Satire & Supernatural in 18th-19th Century Literature: Gulliver's Travels & Frankenstein, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Satire & Supernatural in 18th-19th Century Literature: Gulliver's Travels & Frankenstein e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Jonathan Swift Life • Born in 1667 in Dublin of English parents. • He and his family left Ireland for England at the time of the Glorious Revolution in 1688. • Started to work for Sir William Temple, a scholar and Whig statesman. • Encouraged by Temple to write his first satirical works. • Returned to Ireland in 1694 and became an ordained Anglican priest. • Produced writings in opposition to the Whig administration. • Was appointed Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin in April 1713. • He was a strong opponent to the Whigs, defending Ireland and the Church • Later years were marked by the decay of his mental faculties. • Died in 1745. • Still regarded as a national hero in Ireland. Works • A Tale of a Tub (1704), a satire about the two opposing religious parties, Catholics with their superstition and Dissenters with their fanaticism. • The Battle of the Books (1704), a satire about the merits of ancient and modern literature, in which Swift supported Temple's defence of the classics and mocked the self-satisfaction of modern scholarship, criticism and poetry. • Travels into Several Remote Countries of the World, also known as Gulliver’s Travels (1726), a satirical novel. • A Modest Proposal (1729), a satire suggesting that the poverty of Irish people should be relieved by the sale of their children as food for the rich. • A satire is a direct criticism and attack on the society or the politics of the time, with some specific techniques: ◦ distortion, ◦ exaggeration, ◦ deformation, ◦ caricature. • He also wrote pamphlets to denounce the injustices suffered by Ireland. Among them, the most famous one is The Drapier’s Letters (1724-25), a series of pamphlets written as an imaginary character, M.B. Drapier, who attacked the government’s proposal for a new coinage that would’ve increased poverty in Ireland. A controversial writer • He is one of the most controversial among English writers. • He has been regarded as: ◦ a misanthrope, ◦ a lover of mankind, ◦ a man with a morbid attitude, ◦ a monster. • He: ◦ was concerned with politics and society → wrote against intitutions; ◦ had a pessimistic attitude; ◦ did not share the optimism of his age, the faith in reason and the pride of his contemporaries; ◦ had a conservative attitude. • He considered himself neither English nor Irish, so he: ◦ felt displaced since he had a more European outlook; ◦ criticised: ▪ English people blaming them to be oppressive against the Irish; ▪ Irish people considering them too submissive. • Swift described himself as a hater of man, defining him as “an animal capable of reason”. Reason was an instrument that needed to be used properly: too intensive a use of reason is an error of judgement and therefore unreasonable. Therefore he insisted on the need to take a common-sense view of life, a rational approach to life. • Common sense is the ability to take the right decisions for the suitable situations. He replaces reason with it, as reason is only an instrument, while common sense is an ability. • He saw in irony and satire the means that perfectly suited his temperament and his interests. • Combining the ironic intent with the simplicity of his style and his diction, he pursued the effect of parody. • The traveller invites the reader to see something familiar in a ridiculous, funny or disgusting way. • The perspective on human behaviour is constantly changed. Gulliver’s Travels • Printed in London in 1726. • It consists of four independent books linked to four different settings (Swift provided illustrated maps of the places Gulliver visited): ◦ the land of Lilliput; ◦ the land of Brobdingnag; ◦ the island of Laputa; ◦ the land of the Houyhnhnms. • All the books have a beginning and an ending, but they have the main characters in common. At the end of each book Gulliver always comes back to his land, but every time he finds it more difficult to fit back into European society. • The hero is the ship’s surgeon Lemuel Gulliver, a middle age man, well educated and, lead by curiosity, he investigates different form of government • In each book there is a satirical target • Every place Gulliver visits is not a bare place but a high developed country, however he never finds a place to live because: ◦ the first 3 lands he explores had cons while ◦ in the fourth, the horses (leader of the country) banish him because of his similarities with the Yahoos (stupid creatures associated with the humans) • The novel expresses an opposition between rationality and animality Book 1 • Gulliver sails from Bristol, however, after six months, he is ship-wrecked somewhere in the South Pacific. • He is cast upon the shore of ‘Lilliput’. • The inhabitants, the ‘Lilliputians’, are only six inches tall (15 cm). They are selfish, greedy, mean and petty; their height is proportionate to their empathy (tiny creatures ⇾ tiny feelings) • When he arrived, he was asked to help them fight their enemy though later he is arrested and condemned to be blinded ⇾ Gulliver, with the help of a friend, escaped and returned to England like nothing happened. Book 2 • Gulliver wanted to arrive in India, however he found himself in Brobdingnag, a country near Alaska, where everyone is giant. • The inhabitants' body is as huge as their egocentricity • He is rescued by a farmer who sold him to the monarchs, surprised by the tiny aspect of the human. • Gulliver becomes the king’s pet: he is imprisoned in a cage and transported while talking to the king about the system of the government in England and Europe. • One day, Gulliver’s cage is lifted up by a huge bird and dropped in the middle of the ocean, where he is rescued by a ship that returned him home (after this experiences he lived like nothing happened) Book 3 • Gulliver’s ship was attacked by pirates who sent him adrift on a small boat. • He finds himself on the flying island of ‘Laputa’ (dystopian world). The capital city of the island is Lagado, where there is an academy. • The inhabitants are immortal absent-minded astronomers, philosophers and scientists who make absurd experiments that are absolutely useless only for individual pleasure and not for the community. • The immortality that some of the scientists had was a damnation because, over time, they become tiny and unable to even move. • The scientists (the satirical target) are described as dirty and filthy people, beggars and obsessed with experiments. They resemble the Royal Society and its rational method. • The island drops Gulliver on Japan and he manages to return to England, although it takes a little long for him to get used to his native country. Book 4 • Gulliver’s last voyage to the island inhabited by the ‘Houyhnhnms’. • The intelligent horses endowed with reason that rule over the Yahoos, a vile species of animal resembling human beings. • The horses are so wise that they couldn’t use any bad words, only against Yahoos they are able to say them. • The leaders banish him and he leaves for England where he became an outcast and a misanthrope, in fact he couldn’t stand even the smell of his wife and children. • At the end, he goes to live in the stable near the horses that reminded him of the intelligent one presented in Houyhnhnms. • In the end, he returns home but he isn’t able to readjust since he cannot accept their behaviour and their pride any longer → the story ends with a pessimistic sight. • In this book the satirical target are the european values. Characters • Sterne focuses much of his characterisation on the portrayal of a dominant trait or, rather, obsession, which to him is an accurate indication of personality. • This obsession or ruling passion is called a hobby-horse: Uncle Toby is obsessed with war, Mr Shandy with names, etc. • As a method of characterisation Sterne also concentrates on the description of external signs, gestures and attitudes of his fictional people. • While the male characters are always portrayed with great sympathy for their inconsistencies and faulty vision of the world, the female ones are the object of his deepest scorn. • Women are neither important or interesting, they do not have philosophies or opinions • of their own, but they are created by the author only in terms of their relationship with men. Their sensuality is in opposition with men’s impotence. • Sterne never relates the conversation of a group of women and his approval of women in the novel is limited to those who excite men’s sexual feelings. • If Walter Shandy represents intellect, and Toby Shandy emotion, women seem to represent sexuality, set against male impotence. • The protagonist is an anti-hero, since he’s dull., Themes • While optimism, happy endings and a moralising aim are present in the novels of Defoe and Richardson, pessimism is the dominant quality of Sterne’s work; even the name of the protagonist has a negative connotation: Tristram comes from the Latin adjective ‘tristis’ meaning ‘sad’. • All the characters undergo misadventures and accidents of every kind; • Tristram Shandy is not a sentimental novel, but it is full of sentiment and feeling: indeed the necessity of love, sympathy and laughter is one of the central underlying themes of the novel. Style • Tristram Shandy is narrated in the first person singular, so that everything and everyone is seen through the eyes of Tristram himself. • Tristram’s role is twofold: he is both chronicler/narrator and a dull, inconsistent character. • He never plays the role of the hero, since his life is uninteresting and his nature and body are faulty; he lacks dignity, courage and social credibility. • The reader has an important role: Sterne addresses him and leaves out words, indicating them by asterisks or dashes, so that the reader is forced into active participation not only in the reading but also in the ‘writing’ of the novel. • If the content and the structure of the book are complex, the same can be said for the language: the sentences are long and contain several subordinate clauses. • It is as if Sterne is writing as he thinks, following the wanderings of his mind, rather than working out what he wants to say beforehand and suiting his prose to his thoughts. • The chapters vary in length from several pages to a single short sentence. • Punctuation is arbitrary. • The time is subjective and its dilatation is given by the perception of intensity. The Gothic novel • The word “Gothic” was used at the beginning for architecture, while it was used in literature for the first time by Horace Walpole. • It was the result of a new sensibility, a taste for what is: ◦ Unpredictable, ◦ Strange, ◦ Exotic, ◦ Mysterious. • There is the feeling that the evil can overcome the good feelings → prevailing sense of fear, expressed by the novels too. • The sense of fear reflects the historical moment, with its increasing disillusionment with Enlightenment rationality and the French and American bloody Revolutions. • The main characteristics of the gothic novel are: ◦ Isolated places (castles, ruins, graveyards) → the setting in place is necessarily uncomfortable and it gives a sense of fear and mystery; ◦ The story happens during the night, often with fog → tension, fear, threat, gloom, oppression and mistery; ◦ A female heroin who escapes from a villain, a bad creature, which resembles the evil; ◦ Suspense, the sense that something horrible is next to happen; ◦ Crimes committed by humans and supernatural creatures; ◦ The hero is usually voluntarily or involuntarily isolated; ◦ The outcast is the symbol of isolation, wandering the earth in perpetual exile, as a form of divine punishment. Mary Shelley • Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley was born in 1797 in London. • The daughter of two excellent intellectuals of the time, both believers in the Enlightened power of reason: ◦ Mary Wollstonecraft, seen as the first feminist, ◦ The radical philosopher and theorist William Godwin, a strong supporter of the French Revolution. • In her childhood she was surrounded by intellectuals and she developed a romantic sensibility, revolutionary ideas and concern for the rights of people. Their house was the center of cultural debate of the time, so she had the largest possibility of learning. • Ten days after Mary’s birth, her mother died. • Four years later her father married again. Her step-mother and one of her step-sisters were the cause of Mary Shelley’s sufferings and troubles. • Her father William was only worried about her upbringing: he only trained her mind rather than her soul. • In 1814 she met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was an admirer of her father and often visited their London house. He was one of the most famous romantic poets of the time and was a libertin. • Mary and Shelley fell in love and they met secretly. The man was in love with her mind and her potential, not her soul, so he had great expectation in her that she had to accomplish. • When she found out she was pregnant, he convinced her to elope to France. • In 1816 the couple settled in Villa Diodati, on the banks of Lake Geneva, where Byron soon joined them. • The writing of Frankenstein took place at Villa Diodati. It was the result of: ◦ Her personal experiences, ◦ Her nightmares and anxiety, ◦ The new scientific discoveries and experiments (electricity and reanimation of corpses) • In 1814 she met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was an admirer of her father and often visited their London house. • Mary and Shelley fell in love and they met secretly. When she found she was pregnant, they fled to France. • In 1816 the couple settled in Villa Diodati, on the banks of Lake Geneva, where Byron soon joined them. • The writing of Frankenstein took place at Villa Diodati. • In 1822 the Shelleys moved to Lerici, where one day Percy set sail in a storm and was found drowned ten days later. • At twenty-four, Mary found herself a widow with a son, since Shelley died in a storm near Livorno at 29. After his death she could live a normal and free life, so she felt a sense of relief. • In 1823 Mary returned to England where she continued to write and to publish her husband’s literary works. • She wrote five more novels and some short stories. • She died in 1851. All her life she had to prove herself to others, especially her father and her husband. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus • Frankenstein has become the starting point of a specific horror genre: monster literature. • The creature in Frankenstein is the first in a series of monsters that populated 19th century British literature, such as Dracula, Dr Jekill and Mr Hyde and the Mummy. The origin of the novel • The idea of the plot originated one stormy night in 1816, when Mary was together with Shelley , the poet Byron and the writer John Polidori in their house on Lake Geneva. They decided to engage in a contest and to write a ghost story each. • The weather was unusually cold because of the eruption of the volcano Tambora in Indonesia. The ash and the gas spewed by the volcano blocked the sunlight. So it was ‘the year without summer’, a perfect context to sit indoors and read ghost stories. • In the southwestern Germany there is a castle called Frankenstein which Mary Shelley may have visited and where she may have found the inspiration for the novel. • Two hundred years ago, on 1 January 1818, the novel was first published anonymously. • A second edition of the novel appeared in 1831 with the name of its authress. • In the preface to the novel, Mary Shelley gives her own account of Frankenstein’s origin. • The preface is commonly supposed to have been written by her husband. • The reading of ghost stories, speculation about the re-animation of corpshuces, her personal anxieties connected to the loss of her mother induced Mary to create the novel. Plot • In a series of letters, Robert Walton, the captain of a ship travelling around the North Pole, writes to his sister in England the progress of his dangerous mission. • His ship is trapped by ice. While Walton and his crew are waiting for the ice to melt, they meet Victor Frankenstein and rescue him. Weakened by the cold, Frankenstein is wandering on a sledge across the ice. • Walton takes him on board, helps him to recover his health and hears the fantastic tale of the monster that Frankenstein created. • Victor first describes his early life in Geneva. At the end of a blissful childhood spent in the company of Elizabeth Lavenza (his cousin and adopted sister) and friend Henry Clerval, Victor enters the university of Ingolstadt to study natural philosophy and chemistry. There, he is obsessed by the desire to discover the secret of life. • Victor spends months fashioning a creature by means of old body parts. One night, he brings his creation to life. He is full of horror at what he sees. He takes refuge in his room but has nightmares: he sees the monster at his bedside. Victor goes to Henry’s house. Even if the monster has gone away, Victor falls ill. • Victor receives a letter from his father informing him that his youngest brother, William, was murdered. While passing through the woods where William was strangled, he sees the monster and realizes that the monster is his brother’s murderer. • Arriving in Geneva, Victor finds that Justine Moritz, the Frankensteins’ housekeeper, has been accused. She is tried, condemned and executed, despite her assertions of innocence. Victor feels guilty because the monster he has created is responsible for the death of two innocent loved people. • Hoping to relieve his grief, Victor goes to the mountains. While he is alone one day, the monster approaches him. The monster admits William’s murder but begs for understanding. The monster asks Victor to create a mate for him. • Victor refuses at first, horrified by the prospect of creating a second monster. The creature is persuasive and he eventually convinces Victor. • He goes to England with Henry to gather information for the creation of a female monster. Leaving Henry in Scotland, he goes to an island in the Orkneys and works on the project. • Horrified by the possible consequences of his work, Victor destroys his new creation. The monster, enraged, vows revenge, swearing that he will be with Victor on Victor’s wedding night. • He is arrested and informed that he will be tried for a murder discovered the previous night. Victor denies any knowledge of the murder, but when he sees the body, he is shocked to recognize his friend Henry Clerval, with the mark of the monster’s fingers on his neck. Victor falls ill and is kept in prison until his recovery, after which he is acquitted of the crime. • Shortly after returning to Geneva with his father, Victor marries Elizabeth. He fears the monster’s warning and suspects that he will be murdered on his wedding night. To be cautious, he sends Elizabeth away. While he awaits the monster, he hears Elizabeth scream and realizes that the monster has killed his new bride, not himself. • Victor returns home to his father, who dies of grief a short time later. Victor vows to devote the rest of his life to find the monster and to take his revenge. • Victor goes northward . In a dogsled chase, Victor almost catches the monster, but the ice breaks, leaving an unbridgeable gap between them. At this point Victor meets Walton and tells his story. • Victor, already ill, worsens and dies shortly thereafter. When Walton returns to the room in which the body lies, he is startled to see the monster weeping over Victor. • The creature expresses his will to stop suffering and sets out to the northern ices to die. Setting • The events of the story happen all over Europe in the 18th century (Geneva, Swiss Alps, England, Scotland). • The most important setting is the North Pole. Its wild nature mirrors Frankenstein’s and the monster’s state of mind. • The creation’s birthplace is next to Frankenstein’s university at Ingolstadt. Literary influences Rousseau • Mary Shelley was influenced by Rousseau’s ideas. Rousseau believed that man was born innocent and uncorrupted, then the unjust social system and its prejudices spoil him. • This is just what happens to Frankenstein’s creature who is naturally good when he comes to light, then he turns into a monster because of his sense of frustrastion developed after the experience of people’s rejection because of his ugly appearance. Locke • In his «Essay concerning human understanding», Locke argued that a child is a «blank slate» and knowledge is made up of education and experience. • At the beginning the monster’s mind is a tabula rasa. Education and experience create his personality and lead him to self-awareness. The gothic novel • The ghost stories read at Villa Diodati provided a source of inspiration to Mary Shelley. • Frankenstein shares some features with the Gothic tradition: fear, suspence, horror, danger and a macabre atmosphere. • Frankenstein differs from the Gothic novel since it is not set in a dark castle and does not deal with supernatural events. It replaces the supernatural with science. The romantic poets • The most meaningful source of inspiration was Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Both Shelley’s novel and Coleridge’s ballad are tales of a crime against nature: Frankenstein’s creation and the mariner’s shooting of the albatross. Science • Mary was interested in science so she was updated about the latest scientific theories and experiments in the fields of chemistry, evolutionism and electricity. • Mary was informed about galvanism. Galvani was an Italian professor of anatomy who made some experiments on animal tissue using a machine which could produce electrical sparks. He proved that animal muscles can contract in response to an electrical stimulus. Narrative structure • The form of the novel is epistolary. • The story is told by three different male narrators through a series of letters written by: ◦ Walton to his sister, Margaret Saville. (Her initials, MS, are the same as those of Mary Shelley); ◦ Frankenstein to Walton, who informs his sister; ◦ the monster to Frankenstein, who informs Walton, who informs his sister. • So the whole novel has Walton’s sister as the receiver. • Frankenstein is a multiple frame story, a story within a story, a sort of Russian nesting doll. • None of the three narrators is omniscient and so they are all necessary to have a complete view of the story. • The interplay of the three narrators provides an interesting shifting of the point of view. • The story is not told chronologically. • The authress uses the first person narration and an emotional language. • Climax: the murder of Elizabeth Lavenza on the night of her wedding to Victor Frankenstein. • Falling action: after the murder of Elizabeth Lavenza when dr. Frankenstein chases the monster to the northern ice, is rescued by Robert Walton, tells his story and dies. Message • Frankenstein is the first embodiment of the theme of science and its responsibility to mankind. • Frankenstein is the symbol of the dangerous consequences of human attempt to overcome nature by means of science. • Mary Shelley reflects on the relationship between science and morals, what we call bioethics nowadays, and on progress without a moral direction. Britain and America George III (1760-1820) • George II's grandson, George III, came to the throne in 1760. • His reign lasted 60 years and is one of the longest in English • history. • To reduce the public debt due to the Seven Years' War, the king introduced new duties on corn, paper and tea, which caused opposition in the American colonies. • The English Parliament responded to the protest by repealing some of them, but the tax on imported tea remained. • By the 1770s, many colonists began to think that they should only pay taxes approved by their local governing assemblies. The Declaration of Independence • In 1773 some rebels, dressed up as Native Americans, threw the British tea coming from India to Boston into the harbour (Boston Tea Party). The rebels declared that the taxes were unjust as the colonies had no political power (“No taxation without representation”) • The Aemricans were divided into: ◦ Patriots, who wanted independence, ◦ Loyalists, who wanted to stay a part of Britain. • In 1775 the War of Independence began. The Americans set up an army under the command of George Washington (1732-99) to face the stronger and better trained British army. • On 4th July 1776 in Philadelphia, the Congress, made by the representatives from 13 of the colonies, signed the Declaration of Independence, largely written by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), a lawyer from Virginia. It claimed that: ◦ all men had a natural right to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; ◦ governments can only claim the right to rule if they have the consent of the governed. • In 1781, at the Battle of Yorktown, the British army was defeated and Britain recognised the independence of its former colonies with the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. • The new republic of the United States of America: ◦ Adopted a federal constitution in 1787, ◦ Had as its first president George Washington in 1789. • The colonists who remained loyal to Britain moved to Canada. The Industrial Revolution Economic change • The economic changes that took place in England at the end of the 18th century transformed the country from an agricultural to an industrialised nation. • The origins of the economic transformation can be found in Black Death and the rise in living standards that followed it. • Other factors occurring to the economic change were: ◦ The population increased in the 1500s and 1600s also due to a lower death rate. ◦ Agriculture was intensified. ◦ Open fields were enclosed into smaller portions of land to make more efficient arable farms. ◦ The soil was drained and made more fertile, so that cereal production was greatly increased. ◦ Animals were bred selectively, so they produced more meat. ◦ Economic activity was gradually diversified, especially through the manufacture of woollen cloth. ◦ People began acquiring more goods for the house, such as wardrobes, clocks and china. ◦ Banks began to invest money. ◦ There was an efficient net of transport (mainly canals). ◦ This period was a time of political stability with a puritan mindset, based on hard work and prayer. • The clothing of ordinary people changed with the introduction of white linen underwear, stockings, ribbons and hats. This marked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution because mass consumption of machine-made goods started. • Cotton was the leading sector of industrialisation. • More and more people also began to consume things for pleasure, like tobacco, tea, coffee, • sugar or alcohol. Rural, household-based production supplied these new kinds of demand. Technological innovation • There was a succession of technological innovations that transformed and improved the productivity of workers: ◦ The steam engine, invented b y Thomas Newcomen in 1712, which was able to pump water out of coal mines; ◦ The Spinning Jenny, invented in 1764 by James Hargreaves, which increased spinning efficiency; ◦ In 1769 James Watt patented a steam engine that was more powerful and wasted less fuel than its predecessors. ◦ The loom (James Hargreaves, 1787) linked cloth manufacture to water and steam power. • Products became cheaper meeting the larger demand for goods. • Investment in technological development increased and innovation became linked to energy generated from coal. • The Industrial Revolution changed the geography of the country, concentrating the new industrial activity near the coalfields of the Midlands and the North. • People shifted from the rural South to the North and the Midlands, and small towns, the so-called "mushroom towns', were constructed to house the workers near the factories. • The Revolution was also a cause for pollution, noticeable by the change of colour of the rivers: the romantic poets understood the problem and reforms were made under Victoria’s reign. The workers’ life • Industrial cities lacked elementary public services: ◦ Water-supply, ◦ Sanitation, ◦ Street-cleaning, ◦ Open spaces; • The air and the water were polluted by smoke and filth. • The houses, built in endless rows, were overcrowded. • Women and children were paid less and were easier to control. Children were used to clean the engines or to work in the mines. • The new work patterns were determined by the mechanised regularity of the machine and a rational division of labour. • Workers worked about 65-70 a week. • Food prices rose, diet and health deteriorated with an increase in the mortality rate, which was about 30.