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William Wordsworth
He was born in the English Lake District where he spent most of his life. This place was his main source of inspiration. He was educated in Cambridge and in 1790 he went on a walking tour of France and Alps. The contact with French Revolution filled him with enthusiasm for democratic ideals. He returned to France, fell in love with Annette Vallon and they had a daughter called Caroline. The brutal and destructive developments of the Revolution and the wars between France and England brought him a nervous breakdown. He went to live with the sister Dorothy in 1795 and she remains his most faithful friend. In the same year he moved to Somerset to be near Coleridge and their friendship became very important for the development of English Romanticism. They produced a collection of poems called “LIRICAL BALLADS” (1798); it opens with Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner” and ends with Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”. The second edition of 1800 contained also the “Preface” by Wordsworth that became the “MANIFESTO OF ENGLISH ROMANTICISM”. In 1802 he married a childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson. In 1843 he was made Poet Laureate. The last year of his life were marked by the growing conservatism of his political views and the decline of his creative powers. He died in 1850. ➔ DAFFODILS This poem recounts the experience of a walk the poet went for with his sister, near their home in the Lake District. The poem was inspired by the sight of a field full of golden daffodils waving in the wind. The key of the poem is joy, as we can see from the many words which express pleasure and delight: in fact the daffodils are golden, waving in a sprightly dance and outdoing the waves in glee: they provide a jocund company and the sight of them fills the poet’s heart with pleasure. The flowers are set in a natural environment made up of land (land, vales, hills, tree), air (cloud, breeze, stars, milky way) and water (lake, bay, waves). All nature appears wonderfully alive and happy in fact the cloud floats on high; the stars shine and twinkle, the waves dance and sparkle in glee. The daffodils, too, are not static like in a painting, but alive with motion. The sight of the daffodils amazes the poet at first because of their great number. Yet Wordsworth is not interested in the flowers as such, but in the way they affect him: they delight the poet. He doesn’t realize that at the moment but only later, when memory brings back the scene. It is clear that the daffodils have a metaphorical meaning. They may represent the voice of nature, which is scarcely audible except in solitude, the magic moment when our spirit develops a visionary power and we “return to the enchanted unity with nature we knew in childhood; they may represent a living microcosm within the larger macrocosm of nature.”
The industrial revolution
At the end of the 18th century Britain becomes an industrial country, with a great increase of population and a real “Revolution”, called “Industrial Revolution” because the most important
inventions involved machinery. The most important new invention of the industrial revolution was the steam engine, invented by James Watt, that was used to power the factories and pump out the deeper mines. With these inventions, goods were made more easily by the improvement of transports, especially by a network of waterways. Connected to the Industrial revolution, it also started an agrarian one. During this period, open fields were enclosed into smaller portions of land to make the works in farms easier. People’ lives changed. They began to buy goods for their houses, clothes (machine-made) and to consume things for pleasure like tobacco, tea, coffee, sugar, alcohol. After the loom invention, the new industrial activity moved near the coalfields which caused the constructions of the so-called “mushroom towns” (houses for workers near the factories). Works conditions changed: women and children started to work even if they were paid less; working time didn’t depend on the weather conditions anymore so people worked more. This fact, added to diet and health deterioration, increased the mortality rate.
The French Revolution
In Britain, in 1810 the king George III becomes incapable of reigning so his son George IV is made Prince Regent (from 1811 to 1820 period of regency). Meanwhile in 1792 the French, due to the French Revolution, have abolished the monarchy and declared their country a republic. At the beginning poets and intellectuals share the enthusiasm of the revolution but they change their mind when in 1793 the royal family and thousands of people considered as enemies of the revolution are executed. The British parliament, scared about what is happening in France, begins debating how to react to the French Revolution but in 1793 France declares war on Britain and Holland. Thanks to Napoleon Bonaparte, France is able to win many battles but Britain shows its supremacy at sea led by Admiral Horatio Nelson. The war ends in 1815 with Napoleon’s defeat in Waterloo. Winning the war doesn’t bring many advantages to Britain: bad harvests, high taxation and industrial changes are causing misery and luddities riots. King George III dies in 1820 and is succeeded by his son George IV who reveals himself to be irresponsible and unable to encourage any social reforms. Despite that in 1824 trade unions, the associations of workers, are legalized and in 1829 it is created the Metropolitan Police (called bobbies) with the aim to maintain public order. In 1830 George IV dies and his brother William IV becomes the king (1830-1837). This is a very important moment because parliament abolishes slavery in the west indies in 1833 and in the same year factory employment is forbidden to children under 9 years old. William IV dies in 1837 and his nice Victoria succeeds him.
George Orwell (1903-1950)
George Orwell was born in 1902 in India and his real name was Eric Arthur Blair. He spent his childhood in England and was and excellent scholar with keen interest in literature. Because of his family circumstances, he wasn’t allowed to go to university and in 1923 he joined the Indian Imperial Police. He came back to England in 1928 where he lived among the poor in London and in 1933 publish his first book under the name of George Orwell. In 1945 He wrote Animal Farm and in 1948 he published 1984. During his life, He worked as a journalist, essayist and novelist. All of his work are based on his interest in the social and political conditions he has observed in his life. He has been one of the strongest anti-totalitarian voices of literature.
Old Mayor is an allegorical combination of Karl Marx and Lenin. Napoleon is an allegory of Stalin Snowball is another allegorical combination of Trotsky and Lenin Mr Jones is an allegory of the Tsar Nicolas II ho abdicated following the February Revolution of 1917 and was murdered ➔ 1984 It is a dystopian vision of a future world ruled over by an oppressive totalitarian regime in which the state controls every detail of a person's life, down to their private thoughts. The novel is setting in what was once London, now capital of the state of Oceania where the Big Brother leads The Party. Citizens live in a system of constant surveillance, violent policing and psychological conditioning. The protagonist is Winston Smith, a journalist who has to rewrite old articles to adjust history, in order to support the state policy; rebels against the oppression of the regime. He writes a diary because he wants to keep a record of events. He believe in the existence of objective truth. He meets Julias who becomes his partner in the rebellion. They are discovered by the Thought Police and they are arrested, tortured and brainwashed. The novel ends with the image of Winston Smith as a a passive and depersonalized member of The Party. The title: 1984 = reverse of 1948, year in which the book was written The main points of the novel are the role of power, the oppressive totalitarian regimes of 1920s and 1930s, the difficulty of preserving individuality and value of truth and personal intellectual freedom. Symbols: ➢ Winston = symbolic name → direct reference to Churchill ➢ Smith = most common English last name ⇒ universality ➢ one of the few human beings whose humanity hasn’t been completely cancelled by totalitarianism
James Joyce (1882-1941)
James Joyce is one of the most important novelists of all time one of the greatest innovators of 20th century prose writing. In 1898 he started studying Italian, French and English at University College, Dublin and started writing literary reviews and articles. In 1904: met Nora Barnacle (future wife) and they soon moved to Trieste (still belonging to Austria-Hungary) where he worked as a teacher and started to write Dubliners, a collection of short stories written using a naturalistic style. When the WWI broke out (1914) , he moved to Zurich and started working on Ulysses (considered one of the most important works of modernist literature). In 1920: moved to Paris and started working on Finnegans Wake, his first novel. In 1940: Germans occupied France and Joyce went to Zurich with his family where he died in 1941. ➔ DUBLINERS James Joyce wrote Dubliners in 1900 but it was published in 1914. It is a collection of 15 short stories about the lives of 15 typical inhabitants of the city of Dublin, the ideal portrait of the Irish capital. The stories can be divided into 4 main groups: childhood, adolescence,
maturity and public life. The opening stories deal with childhood and youth in Dublin and show a strong sense of disillusionment and failure. Then Joyce talks about issues like man’s impossibility to escape from suffering, the passivity of Irish people and paralysis of their will (Eveline) and explains his concept of paralysis in the relationship between individuals and collective institutions (politics + musical world + church). One of the major themes is the city of Dublin because it doesn’t have the cosmopolitan atmosphere of many other European capitals and this affects lives of its inhabitants who are imprisoned in a city that doesn’t give them the chance to grow and develop their full potential as human beings. All the characters share the desire to change their situation but they are all paralyzed. There’s only one potential way to escape paralysis: the epiphany, a moment in which the character experiences the sudden revelation of their paralysis. The epiphany doesn’t lead to a real change in their lives but they’re just more aware of how dead and paralyzed they are. The narrative technique is based on rejection of the Victorian idea of the third-person omniscient narrator and the use of internal narrative perspective. Each of the stories is narrated from the point of view of one of the characters. It is used a different linguistic registers which suits the age, the social class and the role of the characters. There is no moral aim because of the impersonality of theartist. ➔ Eveline Eveline is a short-story written by James Joyce, a famous Irish writer. 1904. In “Eveline,” Joyce’s presents the dilemma faced by a young Irish woman who must either care for her family or follow her boyfriend, a sailor who has a home in Buenos Aires. At the beginning, Eveline is in her house, she sits at the window looking at the people passing outside. She starts to remember the past, when she was a child when she was a girl out there and played with his brothers and other children and her father was not so bad.. Now one of her brothers and her mother are died. Eveline lives alone with her father who threatens her with violence that is why she wants to run away with her boyfriend Frank. But then Eveline remembers the promise to keep the family together she made to her mother before she died and she decides not to leave. She is paralyzed because she doesn't know what to do. She has every reason to leave Dublin: he bad relationship with her father, her horrible job and the idea that she doesn’t want to live like her mother. She thinks that going away with Frank is better so she can becomes her wife. But when Frank and Eveline have to take the boat, Eveline is paralyzed and Frank will go away alone. ➔ Gabriel’s epiphany It begins during an after-Christmas dinner at the house of two unmarried sisters who are also aunts of the protagonist, Gabriel Conroy. He goes to the party with his wife Gretta and the house becomes the best representation of Ireland and its tradition in which every guest represents a different generation, religious belief and political tendencies. Gabriel gives a speech and he feels good, then while he is on his way to the hotel he thinks of the best moments of his marriage and still feels love and desire for Gretta. At the same time she is crying because a song she heard at the party made her thinking of her first love Michael Furey who she thinks killed himself for her. She stops and time seems to stop too. So, she has her Epiphany, while Gabriel is watching her from down the steps. She tells her husband the story. In that moment, while Gretta is finally sleeping, Gabriel had his Epiphany looking outside at the show that is covering everything and he thins of the insignificance of even the most intense moments of existence which face like all the rest into oblivion.
➔ “Ode to the west wind” represents the power of the wind and nature (very typical images in Romantic poetry), and can be read at three different levels:
- The personal level: the author identifies with the Nature and waits for the Spring (positive period) to come after the winter (negative period, maybe his wife’s suicide).
- Philosophical way: the wind represents the wind of revolution, a wind of rebellion, because Shelley, through his poetry, wants to make people rebel against every form of oppression.
- The natural level: Shelley’s nature is different form Wordsworth’s. It is not the real world but a beautiful veil hiding the eternal truth of the divine spirit but also a place to escape from the disappointment and the injustices of the ordinary world. In this poem there is an idea of Neo-Platonism, because Shelley thought that reality was just an illusionary image of eternity and that man looks, during his life, for the Hole or Perfection, which can’t be found on earth. In writing this poem, Shelley took the classical form of the “ode” and Dante’s “terza rima”, mixing them together and adding a final couplet.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Life: He was born in 1854 in Dublin. He studied in Trinity College, Dublin and in Magdalene College, Oxford. In 1884 he got married and then he had 2 kids. After a moment of great success, in 1895 he was involved in a legal case which led to his ruin. He had an affair with a Lord whose father accused him of homosexuality but at the time it was a criminal offense so he went to prison where he wrote “De Profundis”, a long letter for Bosie (his lover). When he came out of prison was physically and psychologically a broken man abandoned by many friends. He exiled in France and he died in Paris in 1900. Style and characteristics: Oscar Wilde adopted the “aesthetic ideal” and considered his life as a work of art. He lived the double role of rebel and dandy and used his wit to shock. He believed in the pleasures of life that is why for a long time, his name was associated with scandal and intrigue but he became remembered for his unique contributions to literature, as a genius of wit. He also deeply believed in “art for art’s sake”. ➔ The picture of dorian gray The novel is set in London at the end of the 19th century. The protagonist is Dorian Gray, a rich and beautiful young man whose beauty fascinated the painter Basil Hallward. He decides to paint Dorian’s portrait. After talking to Lord Henry about the transience of youth and beauty, Dorian makes a pledge: sacrifices his soul to maintain his youth and beauty while the portrait will bear all signs of the time. So he decides to hide the portrait and to live a life of pleasure, sin, crime and corruption. He will be the responsible of two murders (the actress and Basil) but after Basil’s death, Dorian will decide to free himself from the portrait and will kills himself. The portrait will get back its original beauty. The message of this novel It shows us three different kind of characters:
- Dorian Gray, who represents the ideal of youth, beauty and innocence. He lives a life of
pleasure but his vanity and his selfishness ruin him
- Lord Henry Wotton, an intellectual and brilliant talker who corrupts Dorian. He is also a critic of institutions such as marriage and the Church.
- Basil Hallward, the intellectual painter who falls in love with Dorian. He is the sad example of how a good artist can be destroyed in a sacrifice for art. The moral of this novel is that every excess must be punished and there is no escape from reality. The horrible corrupted picture represents a symbol of the immorality and bad conscience of the Victorian middle class but it also shows Wilde’s theory of art: art is eternal and survives people.
Aestheticism
The Aesthetic Movement was born in France with Thèophile Gautier in the 19th century and reflected the sense of frustration and uncertainty of the artist, his reaction against the materialism and the restrictive moral code of the bourgeoisie, and his need to redefine the role of art. The artist feels an aesthetic isolation defined by Gautier “Art for Art’s Sake”. This doctrine was imported into England by James McNeil Whistler, an American painter who worked in England but its roots can be traced back to John Keats and Gabriel Rossetti. The main theorist of the Aesthetic Movement is Walter Pater. He rejected religion and said that life should be lived in the spirt of art and that everyone’s life is a work of art and that art was the only means to stop time. The task of the artist was to feel sensations and to be attentive to the attractive and to the gracious. Art shouldn’t have any political, social and moral involvement. It had nothing to do with morality and need not to be didactic. Pater’s works had a deep influence on the poets and writers of the 1890s, especially Oscar Wilde.
Decadence
Decadence is a European movement. It developed thanks to the Symbolists Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé who were much influenced by Charles Baudelaire’s Les Eeurs du mal. The main representatives of Decadence in Italy were Gabriele d’Annunzio with “Il Piacere” and Giovanni Pascoli. In this period two important figures developed: the bohemian and the dandy. The Bohemian allies himself to the proletariat whereas the dandy is a bourgeois artist.
The late victorians
In the later years of Victoria’s reign, Britain is an urban society: cities have gas lighting, rubbish collection, town halls, railway stations, libraries, museums, schools, hospitals, police stations and hospitals. Darwin’s theory becomes the foundation for various ethical and social systems, such as Social Darwinism, which developed in the the 1870s. Herbert Spencer applies Darwin’s theory of natural selection to human society: he says that races, nations and social classes are subject to the principle of the “survival of the fittest”. In the second half of the 19th century, Britain has a very strong power abroad; however, some ideological conflicts begin. Changes regarded scientific achievement, industrialization, sexuality and religion, and a growing pessimi begin to affect intellectuals and artists. Among the thinkers of the late Victorian period, a significant role is played by those who protest against the harm
➔ Hard times: the main character is Thomas Gradgrind, an educator who believes in facts and sta9s9cs and has founded his own school. His son is a lazy and selfish boy who robs his employer. By the way, thanks to him Thomas Gradgrind realizes that he has adopted a very materialis9c philosophy and his way of teaching is not as good as he thought. Dickens' main aim in Hard 9mes is to illustrate the danger of the teaching method called "object lesson" where humans are dishumanised. The story happens in a fic9onal city called Coketown which appears as a real industrial mill town in mid-19th century Victorian England. Coketown is described like a brick jungle: it is full of machines of factories, dirty and grey.
Francis Scott Fitzgerald
He was born in 1896 in Minnesota. He studied in a Catholic boarding school and he went to Princeton University. In 1917, Fitzgerald joined the American army and fought in the First World War. In the same year, he started writing his first novel, The Side of Paradise. The book dealt with the lifestyle of young people in the roaring twenties (I ruggenti anni ’20) and it shown the sense of loss and emptiness hiding behind the cult of materialism. The novel had an extraordinary success and made him rich and famous. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre and they moved to New York where lived a glamorous life full entertainment, parties, alcohol and drugs. In 1925, he published “The Great Gatsby” but it hadn’t a commercial success. Fitzgerald’s life started changing: he was now and alcoholic and his wife suffered from mental instability. They were full of debits so Fitzgerald started to write film scripts in order to gain money. In 1934, he published “Tender is the night” which dealt with the failure of the dreams and ideals of the twenties. In 1939, he began The last Tycoon but he died in 1940 before finishing it. ➔ The Great Gatsby In the summer of 1922 the narrator, Nick Carraway, from Middle West, decides to move to West Egg, Long Island, to enter in the business world and he becomes Mr. Jay Gatsby’s neighbour. On his arrival in New York, Nick visits his cousin, Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom. The Buchanans live in the posh Long Island district of East Egg. Tom is a famous polo player of Chicago, while Daisy, at the beginning, seems the perfect woman. At their house, Nick meets Jordan Baker, a beautiful young woman with cold, cynical manners. Later, the two become romantically involved. Tom goes to New York with Nick to show him his lover Myrtle, and they meet George Wilson, her husband, who is also the owner of a garage. Few days later, Gatsby invites Nick at one of his party; the strange fact is that nobody has ever received an official invitation. Some time later, Gatsby visits Nick's home and tells him he comes from a wealthy San Francisco family, he was educated at Oxford after serving in the Great War and that he has been in love with his cousin for 5 years. This isn’t his real story, he hides some secrets about his past and people thinks he is involved in illegal bootlegging and other underworld activities or, even, that he has killed someone. Gatsby asks to his new friend Nick to arrange a meeting between himself and Daisy; despite all troubles, the love between Gatsby and Daisy is revived, and the two
begin an affair. In the meanwhile Gatsby tells Nick his true story: he was born North Dakota, poor, and the baron Dan Cody served as Gatsby's mentor until his death. Gatsby inherited nothing of Cody's fortune, but thanks to him, he was introduced into the world of wealth, power, and privilege. After his reunion with Daisy, Gatsby ceases to throw his elaborate parties. The only reason he threw such parties was the chance that Daisy might attend. Daisy, Tom, Gatsby, Nick and Jordan are in a hotel in New York when a bitter confrontation begins. The two lovers proclaim their feelings and Daisy says she has never really loved her husband. On the trip back to East Egg, Gatsby allows Daisy to drive his car in order to calm her nerves but when they pass Wilson's garage, Daisy runs over Myrtle who is killed instantly. Nick advises Gatsby to leave town until the situation calms down. Gatsby, however, refuses to leave in order to ensure that Daisy is safe. Wilson wants to take revenge, and Tom makes him believe that Gatsby is the murderer and his wife's lover, so Wilson shoots Gatsby before committing suicide. After the murder, the Buchanans leave town to distance themselves from the violence for which they are responsible. Nick organizes Gatsby's funeral, but only Gatsby's father, Henry Gatz, participates. Thoroughly disgusted by life in New York, Nick decides to return to the Middle West. Nick muses that Gatsby, although people’s beliefs, is the only uncorrupted man. He just wants to turn dreams into reality; and this makes him "great." Nick also believes, that the time for such grand aspirations is over: greed and dishonesty have irrevocably corrupted both the American Dream and the dreams of individual Americans. Features Fitzgerald expresses the idea that the “American dream” has been corrupted by the desire for materialism. Characters: Jay Gatsby is presented as a mysterious character with a mysterious past but he is also the self-made man who is destroyed in the end. Nick Carraway is an observer and a participant in the novel and he is the only character with a sense of morals and decency. He is the retrospective narrator. Tom Buchanan is unfaithful, arrogant and aggressive. Daisy represents the object of desire. She is moody, theatrical and impulsive. Symbols: The sale of the novel is full of flashbacks and symbolic images like:
- the car, symbol of destructive power of modern society and money
- the valley of ashes (a place near Gatsby’s house), symbol of emotional and spiritual sterility)
- Gatsby’s house, symbol of both the protagonist’s luck and success and his melancholy and loneliness.
- The green light, symbol of Gatsby’s hopes and dreams.
