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Complete Summary of English and American History and LIterature (From Pepys to W.B. Yeats), Dispense di Letteratura Inglese

Svolto per il concorso AB24 AB25 2020. Fatto a punti, abbastanza schematico ma comprensivo di tutta la storia e autori americani e inglesi.

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2019/2020

Caricato il 23/02/2022

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Scarica Complete Summary of English and American History and LIterature (From Pepys to W.B. Yeats) e più Dispense in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! SAMUEL PEPYS Born in 1633, member of the Parliement, then accused of selling naval secrets to the French. Arrested again in 1690 cause he was suspected of Jacobites symphathies but released. Died in 1703. He wrote his diary from 1660 to 1669, describing The Plague and The Fire of London THOMAS HOBBES: Born in 1588 in Malmesbury, he travelled a lot. For him, man is essentially selfish and seeking self-preservation. This theory is expressed in his Leviathan 1651. In 1666 the Parliament ordered Leviathan to be instigated for atheism, so he had to burn his papers. He lather died in 1679. The book defends absolutism saying that, in order to avoid social conflict and civil war between men, who are naturally selfish, they should appoint and give obedience to an absolute monarch, or Leviathan (Biblical monster from the Old Testament). Royalists saw the work as an encouragement to take the crown. MRS APHRA BEN Born in Ken 1640. She was employed as a spy during the Dutch war. She is remembered for what may be the earliest English philosophical novel, Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave, a story which deplores the slave trade and criticize Christian Hypocrisy and which admires the nobility of its African hero. She will be later praised by Virginia Woolf. She died in 1689 Oroonoko’s tale is told from the perspective of a female narrator, possibly Aphra Behn herself. The narrator claims to have known Oroonoko during his captivity in Suriname, South America. Suriname is a British colony at the time the narrative takes place (the 1660s). Oroonko is the story of an African prince wo deeply loves the beautiful Imoinda, but his grandfather, the king, also wants Imoinda. Eventually, Imoida is sold as a slave and taken to Suriname under the British rule, under the name of Clemene. Oroonko is also sold to a British gentleman named Trefry and is given a new name, Caesar. In the end, Oroonko kills Imoinda to avoid her a slower and most painful death, he is also killed. DEFOE Daniel Defoe was born in 1660, he was the son of a Dissenter from the Anglican Church He was actively involved in politics: When King James II was deposed in 1701, he wrote a poem (The True- born Englishman, in defence of the king). In 1703 he published The shortest way with Dissenters, a satirical pamphlet where he pretended to write from the point of view of his adversaries (the Anglicans) and made fun of their argument  He was then fined, imprisoned and forced to stand on the public pillory. In 1704 he began publishing a newspaper, The Review. He was imprisoned again in 1713 for his political pamphlets. IN 1719 he began to work on novels, publishing Robinson Crusoe (1719), Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, Journal of the Plague of the Year (all published in 1722) and Roxana (1724). He is considered by many the first English novelist  narrative realism. His novels usually center on a single hero, whose adventures and thoughts are explored using the 1st person narrator, and characterised by an adventurous style much appreciated by 18° century readers. Robinson Crusoe (1719) At the age of 19 yo. Robinson decides to leave his middle class family and sail around the world, looking for fortune and adventures. He his captured and taken prisoner by North African pirates, but he manages to escape. He is rescued by a ship and lands in Brazil, where he becomes a succesful plantation owner. He tries to sail to West Africa, looking for slaves for his plantation, but he is shipwrecked on an island near Trinidad (he is the only survivor). He stays on that island for 28 years. One day a group of cannibals lands on the island with some prisoners. When one of this prisoners escapes his masters, running towards Robinson looking for help, Robinson shoots towards the group of cannibals and saves the man. The man he saved promises to serve Robinson forever. Robinson names him «Friday» because they met on a Friday. He teaches him some English words and elements of Christianity. After many other adventures and fights against these cannibals, a ship saves Robinson and takes him home to England. On his way home he finds out that he is now a rich man, because of the succes of his plantation. He starts a family in England. When the book was published, it was considered to be an authentic story and Defoe tried to confirm this interpretation: in fact, in the preface, a fake editor states that the story is «a just history of fact». The story is also so rich in details that it was easy for the reader to consider it as fact. Some elements of the story are inspired by the true history of Alexander Selkirk, a man who was abandoned on the island of Juan Fernandez (Chile) for five years. The tail of Robinson Crusoe is presented through an omniscent, first-person narrator that helps the reader to understand and share Crusoe’s feelings and opinions. As according to the puritan tradition, Crusoe writes a diary where he keeps track of his adventures and of his moral progress as well. Defoe’s language was simple and realistic, much closer to the language of artisans, merchants and countrymen than to that of scholars and intellectuals. His experience as a journalist led him to a plain, simple prose, with many realistic details and capable of arosing curiosity and interest. JOHNATHAN SWIFT Swift was born in Dublin in 1667 to English Parents. He moved to England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He worked for over 10 years as a secretary for the English statesman Sir William Temple and also became an Anglican minister. When Temple died, Swift completed and published his memoirs. Then, he had to go back to Ireland, where he started working as an Anglican Minister in a church outside Dublin. In 1704, He anonymously released two satires: • A Tale of a Tub: a criticism of Catholicism and Presbyterianism, which was received as a shock and criticized by the Church of England • The Battle of the Books: a criticism of the quality of modern literature, while he praised classical literature In 1713 he becomes dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral (Dublin). In this period he starts writing his masterpiece Gulliver’s Travles. Once he finished it, he went back to London where it was published as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships (known as Gulliver’s Travels). In 1742 he suffered from a stroke and lost the ability to speak. He died in 1745. Gulliver’s Travels (1726): It is the story of 4 travels made by an English surgeon called Lemuel Gulliver. 1) He is shipwrecked on his first voyage and ends up in the land of Lilliput, whose inhabitants are tiny people. At first, Gulliver is treated with suspicion and fear but lately he is accepted as a friend, and he even protects them from the attack of another population. 2) His second trip takes him to the land of Brobdingnag. Here, people are giants. Here, Gulliver is treated kindly but mocked and ridiculed because he seems tiny with respects to the other giants inhabitants of the land. One day a bird pick him up and drops him in the middle of the sea, where he is saved by a ship. 3) In his third voyage, Gulliver lands in Laputa. Here, everybody is obsessed with abstract scientific theories, with the consequence, that they can’t deal with everyday life. When he visits the Academy of Lagado, he realizes that all of these scientific processes have destroyed society. 4) During his fourth journey, Gulliver is abandoned in the land of the Houyhnhmns, which are noble and intelligent horses. The Houyhnhmns try to control the Yahoos, a race of dirty and degenerate humans. Even if Gulliver is a human, he admires the Houyhnhmns (their qualities of reason, nobility of mind and egalitarianism) and feels closer to them. These journey are told from Gulliver’s point of view (1° person narrator), imitating the structure of first- person travels writing to make the stories look more realistic. A Modest Proposal (1729): A Modest Proposal is a satire in which Swift hironically suggests that the problem of poverty in Ireland could be solved by cannibalism, with starving children being used as food. Swift was actually very concerned about poverty in Ireland. He knew that the English government had a big responsibility for the starvation and death of these children. His proposal - that poor families could earn money by fattening and selling their babies to be eaten by gentlemen - is expressed in a very detailed style, number of soldiers nor sailors anymore: as a result, these categories entered the working class, and wages became increasingly low.  The Government was also facing a huge war debt and tried to solve it with the Importation Act, which prohibited the importation of grain from abroad: The result was a rise in the price of bread and other foods. Poor people suffered and were starving.  To prevent disorders, meetings of workers were made illegal by the Combination Act (1800)  One of the most common reactions of many workers were that of attributing their problems to technological innovations. “Luddism” was a popular movement that protested against the wide use of machines in production processes.  The name of this movement comes from that of Ned Ludd (workers in Nottingham used to wear a mask of the mythical figure of Ned Ludd to destroy new weaving machines, they were called luddites).  These forms of protest led to the reinforcement of repressive measures (Peterloo Massacre, Manchester 1819)  When George III died, he was followed by King George IV (1820-1830), mostly known for his extravagant taste and immorality, which embarrassed the government in the times of poverty and hardship of the Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic era.  He was followed by William IV (1830-1837), his brother. This was a period of political rest that saw a series of reforms taking place  The Reform Act (1832): vote was extended to all male members of the middle class. More seats were given in the House of Commons to the growing industrial towns of the north and midlands of England (women and working class men still couldn’t vote).  The Factory Act (1833): this act tried to improve working conditions for children. This law forbade the employment of children under the age of nine and reduced working hours for children under 13 years to eight hours. Boys under the age of 18 couldn’t work for more than 13 and a half hours.  Abolition of Slavery: thanks to the effort of the evangelical parliamentarian William Wilberforce, slave trade was abolished in 1807. This did not free those who were already slaves until the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.  The Amendment of the Poor Law (1834): parishes were no longer obliged to offer financial help to the poor. If people wanted help, they had to go into a workhouse where they were given clothes and food in exchange for several hours of manual labour each day, at terrible conditions. LITERARY BACKGROUND (1760-1837) Pre- Romantic Period The last part of the 18th century (1760-1801) is where the romantic trends start emerging: • Poets began to express their dissatisfaction with the values of Classicism (simplicity, proportion, balance, clear structure, perfection, restrained emotion, as well as explicit appeal to the intellect) and rejected the idea that Reason was the most important feature of man. • This trend started unorganized all over Europe. One of the first result of this new feeling was perceived in Germany, with the Sturm und Drang movement, a movement referring to philosophers, writers, painters and musicians who rejected neoclassicism and expressed social and emotional unrest. The poets who gave voice to these anti-classical reaction are called pre- romantics, because their works anticipated some of the features of Romanticism: The use of classical forms to express Romantic themes, The re-establishment of the prominent role of nature over civilisation: nature is considered the right and ideal state of man in contrast with civilisation, The exaltation of primitive life in contrast with the dehumanising effects of progress, The tendency to use a meditative tone, which reflects the poet’s desire to retire from the world and think about universal themes such as nature, death, melancholy, The rediscovery of the Middle Ages, which was seen as a mysterious charming period, Attention that was given to unusual themes such as “the exotic,” “the strange,” “the sublime”. These concepts gave birth to a new idea of beauty in contrast with the rational beauty of Neoclassicism, A certain fascination for death, graveyards and ruins Pre Romantic poets: • James Thomas (1700-1748): re-evaluated nature as the main source of inspiration for the poet • Edward Young (1683-1765): his poems were deep, sad meditations on the vanities of life. His biggest work Night Thoughts (1742-46) is a collection of religious poems in which the poet represents death as the greatest consolation of a man’s life • James Macpherson (1736-1796): his work “Fragments of Ancient Poetry” was presented as a translation of a legendary ancient ballad called Ossian, which named the so called “Ossianic Style” (characterizes by melancholy, paganism, heroism and the dominant forces of nature) • Thomas Gray (1715-1771): he was part of the group “The Graveyard poets”. His best work is Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, a deep reflection on death and man’s mortality • William Blake (1757-1827): in his Songs of Innocence and Experience he oppose the concept of innocence and purity (before the Fall) to that of experience (destruction of purity once man has sinned). The event that officially marked the birth of romanticism was the publication of the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1801) by William Wordsworth. First Generation: The 2 main authors are William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They published together a collection of poems called Lyrical Ballads (1798) Wordsworth: Representation of a humble, rustic life, Use of ordinary language, Poetry as “emotions recollected in tranquillity” and the poet as the creator (or re-creator) Coleridge: Focus on the mysterious and supernatural, Dream-like poems that escape reason and reality Second Generation: Poets of the second generation embodied the ideal of the artist as a rebel and a bohemian. • Lord Byron (1788-1824): he rejected social conventions and moral limitations. His poetry was very popular and he himself embodied the qualities of the rebel poet who condemned hypocrisy and fought for freedom. His protagonist, the “Byronic Hero”, had all these qualities • Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): was also very hash towards social conventions such as the Church, marriage or traditional family. He was an atheist and believed that the poet was a prophet and had the power and moral duty to change the world. He embodied political rebellion and the desire to free man from the oppression of social, political and religious institutions. • John Keats (1795-1821): he suffered many troubles in his life, family losses and financial problems. His poetry reflects his sufferings and melancholic and solitary state. Keats believed in the primary role of beauty as an eternal value, in a world that was becoming more and more dominated by money, economic interest and material issues. EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797), a politician and philosopher, published in 1775 He was born in Dublin. In 1795 he published A Vindication of Natural Society, followed in 1757 by “A philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”. He was against French revolution (Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790). Conservative, died in 1797 BLAKE: Born in London in 1757. When he was young he worked as an engraver and printer, and also started his painting career. In 1793 he published The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a series of prose texts which expressed his revolutionary beliefs. He described a poet descent into hell, taking inspiration from Dante’s Divine Comedy and Milton’s Paradise Lost. He proposed a unified vision of the cosmo where both the physical desire and the material world were actually considered part of the global order, in a sort of marriage between heaven and hell. His most important publications are Songs of Innocence 1789 and Songs of Experience 1793, that were later republished in a single volume called: Songs of Innocence and Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of Human Soul. He died unappreciated, poor and forgotten. Songs of Innocence and Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of Human Soul (1794): simple, direct but the ideas and the symbolism behind these ideas is often quite complex COLERIDGE Born in Devon in 1772, he studied Hebrew, Greek, Latin and English Literature and entered Cambridge University, but left without graduating. He was a dreamer, and had planned to build a utopian society in America, a “Pantisocracy” where work and rewards were to be shared equally. In 1795 he met Wordsworth and started working together. Three years later they published the Lyrical Ballads, which contains Coleridge’s masterpiece The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. He became politically conservative and died ill and depressed because of his use of opium. • His three most famous works (The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan and Christabel) are all based on a fantastic vision of the mysterious, supernatural and exotic. THE RHYME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER • It’s a narrative poem, the form is that of a ballad, a form that was usually used by Romantics to express their interest in the Medieval past and the traditional theme of supernatural events. • It is divided into 7 parts. Each part is introduced by a short summary of the following stanzas. What differs from traditional ballads is its lack of regularity (almost no repetitions and no refrains) WORDSWORTH Was born on 7 april 1770 Cumbria. He lost his parents at young age. Besides the Lyrical Ballads, he published two of his most famous poems, I wandered lonely as a Cloud and Ode: Intimations of immortality in the collection Poems, in Two Volumes (1807). The Prelude (1808) composed of 13 books is an autobiographical work, describing the development of his ideas and of his poetry. The Excursion is another long work of philosophical reflection on man, nature and society. He died at 80 in 1850. *jj Rousseau (1712-1778) The Social Contract (1726) had suggested that man could truly find himself in communion with nature. People are naturally good, but they are corrupted by society: The Noble Savage. LORD BYRON: Born in 1788, a handsome aristocratic young man, he was born with a handicap, a club foot, which led h im to isolation. His first collection of poems is Hours of Idleness (1807) and he was attacked in the Edinburgh review. He revenged on this critics with his satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. In 1814 he wrote Lara. When in Greece, he produced his poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812), the story of a young man looking for meaning in the world. He was politically engaged for social reforms. Ostracysed by society because accused of incest and homosexuality. When living in Italy he wrote Manfred (1817), the fourth canto of the Childe Harold, and began his masterpiece Don Juan. Died of fever in 1824 at 36. Don Juan was left unfinished at 17 cantos, published from 1819 to 1824. Although Byron is the archetype of the Romantic figure, he uses conventional forms: Spenserian Stanza in Child Harold (imitating what Edmund Spenser used in his The Faerie Queen of 1590) and ottava rima in Don Juan. Byron also wrote drama in verse, including The Two Foscari (1821). Child Harold is a long narrative • Factory Act (1833): this act tried to improve working conditions for children. This law forbade the employment of children under the age of nine and reduced working hours for children under 13 years to eight hours. Boys under the age of 18 couldn’t work for more than 13 and a half hours. • A series of Factory Acts then progressively limited the hours of work a further regulated child and female labour. • The Education Act of 1870 made elementary education compulsory. POLITICS • Queen Victoria was heir to the throne of William IV. Inexperienced at first, she found support in her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne (1837-1841). • In 1841 she married her cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and had nine children. • She restored the reputation of the crown, reconnected the Royal Family to the people, setting the manners, morals and style of the country through her household. At the same time, in the Parliament the dominant political parties had changed. The Whigs evolved into the Liberal Party and the Tories became the Conservative Party. • They were represented by William Gladstone (liberal) and Benjamin Disraeli (Conservative) • Gladstone was Prime Minister four times. He’s responsible for the Third reform Act. • Disraeli focused more on foreign affairs and imperial policy. He had Victoria crowned as “Empress of India” • In 1892 the Independent Labour Party was formed. THE CORN LAWS • Introduced in 1804 when landowners – the majority of the parliament – tried to protect their interests introducing a duty on imported corn, which led to high bred prices and sufferings of the poor. • The anti-corn law League was founded in Manchester in 1839, fostered by the Chartist, as a movement that appealed to the working and middle classes to join together in the fight for free trade and cheaper food. • The abolition of the Corn Law in 1846 signalled the transition of Great Britain from an agricultural country to an industrial economy and a government dominated by capital and the belief in free trade. THE STEAM LOCOMOTIVE • In 1813/14 George Stephenson, a British civil engineer, invented the first steam locomotive, designed to transport coal back and forth a coal mine. • Later, he also designed the first permanent locomotive service to carry passengers. In 1829, the first permanent passenger service opened. • The development of railway service was huge and abrupt, it led to an increase in iron production and engineering works. Shipbuilding was also innovated thanks to the adoption of steam as a mean of propulsion and iron instead of wood as building material. • In 1863 the first underground railway was opened between Paddington and Farrington Street. THE TELEGRAPH • Invented in 1837, the telegraph increased functionality and speed in communication, along with the Penny Postal System that made it easy for people to send letters anywhere in the UK. LONDON AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS • Along with new buildings and innovations, London was still filled with overcrowded slums where people lived in the worst conditions. The population had increased from 1mln in 1800 to 6mln in 1900. Poor sanitary conditions and the use of coal for heating made the air heavy and foul-smelling. Sewage was also thrown directly into the river Thames until the building of a pipes system could finally direct it outside the city. Crime rate was rising • However, many services were introduced (such as water, gas, and lighting). This age of optimism culminated in the Great Exhibition of 1851, which had the aim of showcasing British progress. • These were the values of the middle class:Mi mdle class people believed that progress, industry and colonial expansion brought wealth, which was regarded as a “moral” value. Poverty, on the other hand, was a crime and debtors were sent to prison. DARWIN’S THEORY • With the publication of On the Origin of the Species (1859) Darwin claimed that: Humans and animals shared a common ancestry • That nature was ruled by the law of natural selection, so that only the strong survived and the weak perished. • Despite religion was still one of the main sources of knowledge at the time, the publication of Darwin’s works challenged some of the main religious belief and the importance of faith itself and God’s role in the universe. DARWIN • Born in 1809 into a wealthy family in Shrewsbury, England • He started studying medicine at Edinburgh University, but his actual passion was natural history • He decided to apply to Christ’s College in order to become a country parson, so that he could have more free time for his studies. • At Christ’s College he met professor Henslow, who convinced him to participate into a 5 year journey on a ship around the world. During this journey, drawing recorder his observations and collected materials and zoological samples. He used these observations and proofs to develop his theory, supported by the studies of Charles Lyell. His theory was contrary to the scientific ideas of his day and in conflict with the accepted religious dogma of creationism. • Died in London, 1882. • On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859): The main thesis of Darwin’s theory is that all living creatures are subject to tiny variations (in form, size, colour, etc) over the generations. These inherited variations increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive and reproduce in their environment (to be fit for the environment  the survival of the fittest). Species with advantageous variations would were able to survive and reproduce, thus perpetrating their species. This process of descent with variation led to natural selection, the term Darwin used for evolution. RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS  One of the newest and fastest spreading religious movements was Evangelicalism, which tried to reform the Church of England through social reform and human welfare. For example, William Wilberforce is one of the main examples of Evangelical missionaries, as he headed the campaign for the abolition of slavery, achieved in 1807 with the Slave Trade Act.  Utilitarianism was another ideology of the Victorian middle class, founded by Jeremy Bentham, who supported the idea that only what was useful was good, and the moral, social and political actions should be directed to the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Bentham’s ideas were criticised for neglecting emotions, feelings and spiritual fulfilment of the individual LATE VICTORIAN AGE: THE EMPIRE AND FOREIGN POLICY • The first 40 years of Victorian reign were characterised by unquestionable economic, political and military success of the British Empire, and Victorians were convinced of their superiority and believed it was their moral duty (“The White Man’s Burden”) to export their language, culture and traditions to the uncivilised lands of the Empire: “Britain’s Imperial Destiny”. • The main purpose of the imperial expansion was commercial: to gain access to raw materials and to conquer new markets for British products. • The Empire also offered an opportunity to escape poor living conditions in Britain itself, as millions of British people emigrated to Canada and Australia. THE CRIMEAN WAR (1854-1856) • Britain and France fought with the Turks to stop Russian advance towards Constantinople. Britain didn’t want the Russians to threaten Turkish (and British) control over the Dardanelles, which connected the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, an area that allowed British fleet to access India. • The war was fought on the Crimean peninsula and won by Britain, but the human cost and losses were immense. This was the first media-covered war, thanks to the telegraph, which allowed reporters to send news in hours, not weeks. THE INDIAN REVOLT • India was of course one of the most important foreign possession (The East India Company was set up in 1600 by Elizabeth I). The EIC’s policy was that of destroying the Indian cotton industry to favour the cotton goods made in Manchester. However, in 1857 there was a revolt (The Indian Mutiny) in which the native soldiers of the EIC rebelled against the British commanders. The mutiny was supported by the Hindu aristocracy whose power was gradually being usurped by British officers. • Anyway, the revolt was suppressed and the British Gov. took over rule from the EIC in 1857. Queen Victoria was crowned “Empress of India”. THE OPIUM WARS  After China’s attempt to suppress the opium trade, that Britain had been exporting opium illegally through the EIC, which led to war in 1840. The British won and in the negotiations that followed, the Chinese had to cede Hong Kong and Shanghai.  The second Opium War was a continuation of the first, and was still won by the British army . Which had allied with the French. CANADA, AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZELAND  In the British parliament 2 different concepts of empire began to emerge: on the one side, there were those who opposed any freedom for the colonies, on the other, some people believed that the best way to preserve the Empire was to grant the colonies some degree of independence. British colonies in New Zeeland, Canada and Australia reflected on this new conception of colonization. Known as “colonies of settlement” these colonies attracted immigrants from Britain who settled, claimed the land and pushed the natives out. These colonies were also the first to obtain self-government: Canada in 1867, Australia and New Zeland in 1907. IRELAND  On the other hand, Ireland was not given home rule during the age of Victoria, and also had to endure a devastating famine from 1845 to 1847, the result of a failed potato crop among peasant population dependent on one food source for existence. Lots of Irish people emigrated to Americas and Australia. THE CIVIL WAR • When Abraham Lincoln, the candidate off the anti-slavery Republican Party was elected president in 1860, the delegates of the Southern States left the Union and created an independent government of “Confederate States of America” with Jefferson Davis as president, founded on the institution of slavery and on the supremacy of the white man. • The government of the United States declared the Confederacy illegitimate, and in April 1861 a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina marked the beginning of a bloody Civil War which continued until the spring of 1865. • On September 1862, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed all slaves in “enemy territory” as of 1 Jan. 1863. • In 1864, General Ulysses Grant took command of the Union forces and the conflict turned in favour of the Union. The civil war came to an end in 1865 with the surrender of the Confederate forces after a terrible conflict which had cost over half a million lives. • Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 and the new president, Andrew Johnson, had to deal with the consequences of the war. Under the Reconstruction Acts of 1878 the Southern States were readmitted to the Union. The 14th Amendment of 1868 gave American citizenship to former slaves and in 1870 black men were given the right to vote under the 15th Amendment. POST-WAR AMERICA • The slaves suddenly found themselves free in a totally hostile environment and many of them emigrated to the North. On the other side, many Southerners joined in organisations such as the Ku Klux Klan (founded in 1866). The West was seen as a land of opportunities. Many rushed to California looking for gold and ended up unsuccessful, so they settled down and became farmers. However, the west were not “empty” or desert, they were inhabited by Native Americans who had lived there long before the arrival of the Europeans. Native Americans were being relocated and removed from their land. Here’s a few steps on how that happened: • Indian Removal Act of 1830: Indians in the south east part of the USA were ordered to move because that land was valuable to the USA (they had to move to Oklahoma and many died) • The buffalo’s slaughter: during the 19th century, the American government promoted a large-scale buffalo hunting to favor the expansion of ranching and farming, the spread of the railway system, but mostly to deprive Native Americans of their primary source of food, clothing and manufacturing. The U.S., in fact, wanted native tribes to take up farming on the reservations that the American government provided, but the Sioux, the Kiowa, and Comanches, nearly all the tribes of the plains, lived alongside buffalo herds and took from them their skins for tents and their meat for food. • Homestead Act (1862): the government encouraged people to move west in return for free land (which previously belonged to the Native Americans). • With the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) the US government promised to give the land of Dakota to the Native Americans. And they actually did it, until… they found gold, and decided to repossess the land. • The Dawes Act of 1887 allowed the federal government to break up tribal lands. The federal government aimed to assimilate Native Americans into the US society by encouraging them towards farming and agriculture, which meant dividing tribal lands into individual, smaller pieces if land. Only the Native Americans who accepted the division of tribal lands were allowed to become US citizens. The main genre of the Victorian Age was the Novel, which perfectly embodied the moral values, the religious beliefs and the many contradictions of the period. The two main trends were the following: VICTORIAN COMPROMISE: When fictions had the aim to instruct their readers without bitterly criticising the world they belonged to. This trend was characterised by man’s belief in the goodness of scientific progress, of human nature and of social and economic development. It was also characterised by the attempt to combine a realistic representation of the problems of society with an adventurous tone and a moral aim. ANTI-VICTORIAN REACTION Writers who strongly criticised the values of their era and exposed all of its contradictions. This trend was influenced both by the spread of Darwin’s evolutionary theories, which redefined the role of man in the universe and changed the relationship between man and animal, and by the birth of Realism, a European literary movement that gave importance to the realistic representation of the world without the author’s personal judgement.  Realism was deeply influenced by POSITIVISM, a French philosophical theory based on the idea that human knowledge could be gained only through experience and tended to see life from a pessimistic point of view, in an objective or non-idealised way. EARLY VICTORIAN NOVELISTS The first phase of Victorian novelists includes writers who used prose to make a realistic portrait of society. Many of them set their novels in London and tried to represent the contradictions of the industrial Revolution and the consequences of the expansion of towns. However, criticism was never open – as European realistic writers used to do (*Victorian Compromise*). The Bronte Sisters: Emily and Charlotte, two of 3 sisters, managed to successfully publish two of the most- beloved novels of all times. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847) represented the natural development of the gothic, as its plot was centred around the impossible love between Heathcliff, a dark a mysterious hero, and Catherine, a woman torn between passion and social convention. The novel had elements of supernatural and explored the themes of love, death and immortality. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre revolved around a strong and passionate female character who fell in love with a mysterious man called Rochester. The novel explored the different shades of womanhood and the dark sides of human personality through the analysis of Jane and her alter-ego, Bertha Mason, Rochester’s secret crazy wife. LATE VICTORIAN NOVELISTS In the second phase of Victorian lit., criticism became stronger and realism more evident. Writers didn’t accept the Victorian compromise and used prose to denounce the evils of society without any reticence. Novels revolved around the idea of the divided self and of the duality of human nature, or the meaning of life in a world dominated by blind faith in progress and colonisation. Writers adopted a pessimistic point of view though aestheticism. • Lewis Carroll wrote novels for children. His Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1856) is still considered a classic of children’s literature. • Thomas Hardy’s novel, set in a rural imaginary world, were widely pessimistic and fatalist. In Tess of the D’Ubervilles, the female protagonist has a tragic life which will be dominated by an indifferent and dark fate. • Colonial Novel: as faith in Positivism started to fade and doubts about the good nature of human beings started to emerge, the theme of colonialism was approached by many writers. Rudyard Kipling, an English author born in Bombay, India, explored the encounter and complex relationship between the English and the Indians in colonial India. His novels showed the belief that the English had the right and duty to use their own system of values to “civilise” the Indians. He also wrote the Jungle Book (1893-94) for children THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE The 19th century saw the emergence of the literary tradition in the USA, whose authors became independent of their European counterparts in terms of style. Main authors will be Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlett Letter (1850), Herman Melville with Moby Dick (1851), Mark Twain (1835-1910) whose novels focus on the process of growing up of young male characters who are torn between respect of social conventions and freedom. His Tom Sawyer (1876) is a novel representing rebellious youth. Henry James (1843-1916) was an American author who spent most of his life in Europe. James’ masterpiece was The Portrait of a Lady (1881), an analysis of the encounter between two worlds, Europe and America, his narrative techniques anticipated some later trends of Modern writings. VICTORIAN POETRY In an Era dominated by prose only two figures emerge: Alfred Tennyson (1809-92) and Robert Browning (1812-1889), both authors used dramatic monologue as a technique: along poetic composition in which a single character speaks about his own life and reaches an objective quality highly appreciated. Tennyson’s Ulysses (1842), is a dramatic monologue revolving around the theme of the end of heroism and the human quest for knowledge. Browning, instead, drew inspiration from the Italian Renaissance and its main poetic characters. The last phase of the Victorian poetic production was characterised by the works of authors who were members of a group of artists and intellectuals called: the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The members of this group, which included authors such as Dante Gabriele Rossetti (1828-82), Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) and William Morris (1834-1896), drew inspiration from the pure style of medieval art before the stylistic revolution brought about by Raphael and his followers. They wrote poems that celebrated mysticism, sensuality and nostalgia. American poetry, instead, had authors such as Whitman and Dickinson, which we’ll discuss later, and Victorian Drama saw the birth of modern British Drama (Wilde and Shaw). EMILY BRONTE  She was born in 1818 in Bradford, Yorkshire, she was Anglican.  In 1846 she included some of the poems that she had written in a collection called Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. These were pseudonyms used by the sister (Charlotte, Emily and Anne) to disguise their feminine identity. Only two copied were sold.  Two years later, 1847, she published Wuthering Heights.  Soon after the publication, she died of tuberculosis in 1848 at 30 yo.  After Emily died, Charlotte prepared a version of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey (Anne’s novel) that was published in 1850 and contained a preface in which Charlotte outlined the biography of Emily and Anne mentioning them as women and calling Emily “sister”. WUTHERING HEIGHTS The book is the retrospective narration of a visitor in Yorkshire telling the story of two households: Wuthering Heights, the home of the Eatnshaws, and Thrushcross Grange, the home of the Lintons. The story begins 30 years earlier when Heathcliff, an orphan, is adopted by Mr Earnshaw. When Mr. Earnshaw dies, his son Hindley sends Heathcliff to work in the fields and Catherine, who he loved, marries the well-born and rich Edgar Linton from Thrushcross Grange. Years later, Heathcliff wil return as a rich man to exact revenge on both families.  Complex style and construction: use of flashbacks, flashforwards, idiomatic language and descriptions. For example, the book begins at the end of the story when, Mr Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, visits Heathcliff at W.H., and is forced to stop for the night because of a snowstorm. During the night he is woken up by the noise of a tree tapping on the window, which is actually Catherine’s ghost. Puzzled, the lawyer visits Jekyll and their mutual friend Dr. Lanyon to try to learn more. Lanyon reports that he no longer sees much of Jekyll, since they had a dispute over the course of Jekyll’s research, which Lanyon calls “unscientific balderdash.” Curious, Utterson stakes out a building that Hyde visits—which, it turns out, is a laboratory attached to the back of Jekyll’s home. Encountering Hyde, Utterson is amazed by how undefinably ugly the man seems, as if deformed, though Utterson cannot say exactly how. Much to Utterson’s surprise, Hyde willingly offers Utterson his address. A year passes uneventfully. Then, one night, a servant girl witnesses Hyde brutally beat to death an old man named Sir Danvers Carew, a member of Parliament and a client of Utterson. The police contact Utterson, and Utterson suspects Hyde as the murderer. He leads the officers to Hyde’s apartment. When they arrive at the apartment, the murderer has vanished, and police searches prove futile. Shortly thereafter, Utterson again visits Jekyll, who now claims to have ended all relations with Hyde; he shows Utterson a note, allegedly written to Jekyll by Hyde, apologizing for the trouble he has caused him and saying goodbye. That night, however, Utterson’s clerk points out that Hyde’s handwriting bears a remarkable similarity to Jekyll’s own. efore dying, however, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter, with instructions that he not open it until after Jekyll’s death. Meanwhile, Utterson goes out walking with Enfield, and they see Jekyll at a window of his laboratory; the three men begin to converse, but a look of horror comes over Jekyll’s face, and he slams the window and disappears. Soon afterward, Jekyll’s butler, Mr. Poole, visits Utterson in a state of desperation: Jekyll has secluded himself in his laboratory for several weeks, and now the voice that comes from the room sounds nothing like the doctor’s. The two of them resolve to break into Jekyll’s laboratory. Inside, they find the body of Hyde, wearing Jekyll’s clothes and apparently dead by suicide—and a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain everything. Utterson takes the document home, where first he reads Lanyon’s letter; it reveals that Lanyon’s deterioration and eventual death were caused by the shock of seeing Mr. Hyde take a potion and metamorphose into Dr. Jekyll. The second letter constitutes a testament by Jekyll. It explains how Jekyll, seeking to separate his good side from his darker impulses, discovered a way to transform himself periodically into a deformed monster free of conscience—Mr. Hyde. At first, Jekyll reports, he delighted in becoming Hyde and rejoiced in the moral freedom that the creature possessed. Eventually, however, he found that he was turning into Hyde involuntarily in his sleep, even without taking the potion. At this point, Jekyll resolved to cease becoming Hyde. One night, however, the urge gripped him too strongly, and after the transformation he immediately rushed out and violently killed Sir Danvers Carew. It was the onset of one of these spontaneous metamorphoses that caused Jekyll to slam his laboratory window shut in the middle of his conversation with Enfield and Utterson. Eventually, the potion began to run out, and Jekyll was unable to find a key ingredient to make more. His ability to change back from Hyde into Jekyll slowly vanished. Jekyll writes that even as he composes his letter he knows that he will soon become Hyde permanently, and he wonders if Hyde will face execution for his crimes or choose to kill himself. Jekyll notes that, in any case, the end of his letter marks the end of the life of Dr. Jekyll. With these words, both the document and the novel come to a close. NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE • The story is told from different perspectives. We learn things and details from Mr. Utterson, Dr. Lanyon, Dr. Jekyll’s maid, a member of the Parliament and finally Jekyll himself, through confession. • However, for most of the story, we follow Mr. Utterson’s point of view. In the beginning, he accidentally meet Mr. Hyde and remains extremely suspicious about him and about his ties with Dr. Jekyll. Throughout the novel, Mr. Utterson will guide the reader into understanding what is going on step by step: the effect is to keep the reader in the dark, and to make him share Utterson’s bewilderment and horror as the story proceeds. • These elements of horror, suspense, double morality and scientific research are aspects of the Gothic tradition (for example, Shelley’s Frankenstein). However, Stevenson combines elements of Gothic with the emerging genre of detective fiction. SETTING • The story is set in a dark, grey and foggy London and most of the action occurs at night, the time when Mr. Hyde operates. Jekyll’s house is also symbolic: the front door and façade is elegant and well put, while the back door used by Hyde is in a dark, gloomy building with no windows. THOMAS HARDY • Born in 1840 he worked as an architect. • His first unpublished novel was The Poor Man and the Lady, written in 1867 and then in 1871 he published Desperate Remedies, in 1872 Far from the Madding Crowd, which brought him great success. • Living and working in London he continued to write: Tess of the D’Ubervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895): pessimism and frank treatment of sexual relations • He began to write plays for the theatre and poetry, including Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898) • He was appointed President of the Society of Authors in 1909. • Died in 1928. His ashes are in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. • He categorized his many novels as Novels of Character and Environment, including Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) etc… all set in a fictional area of Wessex. • The term cliff-hanger was coined to describe his stories. TESS OF THE D’UBERVILLES (A Pure Woman) (1891) The story is about the tragic life of young Tess, who becomes the victim of the men she meets. Tess is sent by her family to claim kinship with the rich cousins Stoke-D’Ubervilles and work for them. She is raped by Alec D’Uberville and gets pregnant. She comes home and after birth her baby dies soon. She finds a new job as a milkmaid and meets Angel Clare and they get married. Before their wedding night, they both confess their past affairs but Angel can’t forgive Tess and abandons her and leaves for Brazil. When he comes back, ready to forgive her, Tess has taken Alec as her lover. In desperation, Tess stabs Alec and runs off to find Angel. They try to escape together but then Tess is arrested, sent to jail and hanged.  Hardy had a pessimistic view of life: determinism. Man’s fate is controlled by a blind and indifferent force: Fare of circumstances.  He was a realist writer and uses the 3rd person omniscient narrator, who often comments and expresses his opinion  He uses the Dorset dialect.  Naturalism influence: naturalist writers were influenced by Darwin in their belief that human being were controlled by forces beyond their control: biology and the environment. However, Hardy also tried to give dignity to his characters OSCAR WILDE • He was born in 1854 in Dublin. He was the son of a famous, wealthy doctor. He was a brilliant student and studied at Trinity College, Dublin where he had excellent results. • He moved to London, where he started publishing poetry and became pretty popular. In fact, he started lecturing around the world, in America and Europe. He started being recognized as the leading figure of the aesthetic movement. • He then worked as the editor of a Women’s magazine and married a wealthy English woman and had 2 sons. He published The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1890. The novel was said to be immoral. • In 1892 he stages his first play, Lady Windermere’s Fan, which was well received and successful and led him to devote himself to theatre in the following years, with a series of important successes (his masterpiece being The Importance of Being Earnest). • He was brought to trial for having an affair with the young Lord Alfred Douglas, whose father – Lord Queensberry - accused him of homosexuality. Wilde, in response, accused Queensberry of libel (diffamazione). The libel case against Queensberry was rejected, while Wilde was accused of “gross indecency” and sentenced to 2 years of imprisonment and hard labour. • When Wilde came out of prison he had been abandoned by many of his friends and was physically and mentally weaker. He moved to France but wrote very little. He died in 1900 at 46 years old. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST • Jack Worthing is a wealthy and idle young man who leads a double life. In fact, he has invented a brother in London (Ernest) as a pretext to go there. • In London, under the name of Ernest, he proposes to Gwendolen, who accepts because she has always wanted to marry someone named Earnest, as she thought it was such a respectable name. • Gwendoline’s mother – Lady Bracknell - wants to stop the marriage after finding out that Ernest is a foundling (he doesn’t trust him not having any parent). • Back to the countryside, Gwendoline’s cousin, Algernon, comes to visit Jack but, while Jack isn’t there. Therefore, Algernon pretends to be Jack’s brother (Ernest) and proposes to Cecily, Jack’s half cousin. She accepts because she is also fascinated by the name Ernest. • When Cecily meets Gwendoline, they talk and find out the truth about their fiancés’ names. • In the end, thanks to a coincidence, Lady Bracknell recognizes Cecily’s governess as the same governess who had worked for her sister a long time ago. She reveals that the governess had accidentally lost a baby – Lady Bracknell’s nephew – at Victoria Station. • Jack brings back the same handbag where he was found, at Victoria Station, 28 years before, demonstrating that he is Lady Bracknell’s nephew, whose actual name was Ernest John. • The two couples can get married THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY Summary: In the stately London home of his aunt, Lady Brandon, the well-known artist Basil Hallward meets Dorian Gray. Dorian is a cultured, wealthy, and impossibly beautiful young man who immediately captures Basil’s artistic imagination. Dorian sits for several portraits, and Basil often depicts him as an ancient Greek hero or a mythological figure. When the novel opens, the artist is completing his first portrait of Dorian as he truly is, but, as he admits to his friend Lord Henry Wotton, the painting disappoints him because it reveals too much of his feeling for his subject. Lord Henry, a famous wit who enjoys scandalizing his friends by celebrating youth, beauty, and the selfish pursuit of pleasure, disagrees, claiming that the portrait is Basil’s masterpiece. Dorian arrives at the studio, and Basil reluctantly introduces him to Lord Henry, who he fears will have a damaging influence on the impressionable, young Dorian. Basil’s fears are well founded; before the end of their first conversation, Lord Henry upsets Dorian with a speech about the transient nature of beauty and youth. Worried that these, his most impressive characteristics, are fading day by day, Dorian curses his portrait, which he believes will one day remind him of the beauty he will have lost. In a fit of distress, he pledges his soul if only the painting could bear the burden of age and infamy, allowing him to stay forever young. After Dorian’s outbursts, Lord Henry reaffirms his desire to own the portrait; however, Basil insists the portrait belongs to Dorian. Dorian falls in love with Sibyl Vane, a young actress who performs in a theater in London’s slums. He adores her acting; she, in turn, refers to him as “Prince Charming” and refuses to heed the warnings of her brother, James Vane, that Dorian is no good for her. Overcome by her emotions for Dorian, Sibyl decides that she can no longer act, wondering how she can pretend to love on the stage now that she has experienced the real thing. Dorian, who loves Sibyl because of her ability to act, cruelly breaks his engagement with her. After doing so, he returns home to notice that his face in Basil’s portrait of him has changed: it now sneers. Frightened that his wish for his likeness in the painting to bear the ill effects of his behavior has come true and that his sins will be recorded on the canvas, he resolves to make amends with Sibyl the next day. The following afternoon, however, Lord Henry brings news that Sibyl has killed herself. At Lord Henry’s urging, Dorian decides to consider her death a sort of artistic triumph—she personified tragedy—and to put the matter behind him. Meanwhile, Dorian hides his obsessive behavior. This nature of Ahab’s obsession is first revealed to Ishmael and Queequeg after the Pequod’s owners, Peleg and Bildad, explain to them that Ahab is still recovering from an encounter with a large whale that resulted in the loss of his leg. That whale’s name is Moby Dick. The Pequod sets sail, and the crew is soon informed that this journey will be unlike their other whaling missions: this time, despite the reluctance of Starbuck, Ahab intends to hunt and kill the beastly Moby Dick no matter the cost. Ahab and the crew continue their eventful journey and encounter a number of obstacles along the way. Queequeg falls ill, which prompts a coffin to be built in anticipation of the worst. After he recovers, the coffin becomes a replacement lifeboat that eventually saves Ishmael’s life. Ahab receives a prophecy from a crew member informing him of his future death, which he ignores. Moby Dick is spotted and, over the course of three days, engages violently with Ahab and the Pequod until the whale destroys the ship, killing everyone except Ishmael. Ishmael survives by floating on Queequeg’s coffin until he is picked up by another ship, the Rachel. The novel consists of 135 chapters, in which narrative and essayistic portions intermingle, as well as an epilogue and front matter. WALT WHITMAN • Born in New York in 1819. His family was poor and he started working at 11 years old as an office boy • At 17 he started teaching, which he did until becoming a journalist: a had radical opinion on themes such as women’s rights or immigration. The main debate, at the time, was about slavery, which Whitman believe was a disgrace and a shame for the American Republic • In 1855 he published his first collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, which contained 12 poems. Even though the collection was not an immediate success, it was well received and praised by Emerson, philosopher and poet that was well respected at the time. • As a consequence, Whitman later published a new version of Leave Of Grass containing 32 works. • A new version was published in 1860, but with the beginning of the Civil War and Whitman’s publisher going bankrupt, it wasn’t enough to support Whitman’s family • During the war he worked supporting wounded soldiers, a touching experience that is recounted in is next work Drum-Taps, published in 1865, and a final elegy When Lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, about the death of Abraham Lincoln. • Later, He moved on to working in the Indian Bureau of the Department of Interior in Washington and continue to publish his works: Democratic Vistas and Passage to India (1871) and a new edition of Leaves of Grass. • In 1873 he suffered a stroke and had to move in with his brother in New Jersey. He was partially paralysed and couldn’t work anymore. He was able to continue writing, publishing one more version of Leaves of Grass. The last one, published in 1889, contained 300 poems EMILY DICKINSON  Born in 1830 in Massachusetts. Dressed only in white and reclusive.  Maintained correspondence with friends  Only seven out of 1775 poems she wrote were published during her lifetime. These poems were kept in a drawer and discovered by her sister after she had died in 1886  Transcendentalism: emphasis on personal experience and subjunctive intuition over empiricism  In her poetry, extensive use of dashes, that often replace commas and full stops  Most of her poems are short lyrics written in quatrains that make use of imperfect rhymes or assonance THE AGE OF ANXIETY 1901-1949  1901 The Death of Queen Victoria  Edward III succeeded at 59.  The liberal party won the election of 1906 and remained in power until 1915. At this moment, only 60% of adult men (over the age of 21) had the right to vote and no woman could vote.  29 members of the new labour party were also elected, which worked to pass measures designed to help the working class, like old age pension and the adoption of a National Insurance scheme.  The Women’s social and Political Union (WSPU) was formed in Manchester in 1930: suffragettes, led by Emily Pankhurst.  Emily Wilding Davidson died in 1913 when she threw herself in front of the King’s horse at the Epson Derby  After the War, The Representation of People Act of 1918 finally granted voting rights to women over 30 who were property owners and, in 1928 to all women over 21  At the beginning of the century Ireland was entirely included in the British territory  Southern Ireland did not become independent until 1922  The British Government had promised “Home Rule” to Ireland in the early years but with the Great War the question was postponed. A group of rebels, led by Eamon Valera and the Sinn Féin (We Alone) nationalist party, took action.  On Easter Monday 196 they staged the Easter Rising in Dublin. The rebels took control of some of the central buildings in the capital city and unilaterally proclaimed the Irish Republic.  British forces violently shut down the rebellion. Many rebels were executed by fighting squads in Kilmainham Gaol in the following weeks.  Creation of the Irish free state in 1922. This process led to the partition of that part of Ireland (which was mostly protestant): six counties of Ulster with its capital city in Belfast, which remained part of the UK.  At the beginning of the Great War, Britain prided herself for her “Splendid Isolation” however, when the German Emperor began to build up his own navy, Britain delft challenged and the Prime Minister, Balfour, negotiated an Entente Cordiale with France: it was an arrangement to support each other in case of attack of a third country.  The agreement became the Triple Entente in 1907, when Russia joined.  King Edward VII died in 1910 and was succeeded by his son George V, who was king until 1936 (death)  The immediate cause of the War was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo  by Jugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Prinzip in June 1914  Germany invasion of neutral Belgium .  Italy enters war on May 1915, siding with the Triple Entente.  Initially all the soldier of British forces were volounteers.. Conscription was imposed in 1916.  The United States joined in April 1917 and Germany was defeated on the 11 th November 1918.  A Peace Treaty followed, signed in Paris on 28 June 1919  Remembrance Day, Armisticce Day, at 11 am on 11th November every year: Two minutes of silence. The tradition was introduced by King George V  ON 1 May 1926 the Traders Union Congress (TUC), a federation representing most of the traders unions in Britain, announced a general strike to begin at midnight on 3rd May. Between 1.5 to 1.75 people participated, which paralysed Britain (The prime minister was Stanley Naldwin)  1927 Trade Disputes Act made general strikes illegal  Great depression followed the Wall Street Crash in October 1929  The BBC (British broadcasting company) was founded in 1922 (became British Broadcasting corporation in 1927)  1935 creating of Penguin Books  A new idea of Commonwealth was defined by the prime minister Balfour with the Balfour Declaration of 1926, which established a new relationship between Britain and her Dominions, based on equal status. The Belfour Declaration was formalised officially by the Statute of Westminster in 1931. In it, the British Government recognised the complete independence of the self-governing Dominions and their equality with Great Britain under the Crown. India was not mentioned in this statute and, previous the Westminster Statute, the relationship with India worsened..  The Indian National Congress fought for Dominion Status for India and Mahatma Gandhi launched a major civil disobedience movement, which would eventually result in the independence of India in 1947.  The British Nationality Act of 1948 granted subjects of the British Commonwealth the right to live and work in the UK. Immigrants flowed.  In 1917, George V proclaimed that all English monarchs would adopt the surname of Windsor.  A constitutional crisis occurred in 1936 as the new king Edward VII wanted to get married to Wallis Simpson. Edward had to abdicate in favour of his brother George VI, who reigned until his death in 1952. SECOND WORLD WAR  The Prime Minister Neville Chaberlain didn’t want to involve the nation in another conflict. He flew to Germany to discuss with Hitler in 1938 and was prepared to scarify Czecoslovachia to Germany.  The German invasion of Poland the 1st September 1939 finally pushed the Prime Minister into action and Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1949, with the allied powers of France and Russia, and later the US against Germany, Italy and Japan.  April 1940 Germany invaded Norway and Denmark.  May 1940 Winston Churchill was made prime minister (Conservative party).  France surrendered to Germany and Britain had to face it alone. The RAF, Royal Air Force battled in the sky  Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 brings the US into the war.  The allies achieve victory in Europe on 8 may 1945, followed by victory in Japan after the atomic bombs launched on Hiroshima (6 aug.) and Nagasaki (9 aug.).  Slogan “from the cradle to the grave”  1944 schooling reform  1945 Family Allowances Act  1946 National Insurances Act (help for sick and unemployed)  1948 National Health Service Act, gave free medical treatment for everyone .  The key sector of economy (Bank of England, the power, steel and railway were nationalised). UNITED STATES  President Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive Movement), elected in 1901, passed many reforms (laws to limit the power of monopolies an trusts, he protected natural wealth by establishing a myriad of national parks and regulated the railroads.)  After his recognition of the new Republic of Panama, the US was able to take over the construction of the Panama Canal, which connects the Atlantic with the pacific ocean  In 1913 the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution established the first national income tax and direct election of US Senators to Congress  In 1920 the 19th Amendment to the Constitution gave women the right to vote  African American men had been give the right to vote by the 15th amendment in 1870 but in reality a number of discriminatory practices made this difficult or impossible.  Jim Crow laws were passed by the Southern States and cities from 1880s that legalized segregation between blacks and whites. In 1896 the Supreme Court established separate facilities. In 1963 ML King’s march over Washington and “I have a dream” speech  1965 President Lyndon Johnson passed the voting Rights Act, which guaranteed this democratic right  FIRST WW: President Woodrow Wilson, who was elected in 1912 led America through the First World War. American forces were sent to Europe in 1918  He used poetry to discuss social issues of his time. He used: symbolic but not obscue language and a high level of experimentation, which led him to reformulate many poetic forms of the past giving them new life.  Louis MacNeice: his poems combine humour and tragedy while tackling important contemporary issues, such as war and politics, and reflect the author’s fascination with his homeland, Northern Ireland.  Dylan Thomas, who was Welsh, was one of the main exponents of “New Romanticism” a literary movement that reacted against the cerebral poetry of previous authors such as Auden. Thomas became the prototype of the romantic poet: his first collection of poems “Eighteen Poems” was published in 1934 and was followed by many other works such as The Map of Love (1939), Death and Entrances (1946) and In Country Sleep (1952). His poems revolve around universal themes.  American Poetry: Ezra Pound and TS Eliot were born American, but they spent most of their lives in Europe.  Edgar Lee Masters and Robert Frost were two important American poets of the first half of the 20 th century. Lee Master is the author of Spoon River Anthology (1915), a collection of more than 200 epitaphs written for the inhabitants of the imaginary village of Spoon Rivers.  Frost focused on local life and his poems were mostly set in New England.  Drama: T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral (1935) which draw inspiration from the murder of Thomas Becket.  In Ireland the Irish Literary Theatre was quite revolutionary. Founded by the poet and playwright William Butler Yeats in 1899 it became the Abbey Theatre in 1904. The company aimed to revive the tradition of Irish national theatre by combining nationalistic praise for Irish folklore with a more modern interest in social issues and the use of realistic language.  Some remarkable drama from the US: Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar named desire 1947) and Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman 1949) RUBERT BROOKE  Born in Warwickshire in 1887 he studied in Cambridge at King’s College  His early poetic writings represented an idyllic view of the English countryside.  After a nervous breakdown he travelled to Italy, Germany, North America, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.  He went into the Royal Naval Division when the first WW started.  He published his first collection of poems in 1912 (Georgian Poetry, 1911-1912). The title suggested that he belonged to a group of writers called Georgian Poets, who rejected the didactic style of Victorian Poetry and dealt with humble themes with a melancholic and elegiac tone.  His most famous poetic work is the sonnet collection entitles 1914 & Other Poems, published in 1915, the year of his death, which expresses an idealistic and enthusiastic praise for war, which made him very popular.  Brooke did not have a long experience of war as he contracted blood poisoning and was then sent to hospital. This fact prevented him from experiencing the most terrible aspects of war and explain his exaltations.  The soldier experience was seen by Brooke as a sacrifice for the Nation and war was glorified as a triumph of patriotism and heroism. SIEGFRIED SASSOON (1886-1967)  Born on 8 September 1886 in Kent, he studied at Cambridge University but left without a degree.  He lived a comfortable life and began to publish small volume of poetry.  His war poetry includes Counter-attack and Other Poems (1918) and War Poems (1919).  In May 1915 he went to fight in France but returned the following year. He was wounded in 1917 and returned to England again.  He met several leading pacifists and became disillusioned with war. His open opposition to war nearly led to a court-martial.  While he was in hospital in Edinburgh he met, and greatly influenced, the poet Wilfred Owen, who was later killed in 1918, while Sassoon was wounded again in Palestine but survived.  After the war he continued to write poetry and authobiographical novels, The Complete Memoirs of Geroge Sherston (1937)  Sassoon’s post war work was characterised by his spiritual concerns, leading to his conversion to Catholicism in 1957. His religious poetry is generally considered inferior to his production during and after war  He died in September 1967.  His war poems used explicit and simple language, perfect control of meter and rhyme. Many criticised him for lack of patriotism and violence in his poems. His philosophy of “no truth unfitting” with its insistence on the most horrific details of war such as rotten corpses, suicides and filth, had an important impact on later poetry.  The inscriprion on the stone tablet dedicated to the poets of the First WW in the Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity” WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865-1939)  Born in Dublin he was the son of a well-known portrait painter, John Butler Yeats. He attended the Dublin School of Art.  After the publication of his poems in the Dublin University Review in 1885, he abandoned the art school to dictate himself to a literary career  His interest focused on Ireland and Irish folk tales, leading to a collection of poems entitled The Wandering of Oisin and Other Poems (1889), based on the story of a mythical hero.  However, he was not involved in Irish struggle for independence  He wrote several theatrical works and together with Lady Gregory, a noblewoman who supported the cause for Irish independence, founded the Literary Theatre in Dublin.  His plays focused o Irish legends and his fascination with mysticism and spiritualism. The Countess Cathleen (1892), The Land of Heart’s Desire (1894)), Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), The King’s Threshold (1904) and Deirdre (1907) are among the best known.  In 1889 he met and fell in love with Moud Gonne, a young English heiress and Irish Nationalsit. He proposed to her 4 times and was rejected each time. In 1903 Maud married the irish Nationalist Major John MacBride.  Yeats marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees in 1917 introduced him to “automatic writing” in which his wife’s communicators provided him with the symbolism found in many of his collections, including A Vision (1925), The Tower (1928) and Last Poems and Two Plays (1939).  Yeats was the editor of The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936)  Yeats was a convinced patriot and in his youth was a member of the Irish republican Brotherhood, but he could not accept the hatred and the bigotry of the Nationalist movement, and in Waster, 1916 his poetry reacted against it.  He was appointed to the Irish Senate in 1922  In 1923 he won the Nobel Prize in literature (first Irish man)  Died in 1939  His production can be divided into 3 phases: early works, based on Irish folkore, Celtic tradition and themes of love and mysticism and include poems such as The Celtic Twilight. Second Phase: works that are more powerful and modernist, with social criticism in which the poet took a position on the historical events that led to the War of Independence and to the birth of the free State of Ireland (1922). He was critical toward the excessive violence of Irish nationalists and adopted a form of anti-military patriotism. Third phase: spiritualism and a return to themes of the opposition between art and life, masks and the ideal of beauty contrasting with the confusion of modern life. Poems such as The Second Coming (1920) incorporated the idea of “gyre” – a historical cycle of about 2000 years which foresaw a decline into anarchy of European culture.  The poem which best shows Yeats’ commitment to the historical events of the Irish Question is Easter, 1916 (1921) a poem in which the poet expressed mixed feelings about the facts that led to the Easter Rising in 1916, an uprising of Irish rebels who were bloodily executed by the British Amry. THOMAS STEARNS ELIOT (1888-1965)  Poet, playwright and critic, he was born in 1888 in Missouri. He studied at Harvard and in 1910 he moved to Paris where he studied at the Sorbonne.  Moved to England in 1914 where he got married and started working as a teacher and then at Lloyd’s Bank.  Met Ezra Pound in London, who helped him publish his poems.  In 1925 he left his job for a position with Faber and Faber, a London publishing house which he later directed.  In 1927 he became an Anglican and a British citizen.  Wrote a series of important poetical works: The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock (1915), the collection Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) and his great poetic masterpiece The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925) Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1943). Eliot also wrote seven plays, the best known is Murder in the Cathedral (1935)  He used techniques like pastiche and juxtaposition  He got the nobel prize in 1948 and died in 1965 The Waste Land – Structure:  Part 1: The Burial of the dead: mainly juxtapositions between fertility/sterility; life/death.  Part 2: A Game of Chess: sterility of modern life/splendour of the past  Part 3: The Fire Sermon: deals with the theme of love, which is presented as mere, fruitless sexual desire  Part 5: What the Thunder said: theme of spiritual journey of humanity through the desert of modernity. Idea of a possible revelation that never comes.  The poem is written in free verse and characterised by high level of experimentation. It rejects any kind of narrative structure and contains different and apparently disconnected themes.: historical fragmentation of western civilization  Frequent references to the Holy Grail, the myth of the Fisher King: ancient myths to add a layer of spirituality and wisdom to modern world  The objective correlative: Eliot doesn’t describe the sterility of Western civilisation in clear terms, but juxtaposes a series of apparently incoherent images and symbols whose aim is to produce the idea of sterility. It is a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion that a writer seeks to evoke in the reader. The purpose is to express emotion by showing rather than describing,