riassunti libro amazing minds 2, Sbobinature di Inglese

Scarica riassunti libro amazing minds 2 e più Sbobinature in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL BACKGROUND Early Victorian Age When Victoria ascended to the throne, she was eighteen years old. She became heir to the throne of William the fourth. She felt inexperienced at rst, but found support in her prime minister, Lord Melbourne. She married in 1840 Albert of Saxe, her cousin, and she was so devoted to him that she gave him the title of Prince Consort (in order not to be more important than the queen). They had nine children and gave a new representation of the Royal Family. She also restored the reputation of the monarchy, she was considered as a symbol of her time. Social Reform A lot of revolutions took place in Britain. Britain was becoming the “Workshop of the World”, industrialisation was well underway, there was an abundant supply of raw materials like coal, cheap iron. All these features enabled Britain to distinguish itself from the other competitors across Europe. Although this was a period of splendour, there were also some important contrasts like poverty, social injustice and lack of hygiene conditions. In 1832, the Reform Bill had given the vote to the male middle class, but had done less than nothing for the workers. These people created a mass movement called “Chartist Movement”, because there was a lot of discontent among them. They demanded universal surage and Parliamentary Reform. As a consequence, there were two other reform bills: in 1867, the workers in towns could vote, and nally, several years later, workers in mines and agriculture could vote too. Women still couldn’t vote. To regulate child labor in factories, it was approved the “Factory Act” that regulated child and female labor, while the “Education Act” made elementary education compulsory. Free trade The Corn Laws had been introduced in 1804 when the rich landowners, in order to protect their prots, introduced a duty on imported corn. In this way, it was impossible to import corn from other countries, to protect all British production at a very high level. There was an Anti Corn Laws movement, founded in Manchester and promoted by the Chartists, that was appealing to the middle classes in order to get free trade and cheaper food. The abrogation of these Laws made Britain's economy transform from an agricultural to an industrial. Free trade was the basis of a new economic boom. The new political parties The dominant political parties changed during the Victorian Age. There were the Whigs and the Tories. The rst evolved to the Liberal Party, and the second turned into a Conservative Party. Their representatives were Gladstone (liberal) , which was responsible for the Third Reform Act, and Disraeli (conservative), focused on foreign aairs, emulated the Second Reform Bill (all working class members could vote) and passed the Trade Union Act. Disraeli’s ideas were fully concentrated on landowners interests, so he was a bit “modern” than his predecessors. In 1892 the Independent Labor Party was formed. Faith in Progress The 19th century saw a rapid development of the railway network. It was called the Railway Age, which covered all Britain. Moreover, in 1803 the engineer Trevthick rst experimented with a steam locomotive and 11 years later, Stephenson built steam locomotives for a coal mine. It was only in 1829 that passengers could join railways. Between 1830 and 1840, there was a great boom in the railways eld, which caused industrial prosperity. By 1863, the rst Metropolitan opened. There were great innovations in the communication eld, like the invention of the telegraph, and of the Penny Postal System. People could send letters to anywhere in the UK, for one penny. It was called black for the color of the rst postage stamp. Urban problems and improvements London was a city of full contrasts. On the one hand, new buildings were constructed, and the population increased at higher levels, but on the other perspective, people lived in terrible conditions in their slums, very near to the factories. British people lived for working, they were totally involved in work. The increasing growth of the population meant that London could not satisfy the basic needs of its inhabitants. Moreover, the use of coal for heating made the air unbreathable and heavy. A large amount of sewage was thrown directly into the Thames. For this, there were built 2thousands meters of pipes, tunnels, to direct sewage outside the city. This gave a big hand to contrast the decrease of the population. Sanitation was an important problem, too. We remember Jane Austen, even though she didn’t belong to this age, she talked about gentry (the new land owners). She talked in advance about these topics, about manners, about family, that was the mirror of society, The feminist question During the rst half of Queen Victoria’s reign, women were educated at developing qualities that would make them good mothers and wives. In the second half of the century, the rst feminists movements began, and they emerged as a political force. Their rst aim was to get middle class women a better education, and eventually, the vote. These themes emerged with the novelist Charlotte Brontë in particular, too. LITERARY BACKGROUND The Victorian Age concerned one of the most controversial, rich and productive periods of English literature. The main genre was novel, because it embodied all the controversials of the age, from the values and religious beliefs to the contradictions. This was the leading genre of the Age, for so many reasons: ● Increase in the number of people who could read. ● Books were considered expensive, but the number of people who could aord them increased. ● People who couldn’t aord this expense used to borrow books from circulating libraries. ● The 19th century’s readers were passionate about entertaining and realistic plots. ● Novels were portable objects, so they could have been borrowed anywhere. ● Novels were also published in installments in journals, so they could cost less. From a stylistic point of view, all the novels were characterized by quite the same features: ● Novels tend to satisfy the needs of their readers, instructing and entertaining them, but without embarrassing them. ● Authors felt like they were entitled to make the reader reect on the complexity of the world in which they lived. ● Novels had to be exemplar of virtue, so they have a clear moral aim. ● Novels represented realistically conditions. ● Plots presented subplots too, and they were extremely adventurous, entertaining and complex. ● A 3rd person omniscient narrator tells the stories, and gives comments about the characters, too. ● Novels are usually structured in three volumes (triple deckers). Early Victorian Novelists During the rst phase of Victorian literature, writers utilised prose to make a realistic portrait of their society. Usually, they settled their novels in London, so they could represent all the contradictions of the industrial revolution. The main thing is that they chose not to criticize them. They knew there were a lot of juxtapositions, but they only wanted to instruct the reader, without using any bitter criticism. This attitude is exactly what concerns the “Victorian Compromise”. The tragicomic novel: Charles Dickens Charles Dickens is probably one of the most important writers of this period because he embodied all the characteristics of the Victorian Age. He wrote a lot of novels, exploring all types of prose writings. Late Victorian Novelists In this phase of English literature, criticism became more evident and strong, and realism too. Victorian compromise didn’t even get the same acceptance as before, so authors used prose to denounce the evils of the society where they lived, without any brakes. In conclusion, the dark side of the Victorian Age was evident; novels were based on themes like the duality of human nature and the “divided self”. Furthermore, the optimistic point of view of progress belonging to the Early novelists was replaced by a pessimistic one. Emily Brontë Emily Brontë was a novelist and a poet; she had other ve sisters, and she is recognised as the most talented of them. We don’t know that much about her life, because she was extremely reclusive. We also know that she had an admiration for her city’s landscape, and nature stimulated her imagination. Emily Brontë was brought up in Bradford, and after the death of her mother, she and her siblings were under their aunt. Emily spent a year studying in Brussels (with her brother and two sisters), where she developed the passion for inventing stories; they wrote some poems, using male pseudonyms like “Acton Bell”, “Ellis”, because female’s works weren’t published easily. She published her only novel, Wuthering Heights, and soon after she died of tuberculosis. Charlotte Brontë Charlotte was the third daughter of six children. She had a passion for storytelling, in fact, she and her siblings invented an imaginary world that they called Angria. She attended the Clergy Daughters school, but retired soon after. She cannot forget that experience, that she based there her novel Jane Eyre. She moved to Brussels with Emily and there she fell in love with Mr Heger, the headmaster of the school where she worked. She discovered that he was already married, so their love was impossible. Jane Eyre enjoyed immense success, and she also published “Shirley” and “Villette”. One year later she married the curate of HaworthC and when she was expecting a child from him, she died.