PROGRAMMA DI LETTERATURA INGLESE QUINTO SUPERIORE, Sintesi del corso di Inglese

Scarica PROGRAMMA DI LETTERATURA INGLESE QUINTO SUPERIORE e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! An age of revolution - Industrial society The industrial revolution started in Britain, in 1700, due to the increasing of the population and to the increase of food production. The industrial and the commercial fields were substantially improved. Clothing marked the beginning of the ‘’revolution’’. Technological innovation: • Steam engine, Thomas Newcomen, 1712 • Loom, Edmund Cartwright, 1787 • Energy generated from coal As a consequence the air and the water were polluted by smoke and filth, and women and children were abused in labour. The gothic novel The gothic novel began to develop in the second half of the 18 century. Horace Walpole was the first exponent of the Gothic novel with his work ‘’The castle of Otranto’’. The stories take place in gloomy and spooky places. Darkness in an important element to create an atmosphere of oppression and mystery. Terror and horror are the two words used to describe the emotional response caused by this genre. Terror is characterized by obscurity or the use of threatening events while horror almost destroys the reader’s mental ability by means of an explicit exposition to atrocities. The characters are persecuted by a villain who is the embodiment of evil. There are also supernatural elements. The major exponents of this type of novel were Anne Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis and Mary Shelley. Frankenstein Mary Shelley’s most famous work is ‘’Frankenstein or the modern prometheus’’. The novel’s origin takes place in Mary’s interests in ghost stories and from her personal anxieties, all this factors come together and create the monster that terrified her. The story was influenced by the ideas of Mary’s parents and by her husband’s interest in chemistry, so she was aware of the latest scientific theories. In the novel there is a contras between the concept of scienze and nature: the protagonist create a human being by the use of electricity and chemistry and so he alters the rule of nature. The novel is also influenced by the philosophers Locke and Roseau and by the work of the romantic poet. The novel is told by three different narrator: at first Walton, then Frankenstein and finally the monster. The main themes are: the quest for forbidden knowledge, the overreacher, the double, the penetration of nature’s secrets, the usurpation of the female role and the social prejudice through the figure of the monster as an outcast. The three most important character are linked to the theme of double: Walton is a double of Frankenstein since he manifests the same ambition, the wish to overcome human limits in his travelling toward the unknown. Frankenstein and his creature are complementary: they both suffer from a sense of alienation and isolation, both begin with a desire to be good but become obsessed with hate and revenge. The romantic spirit English romanticism prevails in poetry because is the best way to give expression to the individual feelings. • Romantic poets could see beyond the surface of reality and discover a truth beyond the reason • They mediate between man and nature • The give voice to the ideals of freedom, beauty and truth • A child was purer than an adult because he was unspoilt by civilization, therefore childhood was admired and cultivated • They exalted the atypical, the outcast and the rebel, Rousseau stated that the society’s conventions represented intolerable restrictions on the individual personality and produced corruption and evil • They venerate what is far away both in space and in time, ‘’the cult of exotic’’ Romantic poets shift they attention to subjective and autobiographical materials, they poetry was the expression of a personal experience of life. Many factors led to this change: • Industrial town compared with the countryside • Interests in everyday life • Tendency to melancholy, and meditation on the suffering of the poor and on death • Taste for desolations, the love of ruins, graveyards, ancient castles and abbeys Nature was a real and living being and there also was the contempt of the ‘’sublime’’, that is «whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger or operates in manner analogous to terror». The relationship between man and nature: is an important characteristic of the romantic age. The subordination of nature is emphasized in the new concept of the ‘’sublime’’, expounded by Edmund Burke who held that the sublime is not a feature of nature, but a particular way of perceiving and interpreting it. Nature can also be dramatic, mysterious and reflect the poet’s mood. Primitive and wild landscapes or night scenes convey the inner feelings of the poet, connecting his soul with the supernatural and the divine. Some romantic writers developed the concept of nature from a consoling view. Others portrayed nature as an entity which is indifferent to man’s destiny. In romanticism nature also meant an escape from familiar experiences and from the limitations of reality. The relationship between man and nature continued to evolve in the direction of a deeper symbolism towards the end of the 19 century. The rationalistic outlook of the Enlightenment proved unsatisfactory. Reason seemed unable to correct the evils of society such as the misery and desolation brought by industrialization. The supremacy of reason as the only path of knowledge led to the repression of emotion. William Wordsworth He belonged to the first generation of romantic poets. For him poetry was a solitary act originated on the ordinary. He shared Rousseau’s faith in the goddess of nature. He thought that man could achieve that goof through the cultivation of his sense and feelings. His poetry offers a detailed account of the complex interaction between man and nature, he believed that man and nature are inseparable, man exist non outside the natural world but as an active participant in it. Nature includes both inanimate and human nature. It is also a source of pleasure and joy, it comforts man in sorrow and teaches him how to love and to act in moral way. George Gordon Byron He was an unconventional aristocrat. He believed in individual liberty, he wanted alla men to be free and so went to fight against tyrants. He was also an isolated man whose feelings are reflected in the wildest exotic natural landscapes. He created the ‘’byronic hero’’, a passionate and mysterious man who is an outsider, isolated and attractive at the same time. • The novels of manners; it begat to develop in the 19 century when wealth and influence passed to the middle classes. The novel of manners dealt with hoe these classes behaved in everyday situations and describes their codes of conduct. The major exponent was Jane Austen whose novel where tased on the relationship between manners, social behavior and characters. This type of stories are usually set in the country. The main themes are marriage, the complications of love and friendship. Passion and emotions are non expressed directly. • The humanitarian novel; this type of novel is admired for the tone, there is a combination of humor with a sentimental request for reform for the less fortunate. This type of novel could be divided into novel of a realistic, fantastic or moral nature. The major exponent is Charles Dickens. • The novel of formations; these novels dealt with one character’s development form early youth to some sort of maturity. Some example of this type of novel are Dickens’ ‘’David Copperfield’’ and Charlotte Bronte’s ‘’Jane Eyre’’. • Literary nonsense; is a particular aspect of victorian literature created by Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. For example in Carroll’s ‘’Alice’s adventures in wonderland’’ he created a nonsensical universe where social rules and conventions are disintegrated, time and space lost their function. 
 Charles Dickens In his works he described the lower society, he exaggerated his characters habit and the London middle and lower classes in order to arouse the reader’s interest. He was always on the side of the poor and the working class. Children are the most important characters, they become the moral teachers and the examples to follow. His task was to make the ruling classes aware of the social problems without offending anyone. He attacked the social evils of his time, such as poor houses, unjust courts and the underworld. Oliver Twist talks about the economic insecurities and the humiliations of dickens’ childhood. When Oliver’s mother died he was brought up in a workhouse. When he went to London he is kidnapped by a gang of young pickpockets and he is forged to commit burglary. Finally he is adopted and then he discovers that he had a noble origins. The novel is set in London and describes the society’s lower middle class. The workhouses where dirty, squalid and full of crime. People were insensible to the feelings of the poor, murderers and violent. Workhouses were built all over england to give relief to the poor. However the condition in which they lived did not provide any means of social of economic advances. Furthermore the official sho ran them abused their rights and caused them further misery. Hard Times is set in the imaginary city of Coketown that stands for a real industrial mill town in mid-19-century Victorian England. This place of ‘’hard facts’’ and ‘’hard lives’’ seem to be turned into some kind of magical but hellish land. But to some the black residue that wraps up the town may symbolise productivity for others just depression. In this novel stand out the philosophy of utilitarianism, for this movement an action is morally right if it has consequences that led to happiness, and wrong if it brings about reverse. The Victorian’s had the conviction that any problems could be solved through reason. Dickens’ task in this novel is to illustrate the dangers of the teaching methods called ‘’object lesson’’, with this type of lessons humans were dehumanised because school tries to turn children into little machines that behaved according to the rules of this society. This novel uses its characters and stories to denounce the gap between the rich and the poor and to criticise the materialism and narrow- mindedness of utilitarianism. Lewis Carroll He is the creator of a ‘’nonsensical world’’ where the principles that govern the common social and moral universe are questioned and overturned. He showed the absurdity of the world. He had a dual nature, for him poetry and logic were linked. Alice’s adventures in Wonderland is set in a crazy world which is the real world seen through the eyes of a child. Animals and plants act like normal people. The themes of the novel are growing up and the child’s struggle to survive in the adults’ world. During her journey Alice starts to understand the creatures that live in her and learn from them, when she realize that she has grow up she wakes up back in the real world. There is also the theme pf the identity, she doubts about herself and this highlights how disorienting the idea of growing up can be. The late Victorian novel There was a general time of growing crisis in the moral and religious field. The society was influenced by Darwin’s evolution theory, according to which races, nations and social classes were subject to the principle fo the ‘’survival of the fittest’’ and that the poor and the oppressed did not deserve compassion. This theory also influenced the structure of the realistic novel. The best representatives of this type of novel were Thomas Hardy and George Eliot. Eliot focused on the psychological and moral complexity go human beings while Hardy presented the manifestations of strong forces of nature opposed to history and human beings. His protagonists are defined by their native regions and alienated by them. He abandoned his faith in god and believed that nature was indifferent and the faith was hostile. He could see no intelligent direction of the universe, only the control of ‘’insensible chance’’ over everything. Human life was a tragic process upon which man had no power. But he also express the need for altruism and the application of scientific knowledge. Stevenson described the double nature and at the same time the duality in victorian society, it was kind and refined but hid dark secrets in their beautiful houses. Kipling exalted the British imperial power and he believed that withe man had the right to carry progress to the savages. Aestheticism This movement began in the last decades of the 19 century in France and showed a sense of frustration and uncertainty of the artist. His task was to redefine the role of art, they withdrew from society and escaped into aesthetic isolation. Their motto was ‘’art for art’s sake’’. The aesthetic artists embodied the figure of the ‘’bohemian’’, which lived a life full of excess, cultivating art and beauty. The roots of this movement can be traced back to John Keats, he expressed his aesthetic view in his work ‘’ode on a grecian urn’’. For him a piece of art represents a timeless beauty and art is a form of immortality. The main theorist of the aesthetic movement in England was Walter Pater. The artist’s task was to feel sensation, be attentive to the attractive and to be cheerful. As a result art did not have to be didactic. Art was the only means to halt the passage of time and the only certainty. there was the simultaneous existence of different level of consciousness and unconsciousness, the past experiences determines the whole personality of the character. Time was subjective and internal, the story might unfold in the course of a single day (James Joyce’s Ulysses, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway ). The technique that was used was the ‘’stream of consciousness’’, it consist in the continuous flow of thoughts and sensation that characterize the human mind, for this modern novelist used the interior monologue : 
 ↠ It was impossible to reproduce the complexity of the human mind using traditional techniques. Main features: ⇢ lack of chronological order 
 ⇢ the action takes place in character’s mind 
 ⇢ it could be direct and indirect; it is indirect when the narrator lets the character’s thoughts flow without control, there is the concept of ‘’inner time’’ that consist in the character that stays fixed in space while his consciousness moves freely in time. 
 The direct interior monologue with two level of narration is characterized by a mix of third- person narration, when there is the mind level of narration the character’s thoughts flow freely not interrupted by external events. James Joyce - The setting of alla his works is Ireland, especially Dublin - He rebelled against catholic church - All the facts are explored from different points of view simultaneously - A great importance is gives to the inner world of the characters - Time is perceived as subjective - His task was to render life objectively and that requires the isolation and the detachment of the artist from society - Joyce’s stream of consciousness lets characters show their thoughts directly through interior monologue, sometimes in an incoherent and synthetically unorthodox way ‘’Dubliners’’ was published in 1914 and described the life of afflicted people. Narrative technique: - naturalistic, coincise, detailed description - Naturalism is combined with simbolismo and double meaning od details - He used free-direct speech and free-direct-thought - He used the ‘’epiphany’’ that is the sudden spiritual manifestation of an interior reality. It is the special moment in which a trivial gesture, an external object or a banal situation or an episode lead the character to a sudden self-realization about himself / herself or about the reality surrounding him / her. - Is absent didactic and moral aim because of the impersonality of the artist - The main themes are paralysis and escape; the climax of the stories is the coming to awareness by the characters of their own paralysis, its alternative is the escape, which always leads to failure. Virginia Woolf - In her childhood she experienced death and sexual abuse that led her to depressions - The second world war increased her anxiety and fears. She committed suicide - Her main aim was to give voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory - For her the human personality was a continuous shift of impressions and emotions - The point of view shifted inside the characters’ minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas and momentary impressions presented as a continuous flux. - Woolf’s stream of consciousness never lets her characters’ thoughts flow without control maintains logical and grammatical organization - The moments of being are rare moments of insight during the characters’ daily life when they can see reality behind appearances ‘’Mrs. Dalloway’’ takes place on a single ordinary day in June 1923 and follows the protagonist through a very small area of London, from the morning to the night of the day on which she gives a large formal party. Clarissa Dalloway’s party is the climax of the novel and unifies the narrative by gathering all the people she thinks about during the day. 
 George Orwell He rejected his English background an accepted new ideal and impressions. He live the conflict between middle-class education and his emotional identification with the working class. The role of artist was to inform, to reveal facts and draw conclusion from them, it should have a social function. He was influenced by Dickens in che choice of themes such like social themes, realistic language, misery caused by poverty, depravation of society and criticism of totalitarian, the violation of liberty and tyranny in all its forms. Nineteen Eighty-Four The novel managed to embed key abstract notions about ‘totalitarianism’ – a political term that emerged in the late 1930s – in striking concrete images, visceral and easy to grasp: the Thought Police; thought crimes and ‘doublethink’; permanent ‘telescreen’ surveillance and the notion that ‘Big Brother is Watching You’; and ending with the terrors of Room 101 as a vision of the dissolution of the self. Orwell’s novel is a dystopia, typically envisage the relentless forces of a technologised society extending its power over the human race, offering a nightmare of the individual crushed by inhuman state forces. The critical dystopia doesn’t just set out a negative vision: it uses the portrait of a nightmare future in order to launch a political critique of the present.