Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, on the southern coast of England, in 1812. He had an
unhappy childhood, because his father was prisoned for debt, and he went to work. When his father
was released, Charles continue to work. At fifteen he found an employment as an office boy. In 1832
he had become a succesful reporter of parlamentary debates. In 1833 his first story appeared and, still
a newspaper reporter, he adopted the pen name ‘Boz’. He wrote a lot of collection, but after the
success of <i>The Pickwick Papers</i>, Dickens started a full-time career as a novelist, although he also
continued his journalistic and editorials activities. He wrote <i>Oliver Twist</i>, <i>Christmas Carol</i>, <i>David
Copperfield</i>. He died in London in 1870.

Charles Dickens was a pioneer in introducing the theme of education into his works. He strongly
believed in universal education, objecting the church invention and certain educational methods. One
strategy singled out for criticism in <i>Hard Times</i> was the ‘object lesson’.
Dickens believed in the extension of education to all citizens but did not offer specific strategies for
achiving this aim. He criticised abuses and deficiencies while praising what he believed were positive
developments.

<b><i>Hard Times</i></b><i></i> plot
Thomas Gradgrind, an educator who believeds in facts and statistics, has founded a school where his
theories are taught, and he brings up his two children, Louisa and Tom, repressing their imagination.
He marries hid daughter to Jociah Bounderby, a rich banker of the city, thirty years older than she is.
The girl consents since she wishes to help her brother, who is given a job in Bounderby’s bank, but
the marriage proves to be unhappy. Tom, lazy and selfish, robs his employer. At first he succeeds in
throwing the suspicion on an honest workam, but he is eventually discovered and obligated to leave
the country.
</p>
<p><b>The(definition(of(a(hourse(
</b>The scene is set in a school, where Mr. Gradgrind, the teacher, is giving a lesson to his students.
Children are separated into two halves, boys and girls. Mr. Gradgrind is teaching the importance of
facts; he picks on a new pupil, calling her 'girl number twenty'. Is Sissy Jupe, a poor girl whose father
works in the horse business.The teacher first objects to the girl's nicknameto her father's job. He says
her father 'has no business' in calling her 'Sissy' and that 'Cecilia' is her real name. Mr. Gradgrind
dislikes the feeling of affection that is normally attached to nicknames.
However, he goes on asking her questions about it thus giving evidence to his contradictory attitude.
Then, he asks the girl to provide a definition of a horse.
When the girl proves unable to do it, he calls Bitzer, a student and he is remarkable for his
unwholesome pallor as well as for his passive acceptance of Mr. Gradgrind's teaching method.
We have the impression Mr. Gradgrind likes boys more than girls; he shows a misogynist attitude to
Cecilia and he clearly despises her father's humble occupation.Bitzer provides a pseudo-scientific
definition of a horse, praised by the teacher. Mr. Gradgrind is a typical Victorian teacher; he is strict
and cruel, he refers to his pupils as 'little pitchers', empty vases to be filled with facts. He thinks
imagination, creativity and intuition have nothing to do with education, they may even slow down
the learning process or damage it. His students are mainly depersonalized and passive.
Cecilia’s dark colors are symbolic of her vivid imagination while Bitzer's light colors stand for his
passive attitude and acceptance of facts and his teacher's system. Too much rationality does not
damage Cecilia's powerful imagination (it makes her dark colors even more lustrous) but it turns
Bitzer into a dehumanized machine. Dickens uses a particular technique to suggest to us the main
features of his characters' personality. Their names often reveal their character. The name 'Gradgrind' </p>

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<b><i>Oliver Twist </i></b><i></i>plot
Oliver is a poor boy of unknown parents. He is brought up in a workhouse. He is sold to an undertaker
as an apprentice, but the cruelty he experiences cause him to runa way to London. He falls into a gang
of young pickpockets led by Artful Dodger and trained by Fagin to make him a thief. During hi “job”
he is shot and wounded. Oliver will be adopted by a middle-class family. Investigations will revealed
that Oliver had nobile origins. The gang and the person who stole Oliver’s property will be arrested.

Childhood was a cruel experience in Victorian Age. A lot of children worked in factories, mines, and
other were criminals. Some government acts, like Ten hours act, tried to improve children’s working
condition reducing hours of work to ten per day. Children are either innocent or corrupted by adults
(beginning-&gt; bad condition, happy ending).
The novel is depicted at 3 social levels: Workhouse, cruel conditions, born to resolve poverty as
consequence of laziness, attacked by Dickens (require of labour, families separated, small food and
clothes). Criminal world, poverty drives them to crime, Victorian Middle class, show moral values.
</p>
<p><b>Oliver(wants(some(more(
</b>Oliver is extracted from the other child to ask some more food. Mr. Limbkins sad that Oliver will
beisolated and then sold for five pounds tomorrow.

<b>1. Dickens’s life</b>:
! • Born in Portsmouth in 1812.
! • Unhappy childhood: he had to work in a factory at the age of 12 (his father went to prison for
</p>
<p>debts).
! • He became a newspaper reporter with the pen name Boz.
! • In 1836 Sketches by Boz, articles about London people and scenes, were published in instalments.
! • Success with autobiographical novels, Oliver Twist (1838), David Copperfield (1849-50), Little
</p>
<p>Dorrit (1857). • Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), Great Expectations (1860-61) set
against the background of social issues.
</p>
<p>! • Busy editor of magazines.
! • Died in 1870

<b>2.</b> <b>The setting of Dickens’s novels</b>:
! • Dickens was the great novelist of cities, especially London.
! • London is depicted at three different social levels:
!       1.the parochial world of the workhouses (place which offer accomodation adn employment,
</p>
<p>they were managed by parish –parrocchie-) its inhabitants belong to the lower middle class.
!       2.the criminal world  murderers, pickpockets living in squalid slums.
!       3.the Victorian middle class  respectable people believing in human dignity.
 • Detailed description of “Seven Dials”, a notorious slum district, its sense of disorientation and
</p>
<p>confinement is clearly expressed in Dickens’s novels

<b>3. Dickens’s characters</b>:
 Dickens shifted the social frontiers of the novel: the 18th- century realistic upper middle- class
world was replaced by the one of the lower orders. He depicted Victorian society in all its variety, its
richness and its squalor.
He created:
 •caricatures he exaggerated and ridiculed peculiar social characteristics of the middle, lower and
lowest classes
 •weak female characters He was on the side of the poor, the outcast, the working-class
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<b>4. Dickens’s themes</b>:
 • Family, childhood, poverty the subjects to which he returned time and again.
 • Dickens’s children are either innocent or corrupted by adults.
 • Most of these children begin in negative circumstances and rise to happy endings which resolve
</p>
<p>the contradictions in their life created by the adult

<b>5. Dickens’s aim</b>:
 Dickens tried to get the common intelligence of the country to alleviate social sufferings. He was
a campaigning novelist and his books highlight all the great Victorian controversies:
 • the faults of the legal system (Oliver Twist)
 • the horrors of factory employment (David Copperfield, Hard Times)
 • scandals in private schools (David Copperfield)
 • the miseries of prostitution
 • the appalling living conditions in slums (Bleak House)
 • corruption in government (Bleak House)

<b>6. Dickens’s style</b>:
 Dickens’s style is very rich and original. The main stylistic features of his novels are:
! 1.long list of objects and people.
! 2.adjectives used in pairs or in group of three and four.
! 3.several details, not strictly necessary.
! 4.repetitions of the same word/s and/or sentence structure.
! 5.the same concept/s is/are expressed more than once, but with different words.
! 6.use of antithetical images in order to underline the characters’ features.
! 7.exaggeration of the characters’ faults.
! 8.suspense at the end of the episodes or introduction of a sensational event to keep the readers’
</p>
<p>interest.

<b>7. Oliver Twist (1838)</b>:
• This Bildungsroman (an “education” novel) appeared in instalments in 1837.
• It fictionalises the humiliations Dickens experienced during his childhood.
• The protagonist, Oliver Twist, is always innocent and pure and remains incorruptible throughout
the novel.
• At the end he is saved from a life of villainy by a well- to-do family.
• The setting is London.
Dickens attacked:
 a. the social evils of his times such as poor houses, unjust courts and the underworld.
 b. the world of the workhouses founded upon the idea that poverty was a consequence of laziness.
 c. the officials of the workhouses because they abused the rights of the poor as individuals and
caused them further misery.

<b>8.</b> <b>David Copperfield (1849-50)</b>:
 This novel is the most autobiographical of all Dickens’s novels. In the preface the novelist wrote:
 • Narrative technique  a “Bildungsroman”; the protagonist, David, functions also as narrator.
 • The characters  both realistic and romantic, characterised by a particular psychological trait.
 • Atmosphere  a combination of Advertisement for David realism and enchantment.
 • Themes:
  1. the struggle of the weak in society.
  2. the great importance given to strict education.
  3. cruelty to children. </p>

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<p>  4. the bad living conditions
<b>9. Hard Times (1854)</b>:
 It is a “denunciation novel” a powerful accusation of some of the negative effects of industrial
society. The setting Coketown, an imaginary industrialised town. Characters people living and
working in Coketown, like the protagonist Thomas Gradgrind, an educator who believes in facts and
statistics
Themes:
1. a critic of materialism and Utilitarianism.
2. a denunciation of the ugliness and squalor of the new industrial age.
3. the gap between the rich and the poor. Aim  to illustrate the dangers of allowing people to become
like machines. </p>

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<p><b>Eliot&amp;
</b>
Born in 1888 in Missouri. He studied at Harvard and Oxford. He started work firts as a clerk at Lloyds
Bank, then as a director. Unhappily married, he suffered for a nervous breakdown. He wrote most of
his masterpiece, like <i>The Waste Land</i>, during his recovering in a sanatorium in Lausanne. Poetry was
his only refuge. In 1927 he become a British citizen and he join the Church of England. Then he
wrote also <i>Journey of the Magi</i>, <i>Four quatez</i> and<i> Wednesday Ashes</i>. He became a literary critic. He
was awared the Nobel Prize in 1948. He died in London in 1965.

<b><i>The Waste Land</i></b><i></i>:
•It is an autobiography written in a moment of crisis in the life of the poet
• Published in 1922, the same year of <i>Ulysses</i> by James Joyce. It is divided in 5 sections:
</p>
<p>1.! The Burial Dead: contrast between life=fertility=glorius past and death=sterility=ugly present
2.! A Game of Chess: with juxstapose (tecnique)
3.! The Fire Sermon: theme of alienation with a mechanical and loveless sexual encounter
4.! Death by Water
5.! What the thunder said: evoke religions from East and West. The solution is sympathy with
</p>
<p>other man.

</p>
<p>•The disillusionment and disgust of the period after World War I
•Contrast between past fertility and present sterility
•The mythical past linked to a new concept of History repetition of the same events
•Spring Symbols: different from Chaucer -&gt; absence of rebirth:
! April is the cruelest month, breeding
! Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
! Memory and desire, stirring
! Dull roots with spring rain.

•Mythical method: to give significance to present futility
•Subjective experiences made universal
•Use of Juxtaposition
•Quotations from different languages and literary works
•Fragmentation
•Technique of implication: the active participation of the reader is required
•Objective correlative.
For Eliot, the “objective correlative” is a pattern of objects, events, actions, or a situation that can
serve effectively to awaken in the reader an emotional response without being a direct statement of
that subjective emotion

•Both Eliot and Montale depict a desolate landscape
They both refer to a waste land of the spirit
This landscape is cosmopolitan in Eliot
It is a domestic landscape in Montale
The objective correlative:




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<b>What the thunder said
</b>Desolated landscape (the sweat is dry, a dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit) means
the impossibility to rebirth. Strong desire of water. The comparison beetwen the past and the present’s
cities explain the circle concept of history where civilization will collapse.

<b>The Burial of the dead</b> (modern man, habitans of the waste land)
Spring is an illusion. Winter cover all, also human’s suffering.

Chaucher in the opening of Canterbury tales, celebrate spring as a rebith. He explain the need to go
on pilgrimigis (journey of salvation).

<b>Unreal city </b>(The burial of the dead)
Unreal city is refered to the modern cities of western industrialisation and alienation. Eliot describe a
crowed of office workers flowed like a river over London Bridge. They are compared to Dante’s
souls in the Inferno.
Eliot recognised Stetson, maybe a friend, who had witness the war. There is a circle conception of
history (is quated the Punic war). Eliot refers also to egyptian culture for the Osiris’ mith and the Dog
God. At the end of the extract he used the tecnique of implication. Termina con una citazione di
Baudelaire </p>

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<p><b>Edwardian(age(
</b>
On the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, the royal house took the Germanic surname of her consort
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Victoria’s son Edward, who reigned as Edward VII, the only
sovereign, was crowned in August 1902.
He restore energy to a gloomy monarchy since his father’s death. He was able to assist in foreign
policy negotiations, like the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale. Edward was the first British monarch to
visit Russia. He founded the Order of Merit to reward those who distinguished themselves in science,
art or literature, in 1902.
In 1906 the Liberals won the general election and took a first step towords welfare state: national
insurance and old-age pensions.
Edwardian period was a time of industrial unrest, strikes, ment to be weapons against the government,
remarkable for the number of men involved, violence, also from women.
Suffragettes were ladies plus small groups of male sympathisers, arguing in favour of voting rights
for women. This movement was founded by Millicent Fawcett in 1897. No one paid attention until
the foundation of the Women’s social and Political Union.
The Liberal programme led to a constitutional crisis when the House of Lords refuses to pass the
Liberal budget of 1909, included welfare programmes.
Edward VII died in 1910 and was succeeded by his son George V, who maintained a certain
informality.
In 1914 the First World War broke out. The king pressed for proper treatment of German prisoners
of war. In 1917 anti-German feeling led him to change the family name to that of Windsor.
Irlend ask for support of Home Rule, the right of the people to control they own affairs.
The 1916 “Easter Rising” (In 1916, at Easter, the Sinn Fein extremists, who demanded complete
independence, had rebelled in Dublin (the "Easter Ring")) in Dublin resulted in the setting up of the
Irish Free State, while the six northern countries remained part of the United Kingdom.
</p>
<p><b>Word(War(I(
</b>Borke out when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was animated in Sarajevo in 1914. The war
involved the Central European powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary) vs Triple Entente (Britain,
France, Russia).
Britain declare war on Germany in August 1914. It was a signatory of an agreement to respect
Belgium.
Shell shock is a term used by doctors to refering to psycological effects of shell’s explosions.
USA join the war on 11th November 1918. In 1919 was signed the peace at Versailles.
Wilson propose the “Fourtheen Points” to workout the peace. He describe a plan to set up the
“League of Nation” to keep peace.
The war caused the rein of four great empires.
</p>
<p><b>The(war(poets(
</b>
During the IWW, thousands of young men volunteered for military service. They lived in a squalor
conditions in the trenches because of the rain and mude.
The common soldiers improvised verses, not reach by literate people living, however there was a
group of poets who actually experienced the fighting and awaken the conscience of the readers to
the horrors of the war.

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<p><b>Rupert(Brooke(
</b>
Born in 1887 in a wealthy family. Good student and athlete. He wrote five war sonnets. Traditional
form, he show sentimental attitudes, lost in that period.
</p>
<p><b>The(soldiers(
</b>Poem noted for the lyricism. Composed in 1915, it shows ideals of patriotisms due to the beginning
of the war.
In this poem, the poet says that if he should die, people have to remember that “there’s some corner
of a foreign field // That is for ever England”. It contains a deep sense of patriotism.
</p>
<p><b>Wilfred(Owen(
</b>Born 1893. Work as a teacher of English teacher. His poems are painful and musical.
</p>
<p><b>Dulce(et(decorum(est(
</b>Composed in 1920, at the end of the war, it shows the horrors of the war. The title is a quotation by
Orazio.
The first stanza describes the soldiers in the trench. They feels blinde, deaf and lame.
The second stanza describes the explosion of a shell and the consequences became the Owen’s
nightmare
The third stanza describes the consequences and the effect of the explosion on human body. The
poet used the “tecnique of implication” refered to the reader. </p>

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<p><b>George&amp;Orwell&amp;
</b>
Vita
Orwell’s life and work were marked by the conflict between middle-classupbringing and the
emotional identification with the working class. He did social experiments, for example he tried to
approach to the poor world analysing how institution help this class.
Orwell believe that writing could represents all aspects of reality and so carry out a social function.
The main themes are the critique to totalitarism, tolerance, justice and decency. He use a realistic and
factual language.

<b><i>Nineteen Eighty-Four</i></b><i></i>
The novel, written in 1948, is set in a future world divided into 3 blocks: Oceania, Eurasia
(Russia+Europe) and Estasia (Asia and Far East). Oceania, continuously in war with the other two
country, is divided into 3 provinces; the one with the capital London is “Airstris”. It is ruled by “the
Party”, which is led by a figure called Big Brother.
The inhabitans are continuously controlled and influenced by the dictator with telescreens and
posters, in fact all individuality expressions are forbidden, but they have the “2 minutes of hate”.
To control people’s lives, the Party implementing a Newspeak (new language with limited words)
and threatening them with the “Thought Police”, who do the brainwash to the not conformed people.

Winston Smith illegaly buys a diary in which he begins to write all his thoughts and memory for the
future generations. He work at the Ministry of Truth. He notice an attractive dark-haired girl called
Julia. Thei begin a secret affair insted of the “thoughtcrime”. One day, O’Brien, a member of the
“Inner Party”, tells that he hates the Party and start working against it as a member of “Brotherhood”,
a group led by Goldenstein who wants to overthrow the Party. O’Brien gives a copy of the
Goldenstein’s book to Winston, he read it to Julia in their room, but they where arrested. O’Brien
was a Party spy; he take Winston at the Ministry of Love and he tortures and brainwashes him for
months, but he resist. So O’Brien brings him to the Room 101, where Winston is forced to confront
his worst fear. When he remets Julia, he no longer loves her. He loves only the BB.

The protagonist Winston Smith (the most common name and surname of London) is a middle-aged
described as a small, frail figure (emphasised by the Party’s uniform). His hair as fairs, his face
naturally sanguine, his skin roughened. He is not the classical hero.
His name remainds to Churchill, prime minister of England during the IIWW.

London is described as grotesque, squalid, menacing and as a symbol of poverty: houses are
crumbling, built with wood and corrugated iron. The whole city is rich of bombed sites, heaps of
rubble and a lot of wooden duellings.

The major theme is memory connected with morality and individuality destruction.

So, 1984 is a dystopian novel because it describes a scared imaginary society. Other dystopian novels
are <i>Bave new world</i> by Aldous Huxley and also <i>Animal Farm</i> by Orwell. </p>

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<p><b>John%Keats%
</b>
John Keats is the greatest member of the second generation of poet. He is a precursor
of astheticism. He was born in London in 1795 to a humble but well-off family. He
attended private school in Enfield, but after the early dead of his parents, he became a
surgeon in 1810. Six years later, in spite of precarious finances, he gave up medicine
for poetry. In 1820 he felt the symptoms of tubercolosis, he travelled to Rome in an
effort to recover his health, but he died in 1821.

<b>The substance of his poetry
</b>Keats does not think that lyrical poems have to be based on autopiography situations,
but to universal event. The connection between landscape and poet’s emotion is absent.

<b>The role of imagination
</b>Very important for Keats. The world of his poetry is artificial and is a vision of what
he would like human life to be like.

<b>Beauty and art</b>
Beauty is caped by Keats with sense (colours, perfumes ecc…) and it can produce a
deeper experience of joy, “spiritual beauty”. This two kind of beauty are connected
with life, enjoyment, decay and dead.

<b>Negative capability
</b>Capability of the poet to deny his personality to identify hisself with the object of his
inspiration. In this way he can produce a true poetry.
</p>
<p><b>Ode%on%a%Grecian%Urn%
</b>
It is an ode which celebrate the scenes which adorn an ancient Greek urn. The poem’s
appeal is due not just to the beauty of the scenes, but also to the fact deals, connected
with art.

In the first stanza, the poet personify and describe the urn (foster child, Sylvan
historian, flowery tale): a Dionysian festival with music and ecstatic dance, a piper
under the trees in a pastoral setting (ethernal spring), a young man in love pursuing a
girl (he will never reach the girl but his music will never end. Spiritual love is ethernal,
phisical love leaves a painful heart), a procession of townspeople (then the poet image
the silent city) and priest leading a cow to the sacrifice. Keats is fascinated by the fact
that art is able to present an ideal world because it can freeze actions and emotions.
Beauty allows man to reach knowledge (precurso of aestheticism). </p>

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<p><b>Aesthetic(theories(
</b>
The aesthetic movement developed in the universities/intellectual circles in the last decades of 19th
century. It begain in France with Gautier and reflect the sense of frustration of the artist and his
reaction against materialism, to re-define the role of art. French artist wanted to escaped into aesthetic
isolation (Art for Art’s Sake). The bohémien embodied this protest.
</p>
<p><b>Oscar(Wilde(
</b>
Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin in 1854. He attend the Trinity College in Dublin, then he was sent
to Oxford (he became a disciple of Walter Pater, who introduce the aesthetisism in London) and, after
graduating, he settled in London. In 1881 he edited, at his own expense, Poems, and was engaged for
a tour in the US. On his returne to Europe in 1883, he married Constance Lloyde, who bore him two
children. At this point of his career he was well know. As a tribute to his dandified Aestheticism,
women and young men wore lilies. In the late 1880s he wrote some short stories (<i>The Canterwille
Ghost</i>, <i>Lord Arthur Savile’s</i> …), but after his last novel, <i>The picture of Dorian Gray</i>, he developed
an interest in drama. In 1891 he met the handsome young nobleman Lord Douglas, with whom he
had a homosexual affair. For that he was prisoned (in this period he wrote <i>De Profundis</i>) and after
two years he was released. He lived in France and he died in Paris in 1900.

<b><i>The picture of Dorian Gray</i></b><i></i> plot
Dorian’s beauty fascinated a painter, Basil Hallward, who decide to paint a portrait of him. The
portrait satisfies the young man’s desire. All the signs of age, experience and vice appear on the
portrait instead Dorian remains the same: young and beautiful. When the painters sees the corrupted
image, Dorian kills him, so he decide to hide the portrait. Then, Dorina, witness of his spiritual
corruption, stabs the portrait. Dorian died and the portrait return to be without signs.

The story is told in third person with the point of view of Dorian, whose characters are revealed
through what he says or wath other people say about him. The words appealing to the senses.
The story is allegorical. It’s a 19th century version of the myth of Faust (a man sold his soul to the
devil and all his desires might be satisfied). In the novel Wilde plays on the Renaissance idea of the
correspondence between beautiful people = moral people. The picture represent the dark side of
Dorian’s personality. The moral of the novel is that every excess must be punished, but when he stabs
the portrait he cannot avoid the punished. Finally the picture restored to his original beauty. So: art
survives people, art is eternal.
</p>
<p><b>Dorian’s(death(
</b>
The first part of the extract. Dorian see two men chatting about him, so Sybil comes up in Dorian’s
mind.
Then Dorian understand that he had lost the unstained childhood and he find out the trap of beauty
and ethernal youth.
Dorian thinks that there is a possibility to save himself. He makes a lot of good actions, he confess
his murder, but it’s not enought.
At the end of the extract he kill himself with a stabs on the portrait.


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<p>
<b>1. Oscar Wilde’s Life
</b>! • Born in Dublin in 1854
! • He became a disciple of Walter Pater , the theorist of aestheticism
! • He became a fashionable dandy
! • He was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London and one of the greatest
</p>
<p>celebrities of his days
! • He suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned after been convicted of “gross indecency”
</p>
<p>for homosexual acts
! • He died in Paris in 1900
<b>
2. Works
</b>Poetry :  Poems, 1891
</p>
<p> The Ballad of Reading Gaol , 1898
Fairy tales :  The Happy Prince and other Tales , 1888
   The House of Pomegranates , 1891
Novel :  The Picture of Dorian Gray , 1891
Plays :  Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892
   A Woman of no Importance , 1893
   The Importance of Being Earnest , 1895
   Salomé , 1893

<b>3. Wilde’s aestheticism
</b> • Oscar Wilde adopted the aesthetical ideal: he affirmed “my life is like a work of art”
! • His aestheticism clashed with the didacticism of Victorian novels.
! • The artist = the creator of beautiful things
! • Art -&gt; used only to celebrate beauty and the sensorial pleasures
! • Virtue and vice -&gt; employed by the artist as raw material in his art: “No artist has
ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style”
! • 1890 -&gt; first appeared in a magazine
! • 1891 -&gt; revised and extended
! • It reflects Oscar Wilde’s personality
! • It was considered immoral by the Victorian public

<b>4. The picture of Dorian Gray
</b> • Set in London at the end of the 19th century
 • The painter Basil Hallward makes a portrait of a handsome young man, Dorian Gray.
! • Dorian’s desires of eternal youth are satisfied
! • Experience and vices appear on the portrait
! • Dorian lives only for pleasures
! • The painter discovers Dorian’s secret and he is killed by the young man
! • Later Dorian wants to get free from the portrait; he stabs it but in so doing he kills himself
! • At the very moment of death the portrait returns to its original purity and Dorian turns into a
withered, wrinkled and loathsome man

<b>5. Dorian Gray: a modern version of Dr. Faust
</b>! • A temptation is placed before Dorian: a potential ageless beauty
! • Lord Henry’s cynical attitude is in keeping with the devil’s role in Dr Faust
! • Lord Henry acts as the “Devil advocate”
! • The picture stands for the dark side of Dorian’s personality </p>

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<b>6. Dorian Gray: the moral of the novel
</b> • Every excess must be punished and reality cannot be escaped
! • When Dorian destroys the picture, he cannot avoid the punishment for all his sins -&gt; death
! • The horrible, corrupting picture could be seen as a symbol of the immorality and bad conscience
</p>
<p>of the Victorian middle class
! • The picture, restored to its original beauty, illustrates Wilde’s theories of art: art survives people,
art is eternal </p>

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<p><b>The$age$of$anxiety$
</b>
In the last two decades of the 19th century, the Victorian values had come to an end. The material
gain implied spiritual loss. The positivistic faith in progress and science had led people to believe that
all human misery would be swept away. The First World War, some soldiers died, left the country in
a disillusioned and cynical mood. Prime Minister Lloyd George was undergoing various and
contradictory developments after the war.
An increasing feeling of rootlessness and frustration, led to a remarkable transformation of the notions
of Imperial hegemony and white superiority.
Nothing seemed to be right or certain; even science and religion seemed to offer little comfort or
security. Scientists and philosophers destroyed the old universe which had sustained the Victorians
in their optimistic outlook.

SIGMUND FREUD
He is considered the beginner of psychology and psychiatry. He wrote <i>The Interpretation of Dreams</i>,
a work where he thinks that man’s action could be motivated by irrational forces. He studied the
“libido”, manifested in the Oedipal phase, where child sees the father as a rival for his mother’s
affections. He studied infantile sexuality. He provided a new method of investigation into the human
mind through the analysis of dreams.

CARL JUNG
He continued Freud’s studies and added the concept of “collective unconscious”, a cultural memory
containing the universal myths and beliefs of the human race. This meant that some figures/objects
had a great symbolic power.

ALBERT EINSTEIN
He define the “Theory of relativity” which discarded the concepts’ of time and space. This scientific
revolution was complemented by the cultural relativity developed in that period.

WILLIAM JAMES
He approached a whole series of non-traditional topics in psychology. Every thought or perception
was relative, contextualized and influenced by previous thought. “Consciousness” is like a river of
thought. So the “Stream of consciousness” is the written equivalent of the character’s thought
processes, in the form of interior monologue.

BERGSON
He distinguished historical time, linear, and psychological time, subjective.

GEORGE FRAZER
Some studies of anthropology, helped undermine the absolute truth of religious and ethical systems
in favour of more relativist standpoints. There’s the inability to arrive at a commonly accepted picture
of man.

NIETZSCHE
He substituted Christian morality with a belief in human power.

In that period, English philosophy became analytical. The aim was not to increase knowledge, but
the creative writer have to reassert the centrality of literature as a guide on the perplexities of an age
of alienation. </p>

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<p><b>Modernism$
</b>
The first decades of the 20th century was original. Artistic activity was mainly centered in Paris.
However, some of the main representatives were not French. The term <i>Modernismis</i> is used to refer
to this powerful international movement reaching through Western cultures. It expressed the desire
to break with established forms and subjects. Novel, because of the influence of Freud, explored the
characters’ psyches through the “stream of consciousness” technique and the interior monologue.

Main features:
</p>
<p>•! Breaking down of space and times’s limitations and the disruption of the linear flow of
narrative verse
</p>
<p>•! Perception of reality became uncertain. The omniscent narrator was abbandoned in favour of
the point of view of the narrator.
</p>
<p>•! No rhyme scheme
•! Importance of the “sound”
•! Importance of unconscious
•! Reflect complexity of modern urban life
•! Rejection of elaborate formal in favour of minimalist designs and a fragmented style
•! Rejection of the distinction between “high” and “low”
</p>
<p>
Writers and poets take inspiration from classical as well as new culture to create a new subjective
mythology. Like Eliot or James Joyce.

Untill the 20th century, the novel’s structure was bourgeois (the novelist mediate between characters
and reader). The urgency for social changing forced novelist in a moral and psychological
uncertainty; the new novelist’s role is mediate beetween past’s values and the present’s confusion.
Rejection of the omniscient narration in favour of more PV, analysis of character’s consciousness
(stream of consciousness and interior monologue), subjective time (no chronological sequence of
events). </p>

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<p><b>Percy&amp;Shelley&amp;
</b>
Percy Shelley was born in Sussex in 1792. He was expelled from Oxford University because of his
radical pamphlet <i>The Necessity of Atheism</i>, challenging the existence of God. At the age of nineteen,
he married. Then he had two children. In the period of French Revolution, he rebelled against
religions, laws and customs, he become republican, vegetarian and an advocate of free love. In 1818
he went to live in Italy in a voluntary exile, during which much of his best work was composed.
Shelley died in 1822 by an accident. His grave is situated in Rome.

<b>Freedom and free love
</b>Shelley refuse conventions, political oppression and tyranny. He use the powerful musicality, he
believe in the principles of freedom and love.

<b>The role of immagination
</b>He defence the expression of immagination and revolutionary creativity, seriously meant to change
the reality of an increasingly material world.

<b>Nature
</b>Shelley describes a nature like a beautiful veil that hides the eternal truth of the divine spirit. Nature
is a refuge from the disappointment and injustice of ordinary word. The poet’s task is to help mankind
to reach an ideal world where freedom, love and beauty are delivered from their enemies.

</p>
<p><b>Ode&amp;to&amp;the&amp;West&amp;Wind&amp;
</b>
An ‘ode’ is a lyric composition with an elevated tone, full of archaisms, invocations and
personifications to celebrate something. The poet talks about the defection of the wind on the eath,
atmosphere and sea, then he compare hisself to the wind to share a hope message for humankind.

In the first three stanzas there is the defection of the wind (lots of personification and similies)
</p>
<p>•! on the earth (the wind - destroier - move dead leafs, - preserver - flying seeds under the earth
are compared to corpse in their grave)
</p>
<p>•! on the sky (clouds are moving like seeds, like Menade’s hair. The wind collaborate to the life
cycle create the dome of a vast sepulchre)
</p>
<p>•! on the sea (the mediterranean sea rises by summer’s tepour, near Baia and historical buildings.
The Atlantic sea is divided into chasms by the wind).
</p>
<p>The poet (feels taimless, proud and swift) compare hisself to the element moved by the wind (lots of
metaphor and oximoros), because he would be free like when he was a child (adult life, power and
religion have oppressed the poet). He want to be a lyre used by the wind to awaken mankind and
scatter a massege of freedom, hope (can spring be far behind ?) and changing. </p>

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<p><b>The$Romantic$Age$(171531800)$
</b>
After the American Revolution (1776) and French Revolution (1789), which share
ideals of freedom, english liberals felt that reforms had become a real possibility. If the
bourgeoisie were supported by laissez-faire economy, the state opened a capitalists
economy wich widened the gap between rich and poor. Mechanisation,
Industrialisation and Agricultural Revolution were increased.

The figure of intellectual leaders grown up. Democracy, power of beauty become the
central themes of Romantic poetry. Science inspired Gothic novel and nature became
a place of spiritual truth. (Es. Rousseau encourage civilisation and the “cult of exotic”,
veneration of what is far away from space and time)

The Romanticism valued the subjective and irrational parts of human nature: emotion,
imagination, introspection and relationship with nature. There where two great
generation of poets: Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge in the first, and Keats and Percy
Shelley in the second.
</p>
<p><b>An$age$of$revolution$
</b>
18th century was characterized by great revolutions: the Agrarian and Industrial
Revolutions reshaped the social and political strucutre.

Britain change from a Farming country into an Industrial one. The increasing of
population required a more efficient production, and it’s implied new technologies and
inventions (ex. Machine for cloth-making). At first most of power come from water,
but in 1775 James Watt patented an engine (steam power) more powerfull than it’s
predecessor (it allowed Britain to manufacture cloth). Goods were transported thanks
to new waterways.

There were also great changes in agricolture. It was implied with new technological
inventions and tecniques. It took the concept of “open field” (enclosure act) and the
crop rotation.
</p>
<p><b>Industrial$society$
</b>
During the 18th century there was a shifting of population. New factories were built
near the coal fields (women and children were employed because they could be paid
less and were easier to control). Air and water were polluted by smoke and filth.
Alcolism and Prostitution. The life expectancy was below 20 years because of many
deseases. </p>

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<b>American Revolution
</b>When George III came to the throne in 1760, Britain was in a period of stability. The British
government wanted the American colonies to help pay for their defence and impose new taxes against
the “Bill of rights” (1689), eventhoug colonies weren’t represented in the Parliament (No taxation
without rapresentation). At the boston Tea party in 1773, rebels dessed as Native Americans, threw
a tea cargo from Britain into the Boston Harbos.
Americans where divided into “Patriots” (no army, supported by French) and the British “Loyalists”
(had army, but too small for an attack). On 4th July 1776 in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress
signed the “Declaration of Independence”, written by Thomas Jefferson: all men have natural right
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happines”. With the Treaty of Veersailles in 1783, Britain recognised
the independence of its former colonies. The new republic of USA was a federal consitution in 1787
and George Washinghton became the first president in 1789.

<b>What was the French Revolution?</b>
The French Revolution was a period of time in France when the people overthrew the monarchy
and took control of the government.
<b>When did it take place?</b>
The French Revolution lasted 10 years from 1789 to 1799. It began on July 14, 1789 when
revolutionaries stormed a prison called the Bastille. The revolution came to an end 1799 when a
general named Napoleon overthrew the revolutionary government and established the French
Consulate (with Napoleon as leader).
<b>The French Estates</b>
Before the French Revolution, the people of France were divided into social groups called
"Estates." The First Estate included the clergy (church leaders), the Second Estate included the
nobles, and the Third Estate included the commoners. Most of the people were members of the
Third Estate. The Third Estate paid most of the taxes, while the nobility lived lives of luxury and
got all the high-ranking jobs.
<b>Revolutionary Government</b>
The French Government was in constant turmoil throughout the revolution. At the start of the
revolution, representatives from the Third Estate established the National Assembly where they
demanded that King Louis XVI give them certain rights. This group soon took control of the
country. They changed names over time to the Legislative Assembly and, later, to the National
Convention. After the Reign of Terror, a new government was formed called the Directory. The
Directory ruled until Napoleon took control.
<b>Reign of Terror</b>
The darkest period of the French Revolution is called the Reign of Terror which lasted from 1793 to
1794. During this time, a man named Robespierre led the National Convention and the Committee
of Public Safety. He wanted to stamp out any opposition to the revolution, so he called for a rule of
"Terror." Laws were passed that said anyone suspected of treason could be arrested and executed by
guillotine. Thousands of people were executed including Queen Marie Antoinette and many of
Robespierre's political rivals.
<b>Political Clubs</b>
Many of the new political ideas and alliances of the French Revolution were formed in political
clubs. These clubs included the powerful Jacobin Club (led by Robespierre), the Cordeliers, the
Feuillants Club, and the Pantheon Club.
<b>Outcome</b>
The French Revolution completely changed the social and political structure of France. It put an
end to the French monarchy, feudalism, and took political power from the Catholic church. It </p>

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abolishment of slavery and the rights of women. </p>

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<p><b>James&amp;Joyce&amp;
</b>
Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882. He was educated at Jesuit schools, including University College,
Dublin. He graduated in modern languages in 1902. He was a broader European culture, and this lead
him to think of himself as a european rather than an Irishman. He visited Paris and he fell in love with
Nora Barnacle and he had two children. He met Svevo in Trieste. During the 2WW he moved to the
neutral Switzerland. He died here in 1941. Some of his works are <i>Dubliners</i>, <i>Chamber</i> <i>Music</i> and
<i>Ulysses</i>.

<b>STYLE AND TECNIQUE</b>
He set all his works in Ireland and mostly in Dublin.
His effort was to give a realistic portrait of the life of ordinary people doing ordinary things in their
ordinary life.
He explore the characters’ impressions and pov. He use the free direct speech and epiphany
(revelation of a hidden reality). He don’t uses punctuation or grammatical connections.

<b><i>Dubliners:</i></b><i></i>
It is a collection of fifteen short stories which talks about the oppressive effects of religious, political,
cultural and economic forces on the lives of lower-middle class.
This are arranged into 4 groups: Childhood, Adolescence, Mature Life and Public Life (the last story
“The Dead” is considered Joyce’s first marterpiece).

Joyce use symbolism and epiphany (revelation of the sudden spiritual caused by a trivial
gesture/external object/banal situation, which lead the character to a self-revelation about him/herself.

The central theme of this collection is Paralysis. The paralysis of Dublin resulting from external forces
and linked to religion, politics and culture. Dubliners are spiritualy weak and scared people.
The main theme is the failure to find a wayout of paralysis.

Each story is told by the pov of the character with a free direct speech (direct presentation of the
character). The linguistic register is varied and suited into the age, social class and role of the
character.
</p>
<p><b>Eveline&amp;
</b>
It’s a short story which describe the life of a nineteen-year-old girl who has the opportunity to
change her routine life.

Eveline looks at from the window the street where played since she was a child. To that time was
happy, the father wasn’t bad and the mother was still in life. Eveline is a nineteen girl who works as
shop assistant in a big warehouse, where she is maltreated by the other shop assistant. At home she
helps the brothers and the father despotic as she had promised to her mother. She gave the wage to
the father. Eveline has a boyfriend, Frank, a seaman who he had found luck to Buenos Aires and
was there on holiday. The father had forbidden to meet him. Sad for her life she want to move from
Dublin to Buenos Aires, where Eveline and Frank will marry. At the port she doesn’t go and leaves
Frank alone on the ship, because she is not ready to leave her country.

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<b><i>Ulysses
</i></b><i></i>
Novel set in Dublin and take place in a single day: Thursday, June 16, 1904, the day that Nora
Barnacle (Joyce’s wife) made her fondness clear to him.

During the day, three main characters wake up, have various encounter in Dublin, and go to sleep 18
hours later:
Leopold Bloom is the central character, middle-aged, non-practicing jew, is Joyce’s common man.
He leaves the home at 8:00 o’clock and return at 2:00 of the following day. He buy his breakfast,
turns up in many streets, attends a funeral. He meet Stephen Dedalus alienated protagonist of <i>A
Portrait of the Artist ad a Young Man</i>, momentarily his adopted son. The alienated common man met
the alienated artist who take him home where the paralysis of their fatigue prevents them from
achieving a personal communion. Molly, Bloom’s wife, singer, is planning an afternoon of adultery
with her music director.

<i>Ulysses </i>is linked to the Homer’s epic <i>Odyssey</i> in the characters (Bloom as Ulysses, Stephen as
Telemachus –Ulysses son-, Molly as Penelope) and in the structure (3 parts –like the 3 one of the
Odyssey- and 18 episodes –each with a specific hour, colour, organ of the body, sense, symbol, and
a narrative technique).

The setting highlights the ordinary life on an ordinary Dublin.
He move his characters in places frequented by Joyce. So, Dublin became a character in this novel,
because it is described in every single particular.
Stephen embodies every young man seeking maturity, stream simulated by sense impressions; Mrs
Bloom stand for flesh (sensual nature and fecundity), stream carried on by her own memories; Mr
Bloom is everybody, stream linked by cause and effect.

The theme of the novel is moral: human life means suffering, but also struggling to rise and seek the
good.

This new prose is based on “the mythical method”. Joyce create a parallel with the <i>Odyssey</i>. Homer’s
myth was used to resemblance and difference the actions and people of Dublin day.
However, Joyce wanted to write a “modern epic in prose”: stream of consciousness tecnique, close
ups (= the cinematic technique), flashbacks, suspension of speech, juxtaposition; interior monologue
with 2 levels of narration: one external to the character’s mind, one internal to the character’s mind,
so thoughts flow freely without interruption. The “Collage tecnique” which describe the characters
from more pov.

Language is rich in puns, images, constrasts, paradoxes, symbols. The vocabulary register is huge
(slangs, nicknames, quotations). </p>

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<p><b>Victorian)Age)
</b>
Queen Victoria assend the throne in 1837. Her behaviour made her beloved especially
by the middle class, who shared her ideals. The first years of her reign was progresfull,
with imperial expansion, political development and social reforms (Ten Hours Act,
1847). The merit of this achivement were of the queen, who reigned constitutionally,
in contrast with all Europe. She was a mediator between the two political parties:
Liberals (ex-Whigs, they promoted a strong campain for free trade, for example the
Corn Laws manteined the price of the corn artificially high to protect the landed
interest) and the Conservatives. There were also working-class movements, for
example the “Chartism” with “Peoples’s Charter” who wants a social reform to extend
the right to vote to all male. It’s demand were refused by the House of Commons and
the movement slowly died. The First Opium War against China open new ports. Britain
alzo support Turkey during the Crimean War (1853-1856).
</p>
<p><b>Life)in)Victorian)town)
</b>
Britain had become a nation of town dwellers, due to industrial development. The heart
of Victorian political and social reforms was finding a solution to problems linked to
the overcrowded urban. Victorian cities was famous for overcrowding, squalor, disease
and crime, in particular slums districts. The mortality rate was high and terrible
working conditions in polluted atmospheres had a disastrous effect. The Common
Lodging Houses Act and Labouring Classes Lodging Houses Act (1851) were passed
to prevent the worst squalor and to clean up the towns. However, the changes were
slow in coming and gradual in effect. Medicine underwent a radical change:
professional organisations, control and research, modern hospitals were built. Other
services were introduced: water, gas, place of entertainment, Victorian institutions,
prisons, police stations, boarding schools. Law and order were among the major
problems of the urban environment. Police forces were needed to keep cities under
control. The Prime Minister Robert Peel established the Metropolitan Police, borned
for Peterloo massacre (Army shoot on the crowd and two people died while their were
listening a political meeting), composed of ‘Peelers’ and ‘Bobbies’.
</p>
<p><b>Coketown)
</b>
Coketown it’s a passage from Dickens’s social novel <i>Hard Times</i>. It is centered on the
description of the industrial centre of Coketown (is a fictitious name for any industrial
town in england) and the consequences of the industrialization.
The effect is pollution, in brick which should be red, but they are also black, there are
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<p>with a ill-smelling. The streets and the towns are all a like, symptomps of monotony
and man feels alienated.
There is a materialistic and utilitaristic view of the life (facts). </p>

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<p><b>Virginia'Woolf'
</b>She was born in 1882. She grew up in a literary and intellectual atmosphere. Her education consisted
of private Greek lessons and access to her father’s library. Sea is the central symbol of her art, infact
water represent on the one hand harmonious and feminine, on the other hand the possibility of the
resolution of conflicts in death.
On the death of her father, Virginia started her literary career by taking part to the Bloomsbury Group
(with her sister and the artist Vanessa Bell). In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf. In 1915 he published
her first novel <i>The Voyage Out</i>. In 1925 <i>Mrs Dalloway</i> appeared in which Virgina experimented new
narrative tecniques. In 1929 she delivered two lectures at Cambridge, <i>A Room of One’s Own</i>, a work
of great impact on the feminist movement. The IIWW increased her fear and anxiety. She became
haunted by the terror of losing her mind. Finally, she drowned herself in the River Ouse. She was
fifthy-nine.

She was interested in giving voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory (The human
personality is a continuous shift of impressions and emotions), so the important things are not the
historical events, but the impressions of the historical events on the characters. Infact the omniscent
narrator disappeared and the pv shifted inside the characters’ minds through flashbacks.

As for Joyce, also for Virginia subjective reality came to be identified with the “stream of
consciousness”, but Virginia never let her characters’ thoughts flow without control. She use the
“moments of being”, when the characters can see the reality behind appearences (like the joyce’s
epiphanies). She use poetic and allusive words.

<b><i>Mrs Dalloway</i></b><i></i>
At 10 am on a Wednesday in June 1923, Clarissa Dalloway goes to Bond Street to buy some flowers
for a party she is giving this evening. While she is in the flower shop, a car drives noisly and shif the
attention to the street. Septimus, an estate agent’clerck and shell-shocked veteran of the IWW, with
Lucrezia, an italian girl, are walking, but Septimus mental disorders necessitated the calling in of
doctors, Sir William Bradshaw. Clarissa receives at home the unexpected visit from Peter Walsh, her
youth love. They goes to Regent’s Park; here they meet a glimpse of the Warren Smiths, who are
going to Sir William Bradshaw for an interview. Septimus go to the clinic. At 6 pm he jumps out of
the window of his room, the ambulance carrying his body passes by Peter Walsh. All the characters
are present at Clarissa’s party who hear from Sir William Bradshaw the Septimus’s death.

The novel take place on a single day, June, 1923. It follow the protagonist in a small area of London.
She use the “tunnelling technique” (the reader experience the character ricollection to the past).
Woolf represent a society’s changing: increasing use of cars and planes, new standards in marital
relationships, the striking of Big Ben reminds the reader to the temporal grid which organise the
narrative (passing of the time, of life, of its flowing into death).

Clarissa is a London Society lady of fifty-one, wife of Richard Dalloway, conservative MP. She is
caracterised by opposing feelings: need from freedom (Her life is an attempt to over come her
weakness ) and her class consciousness (she has a role in the society).
Septimus is a sensitive man married with Lucrezia (24). He is caracterised by the sense of fear
(because he is a “shell-shock” case) and guilt (he is haunted by the specre of Evans, his best friend
died in the war). He suffered from insomnia and he is impotent.
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<p>Clarissa and Septimus are connected because they responde to experience in phisical terms, they are
protected by theri partners. Septimus is the Clarissa alter ego because he represent what she tries to
reprime.
Conception of time: similar to the one of Bergson. Interior time is different from the external time.
Time is fragmented in distincted moments. </p>