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Scarica maturità inglese riassunto e più Temi in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! INGLESE 18th CENTURY – THE ROMANTIC AGE (1776-1837) The Roman?c period was related with social and historical context in which it developed. Defined the Age of Revolu1ons because of the changes which took place in Britain during this ?me. • Agricultural and Transport Revolu?on (Britain, 1760-1820) • Revolu?on of the American colonies (1776) led to the War of Secession; the American Declara?on of Independence was signed in Philadelphia • Industrial Revolu?on (Britain, 1780). Industry and economy flourished, and Adam Smith’s theory of laissez-faire developed • French Revolu?on broke out (1789). It destroyed the old social order in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity, beginning of the rise of the middle class. Why the industrial revolu?on began in britain • Britain had colonized India, Canada and other territories, using raw materials from these countries and star?ng the markets for Bri?sh manufactured goods • Increased popula?on meant growing request for goods from abroad • Scien?sts and inventors were free in their work, unlike in countries like France and Spain • Banks were channels for investments • Goods and raw materials could be transported easily to where they were needed INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION – AGRICULTURAL AND TRANSPORT Describes the change from agrarian/mari?me economy to industrialized economy. Term Industrial Revolu0on suggests a sudden and violent event but, on the contrary, changes developed over a number of decades and as a con?nuing peaceful process Technological innova?ons Steam-power. Coal used as fuel for steam engines (coal mines, great number of workers) Factory system Use of iron instead of wood. Factory is the new unit of the system, produc?on in one place. Posi?ve consequences • more food was being produced • cheaper produc?on methods • more people were becoming literate • beder roads and new networks of canals Nega?ve consequences • very bad and dangerous condi?ons in coal mines • pollu?on • monotonous life, aliena?on 1 SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION – TECHNOLOGY • building of railroads • use of machinery in manufacturing • increased use of steam power • electrical communica?ons Social background Approval of what was happening in France, so event greeted with enthusiasm. Poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge had the sense of being present at some apocalyp?c posi?ve event of history. Response to the french revolu?on Edmund Burk: thinker and great prose writer, he described the French Revolu?on as a return into savagery and advocated reform rather than revolu?on. Tom Paine: Anglo-American radical, he saw the established ins?tu?ons as corrupt and malign. He hoped that a democra?c movement might soon affect Europe The working classes Workers began to form associa?ons, to improve working condi?ons and higher wages. The ruling classes forced Parliament to declare these associa?ons illegal in 1799-1800. They con?nued to exist, ogen in secret, and were finally legalized in 1824 CULTURAL BACKGROUND – THE PRE-ROMANTIC PERIOD Last 30 years of the 18th century. • Return to nature: real and living being. • Medita?ons on man’s unhappy des?ny. • Cult of the primi?ve: wild, desolated places in which man lived in communion with nature • Love of the strange, the exo?c, the sublime • Interest in feelings and emo?ons. THE SUBLIME An unknown rhetorician iden?fied this concept with beauty and passion of inspira?on. Edmund Burke He considered beauty and the sublime as opposed. The sublime originates from the feelings of beauty, fears and horror created by what is infinite and terrible (obscurity, loneliness, silence, intangibility). Sublime: what is great and tall/deep in nature (oceans, mountains). Kant The Sublime originated from the conflict between sensibility and reason, from the subject who perceives it and not with the object itself. It makes us realize how lidle we are in presence of infinity. The beau?ful was what created a sense of harmony between our imagina?on and our reason. 2 • Poetry and the crea1ve act of the poet. Crea?ve process starts from an emo?on, recollected in tranquillity, recreated and enjoyed by the poet and then shared by the reader. The emo?on is subjec?ve, deeply rooted in personal experience. Poetry is based on experience, it depends on the spontaneous expression of the poet’s feelings and sensa?ons. The emo?on is reproduced in a purified and poe?c form. COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE The poem has its origin in Wordsworth personal experience: he was crossing Westminster Bridge early in the morning of a sunny day. He was with his sister Dorothy, but he said he was alone to make the experience more personal. The poem records the meaning of nature of the countryside as opposed to town. Lond is described differently from the London we’re familiar with (polluted, grey, full of smog). Elements of the town are merged in natural landscape. Language: quite simple, direct, colloquial, with some archaisms. DAFFODILS The poem has its origin in Wordsworth personal experience: he as walking with his sister Dorothy near their home in Lake District. He said he was alone to be more personal and in?mate. Nature as a source of joy, alive and happy. Daffodils are personified. Man is a part of nature. Landscape: is rural and solitary. Probably Ullswater lake near Dove Codage. MY HEART LEAPS UP The poem has its origin in Wordsworth personal experience: he sees a rainbow (source of joy). Short but dense poem. Adult man’s emo?onal being is mainly determined by childhood esperience, this gig of the child is called “celes?al light”, it slowly fades away with adulthood. Presence of the natural piety: love and devo?on to nature. From the la?n pietas, presence of God in all the natural elements. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Life • Born in Devon in 1772. • Disappointed by the French Revolu?on . • Became friend with W. Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy • Unsa?sfied love affected his health, he turned to opium and alcohol. • 1800, he sedled in the Lake District with Wordsworth and Dorothy. 5 IMAGINATION Imagina?on is divided into two types: • Primary imagina?on: faculty by which we perceive the world around us, through senses, common to all human beings • Secondary imagina?on: faculty that a poet has “to idealize and unify” in a state of ecstasy THE SUPERNATURAL Metaphor for human experiences which the material world cannot represent. Coleridge’s interest in the supernatural derived from nature, but its contempla?on was always accompanied by the awareness of the presence of the ideal in the real. NATURE Chris?an faith, nature not iden?fied with a form of pantheism. Natural images represen?ng the abstract, source for his philosophical medita?ons. Nature reflected man’s inner condi?on, mind and soul. Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge did not find happiness and consola?on in it. COLERIDGE VS WORDSWORTH They both despised Fancy: inferior to imagina?on, mechanical and logical faculty which places images side by side. While imagina?on fuses them into something new and harmonious. • Wordsworth: imagina?on modifies the data of experience through recollec?on in tranquillity. • Coleridge: imagina?on transcends the data of experience and “creates” from zero. THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER – BALLAD Tradi?onal elements • the dic?on • theme of the supernatrual • form: four-line stanza + several stanzas with five or more lines • narra?ve technique: mixture of dialogue and narra?on, use of concrete graphic details • archaic language, inten?on of making credible the experience of the supernatural New elements • length of the story • moral drawn at the end • lengthy descrip?on of the natural landscape The theme of journey Physical journey becomes allegorical journey, allegory for spiritual evolu?on, from the original sin to the salva?on of the soul. 6 The Mariner is punished for killing an Albatross. The shoo?ng of a bird may seem a mader of lidle importance but it becomes significant for two reasons: • lack of mo?ves for the act which suggests the irra?onality of the crime • fact that this ac?on is against nature and breaks a holy law of life The mariner A full descrip?on is not given. The few details given are very vivid, the portrait of the Mariner is vague and not realis?c. • skinny hands • long grey beard • glidering eyes His moods are not described directly, they are reflected in the environment. The wedding guest Func?on: structural, a listener was required. He is impa?ent, arrogant, brusque. His lack of solidarity makes him similar to the man the Mariner was before his drama?c experience. He also represents readers: as he finally becomes sad, they should be different at the end of the ballad. BYRON IN RAVENNA – HOTEL IMPERIALE The mee?ng with the Countess Teresa Guiccioli in April 1819 in Venice changed the course of Byron’s life. In a few days he fell completely in love with Teresa, who was 19 years old and married to a man nearly three ?mes her age. Byron arrived in Ravenna for the first ?me on 10 June 1819, he stopped at the Albergo Imperiale in Via di Porta Sisi (Biblioteca Alfredo Oriani), a few metres from Dante's Tomb. Byron stayed there for two months, because Teresa was sick. Lord Byron and Teresa went back to Venice un?l her husband called for her. He returned to Ravenna the next winter and stayed temporarily in Hotel Imperiale. Byron described Ravenna as “poe?c ground”. Hotel Imperiale is memorialised in Canto IV of Don Juan: ‘I pass each day where Dante’s bones are laid: A lidle cupola, more neat than solemn, Protects his dust.’ 19th CENTURY – THE VICTORIAN AGE CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) Life and works • 1812, born in Portsmouth (south of England) from a very large and poor family. • 12yo, withdrawn from school, sent in a blacking factory (London), bc father was imprisoned for debts. This marked him forever, he sympathised with poor and oppressed in his works. • Published fourteen novels which can be divided into: ◦ humorous novels (Pickwick Papers) ◦ historical novels (A Tale of Two Ci0es) ◦ sen?mental novels (David Copperfield) ◦ social or humanitarian novels (Oliver Twist, Hard Times, Bleak House) 7 • confirms the impression of an ugly, polluted town where living is monotonous and unpleasant Main physical features: • red bricks, machinery, tall chimneys • a black canal and a river • vast piles of buildings full of windows • large streets, small streets, people like one another Dominant colours: red (life), black (ash, denial of life), white (purity), purple (melancholy) Dominant sounds: radling and trembling. Dominant smell: caused by the ill-smelling dye discharged into the river and pollu?ng it. People: very monotonous life. Progress causes aliena?on and desola?on. General impression: ugly town where living is monotonous and unpleasant. Presence of images taken by the natural world. In Dickens's view technological progress and industrialism represented a retrograde step for civiliza?on. Machinery: dangerous beast ready to adack. Coketown: depressing place. The narrator openly reveals himself with “let us strike the key note” and the pronoun “we”. He is clearly an omniscient third person narrator who knows everything about his fic?onal world and is keen to impress on his readers his views of it, which are very cri?cal. OSCAR WILDE Life and works • 1856, born in Dublin, upper middle-class family • Lived as a dandy: created image of eccentricity both disapproved and admired. Dressed extravagantly and paid aden?on to the elegance of his lodgings. His conversa?on was brilliant. This self-created image was based on his belief that in life, as in art, the ar?st’s duty was to cul?vate beauty and give aesthe?c pleasure. • He wrote: ◦ poems ◦ plays (The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband) ◦ fairy stories (The Happy Prince, The Canterville Ghost) ◦ novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). • 1895, he was accused of homosexuality, put to trial and sentenced to two years’ hard work. • While in prison, wrote an epistle “De Profundis” to Lord Douglas about his prison experience. The Picture of Dorian Gray Painter Basil Hallward, fascinated by the beauty of Dorian Gray, wants to fix it forever in a portrait. Basil’s friend, Lord Henry Wodon ini?ates Dorian to the cult of Aesthe?cism. Dorian wishes he could preserve his beauty forever while the portrait grows old. By some strange magic, this becomes true: Dorian remains young and beau1ful and the portrait shows the marks of old age but also those of the immoral life Dorian is experiencing under influence of Lord Henry. 10 Ager some ?me Basil visits Dorian and sees the portrait, he kills the painter to keep his secret. End of the book, Dorian exasperated by what his portrait/conscience reveals about himself, strikes it with a knife. The portrait resumes its original beauty and perfec?on, while Dorian dies. His servants find him looking old and wrinkled and recognize him by the rings he has in his hands. The protagonist Dorian has a nature that is “grey”: neither all white nor all black, mixture of good and evil. He begins in a state of innocence, but he is gradually corrupted, Dorian becomes more and more evil. He begins to lead a double life: presents a moral face to respectable high society, but he also pursues a secret life of sin and depravity. As he becomes more and more involved in sin, crime and evil, his picture reflects the corrup?on of his soul while he remains young and handsome. The double Dorian leads a double life: respectable face to society, but his moral personality is a mask. He ogen disappears for a long period of ?me, and he leads a life of evil and sinful pleasure. Chooses to live both in his elegant house and in rooms of lidle taverns near the Docks. He experiments all kinds of life, sordid, evil experiences and sophis?cated, elegant adventures. Also takes part in brilliant, luxuriant par?es full of refined an?que furniture, silk and velvet clothes, gold and silver accessories. Theme of the double also in London: rich, wealthy in the West End and poor, dirty in the East End. The rebel Wilde affirmed his life was like a work of art. He assumed the double role of rebel and dandy since he lived between high society and bohemian circles. He thought that he should live his life fulfilling his wishes and desires, without suffoca?ng or repressing impulses and ins?ncts. As an individualist he wanted absolute freedom, since according to him life was meant for beauty, elegance and pleasure. He supported a complete free expression of the ar?st both in form and in techniques as he thought art had to be totally detached from morality or u1lity. The Dandy Term “dandy”: man who boasted about his appearance, vanity, extravagance. Idea of dandy developed thanks to Lord George Brummell, leader of the early 19th fashion. As a dandy, Oscar Wilde showed all his eccentric personality in his way of dressing and behaving. He lived the double role of rebel and dandy. Transgression He inves1gated all the possibili1es offered by life, refusing limits imposed by conven?onal morality. He was adracted to transgression, suggested the hypothesis that man could live in a harmonious combina?on of spirit and senses. If Dorian failed, that did not prove the theory was wrong, but that ?mes were not ready for it. 11 Novel?es in the novel As a literary man, Wilde found himself between tradi1on and innova1on (end of the Victorian Age). Novel is based on a compromise and the moral at the end is that every excess must be punished and reality cannot be escaped, it also contains many new elements such as: • polemic attude towards realism • cult of beauty, the defini?on of art as pure ar?fice • choice of a life beyond common morality, the search for pleasure and transgression • introduc?on of the spiritualiza?on of the senses (new hedonism) • life must imitate art, ar?st must be completely free • cult of elegance, luxury, extravagance in furniture, clothes, habits, manners • presence of homosexuality theme, just hinted at in the narra?on • use of a refined, rich language full of aphorisms and paradoxes • presence of a moral at the end, which seems in contrast with the spirit of the work Oscar Wilde and Joris-Karl Huysmans Mid-1800 saw rise of new Aesthe?cism, became cult movement, associated with Decaden?sm as a result of the works of the French Symbolists, Baudelaire, Flaubert and Mallarmé. 1880-1895, France, writers reacted against realism and naturalism in literature, characterized by direct descrip?on and explicit analogy. Poets (like Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud) and novelists (like Huysmans) were called Symbolists because of their interest in mystery, dream, imagina?on, and their adempt to reveal the “correspondences” hidden under “signs”. A' Rebours (upstream) The symbolist movement reacted against the posi?vism and materialism of modern life, was usually associated with moral and physical degrada?on, sadness, irony and ennui. Idea that Art had no rela?on to life and had nothing to do with morality or immorality. 1884, Huysmans published À Rebours (Controcorrente), he gave an extreme example of an aesthete’s complete withdrawal from life into an en?rely ar?ficial world. The aesthete protagonist, aristocra?c Des Esseintes, ager was?ng his fortune, withdraws from the world and from “natural life”. He’s consumed by “maladie de fien de siècle”, “end of century’s desease”, typical of decadent heroes. He became the model of decadent life for a whole genera?on of European ar?sts and young people. Dorian reads Huysmans’ novel, he found in Des Esseintes a hero that became a model of behaviour. But he felt different from the protagonist: Des Esseintes was obsessed by the decay of his beauty, Dorian was never in the condi?on of fearing it because he did not become old. Wilde vs. D’Annunzio Both Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray and D’Annunzio in Il Piacere were influenced by Huysmans’s À Rebours and Des Esseintes became the model of the protagonists of their novels. Dorian Gray, Andrea Sperelli and Des Esseintes are the protagonists of the men?oned novels and they are all typical dandies who live looking for beauty and elegance. 12 Graphic designers had the important task of crea?ng propaganda posters to inspire na1ons during war with aesthe?cally pleasing pictures. Developed by the Office of Public Sector Informa?on, they used images and words to bring the message, inci?ng a sense of guilt for not doing your part. War propaganda for women Posters encourage not just men figh?ng on the badlefield, but also women. As men departed to fight on the Front, some women went with them as military nurses. In the US, women also started doing the jobs men would do. The War Poets Group of poets directly experienced the figh?ng and, in many cases, died in the conflict. They tried to represent war in a realis?c way with the aim of revealing the truth about horrors of the war. They are known as the War Poets. Wrote modern poetry, new and unconven?onal ways of expression. Texts were wriden according to different historical situa?ons and contras?ng personal experiences. A noble cause At first poets viewed war as a noble cause, as in the poem The Soldier by Rupert Brooke, wriden in the first wave of enthusiasm by a man who had not been to the front yet. It seemed an exci?ng experience and an opportunity to show patrio?sm. Also considered a way to get fame and honour. Poet’s role was to glorify war and to persuade people that it was a right, noble cause. Words used are smooth and sweet, sounds are musical, images convey an idealised view of the situa?on. RUPERT BROOKE He was the First War poet to die. He was born in a wealthy family, he became popular for his handsome looks. Ager a brief service, he died at the age of 28 of blood poisoning, in 1915. Early death turned him into symbol of the young hero, prevented him from horrors of trenches. In his poems, war is not seen as a cruel dreadful experience, but as a clean experience. His poems are tradi?onal in form and express idealis?c patrio?sm. THE SOLDIER (1914) Patrio?c idea: death in badle is not considered tragic but noble sacrifice, purifying heart from evil. War is not seen as cruel and the poet does not seem afraid of death. Death as an opportunity to show patrio?sm and as a way to gain glory and honour. Use of personifica?on makes this image more powerful. Feelings: joy, health, pride, patrio?sm, love. England is personified as a loving mother, characterised by a rural, idyllic land. Poet describes beauty of the landscape and politeness/friendship of English people. Theme: war seen as honourable adventure and poet’s love for his mother country. Tone: nostalgic, patrio?c, sen?mental. Mood: solemn. Language: sog, musical, tradi?onally poe?c. Poem was wriden in the ini?al months of war, first wave of enthusiasm. 15 SIEGFRIED SASSOON He was the first to describe the truth about war. He was born in a wealthy Jewish family. He enlisted at the outbreak of the war. In his poems, he expressed his protest against poli?cal errors for which soldiers were sacrificed. His poems are realis?c and aggressive, the physical reality of death is described with a colloquial direct language. They are focused on nega1ve emo1ons. He used anger, sa?re, realis?c details. He underlined the gap between those who fight and those who don’t, the higher ranks (generals, poli?cians, businessmen) who want the war to con?nue and who send people to die at the front. SURVIVORS (October 1917) This poem was wriden during his forced stay at Craiglockhart Hospital ager his Declara?on. Opening line: sense of misleading hope. Speaker: may be a doctor at the hospital, a poli?cian, one of the non-combatants at home. He described symptoms of shell-shock in the survivors. Shock ager trauma?zing experience. Contrasts are used to draw the reader’s aden?on away from the rhyme scheme. It’s compared the youth and innocence of the soldiers with the ageing process of the war. The poet presents us with a sense of hope, immediately reversed by a harsh reminder of brutal reality. Survivors, once they have managed to forget nightmares and visions, will be able to reflect on the 'glorious war' with pride. But this will remind them of their ?me spent overcoming the horror, when they had no self- esteem having been reduced to helpless children. The poem ends in an accusatory manner, directed at the supporters of the War, people who could so easily push soldiers back to the front without ever knowing the horrors of trenches. VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941) Life and works Born in London in an aristocra?c family. Mother: died in 1895, Virginia was deeply affected by her death, started suffering from depression. Ager her father’s death she founded a circle of intellectuals which became known as the Bloomsbury Group, including the essayist Leonard Woolf who later became her husband. As a consequence of her recurrent nervous breakdowns, she adempted suicide several ?mes. Her most important modernist novels: • Mrs Dalloway (1925) • To the Lighthouse (1927) • Orlando (1928) She was also an essayist, a journalist and an art cri?c. She was deeply interested in feminist themes: discrimina?on against women is examined in A Room of One’s Own (1929). She finally commided suicide by drowning in 1941, in river Ouse near her house. 16 Her depression Virginia Woolf was deeply affected by her parents’ death and suffered from depression all her life. She experienced mental instability and when she was alone she was obsessed by anxiety, insecurity, terror in the devastated London streets during the second World War, isolated from her friends. She adempted suicide several ?mes, she finally drowned herself in the river Ouse ( March 28th 1941). She leU a note for her husband explaining that she could not recover, she had begun to hear voices and she could not concentrate. She could not fight any longer and she could not write or read properly anymore. She thanked her husband as she owed all her happiness to him. Anxiety and insecurity In her diary she once wrote that she had adempted a study of insanity and suicide in the character of Sep1mus Smith in Mrs Dalloway (Diary ,October 14th 1922). The protagonist of the novel, Clarissa Dalloway suffers from psychological insecurity and sense of failure, but Sep?mus is the second important figure of the book. He was a poet, but returned from the First World War where he has lost his dearest friend, he has a nervous breakdown, which slowly turned into insanity. He has been prescribed a period of rest and isola?on in a nursing home, but in a fit of terror and madness he kills himself. He felt guilty of his friend’s death and like Virginia Woolf herself, he experienced a progression from depression to madness and suicide. Sep?mus and Virginia Both Sep?mus and Virginia heard voices, both unable to dis?nguish between their personal response and external reality as they alternated moments of sanity to moments of insanity. Virginia: fear of the war, fear of living alone and isolated. Sep?mus: fear of the nursing home and his shell-shock. Both they chose a death without blood, she drowned herself and he jumped out of a window. Sep?mus: waited ?ll the very last moment and seemed to hesitate. Virginia: faced her death as the one experience she would never describe. The writer’s task She refused the idea of order, as it implied a chronological organiza?on of the events of life. Sugges?ng that life was a luminous halo surrounding our consciousness she meant that people cannot observe life and reality from the outside, as they live completely immersed in it. She thought that her task as a writer was to represent the mental processes as they take place. SUBJECTIVITY VS. OBJECTIVITY Novelist’s task: trying to deal with life without being affected by external reality, an “alien”. External reality lost its tradi?onal importance, except for the influence it had on inner life, life of the mind. She eliminated tradi?onal plots and direct dialogues. 17 Time of narra1on: doesn’t coincide with chronological 1me. Through Mrs. Dalloway's thoughts, the reader learns of facts and events stretching beyond the few minutes she takes to go to the florist's. Point of view: one is the narrator's, the other is Mrs Dalloway's mind (the interior monologue). Chronological 1me: split, 1me taken by external events (her movements from one shop to the other) and the 1me covered by recollected events. JAMES JOYCE (1882-1941) Life and works • Born in Dublin, 1882 • Joyce’s father was a supporter of home rule for Ireland and Parnell’s ideas. So he remained vic?m of his ruin ager the Catholic Church opposed to him. • He chose an?-heroes as protagonists of his stories, rejected paralysed atmosphere of Dublin. • He did not sympathize with Parnell’s ideas and na?onalist movements, he considered patrio?sm as a movement paralysing freedom and crea?vity in Ireland. • 1905-1909, he wrote Dubliners • 1919 Ulysses published in installments in the Egoist, stopped because considered obscene. Literary career We can divide his literary produc?on into two periods: • First: marked by a realis?c technique. Quite linear plot, rich in details. Syntax is logical, not distorted, reflects everyday speech. One of the most important works: Dubliners. • Second: marked by transi?on from tradi?onal approach to stage of experimenta?on. Rich in symbolism and allegory. Logical consequence of previous phase, same themes and setng. Language changes, rejects logical sequences and conven?onal syntax. The exile Voluntary exile in Trieste, Zurich and Paris. He became a cosmopolitan writer open to the influence of other intellectual tradi?ons. He wanted to give a realis?c portrait of common people’s life doing ordinary things, represented the whole mental and emo?onal reality. Joyce in Paris Ulysses banned in UK un?l 1922 and America un?l 1933. Published in Paris by Sylvia Beach, label Shakespeare and Company, epicenter of Anglo-American literary culture and modernism in Paris. Joyce in Trieste In Trieste he made a living wri?ng ar?cles for the local newspaper Il Piccolo and teaching English to rich families, classes at his own house or students’ ones. He was a teacher at the Berlitz School. He met Edore Schmitz (Italo Svevo). Joyce helped him to become well-known in Europe. 20 THE ROLE OF THE ARTIST Ar?st should be invisible, he must not express his own POV but thoughts and experience of other men. Joyce supported total objec?vity and independence from moral, religious, poli?cal pressures. He had to be outside conven?ons and society because Dublin was the centre of paralysis, condi?on of death in life, incapacity of facing life, living up to their own ideals. EXPERIMENTATION Interested in all aspects of modern culture, including Freud’s psychoanalysis and experimenta?on in all fields of art. He created a new kind of dreamy language, mixture of exis?ng words, inven?ve words. Syntax is disordered, punctua?on non-existent in an immense flux of words. Aliena?on and paralysis Themes: failure to find a way out of “paralysis”, typical condi?on of modern man in the modern metropolis, and escape or failure of escaping. None of the characters is des?ned to find a way out, they are unable to cut the bonds linking them to their own world. Paralysis of Dublin is both physical (caused by external forces) and moral (religion, poli?cs, culture). Joyce’s Dubliners: accept condi?on because they are unaware of it, or not have the courage to fight. They are spiritually weak and fearful, unable to communicate, paralysed in their rela?onships. Interior monologue • Narra?ve technique by which characters’ inner thoughts are revealed to the reader. • Evolu?on of the tradi?onal monologue. The third person narrator soon disappears to leave room to the flux of thoughts, emo?ons and recollec?ons. • Thoughts and feelings are linked together without apparent logical sequence, but the syntac?c structure remains well-formed. Time • Innova?on was influenced by Freud’s works and the new psychological theory of the concept of ?me, no longer seen as a series of points in an objec?ve chronological sequence, but as a flux of subjec?ve consciousness in which present, past and future co-exist. • Tradi?onal division between fic?onal and chronological ?me does not hold. Chronological ?me is split into two: ?me taken by external events and ?me covered by recollected events. Stream of consciousness • Expression coined by the psychologist and philosopher William James, brother of the novelist Henry James, to describe the mind’s flux of thoughts. • Most famous example: last chapter of Ulysses, records thoughts of Molly Bloom, protagonist’s wife, while she is lying in bed, half-asleep, wai?ng for her husband’s return. • Punctua?on has been almost completely abandoned. Only break in the flow is for a new paragraph, but again without punctua?on in the end or capital leder at the beginning. 21 Ulysses - Text 2: Molly’s monologue from Ulysses – COMMENTARY There are no logical connectors, some words ogen recur and some images, can be linked together by means of the associa?on of the ideas. All these features give the text the quality of a dream. The result is that reading is quite difficult. Molly’s thoughts are recorded as they naturally surface her mind: Molly ‘s thoughts shig from the present to the future, in par?cular the next day. It’s possible to find an order in her flux of memories, not a chronological order, but the order created by the free associa?on of thoughts, feelings and impressions according to analogies of sound or meaning. The end of certain?es, the decline of values, the impossibility to find a common set of principles to be shared both by writers and readers led modern writers to have difficul?es to deal with society. The use of the stream of consciousness allowed the reader to enter deeply the mind of a character, to know its ra?onal and irra?onal sides, past experiences, feelings and responses according to unexpected reac?ons. It also gave the novel a modern dimension reflec?ng the new features of an age dominated by anxiety and doubts. JOYCE VS. SVEVO Difference between Svevo and Joyce is to be found in the use of the interior monologue. This technique is mainly used by Joyce. Svevo writes the word “monologue” but he never adds the adjec?ve “interior” in his wri?ngs. JOYCE: The character is given the possibility to abandon to a flux of consciousness, to the most unexpected and incoherent associa?ons, to the most extreme expressions of his/her inner being. Characters communicate directly with the reader, they let all consciousness come to light, even the darkest aspects of it. SVEVO: Svevo makes an organized, logical and controlled confession a naturalis?c transcrip?on of the puzzling, not logical, nonsensical aspect of the interior monologue. In his novels there is always the constant and controlled contact with the external reality and with the reasoning control of psychic connec?ons. La Coscienza di Zeno: result of the most advanced compromise by Svevo, result of a fic?onal reform. The clearest feature is irony. His new form of the novel doesn’t break or upset tradi?on. They both experimented a long period of obscurity, of mor?fica?on, before achieving success. SVEVO: period had lasted 30 years, when his first works had already been published. JOYCE: years of his forma?on.Then ager the scandals of his first works, he had experienced a polemic silence, rather than the torture of being ignored as it had been the des?ny of Italo Svevo. DUBLINERS (1905-1907) The collec?on consists of 15 stories, all wriden by 1905, except for The Dead, wriden in 1907. The work is an acute analysis of life in Dublin. The stories are arranged in a thema?c sequence divided into 4 sec?ons, each one represents a stage in life: childhood, adolescence, maturity, public life and the final epilogue, The Dead. 22 Leopold Bloom’s travelling and wandering is compressed into a single day in a modern town. His adventures are the events of everyday life. He has a strong sense of the family. His regret for the death of his son makes him ini?ate an intellectual rela?onship with a young man he has just met, Stephen Dedalus. At the end of the day he goes back with him to his unfaithful wife, who is wai?ng for them, but is ironically opposed to faithful Penelope. Joyce changed the features of the ancient myth to point out that modern age has no heroic standards. Symbols The three main characters represent different aspects of human nature. • Stephen: pure intellect, represents every young man looking for maturity. • Molly: sensual nature. • Leopold Bloom: the an?-hero, alienated common man. He is the symbol of the mankind. Main theme Same as Eveline, failure to find a way out of “paralysis”, typical condi?on of modern man in the modern metropolis, and escape or failure of escaping. None of the characters is des?ned to find a way out, they are unable to cut the bonds linking them to their own world. Paralysis of Dublin is both physical and moral. Dubliners accept their condi?o, unaware of it, or not have the courage to fight. Language Full of contrasts, paradoxes, interrup?ons and symbols. Characterized by a wide range of vocabulary and a variety of registers including slang, nicknames, expressions from adver?sing, foreign words, literary quota?ons and allusions to other texts. THE MYTHICAL METHOD Joyce used the device of imposing an ancient myth upon contemporary experience. A myth is a story, passed from one genera?on to the next. The mythical method consists in using the myth to establish a con?nuous parallel between contemporaneity and an?quity, values of modern life are sadly inferior to those of a mythical past. THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT (1888-1965) Life and works He was a poet, an essayist and a playwright. American by birth, European by choice. He soon rejected “roman?c” and evolved a new poe?c technique. • Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1888. • He studied John Donne and the English Metaphysical. He learnt Italian by studying Dante, he considered him the poet who best expressed a universal situa?on with clear visual images. • 1910, he went to Europe, he studied in Paris where he came to know Bergson’s ideas and the French symbolists. 25 The conversion • 1927, Eliot became a Bri?sh ci?zen and joined the Church of England, trying to find out the answer to his inner quest and to his despair at a modern world without faith and religion. • He decided to separate from his wife, but when she died in an asylum, he felt guilty, unhappy. Two periods His works can be divided into two periods: before and ager his conversion to Anglicanism. • First period: Prufrock and Other Observa0ons and The Waste Land. Characterized by a pessimis?c vision of the world, lack of hope, faith or values by the descrip?on of a land with spiritual and natural aridity, lack of love. • Second period: The Journey of the Magi and Four Quartets. Characterized by purifica?on, hope and joy. In par?cular, The Journey of the Magi marks beginning of a process of inner awareness towards a regenera?on, it explores new ways in syntax, rhythm, rhyme, language. Main themes • Modern man’s aliena?on from society • Time versus eternity • Problem of faith • Sense that the present is inferior to the past • Fear of living • Moral, spiritual and sen?mental emp?ness of his ?me Aim of poetry It has to be used as an instrument to express other people’s feelings, not the poet’s own sen?ments. He supported the complete objec?ve impersonality of art. Poetry must communicate something, even before being understood, through its rhythm and musicality. THE OBJECTIVE CORRELATIVE Need to express an emo?on without a direct statement but through something sugges?ng feelings. Term deno?ng a set of objects, a situa?on, a chain of events which are the formula for that emo?on. Eliot invented the objec?ve correla?ve to describe objects, ac?ons, situa?ons which should arouse an emo?onal response in the reader, corresponding to the poet’s inner feelings. TRADITION Since values of society had changed ager the First World War, he thought that poetry had to change and find new expressions to describe emp?ness, degrada?on of the contemporary world. Past and present coexist in man and the past is an ac?ve part of the present. This is why his poetry is so rich in quota?ons from works of the European literary tradi?on. He emphasized the importance of tradi?on, he affirmed that the poetry of the past, wriden in different periods, is part of the living individuality. 26 PRUFROCK AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS Collec?on of poems including The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Poems are observa?ons of emo?ons, feelings, reac?ons to modern world and society. Characters are passive, aimless and powerless. The work was influenced by Bergson’s ideas about ?me. Eliot splits ?me into inner and chronological ?me, considering ?me as a flux. ELIOT VS MONTALE Eugenio Montale (1896-1981) in his collec?on Ossi di Seppia (1925) expressed the nega?vity of the contemporary human experience of living. Like Eliot, he expressed a universal nega?ve situa?on in his poems using the English poet’s techniques of the objec?ve correla?ve. Spesso il Male di Vivere, Montale uses three examples of objec?ve correla?ve, that are unexpected associa?ons from an emo?onal state (“il rivo strozzato”, “la foglia riarsa”, “il cavallo stramazzato”) in order to express the evil exis?ng in contemporary society. They are compared to “la statua”, “la nuvola”, “il falco”, symbols of human indifference, considered the only solu?on for the modern man. Time and memory Memory: meaningful link with the past. Present and past exist simultaneously in the mind in a free associa?on. Contrast between the meaninglessness of present life and the superiority of past legends. Montale: with the passing of ?me, the memory becomes blurred in his poem La Casa dei Doganieri. According to Montale, the relief given by the memory of dear places and people is just illusory, since the images evoked dissolve into the subconscious. THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK – COMMENTARY The poem has the structure of a research, of a walk through the desert streets of a city at the end of which Prufrock should reach his aim, ager overcoming all the obstacles that characterise his life. His obstacles originate from his own insecurity: the poem lacks a ra?onal link , this helps to convey the idea of mental confusion, irra?onality. Stanzas are very irregular in their layout and rhyme scheme, connected to each other through repe??on of words and lines. Protagonist: weak idealist, crushed by the banality of everyday life, characterised by his incapacity of being faithful in ac?ons to his insight. The great problems of absolute knowledge, of personal iden?ty, of human rela?onships are in the end, walls of a familiar and rather comfortable prison, Prufrock makes no real adempt to escape. The free verse which reflects the content of the poem: a chao?c mental ac?vity, thoughts and emo?ons. Eliot uses the objec?ve correla?ve. The tone is highly ironic in the choice of the ?tle, name of the protagonist, Prufrock’s portrait of himself, descrip?on of his inadequacy, indecision and fears. 27 Society: a nightmarish world People: frustrated and alienated from society, constantly watched through screens. The individual is completely subordinated to the State, impossible to express ideas or thoughts. The thought police Government adempts to control also the thoughts of its subjects, labelling disapproved thoughts with the term “thoughtcrime” or "crimethink". The Thought Police are the secret police of the novel, job is to uncover and punish thoughtcrime. The protagonist Winston Smith, a middle-aged, weak man, lives in a society where beauty, truth, emo?ons and values have been eliminated. He s?ll believes in them, he desires spiritual and moral integrity. • Winston: patrio?c figure of Churchill, has a heroic dimension. • Smith: common, suggests he is an average man, an an?-hero. He works for the Ministry of Truth, where he alters history, records of the past, but in private he writes a diary to maintain sanity and the sense of the past. He expresses Orwell’s views. Newspeak Newspeak: "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year", closely based on English, greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar. Totalitarianism of the Party: make any alterna?ve thinking impossible by removing any word describing ideas of freedom and rebellion. INGSOC Ideology of the totalitarian government of Oceania, newspeak for "English Socialism". Ingsoc has mastered a complex system of psychological tools and methods to make people confess imagined crimes and forget thoughts of rebellion, and to actually love Ingsoc itself. The party Big Brother is a fic?onal character and symbol. He is the leader and the dictator of Oceania. It’s a personifica?on of the Party, depicted on posters and telescreens. Reality is what the Party says it is. This is the Party's jus?fica?on for altering historical texts. The slogans The slogans at the end of the passage convey principles of the government, violence and tyranny. Orwell uses paradox to express them, to have a sa?rical effect on the readers. His aim is to make a parody of totalitarianism. The slogans are wriden on the wall of The Ministry of Truth, ironical name for the place where manipula?on is determined. Orwell’s aim was to prove that the individual cannot survive in a totalitarian, repressive state where the Party must have the complete control of ci?zens. Themes • Preciousness of human freedom. • Obsession with the past. • Func?ons of poli?cal language. 30 • Man’s inability and need to communicate. Winston constantly looks for a friend or for someone who can listen to him. He finds a temporary form of communica?on with Julia and O’Brien. • Poli?cal theme: rebellion of the individual against Party’s power is useless. • Love: Winston’s illegal love affair with Julia. Men cannot have wives and love affairs with women, or friends. People are condemned to live in isola?on, desola?on and solitude. Language and style Language: varied in register, allusive, concrete, realis?c. Point of view: third person omniscient narrator. Tone: increasingly pessimis?c, violent, sadis?c, harsh. The story ends with Winston’s defeat. So there is no consola?on, but only sympathy with the persecuted people in the totalitarian systems of the 20th century. THIS WAS LONDON – CHAPTER 1, 1984 – COMMENTARY Text describes London, capital of Oceania, totalitarian, scien?fically advanced, socialist state, where people have lost individuality and freedom. In fact the Party has reduced private life using telescreens and police patrols. Leader: Big Brother, posters hanging everywhere which is similar to Stalin. Symbol of power, probably modelled on a combina?on of Stalin’s and Hitler’s portraits. The Thought Police manipulates people’s thoughts, opinions and feelings. The only person who tries to resist manipula?on is the protagonist, Winston Smith, a weak middle-aged man, who tries to remember London scenery when he was a child, but nothing remains in his mind because the memory of the past is illegal. Cold, windy, bright day in a dirty, poor London. Poli?cal organiza?on of Oceania based on a totalitarian system under the leadership of Big Brother. Posters with cap?ons remind everyone the total control on the life of people by the government. Slogans at the end of the passage convey the principles of the government, violence and tyranny. Point of view: third person omniscient narrator. Main themes: lack of privacy, of freedom, of thought and speech. Atmosphere: gloomy, cold. Tone: sa?rical, pessimis?c and violent. Realis?c, concrete, varied, allusive language and makes a bider parody of totalitarianism. Orwell was probably inspired from both Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and some aspects of Western capitalism. 31