaning of their disappearance are similar: both victims of the monstrosity of the world. Dorian kills himself because the picture shows him how society may see him, and in fact he seems to be afraid of that image and of himself. The novel asks us to reflect on WHO and WHAT in the world of Dorian Gray is the real monster? Oscar Wilde criticises the society of his times, he is one of the main exponents of english aestheticism, so this idea of seriousness was seen as a manifestation of hypocrisy. His mother was one of the supporters of the Irish national cause, Ireland was entitled part of the United Kingdom. In 1920 the 26 counties of Ireland formed an independent state. He got married to a woman and had two children, he also had homosexual relationship in particular one with Alfred Douglas. Homosexuality was a crime at the time, so in 1895 he was accused and sentenced of 2 years in jail. The ballad of reading gaol is the result of his experience. After the time in jail he chose exile and went around Europe. It's a novel of 1891, which created a sensation that takes a somewhat different prospective. The novel is a strikingly ingenious story of a handsome young man and his selfish pursuit of sensual pleasures. Until the end of the book he remains fresh and healthy in appearance while his portrait mysteriously changes into a horrible image of his corrupted soul. Although the preface to the novel emphasises that art and morality develop harmoniously enough to be able to start a relationship with a woman. He probably realizes that might be something wrong in his vision and this is proved by the fear that he expresses in some passages (ex. chapter 8). Basil, Dorian Grey and Lord Henry Basil is afraid to let people see his portrait of Dorian Grey, because he thinks he has revealed too much about him, about his soul... he is afraid that people will understand his love for Dorian. From the first time Basil saw Dorian Grey, he knew that something was changing, he had never been the slave of someone, but with Dorian it will be different. Dorian will become the obsession of Basil, his everything. Also, Basil says that he meets up with Dorian, and if he doesn't do that, he will not be happy. Dorian changed how Basil sees things, the way he thinks, Dorian is his muse, his inspiration and not only in art. Basil does not say to Lord Henry that he loves Dorian, he says that he in his portrait he shows up too much of his artistic idolatry, that people will misunderstand his passion and his feeling. Lord Henry says to him that showing his own passion will lead him to the popularity, to the richness, but Basil thinks that art mustn’t demonstrate nothing about artists’ life. Lord Henry also says that Dorian’s beauty will disappear by time, and then Basil will have to find another model. But Basil specifies that he likes Dorian’s personality too, the way he speaks and his thoughts. Basil is afraid that Lord Henry will influence Dorian. The first time that Lord Henry and Dorian Grey met, with Basil, Dorian remained shocked, without knowing what to say, Lord H. said soo much things, that he couldn't metabolize them. Lord Henry was curious about how his words affected Mr. Grey. Dorian was fascinated because of Lord Henry and his words. Lord Henry will try to educate Dorian about his life style and his behavior, he says to Dorian (not explicity) that he is very beautiful and he can use this gift of the gods, because it won't last forever. When Dorian sees his portrait he became sad, not because it was awful, but because in the portrait he will always be young and beautiful, while in the real life he will became old and ugly. He became a sort of angry with Basil, because he says that B. will leave him when he gets old, and Basil will find another model, another muse. Dorian talks with Henry about Sybil, the actress with he falls in love, and Henry gives him the advice to not marry anyone, because marriage is not the right solution for a man's life. When Dorian is completely in love with Sybil and goes every night to see her at the theatre, he puts Basil on a second level, in fact they do not see each other every day, like they were used. Basil felt abandoned from Dorian when he found out about him and this actress named Sybil, he was afraid that Dorian will never be the same, and their relationship too. After that Dorian is very close with Lord Henry, but not with Basil. He sees the artist when one night he comes to his house, before going to Paris for work. In that night Dorian tells the secret of the portrait to Basil, he freaks out telling him to pray and that this is something very dangerous, he shouldn’t have done that. Dorian is very angry, he didn't like his words and kills him. Everyone thinks that Basil is in Paris, but after a couple of months everyone knew that he is missing, and no one suspect about him. One night, Dorian goes to see the portrait, it disgusted him, so with the same knife which killed Basil, he wants to destroy the portrait, so he puts it in the heart of the person in the portrait... and then Dorian was found in front of a portrait of him, when he was younger, laying with a knife in his heart... they recognize him only for the rings on the hand, in fact he was old, with wrinkle, not young and beautiful like always has been. "his personality has suggested to me entirely a new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. (...) Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a (...) school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body- (...) we in our madness have separated two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void". (chapter 1) "to a large extent the lad was his (henry's) own creation. (...) soul and body, body and soul- how mysterious they were! There was animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say where the fleshy impulse began? How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists" (chapter 4) "(...) it appeared to dorian gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic. (...) yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry had prophesied, a new Hedonism" (chapter 11) Basil Hallward thinks that Dorian embodies both the beauty of the body and of the souls. Dorian is influenced by lord Henry Wotton and he starts living a life full of body leaguers and also crimes. A pleasure taken to the extremes. At the end of the novel, the picture is his image, a mirror of its true inner self. "Basil Hallward is what I think | am: Lord henry what the world thinks of me: Dorian what | would like to be - In other ages, perhaps" (letters 352) "the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself" "every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us. The Androgynous Mind Definition “The word androgynous comes from the Greek and is a blend of the word andro (male) and gyn(female), representing both the masculine and the feminine, entwined together in the creation of a poetic word, inclusive of both genders”. OSCAR WILDE AND AESTHETICISM John Keats has been seen as a precursor of aestheticism, also the pre-raphaelites. The term aestheticism comes from the greek “aistetikos” which means sensation and also perception, so to see through the senses. There is a romantic heritage, because the sensation experience was very important during the romantic period. The preface of Dorian Gray is considered the most important manifest of Wilde's aestheticism. In the preface he says “art is quite useless” because it does not have to have social or pedagogic meaning, art is beyond moral\immoral it is just beauty. Art doesn’t have to be produced in order to convey a message or to teach something. The origins of art have nothing to do with some specific purposes that the artist has in mind: art for art's sake is the principle; the idea that art is superior to life and it's life that should imitate art on its pursuit of beauty and pleasure. In England this concept was absorbed and expanded first of all by Walter Pater, also by John Ruskin and apart from Wilde J. Swinburne. This idea that art is superior to life and it is seen as a sort of new religion; life should be lived as if it was a work of art. This is opposed to the bourgeois capitalist world and hedonism. The picture of Dorian Gray reflects this philosophy of pleasure but in a very complex way. The expression of eroticism in the novel associated mainly with male characters and generally displaced onto the aesthetic (men sharing the experience of beauty). The novel is written in third person narrator, throughout the novel we see the concept of hedonism and aestheticism. The novel is similar to the tragedy Faust. “Silent” homosexuality in the novel «* Homosexual innuendos and references to homophobia throughout the text. «Henry, after discovering Dorian’s implication in Sibyl Vane’s suicide, instructs him not to reveal it: “in London people are so prejudiced. Here, one should never make one's debut with a scandal”. (chapter 8) «* The narrator about Dorian: “from time to time strange rumors about his mode of life crept through London and became the chatter of the clubs”; “he had been seen brawling with foreign sailors ina low den in the distant parts of Whitechapel”. (chapter 11) «Dorian has relationships with other men (Singleton, Campbell...) but their nature is not clear. « “we were quite close, almost touching. Our eyes met again. | asked Lady Brandon to introduce me to him (Dorian), too, felt that we were destined to know each other”. (Basil, chap. 1) « “Th few wods that Basil’s friend had said to him — had touched some secret chords that had never been touched before, but that he felt was now vibrating and throbbing to curious pulses” (Dorian, chap. 2) «Basil says that Dorian is “absolutely necessary” to him, his “life as an artist depends on him”. « “Dorian, from the moment | met you, you personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. | was dominated, soul, brain, and power, by you”. (Basil, chap.9) «Basil: “The reason | will not exhibit this picture is that | am afraid that | have shown in it the secret of my own soul”. (Chapter 1) THE FATAL WISH This is where he wishes to remain young forever, in the novel we have a book described, so we see a book within a book and a story within the story. It is called the yellow book. “The love that dare not speak its name” in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect” (Wilde at the trial in 1895). “Dorian” recalls the Greek tribe of the Dorians from whom the so called “Greek love” derives. Why does Dorian die? For which crimes is he punished? “The real moral of the story is that al excess as well as all renunciation, brings its punishment, and this moral is so far artistically and deliberately suppressed that it does not enunciate its law as a general principle, but realises itself purely in the lives of individuals.” (Wilde in a letter) In what sense “excess”? Beauty must be pursued, yet self-regarding, indulgent hedonism to the detriment of others can be (self)-destructive (murder of Basil and Sybil's and Dorian's suicide). “The real moral of the story is that all excess as well as renunciation, brings its punishment.” During Victorian era there was “male homosexual panic” and homophobia. Homosexuality was regarded as a contrary sexual feeling and an incurable condition. In 1885 the criminal law amendment act: declared the criminalisation of male homosexuality and acts of gross indecency between men both in public and private. So it was considered as a crime. In the novel the theme of homosexuality and the related homophobia are crucial, they emerge in a kind of reticent way, very silently. Although we can recognise them. There are references to homophobia and references to sexual innuendos. The homoerotic theme in the picture is displaced onto the aesthetic, the homosexual desire that the male characters feel is actually transferred onto their aesthetic ideas. The picture itself becomes an expression of that homosexual desire, shared by both 3 characters of the novel. (chapter 11) Dorian attends to a masculine world essentially, in his world there is Sybil. Dorian mainly attends a world which is male and so there may be this allusions to the homosexual relationships. The homoerotic relationship in the novel are implicit hints, such as allusions. (Chapter 1) (Chapter 2) > TOUCH\TOUCHING is both physical and sexual. Futurism is another cultural movement, which originated in Italy in the early 20th century. Futurism is based on: speed, movement and progress. Futurism looks forward to the future and we associate it with the rise of ideologies (Fascism, Nazism...) , nationalism and industries. Futurism is important in relation with Modernism, which is the literary movement to which Virginia Woolf belongs. The link between these two movements is created by a new conception of time. At the core of modernism time is central, because there are new theories about time. (es. La durèe - mental time opposed to the clock time). In the movement of modernism historical time has to be considered in relation with a single moment in time. The single moment which can be a single day or even an instant; the instant in which historical time seems to stop. (ex. the concept of Epiphany). This moment in Virginia Woolf is called “the moment of being”, and in which the being collects itself. During this period Freud’s studies and psychological technique are introduced, also the “stream of consciousness” is introduced in literature. There are also very important changes in this period that are relevant in Virginia Woolf's opera “Orlando”: 1918, the end of the war, the British parliament, passed an act which allowed a few women to vote. In 1928 Women acquire n importance na to n n to vote, the 20 are also the years of art deco, jazz and radical changes, they introduce something totally new. All these events happened during these years are both good and bad. The new woman: * Lyndallin Olive Schreiner’s The story of an African Farm (1883) * The term “new Woman?” first appeared in The Woman's Herald (1893) * Cultural fin de siècle icon and “proto-feminist”. The term “new woman” appeared in The woman's Herald in 1893 about 10 years later, and since then became a phenomenon referred to a woman who did not accept the traditional social code that concerned womanhood, a woman who fought for her economic, educational, social independence. Woman who challenged the behavioural codes imposed by society. At the end of the century started a proto-feminist movement that had a very strong impact onto the feminist movement of the first decades of the 20th century. The new woman had an impact also on feminist’s authors that wrote some of the feminists manifestos, they appealed to society to claim that it was wrong to categorise according to social conceptions. The new woman had an impact on the feminist authors who wrote important texts. The Feminist manifesto-Mina Loy (1914) “Woman, if you want to realise yourself, all your pet illusions must be unmasked. The lies of centuries have got to be discarded. There is no half-measure, no scratching on the surface of the rubbish heap of tradition. Professional and commercial careers are opening up for you. Is that all you want? As conditions are at present constituted you have choice between Parasitism, Prostitution, or Negation. The first illusion it is to your interest to demolish, is the division of woman into two classes: the mistress and the mother. Nature had endowed the complete woman with faculty for expressing herself through all her functions!” In the manifesto she underlines that there is a division between: mother and mistress. There is no attempt to eliminate what femininity\masculinity may mean, there might be some differences, but a difference considered good, not a difference that creates discrimination. In Orlando there are various character that can be identify as transgender, in the sense that they move quite easily from one gender to another. Virginia denies that there are ontological differences between genders, fluidity is a theme in Orlando too. V. Woolf, A Room of One's Own (1929) » What conditions are necessary for the creations of works of art? * It thought what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. Food, house and clothing are mine forever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bitterness. | need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. | need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me. = The mindof an artist, in order to archive the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent, like Shakespeare's mind. There must be no obstacle in it. *= (Woman) pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband. *= What find deplorable is that nothing is known about woman before the eighteenth century. | have no model in my mind to turn about this way and that. Many decades before scientists demonstrated why “psychological androgyny” is essential to creativity, Virginia Woolf articulated this idea in a beautiful passage from her classic 1929 book-length essay A Room of One's Own. In this essay Woolf refers to Coleridge, who, in 1892, wrote “the truth is, a great mind must be androgynous”. Woolf writes that Coleridge “meant, perhaps, that the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is natural, creative, incandescent and un-divided. In fact, one goes back to Shakespeare's mind as the type of androgynous mind, of the man-womanly mind... the normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually cooperating. If one is a man, still the part of the brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her... It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilised and uses all of its facilities” She states that a mind that adheres to a singular gendered structure is not flexible enough to create. Instead, the androgynous mind “is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided”. It is, in essence, essential for writing and creativity. “And | went on amateurishly to sketch a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female... The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating...” Was she a feminist? Virginia Woolf is nowadays often referred to as an early feminist writer; and, from the point of view of a Woolf reader in the 21st century, there seems to be no doubt about Woolf's status as a feminist. However, when studying Woolf's works it becomes difficult to define what kind of feminism she Orlando disrupts the contemporary realist narrative expectation and the conventional plot structure. Woolf claimed that writers needed to rethink and revise literary genres in order to find a more appropriate form, able to represent human life and its shades. With Orlando, Woolf challenges normative opposition, she crosses borders of all kinds. She reworks several genres: biography, novel, poem (oak tree), historical work. She amalgamates all these genres and she transcends all the literary conventions that are established for each genre. She comes up with something completely new. She wants to create a space for sexual diversity and to disrupt early 20 century notions of gender and sexuality, and she does so by deploying a comic tone, an attitude of playfulness that we can see through all the novels. Orlando’s sexuality cannot be described in traditional terms cause he\she is androgynous, bisexual and a multisexual individual. Orlando as a man has homo-erotic desire for Princess Sasha, but also for the Archduchess who turns out to be a male transvestite. There is a variety of sexual appearances and attitudes that Orlando embraces because he\she is multisexual. When Orlando becomes a woman seems to be predominantly attracted by women, but then eventually she ends up marrying this sea man with a strange name, that's because this man has got an androgynous mind. Orlando embodies a diversity of sexual behaviours and desires as well; Orlando’s metamorphosis is used by Woolf to express her ideas about gender and sexuality. This can be read as a form of disguise, a disguise that represents this idea of the fluidity of sexuality. Virginia Woolf herself admitted that she wrote Orlando to have some fun, so there is this fantasy aspect. A fantasy novel but also a historical novel. She makes use of humour to address some of the most crucial questions of her poetic, first of all the concept of gender but also sexuality. In this piece we have to know that underclothing, often , the sex is the exact opposite of what is above, because what people wear didn't define how they really are. It is interesting to underline how both genre and then gender are fluid and more than hybrid. It is an Historical novel (late 1500-1928). No analysis of Orlando is considered complete or definitive without an understanding of her complex relationship with fellow writer Victoria (Vita) Sackville-West. Woolf and Sackville-West, an acknowledged bisexual, were intimate friends and lovers. They first met at a dinner party in December, 1922, but the affair was slow in developing and did not flourish until the years between 1925 and 1929. Initially, the much older Woolf was shy and both repelled and fascinated by Sackville-West”s nature. For Sackville-West, it was one of numerous lesbian affairs carried out in the 1920's, but for the married Woolf, it was her first. In fact. the affair became Woolf's grand passion and the inspiration for her writings, particularly Orlando,_which reached a creative peak during this same period. Orlando is dedicated to Sackville-West, and Orlando's long-lived history is modeled after her four-centuries- old aristocratic heritage. Woolf's information came from Sackville-West's own published book, Knole and the Sackvilles (1922), a biography of her grand country estate. The author used her lover’s Elizabethan ancestor, Lord Thomas Brockhurst, as her model for the young Orlando. The male character's feelings, attitudes, and literary inclinations belong to Sackville-West, however, and intensify when the gender transformation takes place. Both Sackville-West and Orlando, for example, exhibit public transvestism. Other parallels between them abound, including personal details, exquisite legs, love of nature and animals, and attachment to heritage and home. Even Orlando's struggle to retain her ancestral estates, to be taken away, solely because she is a woman, can be found in Sackville-West”s similar, but unsuccessful, attempt to keep her property. The names and personalities of several of the book's characters can also be found in her ancestry. Orlando does not appear concerned at all by this supernatural event. We read in the novel that Orlando after the transformation looked himself up and down in the mirror without showing any sign of discomposure and went to his bath. He smoothly changes from male to female without showing any signs of astonishment, accepting his new appearance. This reaction is extremely crucial rather than the change itself. His sexual metamorphosis became Woolf's main strategy to convey the theory of the fluidity of sexuality (chapter 3). Water was the element that shows fluidity. Orlando’s peculiar reaction suggests a critique on Freud’s theory of the lack of the penis, which according to Freud particularly a woman suffers from. Both Virginia and Leonard, her husband, belonged to the Blusbury circle, an intellectual circle which was interested in Freud’s psychoanalysis. Freud based his theory of sexual different on the symbolic power of the loss of the male organ, but Orlando comically breaks down these psychoanalytic ideas. Orlando reacts as if that sex change was the most natural event in life. The hist l anchoring. Despite his independent spirit Orlando cannot have a control of the spirit of the age, cannot totally resist that spirit and the forces that condition any specific historical period. He cannot completely ignore those spirits, for instance during the Victorian age when Orlando is a man and decides to become a writer, the spirits have an impact both on his art and life. Orlando responds to the contemporary vogue to the so- called “sensation literature”, which was a very popular genre in Britain in the 18th 60\70's, a genre which combines realism and melodramatic elements and gothic traits. A literature in which sensation prevales. In Orlando the narrator reports that Orland feels the sensation through her body. The narrator, but also Virginia Woolf, plays with Orlando. Even a gender fluid character as Orlando cannot completely go against the compulsory heterosexuality imposed by society, he cannot totally go against those norms including the institution of marriage. Orlando maybe had no choice, women did not have a choice during the 19th century, he had to mirror the woman's condition. The critic Faris outlines a third element of magical realism, that can be relevant to the reading of Orlando: The presence of unsettling doubts. When the narrator cannot explain something, in order to fillthe gap, he appeals directly to the reader with some metaphysical questions. Readers are left there to decide by themselves, they are asked to_read between the lines. This is important because it implies that the narrative contains uncertainties. At the end Orlando comes to the conclusion that “nothing is any longer one thing”, in this way Orlando but also Virginia Woolf reaffirms the idea of fluidity. She crosses borders and this is extremely important.. Orlando multi-sexuality conveys a clear message in the novel, that gender identity and sexuality are constructed by various social, cultural and historical factors. Orlando’s androgyny shows that nothing is any longer one thing. In a speech Virginia Woolf wrote “Nothing is only longer one thing”, it means that something can’t be always the same thing, it changes, and it is connected with the idea of fluidity that Woolf has and that talks about in different parts. In fact, she also wrote “I am rooted but | flow”, that indicates a continuous movement, like our life is a wave. Chapter 2: this is one of the moments when the narrator stops telling the story of Orlando. Time is an important topic in this novel, because we go through different historical periods. Time is also very important because mental time is opposed to clock time, how time is perceived and conceived by the single individual sometimes different from the scientist. How time is absorbed in the mind? How does the individual perceive time? In another passage we see a break in the narrative, these pauses are extremely interesting because they get the reader involved in a different way, also because often during these breaks the narrator addresses directly\indirectly some questions. At the beginning of chapter 2 the biographer cannot find evidence enough to explain why Orlando sometimes falls asleep and sleeps for a whole week. Here the biographer is totally put off because he can't explain why, he looks for facts and explanation and here feels kind of embarrassed. This is the first time in which Orlando sleeps for a whole week without ever waking up, eventually he did after a week and his memory is a little frost; he feels this sense of pain of love and he's also tormented by this sense of loss almost like he had experienced death. Something happens to Orlando’s mind during this period of sleep, but the biographer cannot explain it. The biographer in this passage talks about what he is supposed to do, his duty is to plod; he must present the granite but there is also the rainbow besides. The reader uses imagination to reach conclusions. We can see here an example of Keats negative capability, not everything can be explained, we must accept mystery. we can find many references to: * Shakespeare > As you like it * Ariosto + Orlando Furioso * Daniel Defoe + Moll Flanders * Pope+ Therapeofthe Lock *. Bronte> Jane Eyre Intertextuality is a concept that is dealt with studies by various critics and one of the first one that studied intertextuality was Rolon Bart, that said that nothing exists outside the text, the text produces meaning, this meaning is produced by how the text relates and dialogues with other text. The text has a life of his own. He wants to suggest that after all a text means always something even despite what the author intends it to mean. A text can create different meaning according to who reads it. A text like Orlando allows you as a reader to intervene and find new meaning and perform a very active role. Bart also talks about “the death of the author” because the text has a life of his own. This emerges in the novel, starting from the narrator which is genderless. Then we got Orlando who is “multi-sexual” so it is both a man and a woman. He combines femininity and masculinity and all those conventional ideas of femininity and masculinity. The personality of Orlando challenges the idea that women and men apart from their biological sex are necessarily different from their birth. Orlando’s mind, being androgynous, is both feminine and masculine and this is the surreal device that Virginia Woolf makes use off in order to challenge these prescribes ideas of masculinity and femininity from our birth. Orlando wants to show that subjectivity is complex, is changeful and it cannot be simply defined by gender prescriptions that are imposed by society. In his mind the 2 sides (anima\animus) are there. Because he is so changeful it becomes even difficult to decide in what sense he is masculine or feminine; Virginia Woolf wants the reader to reflect on this: Can we really know what it means to be a man\woman or to be feminine\masculine? Virginia wants us to challenge any simplistic definition of female\male gender as well as sexuality. Why does Angela Carter choses the fairy tale? Elliott Oring conducts a study about the fairy tale: it is a folk narrative and must be re-created with each telling, it is in the nature of the fairy-tale to be repurposed and renewed each time. The folk narrative reflects both past and present. The fairy tales are malleable, it gives the possibility to introduce new perspectives and give each time the text a new life. The text has gaps in his meaning and allows the narrator to re-elaborate them and fill these gaps. The narrator shapes the narratives he re-creates in accordance with his own dispositions and circumstances. The fairy tale belongs to the oral tradition, but then it was written down and became a genre. In the 17th century we must remember Madame de Beaumont and Mme d’Aulnoy. From being an old genre the fairy tale became a literary fairy tale. Angela Carter decided to revisit these traditional stories because she wanted to do fairy tales for adults, she takes the story that always has latent content and extrapolate other content and meanings, from the perspective of a woman regarding her experience in society and life. She has always been passionate about tales of terror, gothic tales, fabulous narratives that deal with the imagery of the unconscious. A fairy tale can also be considered postmodern in the sense that they can be a significant example of parody, cause it means dealing with a tradition and doing something with that tradition, in order to reproposit. When you parody something, it means mainly that you critique\ridicules something, but also re-purpose and change in order to express a critique. Angela Carter does this thing to express her own critique about women's condition. The parody is both to enshrine the past and to question it, it is a double discourse. She underlines that the role of the reader is important, reading is just as creative an activity as writing and most intellectual development depends on new reading of old texts. Feminist re-writing Second-wave feminism (60s-80s, gendered socio-cultural roles, sexuality) * Adrienne Rich, When We Dead Awaken: rewriting as Revision (1972) Re-vision — the act of looking back, pf seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction. *» Critique of patriarchal literary canon (Virginia Woolf, Adrienne Rich, Elaine Showalter, Susan Gubar, Sandra Gilbert and Regina Barreca) * VS.Hackneyed images of woman as either Belle Dame sans Merci/ witch or Angel in the House/ Good Mother/ healing woman. *= “Woman have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man as twice as ist natural size” (Woolf, A Room of One's Own, 1929). Why the fairytale? “A folk narrative must be re-created with each telling. As result of this process of re-creation, the folk narrative reflects both the past as well as the present. The narrator shapes the narratives he re-creates in accordance with his own dispositions and circumstances”. (Elliot Oring, Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction, 1986) Literary fairytale= transcribing of oral tales: « 17th-century France: Mme d’Aulnoy and Mme de Beaumont; Charles Perrault (Conted de ma mere L’Oye). «Early 19th-century Germany: Grimm brothers (Kinder und Hausmarchen). «* “My intention was not to do adult fairy-tales, but to extract the latent content from the traditional stories. «» “I'd always been fond of Poe, and Hoffman — Gotihic tales, cruel tales, tales of wonder, tales of terror, fabolous narratives that deal directly with the imagery of the unconscious — mirrors; the externalised self; forsaken castles; haunted forests; forbidden sexual objects”. Parodic fairytales Angela Carter, A.S. Byatt, Anne Sexton, Margaret Atwood... “To parody is both to enshrine tha past and to question it” — DOUBLE DISCOURSE (Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of postmodernism, 1988) From the Greek “para”= 1) para= against, contrary to (critique, ridiculing) 2) para (parallel to, beside) And “oide”= ode, song. “Reading is just as creative an activity as writing and most intellectual development depends on new reading of old texts. | am all for putting new wine in old bottles, especially ifthe pressure of the new wine makes the old bottles explode.” “Beauty and the Beast” “The Courtship of Mr Lyon” “The Tiger's Bride” 2 different treatments of 1) Man's and woman's gender roles. 2) Woman's sexuality & body. 3) Animality & metamorphosis. Main sources * Apuleius “Cupid and Psyche” (The Metamorphoses or the Golden Ass, Il AD)—> Is the story of an impossible love, psyche is a beautiful princess and since Venus is jealous orders to make her fall in love with a horrible monster. Instead it is cupid who falls in love with Psyche because she is so beautiful. Cupid decides to meet her during the night, so they fall in love but always in the darkness without really seeing each other. One night Psyche is curious and decides to look at cupid and who he really is, at that moment cupid is forced to leave psyche. She starts looking for him, when he sees she is suffering so much he goes and asks the gods to let them be together. There is the theme of the gaze, secrecy. There is a moment of revelation in beauty and the beast as well, and this theme of the metamorphosis\transformation in Apuleius is the princess that turns into a goddess. * Jeannie-Marie leprince de Beaumont “La Belle eat la Betè” (Megasin des enfants, 1756)—> it is about a merchant who has 12 children, Beauty is particularly beautiful. He is very wealthy at first but then he loses all his fortunes. One day he decides to travel to regain his fortune, he looks for a shelter and ends up in a mansion. When he enters he finds food and accommodation, in the morning when he leaves he collects a rose from the garden cause beauty asked him to bring her a rose. The beast appears and in exchange for the rose he asks for his daughter. Beauty goes to the mansion, they become friends but while there she dreams about the beast being sick and dying. She sees that the beast is lying dead, she starts crying and her tears manage to transform the beast into a charming prince. After the metamorphosis the prince tells her that he was the victim of an enchanter. Finally they get married. Eee for the first time in 1979 Sintesi: In the courtship of Mr Lyon the plot is similar to “La belle et la bète”, but the setting is modern. She is waiting for her father, he was driving his car but he gets stocked and he starts looking for help and ends up in this mysterious mansion. He manages to have his car repaired, he is ready to leave when he notices this rose and so he plugs the rose and at that very moment the beast attacks him. The beast wants his daughter (Beauty) in exchange for the rose, so he turns back whit her to the beast palace. Beauty is left with the Beast while her father goes back to London to take care of his business. The Beast helps Beauty's father to restore his fortune and she promises that she will return before the winter, but she forgets. She stays away for longer than 2 months, at one point she finds the beast dog at her door telling her that the beast is sick so she goes back, kisses the Beast and transforming him into a man, they fall in love and got married. The Courtship of Mr. Lyon' is based on a classic story, 'Beauty and the Best," and told in the 'once upon a time' third person common to traditional fairy tales. Carter uses free indirect speech, which means that the narrator allows us to see things as Beauty sees them (internal focalization), this strategy of multiple focalization which combines a conventional third narrator whit internal point of view is certainly part of Carter’s modernization of classical fairy tale. The Courtship of Mr Lyon is more faithfully to the original one by Madame Mary la Prence, then “the Tiger’s bride”, where Beauty in order to save her father life, goes to live with the Beast, who reveals to be more human than the expected, in fact he respects her. We have to remember that the Beast in reality isa beautiful Prince, a victim of a spell. At the end of the tail, their love breaks the spell. Carter here challenges the idea of passivity of women in sexual, social and romantic affairs. Carter also is ironic, in fact when the story starts, she says that Beauty was caring out her house works, the typical domestic woman, it's like a critic to the woman just like a domestic. But she doesn't want us to sympathize with this image of Beauty. In fact we can see that Beauty is very brave, she goes to the Beast smiling, knowing that what she is doing is for her father, and she will do everything for her father> she was possessed by a sense of obligation. Beauty is ready to confront the Beast and his nature, she thinks that “wild things have a far more fear of us (humans) than is ours of them”. She is able to put herself in the shoes of the Beast, and we have a very for a single white rose also conveys this wish for conventionality; the rose symbolises her chasteness and delicateness. Carter emphasises Beauty's femininity, innocence, and virginity by comparing her to the immaculate snow upon which she gazes. By saying the snowy road, and by association, Beauty is "white an unmarked as a spilled bolt of bridal satin,' Carter seems to insinuate that Beauty's uniqueness lies in her gentle femininity and that her destiny is marriage. However, knowing Carter's motives, we can assume that Beauty's virginity represents possibility more than it does naivete. Beauty may be trapped within a society that objectifies her, but her innocence empowers her; she is pure of mind enough to see through its conventional dichotomies and claim her own destiny, as she does at the story's end. In fact, Carter reminds us explicitly early on that Beauty has 'will of her own'; she actually empowers herself by consenting to live with the Beast because in doing so she is choosing to step out of her role of child and act as protector to her father. The Beast is so ashamed of his appearance that his only companion before Beauty is his spaniel. By the end of the story, we see that the Beast's loneliness makes him weak and inactive. Beauty's absence weakens him so much that he is unable to do so much as feed himself, and he almost dies of despair. At the end of the story, Beauty is still a beautiful woman, but she is active and brave; she is a mixture of Beauty and Beast. So too is the Beast, who keeps the remains of his leonine appearance when he transforms into a gentle human. He also keeps the name Lyon, signifying his former identity. Beauty takes his name when she marries him. While taking one's husband's name can be seen as an act of submission (not), in this case it is an acknowledgment of Beauty's own masculinity. She is claiming her rightful title, she too is a strong Lyon. The Lyon's palace: * All'inside from the world outside. * A palaceof privileges where all the laws of the world he knew need not necessarily apply. * AIlthe natural laws of the world were held in suspension here. Story: Outside her IN the hedgerow glistened as ifthe snow possessed a light of its own. This lovely girls, whose skin possessed that same, inner light so you would have thought she, too, was made all of snow, pauses in her chores in the mean kitchen to look out at the country road. Father said he would be home before nightfall. The roads are bad. | hope he'Il be safe, from a a distance, he heard the most singular sound in the world: a great roaring, as of a beast of prey.. As if miraculously preserved one last, single, perfect rose that might have been the last rose left living in allthe white winter. The father get into the mansion to ask the owner to take that white rose, and he finds everything set up for him: he knew by the pervasive atmosphere of a suspension of reality that he had entered a place of privilege where all the laws of the world he knew need not necessarily apply. The being who now confronted Beauty’s father seemed to him, in his confusion, vaster than the house he owned. Head of a lion; mane and mighty paws of a lion; he reared on his hind legs like an angry lion yet wore a smoking jacket of dull red brocade. The Beast rudely snatched the photograph her father drew from his wallet and inspected it. The camera had captured a certain look she had, sometimes, of absolute sweetness and absolute gravity, as if her eyes might pierce appearances and see your soul. “Take her the rose, then, but na How strange he was, when she saw the great paws lying on the arm of his chair, she thought: they are the death of any tender herbivore. And such a one she felt herself to be, Miss Lamb; spotless, sacrificial. Yet ATTI vi her father wanted her to do so. For she knew that her bis it to the Beast must be, on some magically reciprocate scale, the price of her father's good fortune. Do not think she had no will of her own; only, she was possessed by a sense of obligation to an a usual degree and, besides, she would gladly have gone to the ends of the earth for the father, whom she loved dearly. He forced himself to master his shyness, and so she contrived to master her own. These strange companions were suddenly overcome with embarrassment to find themselves together, alone, in that room in the depths of the winter's night. As she was about to rise, he flung himself at her feet and buried his head in her lap. She felts his hay breath on her fingers, the stiff bristles of his muzzle grazing her sing, the rough lapping of his tongue and then, with a flood of compassion, understood: all he is doing is kissing my hand. He drew back his head and gazed at her with his green, inscrutable eyes, in which she saw her face repeated twice, as small as if it were in bud. Returning late from supper after the theatre, she took off her earrings in front of the mirror; Beauty. She smiled at herself with satisfaction. A certain inwardness was beginning to transform the lined around her mouth, those signature of the personality. You could not have said that her freshness was fading but she emailed at herself in mirrors a little to often, these dryas, and the face that smiled back was not quite the one she had seen contained in the Beast's agate eyes. His eyelids flickered. How was it she had never noticed before that his agate eyes were equipped with lids, like those of a man? Was it because she had only looked at her own face, reflected there? “Im dying, ‘’, he said in a cracked whisper of his former purr. Her tears fell on his face like snow and under their soft transformation, the bones showed through the pelt. The flesh though the wide, tawny brow. And then it was no longer a Lion in her arms, but a man, a man with an unkempt mane of hair and, how strange, a broken nose, such as the noses of retired boxers, that gave him a distant, heroic resemblance to the handsomest of all the beasts. The Tiger’s Bride Sintesi: The setting is different here. A Russian nobleman travels with his daughter, they arrive in an unspecific Italian city. Beauty's father is playing cards with a mysterious man called “the beast” who is wearing a mask. Beauty's father loses everything so he stakes his daughter Beauty's life, but loses her too. The girl is led to the Beast. The servants of the beast tell Beauty that he has a single desire, that is to see her naked, and if she does that, he will repay her father. She laughs about it and so the beast is very sad, but one day the beast asks Beauty to go for a horse-riding with him. In that occasion he shows her his real face, he takes his mask off. He is a tiger. Beauty then accepts to show her naked body. We can identify some symbolic meaning. When the beast gets to see Beauty naked the beast offers his father all his fortune back. Beauty decides to stay and in a moment of intimacy, Beast starts licking Beauty, and she turns into a tiger, he licked her human flesh away to reveal the animal fur beneath. Carter here challenges the concept of gender as a cultural construct, that through the centuries evolved according to prescribe specific codes of behavior, for men as well as women. The terms masculinity and femininity, according to gender have always represented binaries highlighting differences. It was always compered the powerless of the women to the power of the men. Carter wants to challenge those differences. She always plays women in situation of minority, of disadvantages compared to men. She wants to rehabilitate women individuality. She thinks women have to use the writing to have power, to have a voice in the society and also an importance, against some norms. Magical realism combined with irony is used by Angela Carter to question men authority. In the bloody chamber Angela Carter is trying to revise the literary canon that has been mostly estabileshed by men. She attacks men authority, men power. Rosemary Jackson fantasy= literature of desires, a literature that represents desire, dreams, what a person want but doesn't have. Emphasise conflict between an individual and the society. Carter uses fairytales to bring gender issues, feminist consourns to the fall ground, and this is what happens in the Tiger's bride. Carter’s vision> (re)imagines animal drives, sexual drives, free from the sex/gender system, and in sdoing so she begins to dismantle the phallocentric underpinning of both sex and language. The first difference between The Courtship of Mr. Lyon and The Tiger's Bride is that in the first one there's a third-person narrator, with free indirect speech, and in the second one Beauty is telling her own story. The first theme that arises is the objectification of women, with the heroine's father losing her to The Beast at cards. [There is] a similar transaction in 'The Courtship of Mr. Lyon,' where Beauty's father is forced to give her to the Beast because he stole the rose. However, in that story, the father agrees to 'trade' his daughter's company out of fear, whereas in this story, the father bets her without really caring, like she was a simple possession. From the story's beginning, we are aware that the heroine is seen as an object that can be bought, sold, and leveraged for her owner's pleasure and advantage, and never given the chance of self-determination. We have to say that ‘Beauty’ isa name that objectified her, even if she is really a beautiful woman. The heroine's objectification continues throughout the story, culminating with the surprise ending. When out riding, the heroine states that men see women as soulless, just as they see animals as soulless; For this reason, she feels closer to Beast, the valet, and their horses, than she ever has to a man. Carter surpasses the heroine's comparison to animals by likening her to the soubrette(showgirl). Not only is the soubrette a doll, but she powders the heroine's cheeks so that she seems one of them. This symbolism is not lost on the heroine. As has been pointed out, the soubrette is a 'social creation of femininity'; she embodies the vanity and vapidity that characterize society's idea of a woman. The soubrette needs someone to wind her up so that she can perform her maid's tasks; so too, women are thought unable to think and act for themselves. Once the heroine begins to claim her own desires, she says that she no longer resembles the soubrette. Since she can no longer submit to society's female stereotypes, she plans to send the soubrette home in her place: 'l will dress her in my own clothes, wind her up, send her back to perform the part of my father's daughter." The image of the Beast is different in the two versions, in fact in the first one is seen as an image of aggressive patriarchy to be overcome, when in the second version is seen as something natural. In 'The Courtship of Mr. Lyon,' Beauty is unspoiled and content when she lives in the country, away from society's influence. But when she moves to the city, she transforms into a petulant young woman obsessed with her looks and belongings. Until the spaniel reminds her of her authentic self, she is content with living as a 'social construct of femininity.' In the second version Beauty realises that her place is not at home with her father, but with the Beast, so she turns back to him. The heroine in 'The Tiger's Bride' realises that men treat her like the soubrette, that no matter how hard she tries to equal them, they will always see her as a poor 'imitation' of a person. Suddenly, she is no different from The Beast, who wears his mask painted with a man's face in order to pretend he is a man. The perfection of this mask 'appeals' the narrator because it represents the model of perfection, civility and tameness to which she is bound. When the Beast takes off his mask, he takes off his artificial masculinity and reveals who he really is to Beauty. His animality became symbolical. He allows this woman to be subject rather than object or only vision. Man's and woman's gender roles. FIRST VERSION SECOND VERSION Girl subjected to patriarchal control (commodified woman). Third person narration: woman's story is ‘told’, yet also free indirect speech. Angel in house, conventional role as healer and reconciler. Reserved, shy, domestic, sweet “Miss Lamb”, accepting sacrifice. Girl victim but rebel vs. Patriarchal control and commodification. First-person narration: woman's self assertive agency, she tells her own story. New woman, gradually emancipating herself from social prejudice. Naked she says: “I felt | was at liberty for the first time in my life”. In both Bad father vs. The Beasts, a masculine ‘other’ complementary to the feminine side. “Pact of reciprocity” vs. Simple reversal of the dichotomy of oppressor-oppressed/ victimiser- victimised. Carter vs. “Absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes” and for a mutual exchange and balanced distribution of power. “A true conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conqueredì; it knows of but one great thing: to give one’s self boundlessly in order to find one's self boundlessly in order to find one's self richer, deeper, better”. “Lamb hood and tigers shyness may be found in either gender, and in the same individual at different times”. Woman's sexuality & body FIRST VERSION SECOND VERSION Companionship with Lyon, no direct sexual hint. Spiritual over body experience. “Mr and Mrs Lyon walk in the garden; the old spaniel drowses on the grass, in a drift of fallen petals” — bourgeois Respectability and comfort. Gradual sexual awareness and discovery of her desire. Strong sense of corporeality — disrobing / nakedness= nude human essence. “He will lick the skin off me!” — sensuality and eroticism vs. Taboos for both man and woman. Animality & metamorphosis FIRST VERSION SECOND VERSION Animality as image of aggressive patriarchy to be overcome. Beast (never a tyrant, but potentially one) turns into man. Love turns the animal into man, the girl’s sweetness allows him to find his deepest humanity. Animality as “natural” vs. Societal false myths and gender constructs. Beauty turns into beast (a woman finally free to act as she want). Love turns woman into animal, a natural being versus gender-defining cultural norms. In both Flux and change celebrated instead of fixed gender codes and ideas of sexuality. Girl’s growth into womanhood. Women's progressive empowerment and transformative power — just hinted at in the first fairytale, explicit in the second (in both woman subject OF, not TO the gaze). Patriarchy challenged by man and woman negotiating together their individual and social identity — mutual help vs. Battle of the sexes