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ENGLISH
THE VICTORIAN AGE
the victorian age was a period in which progress, wealth and political stability coexisted with poverty, injustice and many people had to live in unhealthy conditions. victorian society was characterized by utilitarianism, a social philosophy which believed in the development of a society able to guarantee happiness to more families. it considered important values like respectability, morality, prudery, helping the poors, the patriarchal family. women improved their social condition and began to work in factories or as journalists, writers and teachers. social darwinism, which developed around 1870, was applied to human society by the philosopher spencer. he analyzed that races, nations and social classes were also subject to the principle of the “survival of the fittest” and because of this he stated that the poors did not deserve compassion.
THE VICTORIAN NOVEL
during the victorian age novels became the most popular form in literature. novelists wrote about social problems that were created by big changes like the industrial revolution and the mushroom cities. new publishing methods were introduced: for example dickens published his novels in newspapers and magazines and kept the attention of the public by using the suspense technique.
- the voice of the omniscient narrator created a sort of barrier between wrong and right behaviour;
- the setting was often the city, the symbol of the industrial civilization;
- the novelists described society as it was, without using any filter;
- many novelists were women, who published their books using a male pseudonym. there are many types of victorian novels, the most important are:
- humanitarian novel: requested reforms for the poors and exposed the victorian incoherence. an example is “oliver twist” by dickens;
- novel of formation: talked about one character development during his life;
- nonsense novel: carroll with “alice in wonderland” created a universe where no social rules exist;
- realistic novel: talked about a society that lived in a period of crisis due to scientific discoveries like darwin’s evolutionary theory;
- psychological novel: tried to capture the illogical aspects of life and talked about the double nature of the victorian society (the corrupted aristocracy that preached morality and the poor districts of the cities). an example is “the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde” by stevenson.
DICKENS
dickens had an unhappy childhood: after his father was imprisoned he was sent to work in a factory. at 15 he began to work as a reporter for a newspaper and published “sketches”, a series of articles that described london’s people. dickens’ novels are inspired by the bible and gothic novels and their distinctive feature was the critical attitude towards society and the setting in london. his most known books are oliver twist, the symbol of the exploitation of children, and hard times, that made people aware of the condition of the poor. in fact, dickens’ task was to made the ruling social classes aware of society problems and he was always on the side of the working class.
oliver twist
the homonymous protagonist is a poor boy born in a workhouse near london. when he asks for more food, the parish official sells him. oliver manages to escape to london and there he becomes a pickpocket. though, he is caught on his first stealing attempt by mr brownlow, who adopts him and takes care of him. london, the setting of the novel, is described on three social levels:
- the world of the workhouses, where poor people are exploited and live in appalling conditions;
- the criminal world of pickpockets and murderers;
- the world of the middle class, where respectable people live a dignified life.
STEVENSON
stevenson was born in edinburgh and because of his poor health, he spent most of his childhood in bed. as an adult he was in conflict with the victorian environment because he lived as a bohemien: he grew his hair and had an eccentric personality. stevenson became a popular novelist when he published “the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde”.
the strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde
mr utterson begins to question about the odd behaviour of his friend, the scientist dr jekyll. he has created a potion that has the ability of release his evil side, mr hyde, but the formula is not perfect so mr hyde slowly achieves domination over dr jekyll. he now has two choices:
- a life of crime;
- the elimination of mr hyde, which is only achievable with suicide. the story takes place in london and reflects its double nature: the respectability of the victorians on one hand and the poverty on the other. most scenes take place at night, when there is no natural light but only the artificial lighting of jekyll’s house. the idea of this novel came to stevenson while he was dreaming: he wrote in his diary that he had dreamt a man in a laboratory that, after doing drugs, transformed into a different person. in light of this, the story can be considered a psychological search into unexplored regions of the human psyche.
KIPLING
kipling was born in india and at the age of 6 he moved to england. there he started to publish his collections of poems about indian life. after marriage he moved to america with his wife ad published the two volumes of “the jungle book”. it is a series of episodes held together by a central character, mowgli, a child that grew up in the jungle with the animals. kipling’s book became famous among children especially due to the disney film. the writer’s style shows his love for words and his ability to use them to express feelings and emotions.
WILDE
oscar wilde became a celebrity for his extraordinary and eccentric style. he accepted the theory of “art for art's sake” related to the aestheticism movement and to the figure of the dandy. aestheticism was the search of the beautiful through several types of art (painting, sculpting, writing), that were different forms of the same truth. after the publishment of the picture of dorian gray he got interested in drama and wrote a series of plays settled in london, among which his masterpiece, the importance of being earnest. wilde’s golden years ended when he taken to court and condemned to two years of hard labour for being homosexual. when he was released he went on exile in paris and there he died.
the picture of dorian gray
the novel is set in london at the end of the 19th century and is told in third person with an internal perspective (so that the reader can identify himself with the characters). the protagonist is dorian gray, a beautiful young man whose appearance fascinates a painter, basil hallward, that portraits him. dorian is increasingly influenced by lord henry, that drives him in a life of corruption and pleasure, but the young man doesn’t show on his appearance the signs provoked by his age or his sins, because they appear on the portrait (that represents the dark side of dorian, which he tries to forget by locking the painting in a room) when basil sees the corrupted image, dorian kills him because he thinks he is responsible for his tortured existence. though, dorian wants to get rid of the painting and free himself from its curse, so he stabs it but in doing so he kills himself: the picture returns to his original beauty while dorian acquires his real appearance. the moral of the novel is that there is no escape from reality, in fact when dorian destroys the picture he dies. the characters are defined indirectly by what they do or say:
- dorian represents the ideal beauty, innocence and purity, but becomes corrupted due to the influence of lord henry and symbol of the bourgeois hypocrisy;
- the picture represents the victorian corrupted ideals and immorality;
- lord henry is an intellectual, he lives up to the aesthetics ideals and he is apparently superficial;
- basil hallward is the example of how an artist can be destroyed by his own art, as a sacrifice.
THE EDWARDIAN AGE
when queen victoria died, her son edward became king. during his reign many things changed:
- britain signed an alliance (the triple entente) with france and russia against italy, germany and austria;
- the welfare state was born and introduced pensions for old people, free meals and medical inspections in schools, medical treatments for workers;
- the movement of the suffragettes wanted for women the right to vote and organized large protest marches in many cities. women over 30 gained the vote at the end of world war I.
THE MODERN NOVEL
the novel has bourgeois origins and because of this it was deeply connected to society: the novelist had to present a social pattern that must be familiar to both characters and readers. when the british society shifted from the victorian age to the inter-war years, also the novel had to change its style and function and became to reflect moral and psychological uncertainties: ● this view tended to shift from society to the individual; ● the omniscient narration was rejected and replaced by new methods to investigate the individual consciousness; ● the point of view was the internal world of the human mind; ● time became subjective and internal, because when the viewpoint is internal there is no point in building a chronological plot; ● novelists developed the new narrative technique of the “stream of consciousness”, which is a continuous flow of thoughts and feelings used to recall what happens in the human mind; during the first decades of the 20th century there were lots of innovators, which can be divided into three main groups:
- psychological novelists: focused on the human mind, its development and its ability to interact;
- the novelists who used subjective narrative methods to explore human mind, like james joyce;
- the novelists committed to social and political problems, like george orwell.
the interior monologue
the interior monologue is the narrative technique adopted by novelists during the first decades of the 20th century:
- it is the verbal expression of the physical phenomenon, the stream of consciousness;
- it lacks of chronological order;
- the narrator can be present;
- it does not follow any formal or logical order;
- the action takes place in the character’s mind;
- the character stays fixed in a determined time or space while his mind can freely move along them. there are two types of interior monologue:
- indirect: the character’s thoughts are often preceded by introductory phrases and followed by explanatory ones;
- direct: the narrator seems not to exist, thoughts flow without being interrupted by comments or introductions. james joyce also uses the extreme interior monologue, in which he creates new expressions with the free association of words and concepts.
AUDEN
auden was a voracious reader of tales, myths and legends since childhood and, thanks to his passion for books, he got in touch with modernist poetry. initially he was committed to social and political issues like the general strike, the spanish civil war and jews" deportation. with the birth of the nazi regime he moved to new york because he started to worry about being homosexual and concerned about being potentially persecuted for his sexuality. we can divide auden"s career into two phases:
- the english period: at the beginning of his writer career, auden was influenced by ○ freud and his theories about psychoanalysis, that he applied to the entire society instead of the individual; ○ marx and the communist ideology.
- the american period: ○ he freed from social responsibility and started believing the change must start with the self and not the society; auden deals with different themes such as love (a sweetness that can"t be achieved without suffering), modern suffering, sickness, the passing of time, politic and social commitment and death. for example, in the refugee blues he states the problem of the persecution of the jews who escaped from germany and moved to america. auden"s style is various because he liked to change and experiment new form of expressions, he uses free verse, metre, rhymes but also popular forms like ballads.
another time
another time is a collection that contains some of auden"s most famous poems. it was composed and published at the beginning of world war II, when the poet moved to america. the title is symbolic: the poet entered in “another time” through the exile which he shared with many other refugees and that led to become an american citizen. the poems are organised into three sections:
- people and places: characterized by the theme of the relationship between man and nature;
- lighter poems: treats about domesticity with a comic tone;
- occasional poems: celebrates the death of great figures, like freud, example of transgression, moral and artistic renewal. also interprets great historical events like the german invasion of poland.
JOYCE
james joyce was born in dublin and there he attended university college. when he was 23 he moved to trieste, where he taught english and became friend with italo svevo. here he published “dubliners”, a collection of short stories about life in dublin. then he moved to zurich, where he started receiving donations that enabled him to continue writing “ulysses”, published for the first time in paris and accomplished with great success. the final decades of joyce’s life were characterized by his daughter’s illness, his increasing blindness and his father’s death. even if joyce left dublin, he set all his novels in ireland. in his novels the plot becomes less and less important for the narrative, because the whole story focuses on how the same events are seen differently from different viewpoints. joyce is an impersonal author: in his poems he talks about reality in a objective way, using his characters as points of view with three different techniques:
- the free direct speech;
- the interior monologue;
- the extreme interior monologue.
dubliners
dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories arranged in four groups: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. while most of victorian writers celebrated the civilization, joyce is hostile to city life because it degrades citizens: in fact, dublin is a place where feelings and compassion don’t exist; even if in dubliners joyce uses a traditional structure, joyce is a modern writer and uses some stylistic innovations:
- stories don’t have an introduction;
- we do not know much about the characters he is describing;
- there is not only the point of view of the writer or the omniscient narrator, but the same situation is analyzed by many points of view;
- the author goes beyond the photographic realism and collects the sensations provoked in a character by an external event;
- joyce uses symbolism in the form of the “epiphany” technique, in which an external object reveals what type of life the characters are living: for example in the novel “eveline” the harmonium in the sitting room points out the disharmony of eveline’s family, in fact her mother died due to her father’s aggressivity and now she has the same destiny;
- time and reality are perceived as subjective, in relationship with the mind of the character. every character in dubliners is paralyzed and, even if is in a desperate situation, cannot escape because is spiritually weak. dubliners is characterized by two elements: ● the interior monologue in the form of free direct speech; ● chiasmus, the repetition of images that creates melodic effects. in the first three short stories joyce uses a first-person narrator while for the other twelve he uses a third-person narrator that shares a particular character’s perspective. the language is simple and neutral.
eveline
joyce analyzes the mind of a typical irish girl: she is oppressed by her family, in particular her father, by society and religion. her mother was aware of her duty to maintain the family and before she died, eveline promised her to keep sticking the family together, so she is also influenced by her own promise. in fact, when she decides to start a new life in buenos aires with her lover and she is in line to board the ship, she remains blocked on the land, motionless and emotionless. eveline embodies the conflict that many women felt between a domestic life and the possibility of a new life abroad. she is unable to live and think of her future without linking it to her past and her reliance on everyday life is what makes her not follow her lover onto the ship. the ending means that eveline won’t return home and continue her life, she will only live in a mindless repetition in dublin.
former soviet union and tyranny in spain. the setting of the novel is oceania and the story takes place in london, during 1984. oceania is ruled by big brother, a figure who always observes people, and the party, an organization that helps him controlling people’s lives. in fact, the regime of the party introduced the thought police, a special body that arrests people for “thought-crime”, and newspeak, a language whose vocabulary is so limited that it is impossible to express personal thoughts. the protagonist is winston smith, a man working at the ministry of truth who “illegally” buys a diary where he keeps writing his ideas and thoughts for future generations. one day he meets julia and understands that she has a rebellious attitude too. they fall in love and start a secret relationship. though, a member of the party exposes their “crimes” by setting a trap and leading them to believe he is part of the secret brotherhood, an organization that wants to overturn the party: they are both arrested, winston is tortured and brainwashed for months and when he is finally released he is completely submitted to the system and he is no longer in love with julia. 1984 is a dystopian novel because it narrates one of the many ways things could go wrong after the war: orwell speculates on the future and gets people to think about how the situation they are living can turn out bad, without giving any improving opportunities. he wants his masterpiece to be a “novel of all”, a story in which every english citizen could reflect himself: the protagonist’s last name “smith” is one of the most common surnames in england for that purpose. with his narrative, orwell clarifies his position towards dictatorships: he is against any form of totalitarianism and anti-democratic system.
THE THEATRE OF THE ABSURD the term “absurd” refers to everything that is not related to religious or metaphysical roots. absurd dramatists don’t argue about the nonsense of the human condition but represent its situation on the stage: the plays don’t have a real plot or dialogues and seem to reflect dreams and nightmares. beckett’s “waiting for godot” is considered as the starting point of absurd drama
BECKETT beckett was born in dublin and there he spent his first years, studying in the trinity college. then he settled in paris and there he wrote most of his poems (he wanted to use a language that was not his main one to limit his vocabulary). he was part of a group of dramatists, the “theatre of the absurd”, who believed that life is meaningless and purposeless. beckett’s masterpiece, “waiting for godot”, is the first play in this style and achieved immense success, becoming the emblem of the absurd. other themes addressed to beckett are the dissolution of the physical and intellectual sides of men and the impossibility to find an identity. for his work, beckett won the nobel prize for literature.
waiting for godot
“waiting for godot” is a play divided into two acts. its time is circular and the acts are symmetrical:
- act one: vladimir (didi) and estragon (gogo) are waiting on a country road for a mysterious godot (which probably represents god), who sends a boy to inform them that he would have come the following day. the characters are angry, cold and think about suicide.
- act two: it apparently differs from the act one, but the characters are still waiting for godot. analysis of the play:
- the play doesn’t develop in time, there is no past or future but just a repetitive and meaningless present. time is meaningless because didi and gogo have always been doing the same things and we don’t know for how long they will continue;
- there is no setting, just a county road with a bare tree that represents the characters’ lives;
- the play has a grotesque and pessimist humour: man can’t understand or control the universe;
- the characters have no personality, they just represent men concerned with questions about the world and god. the protagonists are also complementary because: ● didi is practical, gogo is a dreamer; ● didi represents mind and intelligence while gogo represents the body; ● gogo has a short memory while didi has a strong memory that distrusts what he remembers. they remind each other what is real and what is distorted.
- language is informal and communication isn’t important: for this reason, most of the dialogues are just sketched and scenes are full of pauses and silences;
- the play is questioning the existence of god and apparently the author want us to know that he doesn’t exist because godot never arrives, but it is impossible to know, so it is still an open question.
