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the romanticism relation between cultural aspects of romanticism + socio historical context in which it developed
- french revolution, (1789-1837) political attitudes of the romantic writers were responses to changes brought by the french revolution
- industrial revolution (1760-1830)
- the american revolution (1760-1789)
the origins artistic + literary movement developed in 1775-1837, in contrast w the themes of the augustan age ◦ rom: emphasis on feelings + imagination ◦ close to the nature ◦ they believed in uncorrupted men ◦ freedom of the individual ◦ simple language
main branches of romanticism ◦ german, origin in STURM UND DRANG, movement that rejected aug attitudes + focus on individual, nature and feels ◦ french, influenced by rousseau, new vision of man (good by nature, corrupted by society + new vision of nature as life giving force) + m.de stael, defined "romantique" w connotations of tenderness and sadness ◦ italian, we have manzoni + foscolo ◦ english, two generations:
- 1, William Blake, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (lake poets) + interested in theorizing about poetry + the last two men wrote a manifesto, which was the preface of the lyrical ballads
- 2, John Keats, Percy B Shelley and Lord Byron + they developed the same themes of romanticism but more dramatic
romantic interests there was a growing interest in humble, everyday life + countryside was a place where a man could find his soul in close contact with nature
- exaltation of emotion OVER reason + senses OVER intellect
- love x ruins + desolate were part of the revival of a past contrasting w the brutal reality of the present
- irrational and dark aspects of life like visions and dreams
the imagination capacity to see in a deep way in the life of things, poetry is none without it, cause it's the key of the creativity It's the faculty of the mind catch the truth, beyond the power of reason and poets take parts of god's activity, reaching a transcendental level
the sublime firstly formulated by Edmund Burke and he divides beauty into:
- beautiful, regular + harmonious things
- sublime, violent + fearful things (mountainous landscape, volcanoes...)
the role of the poets
- The artist put themselves at the center of their artwork + great sense of sensibility and they had the ability to see things into the life of things -> visionary poets
- his task was to give a message everyone about what he sees through imagination + he shows the reality of things and to understand their feelings
- this power was believed to be unique and they formed an elite group and created the myth of the artist
the language
- they used the poetic diction, based on imitation of the classics + use periphrasis + uncommon word
- Romantic poets rejected this kind of diction, they preferred symbols to express the creativity
the nature
- aug: the artists loved cities and towns, symbol of progress and civilization
- rom: concept of nature has changed
what is nature? 3 MEANINGS
- 1, Countryside as opposed to town, the landscape was very rural and solitary
- 2, Nature was a Source of feelings, the contact between poet and nature gives him a great variety of emotions and feelings
- 3, nature was viewed as a life giving force end inspires poets and their poetry + holds the truth of things (the nature reveals the truth of things to the poets and the poets have to teach to the common men)
coleridge ◦ Devon, 1772; ◦ last part of his life, he was a philosopher and literary critic (christabel, kubila khan, the rime of the ancient mariner and biographia literaria -> critics + explain what they did in the lyrical ballads) ◦ 2 kinds of imagination: ⁃ 1, perception + individual power to produce images (gives order to chaos, used it unconsciously) ⁃ 2, poetic faculty to build new worlds -> recreate consciously something original and personal wordsworth, spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, theory of emotions coleridge, 1 + 2 imagination (connected, cause they belonged to the poet) ◦ fancy -> mechanical ability of the poet to use devices to express his ideas + language: evocative, archaic, rich in similes, personification… ◦ the rime of the ancient mariner: it contains a short summary of the whole poem and it consists of 2 narratives: ⁃ 1, captions to the right of the stanzas, which is the framework, introduce the protagonist + his listeners ⁃ 2, poem itself: an old mariner stops a wedding guest to tell him his terrible tale: him and his crew reached a terrifying seascape in the antarctic, killing an albatross. on board, death + life in death cast dice, death won the crew + life in death won mariner’s life. everyone died but the mariner is alive + he re-established a relationship with nature. in the end, the mariner lets the wedding guest go and taught him that is important x everyone to love all living beings
⁃ narrative poem, 7 parts, introduced by a short summary of the story ⁃ archaic ballad form, reflecting the romantics’ interests in the medieval past + differences with typical ballads -> less repetitions and don’t use refrains ⁃ poem rich in sound effects, similes, personification to create a hypnotic atmosphere the rime and traditional ballads ⁃ rime = literary ballad + many features of traditional ones: transmitted orally + many themes (death, love, supernatural) / differences from the traditional ballads: presence of a moral in the end + didactic aim. ⁃ combination of dialogue + narration ⁃ 4 line stanzas ⁃ themes of travel, wandering and supernatural elements
◦ interpretations: ⁃ description of a dream -> allows the poet to link supernatural + unconscious part of his psyche to a familiar experience ⁃ life’s allegory of the human soul -> passage from crime, through punishment and redemption ⁃ mariner breaks the bounds of convention in the search of beauty + knowledge, saved by power of imagination-> mission, pass on his discovery of truth to ordinary men
john keats
2 gen’s romantic poets, love x art, nature but lacked in political commitment.
works the great odes: explores romantic themes of imagination, pleasure + pain, art + life… (ode on melancholy, on a grecian urn, a nightingale) other ones: endymion, la belle dame sans merci;
themes
● he conceived poetry as something absolute + he wrote for the beauty -> source of joy -> “a thing of beauty is a joy forever”, is the only consolation found in the sadness of life. ● the beauty can be: ● physical, temporary: women, nature / expression of the spiritual one. ● spiritual, immortal and eternal: love, friendship ● the beauty was viewed as something truthful, which is an ideal of all art
ode on a grecian urn the urn viewed as a perfect work of art -> permanent source of joy in a world of change, poetry’s metaphor and its power is to overcome time and death. no changes so these scenes of men + maidens never come to life, so there aren’t no emotions. no explanation but he only want to share beauty; (it’s composed by 5 stanzas, and each stanzas has 10 lines)
ode’s comment 1-> the poet addresses to an ancient urn which is eternal + he asks himself to which legend, the protagonists represented, came from. 2 -> a man playing pipes and timbrels w his lover. he couldnt kiss her, cause time has stopped but the melodies will last forever and their love too. 5 -> keats addresses that the urn will remain forever, in fact the poet says that “beauty is truth, truth is beauty”, cause beauty is truer than life, thanks to this sentence, he is considered the forerunner of this movement.
victorian family
● there was male domination all over the concept of the family ● woman, wife and she had to be a fruitful mother and she had to be innocent and pure ● sexuality was repressed and they didn’t speak about that
victorian literature was considered as the age of fiction and was divided into 3 periods:
● early one, writers identified themselves w their own age + wrote social novels like dickens ● mid one, transition period w new trends like charlotte brönte w jane eyre ● late one, sense of rebellion like oscar wilde
the prose started w novels by instalments published by newspapers, accessible to everyone and wanted to give a moral, social responsibility and it had:
● 3rd person and omniscient narrator ● deep analysis of characters ● complicated plot
charles dickens main works
● a christmas carol, david copperfield, hard times, oliver twist: appeared in instalments and then published as a book + we visualize the economic insecurity that the reader experienced when he was a child -> focus on a child protagonist + plot: he was childless and worked in a workhouse, he was asking for more food (no one could ever do that), lately he gets in contact w a group pickpockets who tried to make a thief of him, we lately discover that he has noble origins and finally the pickpockets who’s gonna ruin his life, got arrested ● was an important storyteller, influenced by the bible, fairytales, nursery rimes + plot planned but artificial and filled w superfluous characters + rich in details and uses repetitions of words, alliterative nouns ● everything was based in london, described it with realistic details and studied deeply the consequences of industrialism and later became critical of society
didactic aim
● children most important characters and moral teachers + make ruling classes aware of social problems w offending class readers
london’s life
● diff social levels
- lower class, parish world of workhouse
- middle class, represented by pickpockets and murderers, poverty leading to crimes and violence
- upper class, victorian middle class who shows a regard of moral values and believe in human dignity
social criticism
● focus on workhouses + children’s exploitation ● workhouses: institutions where orphaned + abandoned children lived, supported by public funds ● poverty consequences of laziness and this condition inspired poor people to improve their conditions ● dickens explores the cruelty and corruption of the officials who run the workhouses
oscar wilde
● born in dublin 1854, was eccentric and brilliant, he got married with Constance Lloyd but he was homosexual (arrested and was sentenced for 2 years doing the hard labour) + he got success for “the importance of being earnest”
aestheticism
● he followed this movement, stated that the meaning of life was found in beauty and is reflected in art + the motto: art for art’s sake in contrast with scientific thoughts but in france w baudelaire or flaubert believed that a work of art is important for humanity, no specific purposes other than his beauty, it exists and that is all, wilde in fact says “all art is quite useless” ● he was known as a dandy = symbol of the superiority of his spirit and he said “i have nothing to declare except my genius”
preface of dorian gray
● sort of poem that affirmed of his concept of art and artist + artist is the creator of beautiful things but it needs to be impersonal + his theory says that finding ugly meaning in beautiful things = fault + finding beautiful meanings into beautiful things is to be cultivated + speaks about well or badly written cause there weren’t moral or immoral things + art was viewed as a beauty that prevents the murder of a soul.
picture of dorian gray
● set in london 19 century, the protagonist is dorian gray, a young man + basil hallward paints his portrait cuz he was fascinates him, while the young man desires are satisfied and the signs of age appear, he wants to free himself from the portrait and dorian kills himself cause he stabbed the portrait
allegorical meaning
● myth of faust, a man who sells his soul to devil in change of true knowledge and the picture stands for the dark side of dorian’s personality and the moral says that every excess must be punished and the picture was a symbol of the immorality of victorian
james joyce dublin 1882, he known italo svevo w outbreak of WW2 cuz he returned to zurich + perfectioned his writing in his self imposed exile from dublin to represent city better w distance, dominated by stagnation and stasis = source of inspiration
dubliners collection of 15 short stories, written in exile and talks ab 15 people in dublin: link between characters and unity of all experiences (city has never given them a chance to grow) + 4 phases of human life:
- childhood, adolescence, mature life, public life
characters: oppressive effects of all the forces on the lives of lower - middle classes = give psychological and realistic picture of dubliners as an afflicted people, desperate, weak + each story is told from character’s pov, direct speech
themes: characters have desires and try to overcome obstacles with ambition but they give up cuz they dont have the will to transform them into action:
- paralysis, aspects of life that they dont like and are unable to change + wanted to describe moral linked to religion and culture
- epiphany, manifestation in everyday life linked to objects and makes them aware of how dead and paralysed they are
eveline short story, speaks ab her life, torn between duty and desire + we view her inability to act and she's trying to make an important decision:
- leave her bf and starts a new life in south america or stay where she is and continue her dutiful life eveline, influenced by fam’s mentality + father was her fear cuz he was violent + frank which is her bf / antithesis between her house (paralysis) and new one in buenos aires (epiphany)
the dead Gabriel conroy and Gretta are guests at an aunts’ party, she suddenly starts crying hearing a song at the party (epiphany) who died for her and her man thought that their love was too insignificant.
title:
- michael furey, influence on women’s life
- snow, symbol of death / cleansing
- irish people, spiritually dead
ulysses novel that contains 18 eps that narrates the actions of 3 main characters:
- 1 section, stephen dedalus, protagonist of the first first 3 eps, grouped as “the telemachiad”
- main section, leopold bloom, a jewish advertising salesman, called “the odissey”
- 3 section, Leopold goes back to home to his wife, called “nostos”
this epic novel offers a diff vision of daily life, attitudes of human condition, ideas written down w/o logical organization virginia woolf london 1882, she spent her summer at st.ives in cornwall = sea, symbol of her art + anticonformist and focuses on novels: plot, action thoughts and finally memory and feelings
- finally she developed a “literary devices” that reproduce her characters’ stream of consciousness
- mother’s death: causes depression and mental illness + dad’s death: starts of literary career, became a member of bloomsbury group = famous x anti conformist attitudes
- 2WW: anxiety, fears that lead her to drown herself in a river.
literary career
- mrs. dalloway, 1 novel + to the lighthouse, journey to the lighthouse delayed for years
- the waves: poem that give a desolate vision of life
literary devices
- indirect interior monologue, readers knows everything what characters have been through + monologue is introduced by such clauses that create more ideas
- use of time, shift back and forth using 2 methods analogous to film montage: ● subject fixed in space + consciousness can move in time (TIME MONTAGE) ● times remains fixed (SPACE MONTAGE)
- moments of being, moment of major intensity in novel of our life, in “a sketch of the past”, she wonders why certain moments of our life are so memorable and thought of how some of these are so happily recalled and others are forgotten, there are 2 kinds of experience: ● moments of being, acts experienced intensely ● moments of non being, individual is not consciously aware if she experienced them
mrs dalloway Clarissa prepares herself to host a party, as she walks through the city and thought about her life, specifically the decision to marry her man instead of peter walsh. At the same time, Peter, shocked by 1WW that suffered from mental illness, killed himself and Clarissa knows everything at the party by the guests and she thought of how Septimius could have felt and she felt ashamed by this situation.
clarissa = she wanted peace and order to overcome her sense of failure that lead to depression septimus = sensitive and shocked by 1WW and death of his best friend, feeling of guilt THEY ARE DOUBLES: both depend on protection, they both see beauty in death despite of all suffering.
it’s experimental cuz it has a focus on: 1 character, 1 single say, 1 place = importance of subjective time
citizens from the beginning to the end of their life
- national insurance act, cover any sickness and child allowances - NATO, mutual defence between all states in case of war.
literature of commitment
- After all the wars, the writing was characterised by social commitment and by pessimistic outlook + common themes: repression and class divisions. there were aldous huxley and george orwell, characterised by a strong socialist conscience, who wrote about uncertainties, lack of direction of their own age and they were totalitarian governments.
george orwell one of the strongest anti totalitarian voices of literature and he expresses the warning against all power + danger of that society, he uses his novels as a vehicle for his ideas and to talk about the social injustice and hate for totalitarianism.
animal farm published after 2WW, satirical fable ab real historical characters and shows the failure of the russian revolution of 1917 and stalin’s betrayal -> purpose: denounce soviet myth + criticize common things to all revolutions
historical background 1920 - 1930s totalitarian governments emerged in Russia, Italy and Germany.
- russia, communism in 1917 under Lenin promised a dictatorship of proletariat but in reality there was a “one party dictatorship”
- italy, mussolini founded the fascist party in 1919 -> declared as a prime minister + totalitarian state
- germany, nazi party took the power in 1933 w hitler revealing his plans in mein kampf
plot animals rebel against farmers by taking control of the farm cuz they want equality
- pigs, smarter than the others and increase their control on ‘em -> aim: increase their power at the end, pigs are no longer distinguished from men + 7 principles were the basis of their society “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”
characters
- mr jones, farmer who appears at the start as a drunk man + symbolize a corrupt government and brings discontent
- pigs, 2 leaders: ● napoleon, head pig and he’s gonna chase snowball, took control on him and changes his opinions (represent dictators like stalin) ● snowball, represent the idealist like trotsky
message
satire, orwell didn’t accept the communist interpretation of socialism cuz he saw the communist government + old totalitarism regime very similar (criticize the corruption of the leaders and attacks people who ignore the problems in it
written in 1948, title represent the reversal of the year in which it was written and the society represented could be easily transformed into reality in the near future + dystopian novel that represents the worst imaginable world
plot in our future world there are 3 superpowers involved in a constant struggle: oceania (dominated by the party + big brother), eurasia and estasia. winston smith, protagonist and minor member of the party and works for the ministry of truth -> he modifies articles, rewrite docs and then he rewrite history and the past + he keeps a secret diary recording his true memories and he had a love affair w Julia, committing sex and thought crimes and finally betrayed, arrested, brainwashed and learns to love big brother. historical background: 2WW, nazi germany’s dictatorship
characters
- party + big brother (Stalin), whose image is everywhere but no one knows him
- winston, it refers to Churchill + Smith, common english surnames -> he wonders why the party is so powerful, defeated by them and there is a common pessimism to the struggles against all the superpowers.
instruments of power individual is not allowed to behave, speak or think in anyway different from the imposed one
- newspeak, new language that eliminates the synonyms / antonyms to limit every language + taking away the ability to think
- doublethink, believe in 2 ideas at the same time and using that can no longer recognize contradictions
big brother is watching you the society is under surveillance, symbolized by telescreen = party’s control + they use propaganda to dominate reality. ministry of truth -> w slogans reinforces the power of newspeak in shaping thoughts -> shows a totalitarian world, showcasing the psychological effects and historical through Winston's memories.
● language, informal and dialogues are not well constructed, sentences disconnected and not able to communicate ● structure: two acts (both based on waiting) + second one has the same pattern as the first one, static and repeated actions, setting based on a country road and a dead willow where they never move from
they call each other didi and gogo and they represent human society waiting for godot
● vladimir: mind which is the more intellectual part and hopes that godot will come ● estragon: body which is more material part of the society, weaker and doesnt believe that godot will come
other characters that are travellers and represent human condition and don't wait for godot, they stand for the master - slave relationship:
● pozzo: represents all the master which lead lucky w a rope as a slave ● lucky: represents all slave which carries the master’s luggage
godot, doubts on the chosen name:
● NO god, because beckett rejected any kind of religious aspects ● YES go do it, waiting to find meaning for themselves, but they don't move and linked to the static side of our life
