Riassunto di Letteratura Inglese (English Literature) per 5° anno Liceo (Maturità), Dispense di Inglese

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Victorian Age 6 Victorian novel 6 Charles Dickens (Portsmouth, 1812 - 1870) 7 Plots + Setting + Themes 7 Characters 7 Didactic aim 7 Style 7 OLIVER TWIST 8 Plot 8 Workhouse 8 HARD TIMES 8 Plot 8 A critique of materialism 8 Victorian Poetry 8 Alfred Tennyson (Somersby, Lincolnshire 1809 - 1892) 9 The Brontë sisters: Charlotte (1816-55), Emily (1818-48), Anne (1820-49) 9 Thomas Hardy (near Dorchester, 1840 - 1928) 10 Deterministic view 11 Wessex 11 Themes: difficulty of being alive, Nature, Victorian hypocrisy, religion, lack of communication 11 Language and imagery 11 Style 11 Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburg, 1850 - 1894) 11 THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE 11 The origin 11 Plot 12 The double nature of the setting 12 Narrative technique 12 Influences and interpretations 12 Context 12 Symbols 12 Themes 13 A study in dualism 13 Oscar Wilde (Dublin, 1854 - Paris, 1900) 13 The rebel and the dandy 14 1 Art for Art’s Sake 14 Trials 14 THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY 14 Plot 14 Narrative technique 14 Allegorical meaning 14 Sense perception, wholeness, and the soul 14 The age of anxiety 14 Modernism 15 The Modern Novel 16 The War Poets 16 ❖ RUPERT BROOKE (1887-1915) 16 ○ The Soldier 16 ❖ WILFRED OWEN (1893-1918) 17 ○ Dulce et decorum est 17 ❖ SIEGFRIED SASSOON (1886-1967) 17 ○ Suicide in the trenches 17 ❖ ISAAC ROSENBERG (1890-1918) 17 Break of day in the trenches 18 Thomas Stearns Eliot (Missouri, 1888 - London, 1965) 18 The conversion to Anglicanism 18 Impersonality of the artist 18 THE WASTE LAND 19 The sections 19 The main theme 19 The new concept of history 19 The mythical method 19 Innovative stylistic devices 19 The sense of the past 19 Wystan Hugh Auden (York, 1907 - Vienna, 1973) 20 The English period 20 Auden in America 20 Auden’s English: language and style 20 ANOTHER TIME (1940) 20 ⇒ Funeral Blues / Stop all the clocks (II Lighter poems) 20 2 An influential voice of the 20th century 33 The artist’s development 33 Social themes 33 ANIMAL FARM (1945) 34 The historical background to the book 34 Plot 34 The animals 34 Animal Farm: history as a fable 34 Symbols and Motifs 34 Themes 35 NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR 35 Plot 35 An anti-utopian novel 35 Characters 36 Themes 36 Ernest Hemingway 36 A FAREWELL TO ARMS 36 Characters 36 Themes 36 Symbols and motifs 37 Francis Scott Fitzgerald (Minnesota, 1896 - 1940) 37 THE GREAT GATSBY 37 Plot 37 The decay of the American dream 37 Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway 37 Retrospective narration 38 Symbolic images 38 Themes 38 “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” 38 5 Victorian Age Historical and social context Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 (18 years old). In 1840 she married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha: they had 9 children and provided a model of family and motherhood. ● First Reform Act (1832) gave the vote to the middle class ● Factory Act (1833) reformed social and economic conditions and regulated child labor ● Poor Law Amendment Act (1834) established workhouses for the poors ● Third Reform Act (1884) granted the right to vote to all male householders ● Trade Union Act (1871) legalised trade unions The Industrial Revolution made life more comfortable: building of railways, importation of raw materials and global products, technological advance, thriving economy (transport, coal, iron, steel), huge market in which to sell manufactured goods. There were more people in cities than in the countryside. In 1851 the Crystal Palace (cast-iron and glass building with a political purpose destroyed by a fire in 1936) was built for the Great Exhibition, which displayed examples of the latest technology. There was a growing sense of the white man’s burden: the British felt a responsibility to spread their superior way of life (language, religion, values, laws) to the uncivilised. Negative aspects of the Victorian society: ● pollution, homelessness/slums, water supply problems, bad working conditions SMOG (smoke+fog) ● Great Stink (1858): miasmas = exhalations from the Thames ● Epidemics of cholera and typhoid, high death rate ● Government’s solutions: gas lighting (avoid crimes), control of medical education, prisons, police stations. Organisations for votes for women were set up and the activities of the Suffragette movement gained publicity (suffrage: 1918). Middle class women were still restricted to a domestic life. The Victorian compromise The Victorians were great moralisers. The values they promoted were: ● the need to work hard ● respectability distinguished the middle from the lower class; morality-hypocrisy-severity-obedience to social standards; good manners, ownership of a house, church attendance and charity (philanthropy). ● bourgeois ideals dominated family life. The family was a patriarchal unit dominated by the husband; the woman had to obey and had a key-role in education and the management of the house. ● fallen woman socially outcast. Single women with children were punished by society. ● sexuality repressed in all its forms. They denounced and rejected nudity even in everyday language. ● patriotism influenced by the idea of racial superiority. They believed races were divided by physical and intellectual differences (Jingoism colonial expansion = exportation of their way of life). The Victoran frame of mind ➢ Evangelicalism inspired by the founder of Methodism, John Wesley; belief in dedication to humanitarian causes and social reform and in obedience to strict morality. ➢ Utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham’s principles) contributed to the conviction that problems could be solved through reason. The indifference to human values was criticized by intellectuals. ➢ John Stuart Mill: progress comes from mental energy, importance of art and education. He promoted reforms for popular education and trades union organisations. ➢ C. Darwin (On the Origin of Species) his theory of natural selection defied the Bible’s creation. ➢ Karl Marx protested against the harm caused by industrialism. Victorian novel There was a close relationship between readers and writers. The middle classes were avid consumers of literature (circulating libraries, periodicals). A big part of Victorian literature was first published in instalments in periodicals: contact with the public, high level of interest, change the story according to the feedback. 6 The Victorians were mostly interested in prose and novels. Some novelists felt a moral and social responsibility to depict social changes, the struggle for democracy and the growth of towns. Their criticism was not so radical. Literature was a vehicle to correct vices and weaknesses. The omniscient narrator made comments and distinguished between right and wrong. The setting was the city (symbol of industrialization and expression of anonymity and lost identities). They concentrated on the creation of characters (2 currents: one analysed the character’s inner life more deeply and the other, closer to Naturalism, had a scientific look without the narrator’s comment). ➔ Novel of manners: economic and social problems of a particular class ➔ Social problem/humanitarian/of purpose: industrial life; Dickens: humorous tone and plea for reform. There were many female writers and readers even if they were in a state of subjection (more time). It was not easy to publish: some used a male pseudonym. Victorian poetry: Alfred Tennyson (narrative poems), Robert Browning (creator of characters, dramatic monologue), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (love sonnets). Charles Dickens (Portsmouth, 1812 - 1870) ➢ unhappy childhood: father in prison for debt, he worked in a factory at 12 ➢ journalist at the Parliament and Law Courts, newspaper reporter with the pen name Boz ➢ published in instalments with cliffhangers: Oliver Twist (1838), David Copperfield (1849-50) ➢ exposed the exploited lives of children in slums and factories: Hard Times (1854), Great Expectations novels set against the background of social issues, highlight the conditions of the poor and working class Plots + Setting + Themes Episodic due to the conditions of publication in monthly or weekly instalments. London is the setting of most of his novels and is depicted at three social levels: - parochial world of the workhouses (inhabitants: lower middle class, calculating, insensible) - criminal world (violent murderers, pickpockets, squalid slums) - Victorian middle class (respectable people, moral values, human dignity) Themes: family, childhood, poverty Characters He created caricatures by exaggerating the peculiar social characteristics of middle and lower classes. Female characters are weak. He was on the side of the poor and outcast. The 18th-century middle class is now replaced by lower classes. Children are the most important characters in Dickens’s novels. They are either innocent or corrupted by adults. Most of them begin in negative circumstances and rise to happy endings resolving the contradictions created by adults. Didactic aim He was aware of the material and spiritual corruption of industrialism and was critical of society. He succeeded in drawing attention to public abuses, evils and wrongs with terrible descriptions of London misery and crime. His task was to get the common intelligence of the country to alleviate undeniable sufferings. His books highlight the Victorian controversies: the faults of the legal system, the horrors of factory employment, scandals in private schools, the miseries of prostitution, the appalling living conditions in slums, corruption in government. Style ➔ effective, rich and original language ➔ graphic and powerful descriptions ➔ long lists of objects and people, careful choice of adjectives used in groups, repetitions of words and structures, juxtapositions of images and ideas, hyperbolic and ironic remarks, unnecessary details, antithetical images to underline the characters’ features, exaggeration of the characters’ faults and cliffhangers (suspense at the end of episodes or introduction of a sensational event) 7 Jane, an orphan brought up at Gateshead by her hostile aunt, Mrs Reed, is sent to Lowood School, a strict school where she is not given enough food and clothing. She becomes a teacher there, but ends up as a governess at Thornfield Hall and falls in love with Mr Rochester (owner). [aunt’s deathbed] Rochester proposes to her. Before the wedding she sees a figure and her veil torn into pieces; wedding interruption: a stranger’s revelation of Mr Rochester’s wife, Bertha Mason, a madwoman who lives in the attic. Jane goes to live with her cousins at Moor House: the religious St John Rivers proposes to her, she refuses. [Rochester’s voice] she goes to Thornfield Hall, destroyed by a fire set by Bertha → suicide, Rochester → lost his sight and a hand. Jane visits him in Ferndean and accepts to marry him. He recovers his sight when their first child is born. Settings Jane moves between nature and civilization and develops her inclination to cross boundaries. Place = stage in her life: ● Gateshead (gateway): childhood, unhappiest moments, ethical awakening with the imprisonment in the red room ● Lowood school (low wood): education, low valley beside a wood, low time in her life ● Thornfield Hall (allegory: field of thorns): independence and young love, mystery and temptation ● Moor House (out on the moors): wilderness, she tries to give a sense to her life again, temporary banishment ● Ferndean (fern hill): new Eden, mature love, a new start Characters Each section of the novel represents a phase in Jane’s development. ➔ Jane: imaginative, subversive (promote rights), intense, passionate, rebellious, independent, looking for affection; struggles in the conflicts between spirit and flesh, duty and desire, denial and fulfillment; outsider fighting for recognition and self-respect in the face of rejection by a society based on money and class distinction. ➔ Rochester: Byronic hero, lost nobleman of passion attracted to her soul rather than her body. Jane (clever, independent, deserves to be happy) VS Bertha (trapped in a marriage, locked in an attic, Rochester’s victim?, fire = act of freedom for her + Jane); Bertha: double of Jane, 2 complementary figures, Themes ❖ Bildungsroman: education and childhood ❖ Love: not only romantic, human being deserves affection and worth of value Shock: women were not supposed to explore physical passions ❖ Marriage: relationship between equals, not a social compromise ❖ Independence: she gains economic i. and refuse marriage so as not to sacrifice her moral integrity ❖ Victorian social class system (critique): governess (analysis of this social position); Jane: refined, educated manners, treated like a servant Condemnation of the isolation of a woman ❖ Gender relationships: she could only be a governess; men could attempt to improve their position ❖ Gothic convention (symbolic use): childhood terrors, threatening sights and sounds, malevolent forces, tragedy at Thornfield. Style 1st p. narrator: heroine, Jane’s pov, often addresses the reader explaining her feelings and decisions. Language: straightforward, different according to the style and mood of each character, emotional use of l. (author’s concern with human relationships). Motifs, symbols, images: supernatural, dreams, light and dark, warmth and cold. Thomas Hardy (near Dorchester, 1840 - 1928) ➢ Humble parents, loved music, voracious reader ➢ He was apprenticed to a local architect and church restorer and then studied architecture ➢ He read the works of Comte, Mill and Darwin, which helped shape his thought. But the controlling philosophy of his works echoes Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea ➢ He wrote tragic novels (Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure). ➢ Jude the Obscure (“Obscene”) scandalised Victorian public opinion with its pessimism and immorality ➢ lyric poetry: sketches of love and loss, abstract considerations of human tragedy 10 Deterministic view ❖ His works are packed with considerations about life, death, man and the universe; they express a deterministic view, deprived of the consolation of Divine order. He abandoned his faith in God from his readings of Greek tragedies (cruel Gods, indifferent Nature, hostile Fate) and Darwin’s The Origin of Species. He could see no intelligent direction of the universe, only the control of “insensible chance” over everything. Human life was a purely tragic process over which man had no power. ❖ He was not a total pessimist: under the influence of Mill and Comte, he advocated the need for altruism through cooperation and loving kindness, and the application of scientific knowledge. Wessex ❖ Characters are defined through their environment. ❖ There is the progressive mapping of a semi-fictional region called “Wessex”, by which he meant the old Saxon kingdom of Alfred the Great. Wessex transcends topographical limits: he had a superb sense of place (descriptions of ruins of churches, towers, walls, monuments). ❖ He was also interested in home interiors with their furniture and objects. ❖ He had an accurate knowledge of the country traditions that accompanied gatherings and festivals. ❖ The rustic group is similar to the chorus in a Greek tragedy: it comments on the actions of the central characters. Themes: difficulty of being alive, Nature, Victorian hypocrisy, religion, lack of communication ❖ Throughout all his work Hardy develops one main theme: the difficulty of being alive. Being alive involves being surrounded by a set of circumstances which modify and partly determine the individual existence. ❖ Another important theme is Nature, presented as a co-protagonist with the characters. Indifferent to man’s destiny, Nature sets the pattern of growth and decay which is followed by human life. It implies regeneration, expressed through the cycle of seasons. Some characters, especially Tess, have the same life urge which is found in natural creatures, and their life is set against the seasonal background to counterpoint the phases of experience. ❖ He exposes the most conventional, moralistic, hypocritical aspects of Victorian society. ❖ His attitude to religion is polemical: Christianity is no longer capable of fulfilling the needs of modern man. ❖ Lack of communication is another central theme and it frequently leads to tragedy. Language and imagery His characters speak within their social register and even use dialect. His love of nature is reflected in his use of metaphor, simile, and personification. The language of sense impressions plays an important role: things are presented through their shape, touch, sight, sound, smell. The sense of sight is particularly strong: the characters watch each other, and are watched by the rest of Nature. The use of colour is linked to emotion and experience. Style Hardy emphasises the importance of strict, rigorous form, stressing symmetry and a blend of dialogue, description and narration. He employed the obtrusive Victorian omniscient narrator. He often presents action through the eyes of a hypothetical observer, with whom the reader is implicitly invited to identify himself. He used cinematic narrative techniques similar to “the camera eye” and “the zoom”. Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburg, 1850 - 1894) ➢ poor health, childhood in bed, tutored at home, travelled in search of a more friendly climate (psychotropic drugs) ➢ His nurse read him religious stories, ghost stories and dark tales of real life. ➢ he was able to reject the kind of life that was expected of him and became eccentrically bohemian ➢ he married an American and they moved to Australia and Tahiti; he died of a brain haemorrhage ➢ popular novelist: Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Kidnapped, The Master of Ballantrae + New Arabian Nights (1882) (suspenseful and supernatural collection of short stories) The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde The origin This novel originated from a dream: Stevenson had dreamed of a man in a laboratory who had swallowed a drug and turned into a different being. Gothic novels’ popularity revived and many works depicted the double nature of 11 Victorian society, with its antithetical values and sexual repression. Stevenson was concerned with the duality of man’s nature, the good and the evil sides. The Calvinism of his mother gave him a sense of man’s divided self and he rebelled against religion. Plot It is a highly suspenseful novella that blends science fiction, horror, and detective genres. The protagonist is a man divided against himself in a perpetual struggle between a respectable being, Henry Jekyll, and an evil genius, Edward Hyde: it is the same act of secret chemistry that releases Hyde and restores Jekyll. Hyde achieves domination over the Jekyll aspect: the man may choose a life of crime and depravity or the Jekyll aspect must eliminate Hyde by killing him. Jekyll’s self-murder, or suicide, is the final and only choice. The double nature of the setting The setting of the novel could be either London or Edinburgh: both had a double nature and reflected the hypocrisy of Victorian society. This ambivalence is reinforced by the two facades of the house, symbolically the faces of the two opposed sides of the same man: the attractive front used by Jekyll, and the sinister rear used by Hyde. There are no women, and only professional ties between people. The all bachelors men belong to the same respectable world (lawyers, doctors): the story reflects the male patriarchal world of Victorianism. Narrative technique The structure is multi-narrational with a complex series of points of view, 4 narrators, through whom the action is seen (Enfield, Utterson - role of the detective, Lanyon, Dr Jekyll) himself. Utterson has a strange relationship with his relative Enfield: their walks may be a metaphor for the incongruous elements of their personality which men must learn to live with. Lanyon, friend and colleague of Dr Jekyll’s, is a mirror for Jekyll; he is tempted by forbidden knowledge and dies. Influences and interpretations Stevenson drew inspiration from Darwin’s studies about man’s kinship to the animal world. Hyde may be both the evolutionary forerunner of civilised man and the symbol of repressed psychological drives. Jekyll has projected his hidden pleasures onto Hyde: he is as guilty as Mr Hyde. Jekyll is a kind of “Victorian Faust” who makes a pact with an interior evil. This novel may be considered a reflection on art as a kind of psychological search: Jekyll’s discovery may symbolise the artist’s journey into the unexplored regions of the human psyche. Context ➔ The Gothic Novel: The Gothic movement might be considered the dark or shadow side of the romantic movement. Writers of such literature often build mystery and suspense as Stevenson does in this novella. ➔ Victorian Morality: It was a mass of contradictions with a strict code of sexual morality and repression. British society took more active steps to address crime and poverty. Victorian England accepted the poor living in terrible conditions. Prostitutes were common. Men were supposed to have sexual desires, but women were not. The result was a continual and often scandalous interplay between the classes that was both sexual and economic. ➔ Evolution: Darwin published The Descent of Man: the idea that evolution shaped humans and animals alike challenged the special status humans received in the biblical story of creation. In popular fiction this erosion of human uniqueness took the form of the emergence of animalistic traits in humans. ➔ Homosexuality: There is no explicit homosexuality in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. However, the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde looks like a homosexual affair to Utterson. The suggestion that Hyde may be blackmailing Jekyll would also signal possible homosexuality: threatening to expose a man as gay was the basis of many blackmail cases in the 19th century. This assumption works thematically, since Hyde is Jekyll’s way of indulging passions he cannot pursue in public. It provides a plausible explanation for why Jekyll leaves everything to Hyde. Symbols ● Darkness is the realm of Mr. Hyde. Most scenes take place at night: there is only the nightmarish artificial lighting, events are wrapped up in darkness and fog. The bleakness of this setting is reflected in the characters who inhabit it. ● Houses: in Jungian psychology the house represents the psyche of a person. The front is the public persona, the back is the part hidden away and kept private. Hyde, tellingly, has an entire house but uses only two rooms of it: this symbolises Hyde’s limited development, his possession of only a few aspects of the human psyche. ● Doors: in Jungian therapy, doors are passageways between worlds. A locked door, like the one Jekyll, is an attempt to control one’s reality. When Poole and Utterson break down Jekyll’s locked door, they are symbolically forcing access to his private, inner self. 12 mood. After the war, some soldiers were on a search for pleasure, some felt guilty for the horrors of the war, others missed the sense of purpose the army had given them. The gap between the young and the old generations grew wider. The decadence of the Empire led to rootlessness and frustration, implying a transformation of the concepts of Imperial hegemony and white superiority. There was repugnance towards political subjection from writers like Forster, who believed in relationships based on equality, Huxley and Orwell, with his dystopian novels warning readers against totalitarianism. Science, religion and philosophy offered less comfort and security, with the introduction of new views of man and the universe: - In his work The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud revealed the way the unconscious affects behavior, that is to say our actions could be motivated by irrational forces and social constraints could distort our behavior. He also outlined the role of libido. All of this affected the sense of the Victorian self-responsibility and changed the relationship between parents and children and between the sexes (also thanks to the suffragette’s movement), the conception of childhood related to the Freudian discovery of infantile sexuality. He provided a new method of investigating our minds through dreams and free association. - Jung developed the concept of collective unconscious: a cultural memory with universal myths and beliefs that meant that everyday objects could represent symbols to which people responded unconsciously, and only the psychologist and the poet could catch these symbols. - The concept of relativity was introduced in science. Einstein discarded the conceptions of time and space, presenting them as subjective dimensions. The scientific revolution was accompanied by experimentation and memory’s exploration in literatura, rebellion against phenomenal representation in art and revolution in music. - Time was questioned by the American philosopher James, who explained that we record our experiences as a continuous flow between past and future time, and the French philosopher Bergson, who made a distinction between the external and linear historical time and the internal, subjective psychological time, which is measured in terms of intensity of the emotions. - The rightness of western ways of behavior and the absolute truth of religious and ethical systems were questioned by studies of anthropology (Frazer’s The Golden Bough) The relativist approach meant that a large variety of forms of social organisation was analyzed. The cause was the inability to arrive at a commonly accepted picture of Man: to Freud man was a natural, biological and psychological phenomenon, to Marx the product of the economic structure. Due to Nietzsche’s philosophy the Christian possibility of salvation thanks to God’s grace was no longer taken into consideration. People became aware of other alternatives to Christianity, such as esoteric beliefs. English philosophy became concerned with the study of language with the aim to rectify the knowledge already possessed. Literature was now again considered as a guide to the perplexities of the age of anxiety (poem by W.H. Auden): modern writers expressed the impossibility to understand the chaotic universe. Modernism Modernism was an international movement that focuses on innovation and radical remaking of all arts. The term is used in reference to trends and currents that gave shape to the modern consciousness. It expressed the desire to break with established forms. In the novel it explored the characters’ psyches to the stream of consciousness and the interior monologue. In poetry, it experimented with the mixture of slang and elevated language, free verse and obscure symbols. Common features: - intentional distortion of shapes - radical disruption of the linear flow of narrative - awareness that our perception of reality is subject to change - emphasis on subjectivity - new techniques: stream of consciousness, blurred distinction between genres, allusive language - importance of the sounds of words - an isolated image that provides an insight into the nature of things - overturning of the conventions of bourgeois realism - importance of unconscious as well as conscious life 15 - need to reflect the complex modern urban life in artistic form - rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of spontaneity - rejection of them distinction between high and low or popular culture Writers and poets were inspired both from classical as well as new cultures. In The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot exploited Buddhist sources, Metaphysical poets, Dante; Joyce’s stream of consciousness derives from Freud. Bergson and Laurence Sterne. English literature became cosmopolitan. The Modern Novel The English novel was originally bourgeois and the main theme was the gain or loss of social status. The novelist had to be a mediator between readers and characters and there was a general acceptance of traditional values and standards of behavior. The novel remained unaltered until the second decade of the 20th century. The shift was characterized by the transformation of British society generated from the unrest of the inter-war years, the urgency for social change and the need for different forms of expressions. The now uncertain role of novelists was that of mediating between the unquestioned past and the confused present. There was a shift in focus from society to man, whose moral progress was inferior to technological progress. The modern novel was influenced by the new concept of time and the new Freudian theory of the unconscious. There was no omniscient narration and the viewpoint was now internal to the character’s mind. Since there were theories that declared that the distinction between past and present was almost meaningless, there was no structured plot. The stream of consciousness reproduced the flow of thoughts in a flux of words similar to the mind activity. Three groups of modern novelists: - psychological novelists: concentrated on the development of the character’s mind and on human relationships (Conrad, Lawrence, Forster) - novelists who chose subjective narrative techniques exploring the mind of a character (Joyce, Woolf) - authors who became didactic and took a political stance in the face of social and political problems, with Marxist sympathies (Orwell, Huxley) The War Poets When WW1 began, young men volunteered, seeing it as an adventure with noble ends. With the slaughter on the Somme (1916) exhilaration was replaced by disillusionment and doubt. The toll in human lives was terrible. Life in the trenches was hell because of rain, mud, rats, bombings and poison gas. Some common soldiers improvised verses that did not reach literate people at home. However, there was an educated group of poets who managed to awaken the conscience of the readers to the horrors of the war: the War Poets. Their poetry is considered modern because its subject-matter does not fit into the previous century conventions. Different attitudes to war The reaction passed through different stages: patriotic enthusiasm (Rupert Brooke) anger exposing the lie of war rhetoric (Siegfried Sassoon) compassion and poetry as elegy for young soldiers (Wilfred Owen) detached unsentimental view (Rosenberg, =Hemingway) ❖ Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) ➢ well-to-do family ➢ good student and athlete, popular and handsome ➢ knew many important political, literary and social figures ➢ died from blood-poisoning ➢ perhaps his little combat led him to write 5 war sonnets (1914) in which he presented war as cleansing and safe, in which only the body suffers and death is a reward. The form is traditional and the attitude sentimental. ➢ the publication made him a symbol of the young romantic hero who inspired the early patriotism of the Great War ○ The Soldier ■ enthusiast, ready to give his own life for his country 16 ❖ Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) ➢ English teacher in France, where he visited a hospital for the wounded and then enlisted ➢ Official who was wounded but went back to his fellow soldiers ➢ he was killed by the Germans just days before the Armistice ➢ poems: painful and accurate accounts of gas casualties, soldiers gone mad with destroyed bodies ➢ technically innovative para-rhymes, extensive use of assonance and alliteration that give gravity and moral force ➢ in the preface to “Disabled and Other Poems”: the subject of his poetry is war, poetry cannot be consolatory to his generation, true poets must warn and bed truthful ○ Dulce et decorum est ■ quotation from the Latin poet Horace: when horace wrote it he meant the idea of honour related to family and country, but now to die for one’s country is a lie, is not noble or decorous ■ the feeling behind the poem derives from his role as a guide (teacher and tenant who helps and protects others) ■ he mentions the trenches (distant rest), weapons (five-nines) and masks with green glasses for protection against toxic gases, toxic and deadly lime ■ 1: description of the progression in the trenches; 2: action that brings to the climax; couplet: testifies the closing of the action, 3: ideas on which we have to reflect ■ he needed to use horrible words so that others could know that young people were dying ■ innocent tongues: they represent the innocence of youth that faces the corruption of the adults ■ desperate and glory: oxymoron ❖ Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) ➢ wealthy Jewish family, pastoral life, innocent ➢ bitter and violent reactions to the realities of the war, expressed them through irony ➢ he protested publicly when reading out the Declaration against the War in the House of Commons in July 1917 (from a war of defence and liberation to a war of aggression and conquest, evil and unjust sufferings) ➢ thanks to his friend and poet Robert Graves he was scant to a military hospital believed to be suffering from shell- shock and there he met Owen ➢ “The Old Huntsman” and “Counter-Attack”: denunciation of the political errors for which soldiers were being sacrificed, recreation of the physical horror in a sober documentary manner through anger, satire and sardonic distancing; he achieved a bitter spontaneity of realistic detail ➢ pacifist, siding with the Labour Party and then becoming a Roman Catholic ➢ one of the few that survived the war ○ Suicide in the trenches ■ 3 stanzas, free verse, rime scheme: AABB ■ Sassoon: inducted to think that going to war was glorious ■ simple soldier boy: young, happy to be young and to live ■ private (soldato senza grado) ■ happy in the morning ■ 1 stanza: description of the boy, joy; 2: gloomy feelings, unhappiness ■ hell: metaphor, place where youth and laughter die ❖ Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918) ➢ working-class Jewish family ➢ talented artist who enlisted and was killed at the front ➢ different: poor background, unsentimental vision fo the war free of pity, realistic and shocking details, irony, paradox and contrast, elemental use of language (Collected Works) not just rebellious poetry, not just anti war poets importance of the sound war is the subject and the way these young poets made themselves be heard 17 to those who have gone before. The literary critical concept of “influence” flows from the past to the present and vice versa (ex: The Waste Land - Chaucer’s “General Prologue” in The Canterbury Tales). Tradition is not a chronology: the new work alters all the other works. The value of any one work is found in its proximity to all other works, not by its distance from them. Wystan Hugh Auden (York, 1907 - Vienna, 1973) ➢ middle-class anglican parents, voracious reader (fairy tales, myths, legends, psychology, engineering) ➢ Oxford: Modernist poetry + leader of the left-winged Oxford poets ➢ committed to social and political issues (in Berlin he witnessed the rise of Nazism, Spanish Civil War), solidarity with the persecuted Jews (he married Erika Mann to provide her with a British passport to let her flee from Germany) ➢ homosexuality: condemned in his religious upbringing, regarded as criminal offence in England ➢ New York: teacher, published Another Time, citizen of the US ➢ end of the political period: his social poetry is now anti-ideological, return to Anglicanism ➢ difficult verse forms, religious reaffirmation, existential questions ➢ Professor of Poetry at Oxford The English period ❖ Freud and psychoanalysis: he thought about psychological models in relation to the customs and rituals of society ❖ role of poetry: to tell stories of particular experiences from which we have to draw our own conclusions ❖ Marx: the poet’s task was to act as a public voice, to support freedom against tyranny, to express the anxieties of the contemporary left-wing intellectuals Auden in America ❖ It coincided with his withdrawal from political commitment, it freed him from the burden of social responsibility, 30s “low dishonest decade”: disillusionment with public events ❖ style that refused the identification with a single poetic culture or nation ❖ improvement must begin within the self not society ❖ theme of the quest: in the English period for a new society and a new self, later for a new life Auden’s English: language and style ➔ language experimenter ➔ he hated obscurity posing as profundity and loved tradition ➔ reviver of past disciplines within modern times ➔ in medias res (independent lyrics): memorable starts, with attention-grabbing vocatives ➔ didacticism: the moral insistence is watered down by his constant questioning of ethical seriousness Another Time (1940) ● the period of composition and publication covered the eve and the beginning of WW2 and his move to the US ● title: the poet entered another time through the exile ● it marked Auden’s turn from secular political interests towards ethical concerns and Christianity ● it combines intellectual rigour and social conscience with a mix of styles (free verse, popular forms: ballads, songs) ● 3 sections: ○ People and places: complex, meditative, sorrow, relationship man-nature ○ Lighter poems: light comic tone and domesticity ○ Occasional poems: celebration of the death of great figures (Freud, Yeats), possible interpretation of historical events ⇒ Funeral Blues / Stop all the clocks (II Lighter poems) ■ 4 quatrains rhymed AABB, irregular metre ■ Immensity of grief, disorganised flow of thoughts, loss of direction (compass points) ■ mourning for the death of a beloved person: life is now pointless ■ imperative: beginning in medias res, urgent requests ■ contrast between life and death 20 ■ the speaker has lost someone important, but the rest of the world doesn’t slow down or stop to pay its respects—it just keeps plugging along on as if nothing has changed. The speaker experiences this indifference as a kind of rude torment, and demands that the world grieve too. Grief, in the poem, is thus presented as something deeply isolating, an emotion that cuts off the people who grieve from the world around them. ■ The world’s indifference highlights the intensely personal and isolating nature of grief. ■ these demands reveal to the reader that the speaker doesn’t want to grieve alone. The speaker wants the rest of the world to acknowledge and reflect the magnitude of the speaker’s loss. ⇒ September 1, 1939 (III Occasional poems) ■ in response to the outbreak of WW2 (German invasion of Poland, 1939) ■ he is in NYC: neutral air ■ people back from WW1 felt betrayed, suffered from PTSD/shell-shock ■ he can’t bear German culture (Germany responsible for both WW1-2; psychopathic god: Hitler) ■ references to the past: Thucydides (historical) ■ elderly rubbish: things said in the past by dictators ■ he’s expressing pain because politicians couldn’t administrate (moral inaptitude, brutality) ■ capitalism (skyscrapers) and imperialism ■ is universal love more important than individual love?: an individual is meaningless without the community; war = lack of love towards other communities ■ he wishes he could be a part of the Just and show an affirming flame (wish for peace): the solution is universal love. Intellectuals need to communicate through light (candles in the dark) ■ the poem comments on how the dishonesty and manipulation of government can lead to war: there’s a sense of the world lapsing back into barbarism and violence with Hitler’s attempt to expand the Nazi empire, and a feeling that whole nations have swallowed the manipulative rhetoric used by ‘dictators’ to bend people to their will. ■ the poem captures feelings of fear and uncertainty in the face of fascism and war—as well as glimmers of hope that people might come together to counter authoritarianism ■ Only by overcoming selfishness and working together, the speaker insists, can people keep the “affirming flame” of hope and love burning brigh: poems like this one, and other messages of love and hope, serve as a way to “love one another,” and thus keep justice alive in the face of evil. ■ The poem contains attacks on a consumer society, The poem's skyscrapers represent authority—or, perhaps more accurately, the way that the state projects an image of authority and power. ■ Light and flame in the poem symbolize hope, resistance, and connection. Darkness, it follows, represents ignorance and oppression. ■ 99 lines, which break down into nine stanzas of 11 lines each. ⇒ Spain (1937) ■ history that led up to the Spanish Civil War - the arrival of the International Brigades - possible consequences ■ rejection: “dishonest”, expressed political views that he never believed ■ Spain was influential and powerful, now it was breaking down ■ poetic voice: the country itself, Spain The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (1947) ● psychohistorical poem, Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1948 ● dissonant clash between anglo-saxon medieval alliterative verse and modern English ● The poem highlights human isolation, a condition magnified by the lack of tradition or religious belief in the modern age; it explores the spiritual emptiness, the loneliness, and the anxiety-ridden purposelessness of the 4 lives ● The 4 protagonists (Quant=Intuition, Malin=Thought, Rosetta=Feeling, Emble=Sensation) find some comfort in sharing their distress: they are mundane characters that meditate on their lives, hopes, losses and human condition. ● The setting is a bar in NYC at night time and Rosetta’s apartment. ● 6 parts: Prologue: the Modern Soul, The Seven Ages of man’s life - a life-story, The Seven Stages of a dream- quest, The Dirge: possibilities of happiness, The Masque: alienations of men, Epilogue: ennuis of America ● Auden implements Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety into the poem; the basic human problem is “man’s anxiety in time” ○ anxiety is manifestation of the fact that we are free: it reflects our relationship to possibility and the future; the poem deals with human’s quest to find its identity in the volatile industrialised world. ● Auden expresses doubts about the ability of mankind to learn from the mistakes of the past, sorrow and skepticism over the fate of the after-war generation and humankind itself ● a possible way to overcome anxiety is “local understanding”: Certain anxieties may be overcome by “cultivation of mutual sympathy, perhaps mutual love, even among those who hours before had been strangers” The More Loving One ● 4 quatrains rhymed AABB 21 ● a celebration of unrequited love and a metaphysical poem about the difficulty of finding love and meaning in a secular age ● the poet begins by remarking upon the indifference of the stars. He wonders: what if the stars were burning because they harboured a love for us that we could not reciprocate? He is glad to be “the more loving one” out of the two. He doesn’t miss them during the day and if stars disappeared, he would get used to an empty night sky. ● It should be analysed in light of the decline of faith in the western world, and the growing secularism of the twentieth century: Auden is looking up at the heavens – and deciding that there is no ‘heaven’ as man has conceived of it. What should we make of this knowledge? Auden’s answer is love: we should admire the stars all the same. It is a level-headed response to the crisis of disenchantment in a post-religious age. We can take pride in the fact that we have been instilled with the ability to feel awe in the face of nature’s sublime aspects. Joseph Conrad (Poland, 1857 - 1924) ➢ Homo duplex: no clear stable positions, double nationality, two professional careers, theme of the double ➢ Poland was occupied by Russia, Prussia and Austria. His family was forced into exile in Russia (experience of being colonized) ➢ He trained as a mariner, learned English and became a British subject (career as a seaman: he met any kind of people) ➢ A commission brought him to Africa (journey recorded in his Congo Diary): the brutalities of colonial exploitation led him to suffer a mental breakdown. ➢ He devoted himself to writing. The dating is not simple because some works were published in book form, others serially (+articles and short stories). The writer’s task He did not believe the novelist should try to amuse his readers or teach them a lesson: his task was to record the complex pattern of life and explore the meaning of the human situation. Exotic latitudes ❖ At first labelled a writer of adventure stories. ❖ Setting: exotic latitudes (Belgian Congo, China Seas, ship). ❖ They enabled him to isolate his characters so that their problems and inner conflicts stood out (microcosm in its isolation). Conrad’s oblique style, narrative techniques and language ❖ extreme situations, violence, mystery ❖ heroes: solitary figures, rooted in no past, committed to an uncertain future, viewed externally. ➔ He broke the normal time-sequence, first-person/invisible/multiple narrator, journals and letters, several povs, break free from the constraints of an omniscient narrator, shown the relativism of moral values. ➔ He chose English because he thought that it offered him the ideal expression for his complex vision of life. His form reflects the complexity of man’s consciousness. ➔ Variety of adjectives and complex structures. The individual consciousness ❖ A man who relies on virtues is confronted by evil against which these virtues are powerless. ❖ Conflict between personal feelings and professional duties. ❖ The crowd gives man confidence but it fails when man is lonely surrounded by an hostile background. Heart of Darkness Plot + Characters 3 parts set at the end of the 19th century. Marlow is a sailor who is waiting for a tide which will let the Nellie and its passengers sail from London. He talks about his first commission for a Belgian company involved in the Congo ivory trade: he is disappointed by the inefficiency and neglect of the organisation and by the cruelty of colonial exploitation. He had to pick up Kurtz, a famous company agent who had to go back to civilization because he had gone mad by collecting more ivory than anyone else; they meet but Kurtz dies whispering “The horror!”. Back in Belgium, Marlow tells Kurtz’s fiancée that he whispered her name while dying. ➔ Marlow: traditional hero, honest, but broken, sceptical and cynical, he suffers; between the figure of the intellectual and the worker, intermediary between Kurtz and the Company; like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner he is destined to repeat his story 22 Family and social context Paul undergoes psychological development. His father’s estrangement from the emotional life of the family is due to social difference (his wife is of a higher class), lack of education, that makes it difficult for him to express his feelings, and the hard nature of his work that leads him to domestic violence. Mrs Morel symbolises what Paul hopes to achieve: his emotional turning from his father towards her is a revolt against the poor exploited world of the mine towards the life of emancipated consciousness. Social and romantic bondages ❖ The love of natural human passions led Lawrence to a deep hatred of modern civilisation and a consequent admiration of nature. ❖ Mrs Morel feels socially bound by her status as a woman and by industrialism, feeling “buried alive”, which is a logical lament being married to a miner. She must remain a housewife for life and, because of this, she is jealous of Miriam. ❖ Paul is unable to make up his mind between hate and love for the women in his life. ❖ Lawrence uses the opposition of the body and mind to expose the contradictory nature of desire: characters often pair up with someone who is unlike them. Miriam and Paul: the failure of otherness As much as Miriam is another version of the possessive mother, she is equally another version of Paul himself: neither feels fully real or alive. Paul’s contempt for Miriam’s suffering reflects his own self-contempt. Paul is never able to relate to Miriam as other than his narcissistic projections. Clara’s character serves to highlight the limitations in Paul’s perception of Miriam. Paul fails in comprehending Miriam’s otherness: he sees in her only a mirror of his vulnerability, shame and fear. Edward Morgan Forster (London, 1879 - 1970 ➢ He was brought up by his mother and his great-aunt, who provided financial help ➢ He was educated by his mother and then sent to school: he lived both experiences as a spiritual imprisonment ➢ He lived for a time in Italy, the background of Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Room with a View ➢ He explored the differences between the strictness of English conventions and upper-middle-class codes of social behaviour and the more spontaneous and relaxed Italian way of life ➢ In India he began to work on A Passage to India (1924) ➢ Posthumously appeared Maurice, written to release and overcome the sense of guilt linked to his homosexuality Forster and the novel Forster bridges the late Victorian and early modern periods. His work presents no technical virtuosity. He employs a plot arrangement and the presence of an omniscient, occasionally obtrusive, narrator. The optimism about the future of 19th-century fiction is questioned through irony, reminiscent of Austen’s. His novels remain focused on the struggles of characters in conflict with their own societies and cultures, on personal relationships: his characters wish to find harmony in the face of the increasing disintegration of the world. Forster’s complexity derives from his power to question the culture to which he yet remains attached. Forster and Modernism Forster’s pre-WWI fiction sought for compensations for advancing modernity and materialism at a time when nature’s capacity to provide them seemed threatened. He tried to “exorcise the demon of chronology” and to provide an analysis of fiction independent of history; he wrote “there seems something else in life besides time, something which is measured by intensity”: he divided “the life in time and the life by values”, consistent with Woolf’s division of “time on the clock” from “time in the mind”. In A Passage to India he seems a modernist writer: the inhospitable and indifferent setting disrupts not only cohesive human relations, but coherence itself. Forster at times enters the consciousness of characters. Yet, movements into mind remain fairly limited and local. He appears a writer approaching modernism in theme and outlook, but without adopting innovations in form and style. A Passage to India Plot Indian town of Chandrapore, divided into the old Indian quarter and a British Civil Station. The City Magistrate Ronny Heaslop is engaged to Miss Adela Quested, who visits India with Ronny’s mother, Mrs Moore. Mrs Moore makes friends with a Muslim doctor, Aziz, at the mosque. He invites Mrs Moore and Adela to visit the Marabar caves, which proves a disrupting incident: Mrs Moore suffers a nervous crisis and a sense of emptiness and suggests 25 that Aziz and Adela should continue the exploration without her. Adela accuses Aziz of physical assault: he is arrested and tried. Fielding, the headmaster of the local college, sides with the Indians; Mrs Moore shows none of her former understanding (later she leaves and dies in her voyage). At the trial Adela declares she has made a mistake. Aziz is released, Adela disowned by her own people, except Fielding, resulting in a broken friendship between Aziz and Fielding. The belief in goodwill Forster was concerned with the desire to overcome social and racial differences. He called the novel as Whitman’s poem Passage to India, which celebrated the opening of the Suez Canal as a bridge between Europe and India. He believed in the importance of personal relationships and a general need for tolerance and sympathy. In the novel there is a strong belief in “goodwill”: religious belief in Mrs Moore, secular, personal one for Fielding. Politics are a major context for the failure of the friendship between Fielding and Aziz and the impossibility to establish an understanding relationship on an equal basis between the western and eastern cultures. India as a physical and mental landscape Obtrusive omniscient narrator, the point of view shifts from character to character. The use of negative forms emphasises the sense of ambiguity and mystery. ❖ The Indian landscape challenges the established values of western civilisation. The reader is constantly reminded of the many inhabitants (people, animals, plants, stones). ❖ Forster’s India has no interiors or exteriors, nothing is private, everyone can see you and know your secrets, weaknesses and failures (it is Ronny’s job to make sure there is no privacy). The mission of the Anglo-Indian establishment is to create a relationship of power where the Indians are the looked at, while the English are the inspectors. ❖ India awakens desire: Adela’s experience of certain events is linked to her realization that she doesn’t love Ronny. The caves The Marabar caves offer a kind of black hole around which the narrative gravitates. They are enclosed and public spaces at the same time. There are no signs of human presence. Mrs Moore and Adela both have traumatic experiences inside them in the form of an echo. In Hindu mythology the caves are the “womb of the universe”; psychologically they could be identified with the subconscious. In literary tradition the echo is the symbol of nature’s benevolence, but Forster gives it a dehumanizing quality. Forster’s view of imperialism The novel deals with the dissolution of British dominion over India. Forster recorded the moment of British India’s transformation into a new country. The “white man’s burden” finds its expression in Ronny. British control was a system of sovereignty in which the English bureaucracy did not associate with the people they ruled. Forster shared the non-cooperation movement and Gandhi’s view of social equality between the British and the Indians and criticised imperialistic policies of discrimination under which personal relations were spoilt. The development of an Indian national consciousness is described by Forster in Aziz. James Joyce (Dublin, 1882 - Switzerland, 1941) ➢ He grew up a rebel among rebels ➢ He wasn’t interested in freeing Ireland from English dominance, but in a broader European culture (he thought of himself as a European rather than an Irishman) ➢ To increase Ireland’s awareness he offered a realistic portrait of its life from a European, cosmopolitan viewpoint ➢ Nora Barnacle (first date: 16 June, Bloomsday), they moved to Trieste, had Giorgio and Lucia (schizophrenic) ➢ Financial problems, troubles with publishers and printers caused by obscene elements in his prose ➢ Dubliners published after WW1, E. Pound helped him print A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ➢ As a British national in Austrian-occupied Trieste, he moved to Zurich ➢ He wrote Ulysses thanks to anonymous donations (published in 1922): court action in the US to determine whether it was pornographic ➢ He flew from France to neutral Switzerland due to Hitler’s advances Ordinary Dublin + Ambiguous relationship with Ireland ❖ Though he went into voluntary exile, he set all his works in Ireland, mostly in Dublin. 26 ❖ Realistic portrait of the life of ordinary people that represents the whole of man’s mental, emotional and biological reality in a fusion with the cultural heritage of modern civilisation and with the natural world. ● On one hand, he recognises Irish values, such as hospitality; he usually describes the ideals of nationalism in positive terms and is evidently in love with Dublin. On the other hand, he harshly criticises his city of birth and Ireland, underlining the corrupt atmosphere, the sense of paralysis, the lack of modern development and a suffocating attachment to old traditions. He is apparently so disgusted that he decides to spend most of his life. ● His literary talents make it possible for him to describe Dublin as a unique city, showing all its specific aspects, but at the same time to make it universal, an example of human nature which is appreciated by readers all over the world because everyone can identify with one or the other of Joyce's characters. Paralysing forces in Joyce’s description of Ireland ➢ Catholicism: knowing religion well (mother’s strong faith + Jesuit education), he develops a criticism which is not superficial or uninformed. His two main accusations are the hypocrisy of many priests, whose behaviour is immoral and contrasts with the teachings of Christ, and the repression of passions and impulses that are considered sinful, thus creating a sense of guilt in all believers. ○ His accusations against the falsehood of priests might be so bitter exactly because they are betraying the real values of Christianity. This view is supported by Joyce’s attendance to Catholic Masses. ○ It is undeniable that Catholicism was part of his cultural background and even though he openly dissented from that culture, his works are deeply influenced by religion. ➢ English dominion: according to him, the British Empire considers Ireland as one of its many territories to be exploited with no interest in the well-being of the inhabitants and discriminating the Catholic majority in favour of Anglicans. He apparently stopped believing in the possibility for Ireland to rebel and obtain independence. Poor eye-sight He was almost blind and compensated for this problem with his sense of ear (sound of words is important). Modernist author ❖ He was influenced by philosophers and intellectuals who developed new theories at the beginning of the 20th century (Bergson’s concept of time, Freud’s psychoanalysis, Einstein’s theory of relativity, W. James’s stream of c.) ❖ Physical sensations, external events, memories of the past and momentary feelings all succeed one another in our mind, forming our unique consciousness. ■ free indirect speech: keeping a 3rd-p. narrator but making them identify with the character described ■ interior monologue: uses the first person narrator In both cases the character’s thoughts are described without selecting what is more important or relevant: the reader feels as if they had entered the character’s mind. Subjective perception of time ❖ Time is perceived as subjective. The stories open in medias res. The themes are less relevant than the narrative. The facts are confusedly presented from different povs as clues (no omniscient narrator). ❖ Joyce transcends photographic realism: he analyses the impressions that an outer event causes in the inner world of a character. The portrait of the character is based on introspection. Impersonality of the artist ❖ Influences: Flaubert, Baudelaire, T.S. Eliot (impersonality of the artist) ❖ Artist’s task: to render life objectively → isolation and detachment of the artist from society + different povs ❖ narrative techniques: free direct speech, epiphany, interior monologue with 2 levels of narration, extreme i.m. ❖ Language breaks down into a succession of words without punctuation or grammar connections: reality becomes the place of psychological projections ❖ His purpose is to describe human nature in a detached, objective style which hides the narrator and presents characters as real people, with no artificial language and omitting no aspect of their life, no matter how humble. ❖ Using the minimum amount of words he is able to obtain the maximum effect: he defines this economy in language as “scrupulous meanness” 27 Cubism). Interior monologue with the two levels of narration, one external to the character’s mind, and the other internal, mind level of narration (flow of the character’s thoughts without any interruption). The language is rich in puns, images, contrasts, paradoxes, juxtapositions, interruptions, false clues, and symbols; a great range of vocabulary (slang, nicknames, expressions from advertising, foreign words, literary quotations). Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941) ➢ Thanks to her father, she grew up in a literary and intellectual atmosphere ➢ Her education consisted of private Greek lessons and access to her father’s library ➢ She spent her summers in Cornwall and the sea remained central to her art: water represented what is harmonious, feminine and the possibility of the resolution of conflicts in death. ➢ Childhood experiences of death (mother) and sexual abuse (stepbrothers) led to depression. ➢ She rebelled against her father’s aggressive character, and his idealisation of the domesticated woman. Bloomsbury Group After her father’s death she began her own literary career. Together with her sister Vanessa, she became a member of the Bloomsbury Group (philosopher B. Russell, painters V. Bell, D. Grant), whose radical thinkers members shared contempt for traditional morality, a rejection of artistic convention, and a disdain for bourgeois sexual codes. They defined the concerns of the coming mid-century: unconventional sexual practices; anti-war sentiments and socialism, and the fragmented perspective aesthetics of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Literary career Virginia married Leonard Woolf. She entered a nursing home and attempted suicide by taking drugs. Novelist and essayist (novels: The Voyage Out, Mrs Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves - in which she recognised there was a link between her creative process and her illness). She delivered two lectures at Cambridge, which became A Room of One’s Own, a work of great impact on the feminist movement in which she insisted on the inseparable link between economic independence and artistic independence. + androgyny in Orlando. WW2 increased her anxiety, fears and terror of losing her mind. She drowned herself in the river Ouse. Modernist novelist ❖ She gives voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory: the human personality is a continuous shift of impressions and emotions. ❖ What mattered is the impression the events make on the characters. ❖ No omniscient narrator, the pov shifts inside the characters’ minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas, momentary impressions presented as a continuous flux. Essay Modern Fiction: “if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style” Woolf vs Joyce ➔ Joyce’s characters show their thoughts directly through interior monologue, sometimes in an incoherent and syntactically unorthodox way ➔ Woolf never lets her characters’ thoughts flow without control, maintaining logical and grammatical organisation ➢ Fusion of streams of thought into a third-person, past tense narrative: she gives the impression of simultaneous connections between the inner and the outer world, the past and the present, speech and silence. ➢ Moments of being (Joyce’s epiphany): rare moments of insight during the characters’ daily life when they can see reality behind appearances. ➔ Joyce was more interested in language experimentation and used accumulation of details ➔ Woolf’s words are almost poetic, allusive, emotional and fluid with intricate thoughts and intimate feelings. Mrs Dalloway Plot Clarissa Dalloway buys some flowers for a party she is giving at her house. On the street Septimus Warren Smith, an estate agent's clerk and shell-shocked veteran of the war, and Lucrezia, an Italian, are walking. Septimus’s mental 30 disorder has necessitated the calling in of Dr Holmes and Sir William Bradshaw, a nerve specialist. Clarissa receives an unexpected visit from Peter Walsh, the man she used to love. The Warren Smiths have an interview with Sir William Bradshaw, which results in the arrangement for Septimus to go into one of his clinics. Septimus jumps out of the window of his room. At her party Clarissa hears from the Bradshaws of Septimus’s death, with which she feels a strong connection. Setting It takes place on a single ordinary day in June 1923, and it follows the protagonist through a very small area of London. Unlike Joyce, Woolf does not elevate her characters to the level of myth, but shows their deep humanity behind their social mask. Through the “tunnelling technique”, she allows the reader to experience the characters’ recollection of their past. The party is the climax: it unifies the narrative by gathering all the people Clarissa thinks about during the day. Changing society The novel deals with the way people react to new situations, and provides an insight into some changes in the social life of the time (spread of newspapers, increasing use of cars and planes, new standards in the marital relationship, success of the cinema). ● Aeroplane: a catalyst for the fears and anxieties, symbol for the swift changes in London’s urban society that inspired the Modernists to reflect on human feelings of confusion and helplessness. It is also the shadow of the war that still lingers in the lives of characters like Septimus. ➢ Cinematic devices (close-up, flashback, tracking shot). ➢ Striking of Big Ben/clocks (motif + structural connection + symbol): it reminds the reader of the temporal grid of the narrative, of the passing of the time in life and of its flowing into death. ➢ Moments of vision: objective and subjectively creative (they are recreated every moment by active consciousness). Characterization ❖ The meaning lies in the way a specific use of time and place holds the events together. ❖ Clarissa’s present experience and future plans are suffused with the feelings and experiences of the past. ❖ Woolf shows life as changing endlessly from moment to moment. ❖ The characters are emotionally aware of the moment and respond physically to the world around them. They belong to the upper-middle class (doctors, lawyers, intellectuals, politicians, society hostesses) whose place is decorative. Clarissa and Septimus ➔ Clarissa: London society lady of 51, wife of a Conservative MP, Richard Dalloway. Her emotional self is weakened by a possessive father, the frustration of a genuine love, the need to refuse Peter Walsh (he would force her to share everything). She is split into two with opposing feelings: need for freedom and independence and class consciousness, effort towards order and peace, attempt to overcome her sense of failure. She needs to become an ideal human being but imposes restrictions on her feelings. ➔ Septimus: young poet, lover of Shakespeare who enlisted for patriotic reasons, sensitive man who falls prey to panic and fear. He is a shell-shock case: he is haunted by the spectre of Evans (best friend who died in the war), suffers from headaches and insomnia. He cannot stand the idea of having a child and is sexually impotent. ❖ The plot does not connect Clarissa and Septimus, but they are similar: their response to experience is given in physical terms, they depend upon their partners for stability and protection ❖ Septimus is Clarissa’s double: he is not able to distinguish between his personal response and the nature of external reality. His psychic paralysis leads him to suicide whereas Clarissa never loses awareness of the outside world as something external to herself, she recognizes her deceptions and accepts the idea of death. Themes ➔ Age, Memory and Death: ◆ The fractured, magical, prose style shows memory can be unreliable. 31 ◆ Woolf emphasises, through her characters who have suffered loss, that the dead live on in the memories of the living. Clarissa thinks frequently of death, though she has a deep desire for life. The spectre of mortality hovers over the younger characters after the many deaths of World War I. ◆ With the perspective age brings, they can appreciate life more than they ever have in their knowledge that it is temporary and precious. By the end of the novel, ageing is celebrated, rather than feared. ➔ Passage of Time ◆ Time dictates the characters’ movements and pushes them to accomplish as much as possible. The unstoppable movement of time provides both stress and the comfort of order and rhythm. ◆ Characters do not experience time in the same way: their thoughts have the ability to stop narrative time, displaying Woolf’s focus on interior life. ➔ Aftershocks of War ◆ Shell shock, or post-traumatic stress disorder, brought on by the stress of World War I, is most apparent in Septimus, but every character feels the effects. London’s loud traffic echoes the link between technology and violence. ➔ Stress and Mental Illness ◆ The mental instability experienced by Septimus and Clarissa feels real and honest to the reader. Both feel depression and pain but can still see the beauty in life. The novel also discusses the effect mental illness has on loved ones, such as Rezia. ◆ The good reputations and intentions of Holmes and Bradshaw contrast with the insufficient, and sometimes harmful, effects their treatments have on patients. Clarissa’s and Septimus’s bond, though they never meet, is driven in part by their simultaneous experience of mental illness and the resulting alienation from others. Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963) ➢ Family renowned for its contribution to science and literature ➢ He was obliged to leave his medical studies because of defective eyesight ➢ He married and spent time in Italy, until the political climate forced him to move to France; he travelled widely ➢ He supported the Peace Movement and wrote pamphlets against the Spanish Civil War Main works Versatile writer: novels, travel-books, short stories, biographies and essays. His literature developed from aesthetic interest, through a politico-ethical commitment considering scientific progress and the negative aspects of modern civilisation, to a religious point of view: 1. Like Eliot and Joyce, he was affected by the alienation of a world dragging itself from one WW to another through economic depression and totalitarian political tragedies. He expressed a refusal of modern civilisation, mechanisation, and corrupted rationalism. 2. The second phase opens with the anti-utopian novel Brave New World (1932), a disturbing “novel of exploration” where the true enemy of mankind is ordinary human selfishness and the danger is the humanistic dream of a well- regulated society. 3. Huxley’s pessimism as regards the future of modern man seems to have led him to explore metaphysics and mysticism in his third phase. He experimented with various hallucinogenic drugs to write works that would turn upside-down the mechanical reality of Brave New World. Brave New World Origin of the title The title is taken from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, when Miranda, who lives on a deserted island, sees other human beings for the first time: her exclamation is related to the future and utopian or anti-utopian ideals. Plot It is set in a. f. 632 (2540): after Henry Ford (assembly-line). After a war, a new world has been created, with no private property where the State controls everything. People are classified according to their future role in society. Generation and birth are artificially produced in hatcheries and conditioning centres and people are brainwashed into a happy state. Desires are satisfied by copulation and a synthetic drug, soma, used to solve any problems. In the “wild reservation” in New Mexico people continue to live naturally. 32 ○ squealer - negative associations with snitches who tell on people; someone who makes a terrible noise of pain. ○ Moses - the Biblical prophet who receives the Ten Commandments from God ● Milk and Apples: the pigs claim them after the rebellion; they represent riches/wealth, to which they feel entitled. ● Windmill: when Snowball introduces the plan for the windmill (generates electricity), it represents the hope of a better standard of living for all animals. As the windmill gets destroyed and rebuilt, it comes to represent the constant hard labor the animals do for very little benefit. Its destruction is the loss of their hope. ● Old Major’s Skull: Napoleon puts it on display for the animals to salute. It is an attempt to acknowledge the roots of Animalism. When the ideals of the rebellion no longer serve the pigs’ purposes, it is reburied. ● Jones’s Rifle: left behind at the Battle of the Cowshed, it is a symbol of the animals’ victory over human masters. ● Songs and Chants: function as propaganda. By having the animals chant, the pigs strip them of their individuality. ● Religion and Ritual: the pigs institute rituals (awards, parades, songs) to create loyalty to the state. Themes ❖ Corruption: As the pigs who take over the leadership gain more wealth and power, they change the rules of Animalism to suit their own desires, eventually turning the farm into a totalitarian society. ❖ Exploitation: Since literacy offers power, the pigs make sure that none learn how to read and use their superior education and the physical threat of the dogs, while the overworked and uneducated work harder for fewer benefits. ❖ Deception: Napoleon and the other pigs lie to cover their actions and Squealer uses propaganda. They secretly change the Seven Commandments, convincing the animals that their own memories are faulty. Using Snowball as a scapegoat hides the fact that others are really responsible. ❖ Idealism: The animals embrace the ideals of Animalism and equality. The practice of Animalism moves away from its noble concept of free, equal animals sharing the fruits of their labor. (song “Beasts of England”) ❖ Apathy: The apathy shown by characters such as Benjamin stems from a belief that action of any kind will not create change. Most of the animals fall victim to an apathy born of unquestioning trust in the pigs’ leadership, which leads to a lack of critical thought that makes them susceptible to manipulation. Nineteen Eighty-Four Plot A future world divided into Oceania, Eurasia (Russia and Europe), Eastasia (Asia and the Far East). Oceania is oppressively ruled by the Party, led by the Big Brother, continuously at war with the other 2 states. The Party is implementing Newspeak, an invented language with a limited number of words, and uses the Thought Police. Any expression of individuality is forbidden: Winston Smith illegally buys a diary (thoughtcrime) and write his memories, addressing them to the future generations. At the Ministry of Truth, where he rewrites historical records, Winston meets Julia and they begin a secret affair (ownlife). O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party, tells them that he works against the Party as a member of the Brotherhood led by Emmanuel Goldstein, a counterrevolutionary movement. Winston is reading Goldstein’s book to Julia when some soldiers arrest them. In the Ministry of Love, he finds out that O’Brien is a Party spy: O’Brien tortures and brainwashes him and sends him to Room 101, where Winston is forced to confront his worst fear – rats. His will is broken and he is released to the outside world: he meets Julia, but no longer loves her; he has given up his identity and has learned to love Big Brother (he accepts 2+2=5). It is possible that Big Brother is a symbol of totalitarian rule and not an actual person. An anti-utopian novel While a utopia is an ideal or perfect community, anti-utopias show possible future societies that are anything but ideal and that satirize existing conditions of society. In this anti-utopian London there is no privacy due to telescreens, love is forbidden, there is the Two Minutes Hate and the country is in a perpetual state of war. The Party has absolute control of the press, communication and propaganda; language, history and thought are controlled in the interests of the state through Newspeak. The memory hole, which is where all previously true documents and photographs get tossed, symbolizes thought control and the restructuring of what is true. Newspeak and memory hole keep people ignorant of what really happened in the past by making it disappear, so they are symbols of total ignorance and lack of real history or knowledge. Nothing is real to the people unless the Party says it is (2+2=5 is a lie that the Party presents as truth and people accept as such). Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs and accepting both of them as true. Ex.: preemptive war starting a war cannot prevent war. The novel does not offer consolation. 35 Characters ➔ Winston is the last man to believe in human values in a totalitarian age: Smith is the commonest English surname, and Winston evokes Churchill (“blood, sweat and tears”). Winston experiences alienation from society and feels a desire for spiritual and moral integrity. At the beginning Winston, the narrator and Orwell’s views are one. He remember being a child before the Revolution, while Julia doesn’t because she is younger. ➔ Julia is uninterested in politics, untroubled by the Party’s lies, and only makes a pretense of being a good Party member. She lives in the now and does not worry about the future. ➔ Emmanuel Goldstein was an early leader of the Revolution, but he broke off when he felt that it had betrayed its idealistic goals. “The Enemy of the People”’s face is used to build fear and revulsion against an imagined enemy: the Party needs to compare itself to something/someone in order to maintain its superiority. It is even possible that Goldstein doesn’t exist, but he symbolizes the power of groupthink. ➔ Mr. Charrington is the owner of an antique shop in the prole neighbourhood. Like Winston he is interested in useless items that have a simple beauty. He keeps a room as it would have looked before the Revolution. Themes It is a satire on hierarchical societies which destroy fraternity. The dictator Big Brother does not watch over his people as a brother should do: “watching” here does not mean taking care but controlling (doublethink). Memory and mutual trust become positive themes in Winston’s to maintain his individuality: Orwell believed that if man has someone to trust, his individuality cannot be destroyed. An egalitarian post-revolutionary society would not change values but would put an end to exploitation. The attempt to write a diary and a private memory is defended against the official attempts to rewrite history. Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms Its realistic depiction of war has often been attributed to personal experience. Characters ➔ Henry is a classic Hemingway hero, a stoic who does his duty without complaint. Yet Henry also undergoes tremendous development. At the beginning of the novel, he believes that war is dreadful but necessary, has a lust for adventure, drinking, and women, and sees Catherine as just another diversion. As the stakes of the war intensify, however, he becomes deeply pessimistic about the war and realizes that his love for Catherine is the only thing he is willing to commit himself to. ➔ Catherine: heartbroken, she engages in a relationship with Henry because she would rather have an illusion of love, however false, than nothing at all. As the novel progresses, the lines between fantasy and reality blur, and the reader is left questioning whether she loved Henry at all or if the entire romance was a game. She is brave, dedicated, and faithful. In her pursuit of creating the idealized romance, she would say or do anything to become Henry’s perfect woman. Themes ➔ War and disillusionment: ◆ To Henry, the war is, at first, a necessary evil from which he distracts himself through drinking and sex. ◆ By the end, his experiences of the war have convinced him that it is a fundamentally unjust atrocity, which he seeks to escape. ➔ Doomed love and loss: ◆ In spite of his natural cynicism about love, Henry falls for Catherine. Catherine craves love to the exclusion of everything else in the world. ◆ (Catherine repeats the mistake she made by not marrying her fiancé when she refuses to marry Henry.). ◆ Their love is surrounded by loss: the loss of Catherine’s former lover, and the foreshadowing of the loss Henry will have to live, when Catherine dies in childbirth. ➔ Reality vs Fantasy (escapism): Hemingway shows how the harsh truths of reality always infiltrate and corrupt the distracting fantasies that characters create to make themselves feel better. Ideals such as glory and honor quickly fade when one is confronted with the realities of battle. Many characters create escapist fantasies to make the war around them easier to bear. Henry and Catherine retreat from the world to live an idealized private life in Switzerland only to have the specter of reality return when Catherine and her baby die. 36 ➔ Self vs Duty: Henry is an ambulance driver and Catherine is a nurse, so each of them has a responsibility to others during wartime. However, he begins to adopt a philosophy of egoism (“every man for himself”) and makes a final break from the army and throws off his responsibilities (climax: he deserts the army). ➔ Religion: Throughout the novel Henry struggles with his spirituality. He wants to believe in something to give his life greater meaning, but he can't comprehend a God that would allow the mindless suffering and loss he has seen in the war. His love for Catherine becomes his religion, giving him something to sacrifice for. Symbols and motifs ➔ Seasons: the changing seasons reflect Henry’s inner development, his relationship with Catherine, and the progress of the war. The novel begins in harvest time, when the two meet. They later enjoy a blissful summer in Milan. But the book’s second half is filled with uncertainty and death, accompanied by rain and snow. Catherine says, “I’m afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it”. ➔ Alcohol: it is a refuge for Henry and Rinaldi ➔ Hair: For her work Catherine must wear her hair pinned back. But when she is alone with Henry, her hair is loose, symbolizing the isolation and comfort she and Henry create in their romance. This symbolism is enhanced in Switzerland when Henry grows a beard so magnificent he hardly recognizes his own reflection. No longer Lieutenant Henry but simply Catherine's perfect lover. Francis Scott Fitzgerald (Minnesota, 1896 - 1940) ➢ At Princeton University he began to write and had the opportunity to associate with rich young men ➢ He joined the US army in the WWI ➢ His first novel, This Side of Paradise (1920) gave a forceful picture of the lifestyle of young people in the roaring Twenties and captured the sense of loss and emptiness hiding behind the cult of money and materialism ➢ He married Zelda Sayre: they led a glamorous life spending a lot of money on parties, alcohol and drugs ➢ Tales of the Jazz Age, The Beautiful and Damned: hedonism, corruption and loss of ideals of the Lost Generation ➢ On the French Riviera he finished writing The Great Gatsby (1925), that marked the beginning of his decline ➢ He started to write film scripts to pay his debts, became an alcoholic and his wife suffered from mental instability ➢ Tender is the Night (1934) where he dealt with the failure of the dreams and ideals in the Twenties ➢ He began his last novel, The Last Tycoon, which he could not finish since he died of a heart attack The Great Gatsby Plot James Gatz comes from a humble family and makes every effort to rise above poverty, changing his name into Jay Gatsby. While in the army, he falls in love with Daisy, a beautiful but superficial young woman who marries Tom Buchanan, a wealthy, brutal man. Gatsby makes a fortune as a bootlegger and illegal activities and rents a mansion on Long Island, where he gives parties, in the hope that he will see Daisy. Nick Carraway is Gatsby’s neighbour and Daisy’s cousin. Thanks to him, Daisy and Jay meet again and have an affair. After a fight with Tom, Daisy runs over Tom’s mistress, Myrtle Wilson: she does not stop, and Gatsby hides the car. Running from responsibility means that she is a risk-taker only if it does not risk her privileges. Myrtle represents lower class striving for the wealth and lifestyle of the elite. Myrtle’s husband finds that the car is Gatsby’s: Jay does not protest his innocence because he wants to defend Daisy, but she reconciles with Tom. Jay is shot, George commits suicide. Only Nick tries to defend his name and arranges his funeral but, as opposed to the parties, nobody comes. The decay of the American dream The Great Gatsby contains criticism of American life in the Jazz Age with such themes as the confrontation between the romantic ideals of courage, honour and beauty and the corrupted world of greed and money, Gatsby’s material achievements, the tremendous growth of the car industry, the corrupting effects of Prohibition, the poverty of spiritual life in America during its most hedonistic decade. Blindness is a central theme: the characters do not wish to see, they seek out blindness in the form of drunkenness, they drive carelessly, they remain blind to danger. Only Nick truly sees. Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway ➔ Jay Gatsby is mysterious He is a romantic hero who dies for his dream but he also embodies the self-made man who tries to recreate the past through money and is finally destroyed. To Fitzgerald the American dream has been corrupted by the desire for materialism: Gatsby had a pure dream, but became corrupt by reckless 37